Jack Carr’s latest thriller, Red Sky Mourning, should come with a reader’s advisory, a blood red rectangle in bold print — “people with a heart condition should proceed at their own risk. Timid soy-boys need venture no further.” If you’ve never been shot at before, you’ll feel the experience deep within your quivering viscera. Reading Red Sky Mourning, you’ll forget you’re snug at home wearing your favorite pair of slippers, and sweat nervously as you prepare for a HALO jump out of a small, purpose built cargo door just under screaming turbines sucking, crushing, and blasting a column of superheated air into the stratospheric void.
Your destination isn’t a placid field of gently growing Kentucky fescue, but the heaving swells of the Banda Sea. The only easy day was yesterday.
Carr puts you on a CIA covert jet with James Reece, flying nearly twice as high as Mount Everest. The modified civilian sport rig’s straps will pinch your flesh as your jump buddy meticulously checks rings and pins — each critical to you surviving the next twenty minutes of arctic free fall. Never collided with a brick wall? If you read Carr’s latest, you’ll experience a virtual concussion as your frigid fingertips grip the freezer cold aluminum skin of the sucking black hole before you. All you have to do next is jump, tuck into a ball, and survive the freight train of atmosphere turned to solid mass through sheer velocity.
After the pneumatic beating, you can untuck, starfish into wisps of upper troposphere, and marvel at the luminescent curvature of the earth as the glories of morning spread with the waking eye of the sun. All this, and you have yet to send a single round down range.
But, James Reece and his crew have all of civilization to save as corporatist, nation state, and the personal political interests of politicians intersect to press the balance of power to the tipping point. The Cuban missile crisis was child’s play compared to the existential threats confronting Reece. Vast nuclear arsenals are in play while super-empowered individuals pursue their corrupt desires.
Red Sky Mourning spills blood as easily as ink, but with an elegance of purpose. Torture, in the form of the artistic manipulation of pain, suffering, and terror, comes to those who have called down the thunder by violating Reece’s sanctum. And, he’ll stop at nothing to secure the future of those he holds dear. Even at the cost of his own life. Just like real apex predators, Carr writes James Reece’s story with the authenticity of trial, failure, revivification, and unwavering perseverance in the pursuit of mission.
Typical of a Jack Carr thriller, this book is immersive and tactile entertainment. As masters of the written word do, Carr engages the fickle muse with prose that transfuses into the mind’s eye, creating the magic of felt experience. But in conjunction with that high art, Carr does what is a hallmark of his work. He manages to inculcate the reader with real information, and insight into the dark realm of espionage, the complex landscape of geopolitics, and the near science fiction of the quantum universe.
The real and fictional are blended like an array of color as if applied to the artist’s canvas, speaking truth the way all great art does — by impression and a stirring of the id. Carr just knows how to write good fiction — the lie that tells the truth.
And, he doesn’t pull punches, either. Because guys used to living at the sharp end of the spear are conditioned by hardness to not suffer foolishness. Equivocation is a luxury for soft seats and soft people, so men of battle timber typically see, speak, and shoot straight. He calls out the hypocrisy and dangerous indulgences of politicians whose only concerns are money, power, and accolade. He’s not averse to engaging with government weaponization issues, making oblique but recognizable references. Carr calls out recent FBI malfeasance without disturbing his crafted narrative.
With regard to the FBI’s recent surveillance of “soccer moms,” Carr told Townhall, “It’s an easy target that people are aware of, but it’s more about overreach of the federal government in general. It was one case of, Really? What are they doing? But, [that type of thing] is prevalent throughout all agencies and bureaucracies. That’s the one I chose because it’s so outrageous.”
Carr stays quite busy these days, traveling to Budapest to work on upcoming episodes of the hit Amazon show, The Terminal List (and coming soon The Terminal List: Dark Wolf), based on his highly successful novels. He recently returned from Normandy, where he participated in The Best Defense Foundation’s tour for WWII veterans. Carr told Townhall, “We had 48 WWII veterans there. It’s really about two weeks of events. But, these guys are at or near one hundred years old, so there was no time for anything else but really caring for these guys, and getting them to the events, and making sure they were safe. It was an intense trip, but so powerful to be there with those guys.”
Jack understands the value of time, maybe more than most. And, as he often says, he considers it an honor to be trusted with each reader’s most valuable asset. In light of that, Carr says he’s compelled to produce the best writing possible. With each novel, he’s met and exceeded his own standard.
Red Sky Mourning is replete with living, breathing characters that will shock you with an intensity of presence — even if they’re a quantum enabled digital consciousness. Through the wonderful alchemy of the written word, Carr transmits the fears, triumphs, and neuroses that give James Reece life. He is simultaneously a god of war, and as relatable as an old friend.
The wait is finally over. James Reece is back, and you can join in his continuing saga — no jump quals necessary. Get the book today online or at your favorite bookseller.
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