When a Senator's daughter is kidnapped, possibly eaten by what appears to be a sea monster, Seal Team 666 is called in for their expertise in combating paranormal threats. For once the team splits with the greater part heading to South America, while Ya Ya heads off to help out with a domestic security problem. When he returns to the team, things are not right. The agent who had accompanied him is missing and the team quickly discover that he is possessed. All this puts their mission against the Cartels, who have the Senators daughter, in jeopardy...

Seal Team 666: Age of Blood (2013 - 347 pages) is the second in the series, written by Weston Ochse, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for his first novel, Scarecrow Godsand. The story follows directly on from Seal Team 666.

The book is a mash up between military procedure and macabre horror, or it should have been... and yet we sail through a good half of the book without anything really fantastical happening. There are moments and vignettes, the team are helped by a werewolf, we have the aforementioned possible sea monster and Ya Ya going gaga, but given the amount of time allocated to these elements, the first half of the book could just have easily dispensed with these and have been none the worse for it.

It’s as if Ochse got so engrossed in the descriptive minutiae of military equipment and operational procedure that he forgot the best part of the first book and the reason for the team’s existence, to fight demons and sundry denizens of the underworld. That is not to say that the book is bad, but you might have to wait some time for some supernatural thrills.

Like the previous book, the stories strengths are its technical aspects and the well rounded characters which populate the story. It’s wall to wall military porn. The main weakness of the book is the gung-ho attitude of the team regardless of what they experience it barely shoves a hair out of place. This is not an isolated problem with this story, but seems to pervade cross genre military procedure books in general, whether they are in the realms of fantasy or science fiction.

Ultimately, what Ochse has created is a cracking, fast paced thriller with enough technical jargon to fill the boots of any armchair warrior.

6

Charles Packer