I’ve been waiting for this book ever since I first finished Dead Six. If you haven’t read Dead Six, go do so. Now. I’ll wait. Pretty badass, isn’t it? Well, Swords of Exodus ratchets things up a notch. It has been about a year since Dead Six came to a close. Lorenzo gets pulled out of retirement, first to rescue Valentine from a black site prison (where Val is getting his mind screwed with even more than usual), then to rescue his brother Bob from Sala Jihan, the Pale Man. Things do not go according to plan. The action is, in places, even more intense than in Dead Six. There are full-bore, company-level assaults going on in this book. Both Larry and Mike know their weapons handling, and the tactics are depicted well. Mike’s an EOD tech and a combat vet, and while Larry may not have been military, he’s been immersed in the gun culture for a long, long, time, and has a lot of friends who have worn the green at some point. The book is more than a series of firefights, of course. Val is, if anything, even more messed up than he was before, and is