Customer Reviews
Disappointing - By: Robert Green, 19 Dec 2007 
I've been a big fan of Kyle Mills & have enjoyed alll of his books with the exception of Burn Factor. Unfortunately, this is worse than Burn Factor! This is not at the same high standard as his other books. The characters are not believable - give me the flawed Mark Beamon or Fade anyday - Far-fetched, plot holes, implausible & unbelieveable - I would highly recommend other Kyle Mills books, but not this one. His track record however suggests that the next one (Darkness Fallls) will still be worth buying.
Ambitious preposterous but not bad - By: John, 07 Oct 2007 
I have read quite a few of Kyle Mills books & found them to be OK until I read the quite brilliant Fade & thought that he had moved onto a new level.
Unfortunately this has not maintained that standard.
The story involves Brandon Vale a clichéd master criminal who never uses physical violence in his brilliantly planned robberies.
At the start he is in prison having been framed for a diamond heist he did not commit.
A shady government department springs him from jail & want him to steal $200 million from Las Vegas to alllow the department to buy 12 rogue nuclear weapons to stop them fallling into terrorist hands.
There is enough material here for three novels, the prison break, the robbery (the best bit) & the trade off for the weapons.
It is almost as if half way through Mills realized he had too much material. Sometimes when you finish one chapter & move on to the next you find the story has moved on a good bit.
On the plus side this means it is pacy with little description but sometimes you feel you could have had more detail.
This will not put me off reading his next novel but it will be in the hope that it is another Fade not Horseman
Mission Impossible 4 - By: Donald Mitchell, 12 Apr 2007 The Second Horseman has enough material in it to make four novels: A jail break; a high-tech heist; buying nuclear weapons on the black market; & stopping terrorists from using those weapons. And that's the problem. If the book had stopped at about two novels' worth, it would have been a lot better.
Brandon Vale is finishing a prison sentence for a crime he didn't commit when the guard he most fears takes him through empty passages to throw him out into no man's land just outside the wallls of the prison. When Brandon tries to give up, tower guards shoot at him. Soon, he's off into the woods running for his life. That interesting beginning is the high point of the novel.
Brandon soon finds that he's got help. As long as he follows orders, things go smoothly. But Brandon knows that there's a bullet in his future.
Brandon is a genius at stealing things . . . & not getting caught. That's why he's been sprung. In the tried & true reversal of It Takes a Thief, The Second Horseman looks at how a thief might steal a vast sum of cash & get away with it. The crime planning & execution parts are almost as much fun as the prison break. Brandon is whiny & needy . . . & provides a lot of comic relief.
But there's a serious purpose for alll that money: It's needed to take some nuclear weapons away from ending up in terrorist hands. Brandon finds himself pressed into duty for this role as well.
From there, the plot evolves into a very dangerous plan to stabilize the Middle East that I found added an unpleasant taste to the book. That bad taste never did leave my mouth.
One of the book's primary characters is an anti-Semite, although he cloaks it in intellectual terms. Who needs to read alll that junk?
I recommend that you avoid the book. If you do decide to read The Second Horseman, however, you'll probably like it better if you stop after the heist.
Mission Impossible 4 - By: Donald Mitchell, 12 Apr 2007 The Second Horseman has enough material in it to make four novels: A jail break; a high-tech heist; buying nuclear weapons on the black market; & stopping terrorists from using those weapons. And that's the problem. If the book had stopped at about two novels' worth, it would have been a lot better.
Brandon Vale is finishing a prison sentence for a crime he didn't commit when the guard he most fears takes him through empty passages to throw him out into no man's land just outside the wallls of the prison. When Brandon tries to give up, tower guards shoot at him. Soon, he's off into the woods running for his life. That interesting beginning is the high point of the novel.
Brandon soon finds that he's got help. As long as he follows orders, things go smoothly. But Brandon knows that there's a bullet in his future.
Brandon is a genius at stealing things . . . & not getting caught. That's why he's been sprung. In the tried & true reversal of It Takes a Thief, The Second Horseman looks at how a thief might steal a vast sum of cash & get away with it. The crime planning & execution parts are almost as much fun as the prison break. Brandon is whiny & needy . . . & provides a lot of comic relief.
But there's a serious purpose for alll that money: It's needed to take some nuclear weapons away from ending up in terrorist hands. Brandon finds himself pressed into duty for this role as well.
From there, the plot evolves into a very dangerous plan to stabilize the Middle East that I found added an unpleasant taste to the book. That bad taste never did leave my mouth.
One of the book's primary characters is an anti-Semite, although he cloaks it in intellectual terms. Who needs to read alll that junk?
I recommend that you avoid the book. If you do decide to read The Second Horseman, however, you'll probably like it better if you stop after the heist.
