Action filled and dual-time which was fun.

I've read some of the Gray Man series and reallllly need to go back and start from the beginning but I still was able to enjoy this book despite not having read all 10 books previous. I love a good action thriller where you just know the bad guys going to be stopped and the dual-time telling of this made it very interesting!

My rating: 3.8*

Thanks to the published for and advanced reading copy. All opinions are my own.

Court Gentry returns in yet another fantastic Mark Greaney thriller. Full of action and tension, the author goes full bore on his story telling with pin point accuracy and creative scenarios.

I am, generally, a huge fan of origin stories - assuming they're not of the generic, giant trope-y type. You know those. Those are the ones where the lead had a perfect life before violence came to visit. Let me assure you, writers and readers alike, that there is no perfect life, and the perfect lives upended by sudden violence, with a vow of revenge afterward are, in a word, boring. I want to see the lead struggle with something before struggling with another something.

Which brings us to Sierra Six. This is book eleven in the series, and by now, we've seen Court Gentry go from CIA hit dude to member of one of CIA's back ops teams Sierra Golf (Court's call sign: Sierra Six) to private hit dude with the CIA and Suzanne Brewster (his last boss before she punted him) on his trail, trying to take him out. What is Court doing these days? Taking private contracts, of course. It isn't like the guy is going to retire to a beach and drink Mai Tais.

Before we go on: if you're a reader jumping in at this point in the series, do yourself a favor and go to book one and begin there. About half of the things in this book will not make a lot of sense, or will appear to have no bearing at all on the other half of the book. Besides, it's a great series and a lot of fun to read.

But we open, in Sierra Six, twelve years ago. Zack Hightower - a familiar enough name to readers of the series - leading Sierra Golf on an op to take out a terrorist and any other bad guys around him. It isn't giving anything away to say that Sierra Six gets smoked after opening a hatch and finding a nest of bad guys, all with guns pointing up. This is not the first Sierra Six they've lost, either. They'll need a new one. This mission, however, is over, and they get out, back to base.

They get Court, who is used to working alone and initially doesn't fit well with the team in training. Eventually, he gets himself on track, and Sierra Golf is ready to go find the bad guy and try again. This is the mission in the past.

Back to the present (book time present). Court is on a contract, staking out a small villa, watching for the chance to get to that villa when the target has arrived. He does so, and is about to kill the man when h realizes this guy should be dead. But he isn't, Court misses the chance, and has to escape.

He's been helped by a young woman operating a drone. She's captured by the bad guy's minions, and now we have the mission in the present: rescue the young woman and kill the terrorist before he's able to do any further evil deeds.

By now, most readers will have surmised that the mission in both time periods concerns the same bad guy, and it does. From here to the end, I won't be giving away a ton of details of what happens in the book.

What I will say is this: I've tons of books. If you're reading this on Goodreads, you can see the numbers, and these are only the things I have read since joining Goodreads plus the things i could remember reading prior to that time. The actual number is likely twice, perhaps twice and a half that. Why do I mention this?

It means I've read a number of books that are self-contained origin stories. Many series that have the same main characters will have them. Stephen Hunter took us to Vietnam for Bob Lee Swagger's origin, for instance. The Hobbit is itself ab origin story for the Lord of the Rings. Comic books - well, they're rife with origin stories, for both heroes and villains.

This is not to say that every character needs an origin story that encompasses everything in their life to point X or that begins at their birth (Superman), although sometimes some information about their childhood is helpful to know - Bruce Wayne sees his parents gunned down when he was a boy, for instance. What we, or at least I, want to know is what changed this character deep down within themselves. Mack Bolan's family is killed by his own father over despair about debt owed to a Mafia loansharking operation, leading Bolan to begin a campaign against the loansharks and then against the larger Mob.

