| | |  | Terrorism | Home » » Scarecrow Returns | | | | | | | Description: | | SCARECROW IS BACK AND READY FOR ACTION Deep in the Arctic, a long-forgotten Soviet military base enshrouds a weapon of unimaginably destructive force—a Cold War doomsday device with the power to obliterate the planet. When a mysterious and brutal terrorist group known as the Army of Thieves seizes control of the remote base and unleashes the weapon upon an unsuspecting world, there is only one team close enough to sabotage them: a ragtag band of Marines and civilians led by Captain Shane Schofield, call sign “Scarecrow.” Outnumbered, outgunned, and with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, Scarecrow has only a few short hours to bring down the Army of Thieves—or see the Earth go up in flames. Filled with nonstop action and told in Matthew Reilly’s characteristically white-knuckle prose, Scarecrow Returns is a work of gripping suspense and complete exhilaration. | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 41 reviews |
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Average Customer Review:
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33 of 35 found the following review helpful:
 Please God, let there be another one.Jan 09, 2012
By Sailfish34
Okay, so I read Scarecrow Returns last night. It's a hodgepodge of Wikipedia articles, recycled conspiracy theories, insanely bad prose, stupid characters and some of the worst dialogue ever attempted in the English language.
And I LOVED it.
Matthew Reilly owns the market in so-bad-they're-brilliant action books. You pick up a Matthew Reilly book as a kind of mental shiatsu massage: just sit back and let Mr. Reilly pummel your brain with one insane scene after another, each of which is delivered in prose so reliably crude that you can't wait to see how he'll debase the art of fiction next. And like shiatsu, these individually painful experiences combine into a wonderful kind of bliss. After three or four hundred pages, Reilly's writing can completely obliterate your mind and relieve you of such troubling burdens as thought, logic, empathy, and standards. When you finally put down one of his novels, you are mentally limp, scrubbed clean, and ready to take on something new.
For people who are interested in avoiding plot spoilers, you might not want to read the rest of this review. But honestly, you wouldn't pick up a Matthew Reilly book if you were interested being surprised by the plot. The plot is totally irrelevant. Scarecrow Returns could be a retelling of The Old Man and the Sea or a newly revised version of The Joy of Cooking, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference as long as Matthew Reilly was writing it. The only relevant question in a Matthew Reilly book is this: How much insane action can Reilly pack in betwen the covers? Scarecrow Returns delivered. Imagine taking the paragraph below and expanding it into 360 pages, without wasting a single word on character development, realism, research, good dialogue, transition scenes, or anything else that impedes the author's ability to blow stuff up. To speed things along and avoid wasting your time on useless descriptions that don't involve violence (i.e., prose), most of the locations are rendered as simple line drawings and diagrams in between chapters. You won't have to worry about missing a point, because Reilly is a master of non-subtle emphasis: italics, exclamation points, single word paragraphs, and when all else fails, use of the sentence: "The sight was absolutely incredible." And even with all these nods to extreme efficiency in delivering action, there is still a shortage of space.
In a 360-page book, the main character barely had time to: use a friendly robot to shoot down a helicopter; use a speedboat to escape the destruction of a French submarine; kill 70 - 80 people with various machine guns; blow up a control tower with plastic explosives and survive the tower's collapse by bracing himself against a mattress; jump a fuel truck off a cement wall and arrest its fall with two Maghooks; destroy a hovering V-22 Osprey with a falling truck; jump a cement mixer into an airplane and then fly the airplane; fall in love with a French assassin whose Maghook is longer than his; board an airplane using his Maghook while driving a Jeep down a runway off the edge of a cliff; exit a flying airplane in a different Jeep but use his Maghook to reboard the airplane while the Jeep falls into an iceberg; throw a fake-sounding nuclear bomb (red uranium?) out of an airplane into the ocean before it ignites a rocket fuel vapor cloud that will destroy China; get captured; get tortured; watch as a friend is tortured with a forklift; watch an acquaintance's head get eaten by rats; escape captivity thanks to the tender friendship he developed with a robot (which robot, by the way, is one of the most developed characters in the book), and kill 70 - 80 additional people with various machine guns; storm some place called Bear Island with the help of an experimental submersible speedboat; kill 4 - 5 mutant, highly-aggressive polar bears leftover from a singularly implausible Soviet weapons program; storm some place called Acid Island; get shot down in an airplane by a Soviet missile; drive a crashed airplane into a river; blast a cement truck through the wall of a floating, crashed airplane; launch a floating crashed airplane off a waterfall by retracting its landing gear; kill a drug-crazed soldier while several hundred feet under Arctic water inside of a crashed airplane; perform first aid upon / woo a French assassin while also paddling a life raft back into battle at a secret Russian arctic island weapons base; have text message conversations with a guy in Washington, D.C. while shooting people with a machine gun above the Arctic Circle; unravel (by using a bullet-proof wrist-mounted computer that apparently gets wi-fi anywhere and never runs low on battery power) a 30 year old CIA plot to keep America on top by incinerating everyone in China; defy logic, gravity, and the manufacturer's instructions for his belt; survive the direct impact of a Soviet nuclear missile; meet the President; note that Hollywood films had really gone downhill since "Predator"; finally get the French off his back for those harmless previous incidents in prior novels where he blew up a French submarine (Ice Station) and a French aircraft carrier (Scarecrow); get a medal; see a down-to-earth therapist in Baltimore; and go out for dinner and drinks with a French assassin, whose name in English, it turns out, means Fox.
And that's without even mentioning anything the Scarecrow's loyal sidekick Mother did.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Great Book! However its the same as Army of Theives!Jan 18, 2012
By Tracie A. Nelson
This is a awesome book for anyone who loves action and adventure. I was totally excited to see that there were 2 more Scarecrow books out by Mathew Reilley. However as a caution buyer beware. Scarecrow and the Army of Theives is the same identical book as Scarecrow returns. One was released by a British publishing company and one by an American company. I was bummed when I realised this. I hope a new book does come out soon!!!
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 "Outrageous Enough"Feb 28, 2012
By Jeffrey Swystun
"As if this whole situation wasn't already outrageous enough"..so goes one line in the book. And yes, Reilly continues his outrageous comic book-like series featuring U.S. Marine Captain "Scarecrow" Schofield. I have read them all and though the series is flagging, it stills entertains with sparse dialogue and tons of action. None of these books are to be taken at all seriously which Reilly must treasure because it gives him license to be a bit absurd. It would be great to see this done as an animated series from DC or Marvel. I will not give the plot away but suffice it to say Scarecrow saves the day.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
I Love the ScarecrowFeb 02, 2012
By Konrad Kern
When you start a thriller written by Matthew Reilly you're really getting on a ride full of adventure. Yes this ride is full of inconceivable, and beyond belief action and affects, but that's why it's just a ride. It's fun and exhilarating filled with adrenaline sustaining action that will leave you breathless, and in a weird way very satisfied. Just enjoy.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
An over-the-top treatJan 17, 2012
By Amy M.
Matthew Reilly's books are certainly not for everyone, but for someone (like myself) who enjoys fast-paced action and doesn't mind some delightfully absurd situations, there's a lot to like here. While I generally enjoyed his Jack West trilogy, it is good to see Reilly making another Scarecrow book. I love the character, as well as his sidekick, Mother. I hope to see more in the future.
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