Bring It

Pia is a total package and an enjoyable character. Likewise with Jacob Starnes. Look forward to more action in future titles.

Good book

“Bring it” by Seeley James certainly lives up to it’s name. This story goes deeper into Pia’s back story and is much easier to follow than the “The Geneva Decision”. It picks up basically where the last book ended. The story continues to add segments of all the main characters backstories between all the action. And there is a ton of action. You are taken around the world and back as Pia and her team from Sable Security try to stop what they think is a child kidnapping scheme. It turns our to be much worse and goes higher up the ladder than anyone could believe. I was glued to this book and on the edge of my seat for the entire read. I was sure that Pia was definitely dead a couple times. Amazing action and I loved this story. The twists and turns are really complicated and you have to pay attention to not miss any of them. I highly recommend this series and the author Seeley James. I’m already into the next book and WOW!!

This is perhaps the most violent one I have read lately.. But of course, it is a good thriller for an afternoon read.

It took me about six years after reading the series opener to get back to the adventures of one of my favorite action heroines, Seeley James' Pia Sabel; but I only wish I'd done so a lot sooner! Some of my comments in my review of the preceding book, The Geneva Decision, are relevant here as well, and that review also explains something of the premise and who Pia is. In this second book, we learn significantly more of her backstory (and the revelations are corkers --but no spoilers here!).However, I liked this book even better. Here, there were no interspersed deus ex machina revelations to jump over plot obstacles, and for the most part I could visualize the action scenes better (with only a couple of exceptions). I attribute this to the author's increasing skill at writing. A review by a Goodreads friend had stated that Pia isn't the main character in this novel; I also knew that Seeley had opted here for using Sabel Security agent Jacob Stearne as a first-person narrator (actually, his narrative thread only comprises part of the book), and that Pia is kidnapped early on by the baddies. Since, for me, her character is the main draw of the series, all of this was somewhat off-putting; I feared that she would be largely inactive and off-stage here. But I needn't have worried; I would definitely dispute the assessment that she's not the main character, and I can categorically guarantee that she's neither inactive nor off-stage! Although the two characters are distinct and not clones of each other, in some ways Jacob reminds me, in his personality and his relationship to Pia, of Peter O'Donnell's Willie Garvin and his relationship to another kick-butt heroine, Modesty Blaise; both Willie and Jacob are utterly clueless in their certainty that recreational sex is a perfectly harmless pastime and that any woman they meet should be a potential partner, and both are apt to prompt some eye-rolling moments from readers who aren't similarly clueless. (There's no explicit sex in the book, however.) They differ, though, in that while Willie adores Modesty, he thinks it would be an impermissible "liberty" to entertain romantic fantasies about her, but Jacob definitely has romantic fantasies about Pia. (Of course, he also has feelings for another of our old friends from the first book, his colleague Agent Tania --but that doesn't inspire fidelity to either woman.)Another aspect of this book that's superior to the first is the seriousness of the theme, because here the author takes a hard fictional look at the real-life underbelly of America's Deep State, where an out-of-control, largely unaccountable security apparatus can too often be run by sociopaths who think only in terms of "us against them" rather than right vs. wrong, see morality and law as quaint superstitions, and can and do carry out outrages (up to and including murder) against innocents, including American citizens. (Yes, the horrors of Operation Snare Drum here are fictional --but there have been documented crimes by U.S. government personnel or "contractors" that aren't fictional.) To his credit, Seeley doesn't portray this as a partisan issue with just one establishment party as the bad guys, because it isn't; it's not a Republican vs. Democrat issue, but of decent Americans of whatever party label vs. traitors to our ideals regardless of what party label they use. (Though this was written during the Obama administration, it's set after it, with a fictional new President of unspecified affiliation.) It's a needed eye-opener for any American who cares about the rule of law and ethics in government --which is why I recommend it as not just for genre fans!A quick disclaimer: Seeley and I are Goodreads friends (though he's not very active there), but I bought my copy of this novel myself, and my rating wasn't at all affected by his "friend" status.