Most of the background we get on series characters comes in pieces via narrative of the events in the current book-time. In Gregg Hurwitz's excellent Orphan X series, we get pieces of how Evan Smoak, literal orphan, and later Orphan X, came to be. Sometimes, it's just a paragraph or two, sometimes, it's longer, as when he's thinking about Jack, who basically became Evan's father.

What I don't think I've ever read, though, is a book that so effortlessly and (more importantly) readably (is this a word?) combines both an origin story and a current story told in an alternating fashion, where both parts, the past and the present, have very real stakes and are both incredibly well done - to the point where either of them, on their own, would be an excellent book, but where together, they are even better than a single book on each would be.

There are no wasted characters. We don't have Joe Smith show up in the story, only to have nothing to say or do that impacts anything. There are no wasted, throwaway scenes or dialogue. The twin stories are compelling, the action (as usual) fantastic, even if having someone jump from a construction crane, during a monsoon, onto a level of an uncompleted office building, or having them pole vault using bamboo taken from a scaffolding are perhaps stretching things a bit. There is an absolutely extraordinary helicopter chase through mountainous terrain that will leave you breathless, and not from the altitude.

There is, alas, also loss. That loss is often the most compelling - and indeed, most propelling - event for the character. While some may argue that Court's loss in this book is unrealistic and too brief to be meaningful, I'll say that it is sometimes the briefest of connections whose severance wounds us most deeply.

An absolute five star read. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for the reading copy.

A prequel to the Gray man series of books, it provides a lot of background in to why Court is a loner and how he became the one man wreaking force that he becomes. We spend a lot of time in Afghanistan with a story about a person Court thought was dead but isn’t and is on a path of vengeance throughout the Middle East. Another great book.

Sierra Six is the 11th book in Mark Greaney’s The Gray Man Series. As with all of the other books that I have read in the series, I was not disappointed. It had everything that I love. There was action, adventure, guns, fights, more guns, bombs, etc. This book was a wild ride. The best part about this book was that I finally found out more about Courtland Gentry/The Gray Man’s past.

If you haven’t read any books in the series, you could likely still enjoy most of the book but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to put all of the pieces together as they relate to different relationships. Courtland Gentry is a very complicated man who could kill you in a hundred ways. He is very good at his job. Sometimes he is a friend of America and other times, America is out to kill him. For Courtland, that’s just another day in the life. This time, Court’s mission leads him to come face to face with a madman that he believed had died 12 years prior on one of Court’s earlier Ops. Consequently, Court makes it his mission to kill the man and thwart whatever new terrorist attack he has planned. Since they have a history, the book goes back and forth through time to get us all caught up as to what happened then so we are fully invested into what has to happen now. All of the pieces were nicely put together and I had the opportunity to sit back and watch The Gray Man do his worst.

I am going to be really sad when this series comes to an end. It has been a roller coaster ride that has provided so much entertainment value. At least, there is also a movie coming out that will finally give me the chance to see how Mark envisioned the character to be in real life. Hopefully, there are also more books to come.

Published by ‎ Berkley on February 15, 2022

Most Gray Man novels are pretty good. Some are really good. Sierra Six is on another level. It’s the best Gray Man novel I’ve read, in part because it humanizes Court Gentry. Or, at least, it proves that Gentry was once human.

Gentry’s life has changed over the course of the series. Once he was a CIA lone-wolf operative, essentially an assassin. Then he became part of a CIA paramilitary team. Then he was chased by the CIA and marked for assassination. He became a mercenary before he made an uneasy alliance with the CIA. He’s still a mercenary as Sierra Six opens and the fickle CIA wants him dead again.

The story follows two branches, one in the present, one twelve years in the past. In the present, Gentry has been hired through the dark web to plant microphones outside the Turkish embassy in Algeria. He assumes he’s been hired by the Indian government for a mission that India can deny if it goes haywire. The mission goes haywire after Gentry sees a man he thought had died twelve years earlier. Gentry ignores the mission for which he was hired in favor of his own mission: to kill the dead man.

