Not since the grand old days of Alistair MacLean (“The Guns of Navarone”, “Where Eagles Dare”, “Ice Station Zebra”) have I read such a convincing and exciting book about people stranded in a cold cold environment with bad guys in pursuit.

Author Thomas Young uses his insider knowledge as an Air National Guard C-130 crewman in Afghanistan and Iraq to spectacular effect in this story of a navigator and a female Army intelligence officer shot down in the mountains of Afghanistan during a blizzard while delivering an important Al Qaeda mullah to be interrogated.

While dodging Taliban and Al Qaeda gunmen on the ground, and struggling to survive the elements besides, they find out that the mullah is an important key to a much bigger operation than merely exposing terrorist networks. This is a tough-minded and relentlessly exciting action novel with better characters than one expects to find in the genre.

The Mullah’s Storm is an impressive debut and Thomas W. Young is a talent to watch.

I have a room full of military history books, and have been reading them since I was a kid; but I don’t think I have ever seen a book on Special Operations that was this current– and especially this well illustrated (though many faces are understandably blurred.)

Chock full of great stories well told, and shadow warfare lore, this book is appropriate for anyone old enough to appreciate it. Oliver North and Chuck Holton also co-authored American Heroes in the War Against Radical Islam, which is fine in its own right. But the particular focus of this book makes it uniquely compelling. A great gift.