Two days ago, I stood before my bookshelves, perusing my collection, trying to find my next read. I must have stood there for ten minutes. I opened some books, read the first page, flipped through others, but couldn't decide. I know most of you (if not all of you) have had this problem. I was a rich socialite going through their closets before a night on the town; I had nothing to wear because I had too much I could wear. Well, thanks to the random number generator at Random.org, I was finally able to pick something off my TBR. Thank you, Goodreads, for allowing us to number our books.

About the book itself: My first Edward S. Aaron book was entertaining, and that's all a book should be: an escape, a distraction, a bit of fuckery. Sure, it was dated and goofier than Disney porn in places, but it was enjoyable to the point that I didn't want to put it down. It is, at the end of the day, a product of its times, and you're likely not going to read it no matter how much I tell you I liked it, because the book is hard to find and not available on the digital market. (Funny side note: I bought a pulp paperback of this one at the Christian thrift shop in town for fifty cents; the book, when it was released, sold for the same price. Talk about retaining value *snicker*)

The plot was far more engaging than I thought it would be. Construction-type peoples uncover a bunker filled with pillaged artwork and viral weaponry from World War Dos. This bunker had been hidden underwater after the Nazis realized they were losing the war and destroyed the dam, flooding the area. Then along comes one person in search of the artwork, and a pair of bros looking to make millions by threatening the world with a virus codenamed Cassandra. CIA Agent Sam Durell is on the case, and if he doesn't kill you, he might very well fuck you into submission. Fun times.

I did find at least one typographical error per chapter. Some of them were so bad, I had to stop reading to figure out what the sentence meant. Also, the formatting (I guess it would be typesetting in this book's day and age) was wonky. Some paragraphs had no indenting, and one page had the sentences out of order. At times, I thought I was reading a poorly edited indie book. I think that, more than anything is why I gave it three stars instead of four.

In summation: I'm a big fan of James Bond movies, although I have yet to read any of the original Ian Fleming novels. I own Moonraker, but have yet to read it. Sam Durell seems to be an American version of Bond without all the cool gadgets. If that sounds like your thing and you can dig up a copy of Assignment Lowlands, read it.

Final Judgment: Past its expiration date but still edible.

I agree with those who said this book was uneven. It also seems to me that it lacked a coherent direction or tone. Some of the stories seemed too simple for older kids and some were too frightening for younger ones so I was confused about what age group this was aimed at. Thematically it wandered; some authors seemed to be writing about how people might behave peacefully, others about how war is frightening and bad, some about how to agitate or demonstrate for political change, others retold native american stories, some gave episodes from US history. I do get that there is a common thread to all of this but it wasn't a strong enough thread to pull the book together. It felt like a bunch of very loosely related parts just thrown together. Some of the loosely related parts were charming, some were less so. All in all I felt like it needed a much stronger editor and in the end I wanted to like this book much more than I did like it.