Gentry’s revised mission goes haywire when the man he wants to kill, Murad Khan, eludes him and orchestrates the capture of his handler, a woman named Priya. Gentry adds freeing Priya to his to-do list, along with killing Khan. (Yes, there is a scene in which Gentry screams the name Khan. Yes, I immediately pictured William Shatner as Gentry. Yes, that makes me an aging nerd.)

To achieve his goal, Gentry needs to ask his former boss, Matt Hanley, for information. Hanley, a character who will be familiar to series readers, has been relegated to Palau as punishment for his friendship with Gentry. Another CIA character who will be familiar to readers, Suzanne Brewer, is now in charge of killing Gentry, but that ongoing storyline is only collateral to the main action.

Hanley’s information leads Gentry to a retired CIA station chief named Ted Appleton who is now living in Mumbai. Appleton is initially a character of ambiguous loyalty as Mark Greaney makes the reader guess whether he’s on Gentry’s side.

The story that takes place in the past explains Gentry’s animosity toward Khan. It also explains how Gentry transitioned from being a solitary assassin to a member of Sierra Golf, a CIA paramilitary team. That team and its leader, Zack Hightower, will be familiar to series fans from earlier books. The story explains Gentry’s training and early missions before Gentry tackles Khan’s plan to detonate dirty bombs at US military bases in Afghanistan.

Both stories are filled with action. The earlier story’s action culminates in a helicopter chases, which is a refreshing change from most thriller chase scenes. A helicopter piloted by Gentry chases down three other helicopters flying toward three different destinations while his paramilitary team tries to shoot them out of the sky before they can deliver their deadly cargo. Is that even possible? Probably not, but unlikely action scenes never stop me from enjoying James Bond movies.

The story set in the present culminates with Gentry trying to prevent Khan’s detonation of another dirty bomb, this one in Mumbai. Among other improbabilities, Gentry has to climb a crane and leap into a partially constructed building during a monsoon. We ask a lot from our action heroes, don’t we?

While working with Sierra Golf, Gentry finds himself attracted to a bright analyst in Afghanistan named Julie who, like Gentry, lacks social skills (she freely admits she’s somewhere on the spectrum). In the present, Gentry bonds a bit with Priya. Gentry’s intense desire to protect both women, and in particular his emotional response to Julie, gives Gentry the heart that makes it possible for empathic readers to connect with him. Unlike Hightower, who measures his morality by whether he kills more bad people than good people, Gentry (at least during his early days with Sierra Golf) has reservations about that moral equation.

Mark Greaney generally avoids overt political discussions, or at least he avoids having politics intrude on Gentry’s life apart from the scolding Gentry receives when he tries not to kill the innocent. Gentry is usually too busy avoiding death to give much thought to philosophical questions.

I appreciated the character development we see in Sierra Six and, of course, I enjoyed the nonstop action in the parallel stories. Action novel fans who haven’t read any of the Gray Man novels can easily read Sierra Six as a standalone. As an adrenaline rush, it’s one of the best high-octane stories I’ve read in recent memory.

RECOMMENDED

A great addition to the Grey Man set. Fills in some important background. . As ever very fast paced, and action filled. Greaney is a busy guy but I support him in turning out more in this series

