Birmingham’s Axis of Time books

Part of this summer’s brain candy was John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice, a free Kindle book from Amazon. I’ll confess I started it with very low expectations, particularly since I’d seen Final Countdown as a kid and figured the book would be a tired retreading of the same theme.  However, I was pleasantly surprised; the book was fun and energetic and Birmingham did a good job of moving the plot forward. As summertime action brain candy it was a great diversion (particularly when acquired free). In fact, I enjoyed the book enough to actually purchase the sequels Designated Targets and Final Impact.

The second was even more enjoyable than the first, but the last (the completion of the trilogy) was the weakest of the three.  I was left with the impression that the author realized he had a few too many plot lines open to complete the series expeditiously and summarily ended several of them between books 2 and 3. That wouldn’t have been necessarily that bad, but in this case one of the plot lines tied to a major event that book 2 had spent most of its time working toward.  Still, all in all a good trilogy for summer reading (and enough to remove most of the stigma that Final Countdown had attached to wartime time travel stories).