Tiger by the Tail: Paladin of Shadows, Book 6

I've been an avid reader of this series for several years, and eagerly await each new book and the further adventures of the Mike and the Keldara. When I saw this book was available, I purchased it without a second thought. Before beginning the first chapter I skimmed a few reviews here, and was surprised and dismayed by all of the negative comments. With some trepidation, I began reading. However, I was pleasantly surprised that to me the characters seemed little changed, although no real character development occurs in this book. The fast paced action and the Kildar's phenomenal abilities to navigate international mysteries and dangerous situations are too outlandish to be believed, but really, this is no different than any of the other books in the series. The action kept me interested and the payoff was worthwhile. If Ryan Sear writes the next book in the series I will purchase that one as well.

John Ringo is another of my favorite writers and I've been following this series since the original volume which was called "Ghost"! It's a series of tales about an ex-navy SEAL, Mike Jenkins, who went by the call sign Ghost. I think this book is either 6 or 7 in the series, I've lost count! Over the course of the stories he winds up owning a valley in the country of Georgia. Turns out the people are descendants with a warlike history and are natural fighters. Mike Jenkins becomes the Kildar which is what they call their leader and he trains them up as a light infantry unit. They hire out as mercenaries but only to the good guys like the USA. Much violence and action ensues and a lot of bad people die sometimes badly. If you are an action fan then this series is definitely for you. Heavy on the action and fast paced. I can't wait for the next book to come out!

Another reviewer here commented: "How bad could it really be? I found out."Well . . . it certainly wasn't Ringo. Ringo has a way of drawing you into a story, painting bright, hard-cornered word-pictures for you to devour in convenient chunks. OK, yeah, sometimes he data-dumps more than I'd like. And he spends too much time dwelling on "what came before", as if anyone is going to pick up the third, fourth, fifth, or (in this case) sixth volume without reading the earlier books first. Damn it, Ringo, I already know who these people are, and why they're working together. The rest of you, go read Ghost and Kildar; you ain't ready for this yet.Ryan Sear, whoever he is, is clearly the lead author, here. He's also, clearly, read the earlier books. What he doesn't have is Ringo's depth, or crispness. He puts sentences in characters' mouths that are, flatly, out of character. And I don't mean that the information conveyed is necessarily wrong, or that the character wouldn't say something along those lines at that point, I mean the way the words come out of their mouths is wrong. So many of the Kildar's speeches sound, sorry, stilted. And don't get me started on Katya and her Russified English with half the articles missing. First of all, she speaks better English than that in the other books. Second, Jay would kick her ass for speaking English like that around her boss or other members of the team. He'd probably say, "Never miss an opportunity to learn, padawan," or something like that.Worse are Sear's data dumps. Honestly, I don't care what kind of ammunition Lasko is using. Or at least, I don't care who makes it and where it came from and what lot number was on the box and whether or not the guy who made it got laid the night before. (Just kidding about that last bit.) I mean, Ringo can go on and on, but this was too much. A little bit of that goes a long way, kid. That said, I'll give Sear points for not overdoing the character backstory dumps. Most of them were economical and didn't detract from the line of the story.Anyway, I can live with most of that. It wasn't as bad as reading Pratchett's posthumous "Raising Steam", which I had to struggle to finish and read like a verbatim transcript of Pratchett dictating the story for later detailed wordsmithing. (Which it may have been.) Just, most of the characters were "off", and the general storytelling was forced; it just didn't read like Pratchett. Similarly, this book didn't read like Ringo.The new kid, Vanel, and his girlfriend Xatia, seem like nice additions to the cast. Vanel is a young kid with mad skills trying to impress the boss. Xatia . . . we don't find out much about, really. The reviewer who said this book needed more character development is probably right. Other new characters are kind of two-dimensional. But we have to remember, we've had five previous books to build up the recurring group of characters.Finally, my personal bugaboo: The proofreading really kind of sucked. At the very least, couldn't someone have gone through with a spellchecker and found all the places where COL Nielson's name was spelled, "Neilson"? (Sometimes it flip-flopped back and forth from one paragraph to the next.)Despite the essentially technical issues such as outlined above, I think there was a really good Paladin of Shadows book buried in this plot. It just didn't shine through like it would have if Ringo had written it. But it does advance the story and broadens the worldview of the Keldara. From what Ringo has been musing about on Facebook, this book probably needs to be read to move on to the next chapter(s) he has up his sleeve, and that's mostly why I broke down and finally did, despite the poor reviews.

I’ve read the whole Ghost/Kildar series at least three times. This one is the last one to date ,to my knowledge. First one with two authors. Definitely could tell the difference. There was a slight hint they might tie this series into another one but nothing so far.

I know he's just a character in a book, but WOW! WOW! I just gotta love this guy. I haven't read the book as yet but as soon as I got the notice of the release man I just purchased...WOW! From the first book GHOST, the rate of the action in these books are break neck action. I love movies but these books are better, man dey the best!!!!Amazon just have 5 stars Mr. Ringo but I want to give you a million for the best told story in AGES!!! I didn't just read the Paladn of Shadows series, I DEVOURED THEM... I had to wait a while for Tiger by the Tail so I'm savoring it, holding back for a special time to lose myself with the kildar and his followers...I JUST KNOW IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME!!!

Another great read in the series. Again a great book filled with action, comedy, pitched battles and a little bedroom action. Looking forward to the next instalment in the adventures of the Kildar and hopefully and answer to class 201.

Too contrived and superficial. Reads a bit like a pre-teen novel with added sex of a rather odd kind. Ringo might have lent his name to the title but had very little other input

A good book but I prefer the earlier books in this series (Ghost, Kildar, Choosers of the Slain, Unto the Breach)

v.good

Big disappointment. Will now stop buying books from this series. Shallow and boring story. Characters one dimensional. Reminds me of book 1. The ones in-between were good