Mark Greaney is one of the top paramilitary thriller writers in the genre. He is known for his meticulous research on his globetrotting plots, the military tactics his character’s employ, and in all the latest and greatest guns and gear his characters utilize. Greaney stormed into the thriller genre as being a coauthor with Tom Clancy in his Jack Ryan universe, and later taking over the series with multiple novels he has penned himself.
He later passed the baton of the Jack Ryan universe to another stellar writer, and started the incredibly popular Gray Man series. Greaney hit absolute literary gold with his Gray Man series, so much so that he has just penned his eleventh novel in the series entitled Sierra Six. Greaney is famous for running his main character, Court Gentry, ragged, and Sierra Six is no exception!
In Sierra Six, we go back twelve years to see how Court got his start as the sixth man on the Golf Sierra squad. In his first mission, the Golf Sierra team was tasked to kill a terrorist mastermind. Much destruction was left in the wake of this mission. As we fast forward to the present time, Court is working as a singleton operator for hire. He is sent on a simple mission, yet he comes face to face with a person who takes him back to that very first mission with Golf Sierra; a person who he believes to be dead.
Court is taken back to that mission, a mission that is the foundation of his modus operandi for how he does anything since that day. He was always someone with a specific skill set waiting for that next kill order, but after joining Golf Sierra and enduring this first mission, he is someone with a blood debt always at the front of his mind demanding to be satiated.
On the present mission Court is working on, he strikes a type of friendship with the women providing his tech support for his mission. The two are sent on a wild goose chase throughout the massive city of Mumbai, India hot on the trail of this terrorist, and Court is bound and determined to complete this mission he started twelve years ago.
As a fan of the Gray Man series from the beginning, I really enjoyed going back and forth from the events of twelve years ago to the present. It was highly intriguing to have this perspective to see how Court got his start, and to see his first interactions with other characters that flow in and out of the life of the series.
Sierra Six is a no holds bar read. The action is classic Greaney on steroids, and that is saying something! I loved getting a detailed look at how Court got his start in the Golf Sierra squad, and to get an in depth look at his psyche, and why he is what he is. Avid fans of this series…get ready, because this is an edge-of-your-seat read!

Reviewed for Mystery and Suspense Magazine

This is the 11th book in the Gray Man series and I'm still a HUGE fan of Cortland Gentry. I enjoyed this one because of the split stories told in present day and twelve years ago when we get to learn more about his induction into the Golf Sierra ground branch team. We have our usual favorites - Matt Hanley and Zach Hightower, plus a few "past" villains - Denny Carmichael and of course, Lloyd from legal. Fortunately we don't hear from Suzanne Breuer until the end of the book. The present day story is classic Gray Man operating as the singleton he was trained to be and going after the bad guys. Do you have to suspend reality? Yep, but I'm never disappointed with this character

Sierra Six is the eleventh book in the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney. It is a suspenseful thriller that is sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats with unexpected twists and turns that will leave readers wanting more.

The eleventh book in the Gray Man series is every bit as good as the first 10 books. I have enjoyed following this military thriller series since book one (The Gray Man) and the latest book, Sierra Six, with it's dual timelines fills in more details about how Court Gentry (The Gray Man) became part of the CIA team knows as Gulf Sierra. Great characters and fast paced action sure to please any military thriller fans. Highly recommended.

Court Gentry must face a ghost from his past in Sierra Six. Prior to becoming the Gray Man, Court was an independent operator for the CIA. When their Golf Sierra team from the Special Activities Division loses a man on an assignment, Court is called in as a replacement and given the designation Golf Sierra Six. Court, who had no military background and always worked alone, was resented by the members of the team. After undergoing training with the group they are sent to Afghanistan and their first assignment together. A simple recon mission has them witnessing the murder of a chemical plant’s staff and the theft of enough chemicals to build bombs capable of massive destruction. An effort to trace the chemicals and identify the head of the Kashmiri Resistance Front who planned the theft leads to their betrayal and further attacks.

Twelve years later Court is a freelance intelligence operator hired to infiltrate the Turkish embassy property in Algiers and plant a device. There he comes face to face with Murad Khan, the head of KRF responsible for the death and destruction years earlier. He had been reported killed at the time. Now Court is once again on the hunt to stop Khan as he plans another major attack.

