Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier sees Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon go up against an adversary as hard to find as he is to kill. They may have finally met their match. The Vendor is an elusive arms smuggler who also manufactures bleeding edge advanced weapons tech, including the latest in AI enhanced drone tech.

Cabrillo goes undercover to find the Vendor’s base, but finds he’s just walked into a lethal military game alongside the most dangerous mercenaries in the world, designed to test the Vendor’s cutting-edge AI arsenal. However, surviving an arena full of flame-throwing robots isn’t even his biggest problem. The Vendor has an army of high-speed drones headed for a pivotal military site, and if the Oregon crew can’t stop them from releasing a deadly neurotoxin, the entire globe will erupt in conflict.

Mike Maden is the author of the Troy Pearce series, four books in the Jack Ryan Jr. series, and now a third book in the Oregon Files.

This book had a clear central theme of AI drone technology. Mike Maden has been writing about drone tech since his first book Drone. However, this time around there was a strong emphasis on the AI. Planes are flying themselves, drone are making targeting decisions, and the Vendor has all manor of automated systems producing and transporting the weapons.

A recent chat with Maden at The Poison Pen makes it clear just how much he has been researching this and thinking about it all. This comes through in droves in the book and, just as in real life on the battlefields of Ukraine, there are gruesome scenes of advanced drone carnage.

While this story tells of tech that is next gen, the truth is that it’s not far away at all. This similar to The Chaos Agent from Mark Greaney, of which he said the tech was likely no more than five years away.

The writing from Maden was so compelling that I found myself taking pity on a group of unsavoury mercenaries who were being deftly dispatched by the Vendor’s weapons.

There were other thrilling scenes too, including high altitude free-falls, deep sea submersible retrievals, and the Oregon showing off it’s advanced technical prowess.

This was my first time reading a book from the Oregon Files, despite having read other Cussler novels, so the characters were all new to me. Regardless, they were easy to get to know. In all honesty, the characters and the writing in general was smooth. Everything flowed and many of the scenes had me feeling like I was falling in step with a group of old friends.

I enjoyed the clear sense of right and wrong in this book. There were no grey areas or room for moral ambiguity. I know life isn’t always like that but it sure feels good these days to just know the bad guys are bad, and the good guys are good. It reminds me of my childhood, lazy Sunday afternoons watching old WW2 movies where there was no question that the Nazis were the bad guys, and everyone else was pulling together to defeat them.

To anyone else new to this series, I can happily say there’s no need to worry that you need to read all the previous books to enjoy this one. I enjoyed this just fine as a series starter but will definitely be doubling back to at least the last two from Mike Maden. And I’m looking forward to the next one.