The Fire Keeps on Raging (Echo Burning - Lee Child)

Member Name: MI9to5

Product:	Echo Burning - Lee Child
Date:	06/08/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A believable hero

Disadvantages: There are none for me

Echo Burning is the fifth novel in Lee Child's series of books written around the fictional character of Jack Reacher.

Reacher is a loner. He always has been and always will be. Travelling is not only something he has become used to but also something that in his heart of hearts he enjoys. First as an army wrenched for continent to continent, school to school and then as an officer in the military police moving from job to job, conflict to conflict; he has becoming used to owning little and that's just the way he wants things to stay. Being tied down by someone or something is not really a prospect he relishes. He'd much rather remain a tugboat tossed around in the storm than safely tucked up in port. He doesn't mind being a drifter, being able to live in the shadows is a privilege and that is exactly why he's adrift in the raging Texas heat thumbing for a lift to nowhere in a vast empty and ultimately dangerous landscape.

The problem is though that Reacher is six foot five and extremely well built. He emanates strength and strength is danger. It's therefore a big surprise to him when a Cadillac stops and offers him a ride. An even bigger surprise when the driver is a young woman. The woman, Carmen, is one troubled young lady; her husband's in jail and she swears that when he is released he's going to kill her. Her reasoning for stopping to pick up Reacher is soon more than apparent. She can't trust anyone. Her family hate her, lawyers won't help and the police are uncooperative. She has exhausted all her options one by one and the only one remaining is to trust the stranger sitting in her car.

Echo Burning is an exceptionally powerful roller coaster thriller full of enough twists, turns and loop-the-loops to satisfying even the most insatiable thrill seeker. The path this ride of a lifetime takes however isn't perfectly laid out or maintained and just when you see the track coming to an end it will suddenly disappear beneath your feet and leave you dangling in the air before plummeting you downwards and onwards onto a track that you never imagined could exist. All of this is very cleverly and carefully contained within the plotline, which despite being unpredictable from the start never errs to far off the main ideas and conveys difficult ideas with a seeming ease showing off Child's amazing writing talent.

As a reader he pulls you along the journey alongside the characters making certain that you feel everything they do, every emotion, every decision, every scratch, every scrape. From the moment you begin reading you are forced to feel what they feel and Child ensures that you are teased and manipulated along with his carefully constructed characters so that you are taken in by the false leads the same as them and are never more aware of anything than they are.

This clever manipulation of audience and characters alike creates an immense level of drama and tension throughout the novel, as Child seems to know instinctively where to place all his plot elements in order to create maximum impact and enable the intensity of action within the story to increase and decrease spectacularly as revelations about characters and plot grip the reader.

Combined within the thrilling plot that grips the audience and refuses to let go Child has also masterfully positioned a helping of humour. This humour is superbly placed and unique in many ways. Some of the humour is military based and therefore will not appeal or even be noticed by all. Other humorous anecdotes relate to Reacher's past, which may have been revealed in previous novels and other sections are simply funny on their own merit.

The authenticity of the characters is certainly important to the novel as a whole but the general progression and development of the lead character - Jack Reacher - is something special and rather unique in my opinion. I don't think I have ever come across such a wonderfully created and depicted character ever before. Reacher has been carefully constructed within each of the previous novels so that we know just enough abut him to empathise with him, agree with him and fight with him, but not enough that we feel we know him too well.

This is an endearing characteristic because it enables us with each new novel to peak deeper beneath the armour of this enigmatic character and probe closer and closer to the things that have made Reacher the man he is. Seeing as this is the fifth novel in the series the opportunities to glean more information on him aren't as plentiful as before but to be honest if they were we'd soon know too much and that would spoil the air of mystery that somehow surrounds him and his actions.
He is in my opinion the perfect action hero. Ultimately he's an epic hero with the ability to capture imaginations and make every word written about him so difficult to let go off.

Obviously being the main man Jack Reacher is the character that is developed the most but all of the others introduced to us by Child are written with the same degree of development and progression. Characters from previous novels are mentioned although not really developed, but in the context of this novel this would have seemed a little strange. New characters however are brought to life with vivid descriptions and intricately placed within the plot to ensure that the novel oozes originality and remains fresh and vibrant. Furthermore these new character additions, which it is likely will only stay in post for this one novel, teenage the audience in the overall process of the tale and help to vividly highlight the vibrant character of Reacher.

Although this book is part of a series the characters and delicate plotlines are so well developed within the novel itself that it could quite easily be read as a stand-alone. I would however highly recommend reading them as a series as in this way you can really appreciate all the work that Child has put into his novels and into the creation of Jack Reacher; a more human, more normal and more unique hero than any other in literary or film history. He's no self-centred and cocky James Bond. No vigilante Jason Bourne. He's simply Jack Reacher, a man we quickly learn to admire and believe in and that exactly how he should stay.

Summary: Like a tank this book demolishes the opposition