Mark Greaney alternates chapters between Court’s early years with Golf Sierra and the present search for Khan. Priyanka Bandari assisted Court with his assignment at the embassy. Kidnapped by Khan’s men and taken to Mumbai, she is rescued by Court and works with him to find Khan. Court is resourceful and Greaney puts him through encounters where he proves himself time after time. He is a loner who does not always relate well to people and he has suffered loss, but also takes responsibility for protecting those around him. Greaney’s story contains a number of military designations that may not be familiar to some readers but since Court is not from a military background most of the terms are explained to him, also making their meanings clear to the reader. Sierra Six is recommended for fans of Brad Thor and thrillers with breathtaking action. I would like to thank NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for providing this book for my review.

Sierra Six is the 11th title in the Grey Man series from Mark Greaney.

"Court is on a contract mission when he sees a ghost. A terrorist he thought was long dead is alive and plotting. Court tries to go after him but his cover is blown and he flees to save himself. His partner on the mission is taken and Court tracks them to Mumbai where he discovers a plot to devastate large parts of the city. Can he take his revenge and save the city?"

Court flashes back to his days on a CIA paramiltary team and the events that led him to where he is today. Both timelines are full of explosive action. It was interesting to get some backstory on Court and see how he operates in a team environment.
More great action writing from Greaney.

Fans of Jack Ryan, Orphan X and Reacher should enjoy this book

I always wait impatiently for the latest Gray Man book to be released. This eleventh book in the series will be available February 15, 2022, and the wait is worth it. This book essentially contains two complete plots with one taking place in the present and the other one twelve years ago. I think these would have made two books easily and, speaking only for myself, I would have been just fine with that. One plot gives us great insights into how Court found himself a member of the Sierra Golf group - as Six. We've been learning bits and pieces about Six throughout this series and it was very interesting to see how Mark Greaney handled the emergency integration of Gentry into a battle savvy cohesive unit. The present-day plot shows Gentry that his mission twelve years ago did not end as he thought it had and there is still work to be done to finalize the situation.

I really like the Court Gentry character and enjoyed these two stories. I especially liked the plot line in this book that had Court going back in time so I could watch the development of his character and his skills in his field of expertise. More along those lines would suit me just fine Mr. Greaney.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for an e-galley of this novel.

Book Review – It's not easy to write a book with two different timelines but author Mark Greaney has done a fantastic job with Book 11 of The Gray Man series, “Sierra Six.” The plot runs in two distinct timelines twelve years apart. One is when Gentry is a young covert operation operative and new to the CIA's Sierra Six group, the later timeline - present day – where Gentry now works as a contracted assassin for the CIA, called on when his unique skills are needed. Both timelines could be standalone books, each as compelling and dramatic as the other, but eventually – in no surprise - they come together in one dramatic do-or-die closing. Greaney eventually blended the action, characterization, and backstory into one thriller that couldn't be told without this unique approach. Greaney managed to pull this unique two-timeline narrative off is testament to his talent as a writer. Sierra Six is a rollercoaster ride of vivid action, tremendous intrigue, and unprecedented dialogue. Each character is so well developed and invaluable to the story. Origin-type stories are always good because the author gives the reader, the full and unmitigated backstory of the characters and the series. Greaney did this with Sierra Six along with telling one of the best Gray Man stories in the series! Greaney’s storytelling in Sierra Six gives a new height to the Gray Man series and will continue to be my personal favorite in the action thriller genre. Early contender for best thriller of the year! Sincere appreciation to author Mark Greaney, Berkley Publishing Group, and NetGalley for the privilege of reviewing an ebook advanced reader’s copy of Sierra Six.

Before he was the Gray Man, Court Gentry was Sierra Six, the junior member of a CIA action team. In their first mission they took out a terrorist leader, at a terrible price. Years have passed. The Gray Man is on a simple mission when he sees a ghost: the long-dead terrorist, but he's remarkably energetic for a dead man. A decade of time hasn't changed the Gray Man. He isn't one to leave a job unfinished or a blood debt unpaid.

I have been a fan of this series since I had the chance to meet the author right after he had co-authored Red Metal and moved back to my home town. Since then, I have read all of his newer Gray Man books, but have plans to go back and read the earlier ones. One story does build on the last one, but he gives enough backstory is each one that you can read them out of order as I have done. The latter books have been quite long, over 500 pages, but the author keeps you involved in the story and you don't realize how long they are as you keep reading to find out what happens next. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this latest Gray Man book.

Twelve years ago Court Gentry was Sierra Six, low man on a mission-focused totem pole. He and his team took down a terror group targeting US bases, and left the leader of the cell dead.

Fast forward to the present, and the Gray Man is tasked with planting a listening device to record a secret meeting. To his horror, he recognizes one of the men as the not-so-dead terrorist. He needs to find out what the man is up to, and make sure he’s really dead this time, even if it means his own life.

This is an exciting, suspenseful thrill ride, and highly recommended! #SierraSix #NetGalley #SaltMarshAuthors

Features Court Gentry, the aforementioned Gray Man—who’s a principled assassin with a unique moral code—in two roles of what is actually a double yarn in one novel. In the first story, which takes place in the present time, Court is on a lone wolf mission in Algeria that he contracted for on the dark web through a broker. It’s supposed to be simple and easy, but like everything in his clandestine life, it doesn’t go as planned, when he sees a someone who’s been dead for a decade. The man’s name is Murad Khan, and he’s a terrorist mastermind. The incident kicks off a second story, which happened twelve years in the past, when Court Gentry, the lone wolf killer was assigned to a CIA paramilitary team known as Sierra Six. Their mission was to stop an attack by terrorists who planned to use a series of radioactive dirty bombs against American forces. But Gentry has problems integrating into such a tight knit military unit . . . causing major friction with the team. But he’s deployed to Pakistan anyway, because of his ability to kill efficiently and effectively without conscience. Thereafter, the novel moves back and forth between past and present as Mr. Greaney uses those long ago events to explain Gentry’s current mission of personal vengeance. If you’re a fan of Clancy, Flynn, or Ludlum, Mark Greaney is gonna be your next MFA, most favorite author. Oh Yeah. He will!!

As in all installments of Mark Greaney's incomparable, thrilling, and fast-moving Gray Man series, US government agent Court Gentry is tasked with saving a chunk of the world from destruction by yet another unstoppable, spine chilling madman, but in Sierra Six, the story structure is a bit different than the norm. The plot runs in two discrete timelines twelve years apart. One is when Court is in his mid twenties and new to the CIA's Sierra Six group led by the storied Nate Hightower. In the later timeline--present day--Court has left Hightower's command and now works as a special contractor for the CIA, called on when his unique skills are necessary. A particularly dastardly America-hating terrorist that Gray Man kills in the earlier time comes back to haunt Court in the present. Before he died twelve years ago, this particular bad guy took something from Court that he has trouble recovering from. Both timelines could be standalone plots, each as compelling and dramatic as the other, but eventually--no surprise--they come together in a dramatic do-or-die event. 

I must admit, it annoyed me for a while trying to jump between the two time periods, but as I would expect, Mark Greaney eventually blended the action, characterization, and backstory into one thriller that couldn't be told without this unique approach. Highly recommended for those who love high-powered, can-do characters who do the impossible.

Note to Mark Greaney: That you managed to pull this two-timeline thing off is testament to your talent as a writer. Maybe because I'm old, but it was more challenging than usual to keep track of everything so I wouldn't mind if you stick to the more traditional storyline in the future.

Sierra Six is the next installment in the Grey Man series and it doesn't disappoint. The book is face paced and never slows down on the action. I liked the transition between the present and past as we discover how Courtland Gentry became who he is and how he utilizes the skills in the present. I will say the villain was not as interesting as the previous books, and I felt this novel was more focused on giving us more backstory than progressing from where the previous novel left off. I think the novel missed having some characters, but I understood that the story being told dictated the need for them not appearing as much. Overall good novel to hold you over until the next Grey Man!