Latest Books Sons of Valor III: War Machine with Andrews & Wilson

The Big Thrill Discusses SONS OF VALOR III: WAR MACHINE With Andrews & Wilson

After a shootout in Dubai left Hamza al-Saud dead and elevated brilliant aeronautical engineer Qasim Nadar to hero status in England, everyone assumes the terrorist threat from al Qadar has been eliminated. Everyone except JSOC counterterrorism analyst Whitney Watts. But when she decides to help MI6 penetrate Nadar’s secret network, Watts gets a little too close to the truth and finds herself in a deadly situation not even her teammates from Tier One can save her from.

As Lieutenant Commander Keith “Chunk” Redman and the rest of Tier One fan out across London in search of Watts, Nadar prepares to unleash his most dangerous weapon yet—an advanced drone with artificial intelligence and stealth technology. To stop a horrifying attack on London, Chunk and his Navy SEAL brethren must seek help from an unexpected ally and find a way to stop a war machine that was designed to be unstoppable.

#1 New York Times bestselling authors, Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson recently spent time with The Big Thrill to discuss their latest military thriller, SONS OF VALOR III: WAR MACHINE.

Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

We tend to write our military thrillers in three book arcs, back-to-back trilogies if you will, and SONS OF VALOR 3 is no exception. For fans of the series, we know you’ve spent two books with these characters and built a relationship with them. The third book in every trilogy is the most challenging because we want to honor that history and bring the plot and character arcs to a satisfying conclusion. We hope readers will take away from SONS OF VALOR 3 that our protagonists, LCDR Keith “Chunk” Redman and Whitney “Heels” Watts have grown professionally but also personally since we first met them in SONS OF VALOR. Their relationship has also evolved in a way that, frankly, has taken them both by surprise.

No spoilers, but what can you tell us about your book that we won’t find in the jacket copy or the PR material?

The third book in a trilogy must test the lead characters in a way they’ve not been tested in the previous two books. You have to take away something that the characters have become reliant on and force them out of their comfort zone. In SONS OF VALOR 3: WAR MACHINE, the thing we take away from Chunk and Heels is each other. Over the first two books, they grudgingly come to depend on each other to augment their individual weaknesses, and in this book, by antagonist action, they are separated and must independently save themselves and complete their missions. This proves to be harder for each of them than they ever imagined it could be.

Without spoilers, are there any genre conventions you wanted to upend or challenge with this book?

Yes, we want to challenge the “perceived” convention that military thrillers are plot-driven novels. SONS OF VALOR 3 has a great plot, but it is definitely a character-driven novel. In the Sons of Valor series, plot elements stress and challenge the characters at every turn, but it is the characters’ personal journey, struggles, and relationships that drive the narrative. The heart of the Sons of Valor series is the power of “teams,” in this case a SEAL team (and the nuclear family and friends of those serving on the team). We challenge anyone to read a SONS OF VALOR book without walking away feeling a powerful sense of community, empathy, and patriotism.

What’s the one question you wish someone would ask you about this book, or your work in general? And, please answer the question too!

The one question we wished we could be asked is “Where do you get your ideas?” Just kidding, we despise that question. The real question we wish someone would ask is why did you decide to create a spin-off series from Tier One in the first place? The answer is surprisingly simple: because our fans asked us to! Chunk was originally written to provide comic relief and balance out Dempsey in the second Tier One book, War Shadows. But his optimism, courage, and valor resonated powerfully with the readers of that series. We received so many emails asking about Chunk that we realized he deserved his own series. That’s how and why Sons of Valor was born!

Andrews & Wilson is bestselling coauthor team of multiple covert ops and action-adventure thriller series: Tier One, Sons of Valor, and The Shepherds.

Brian Andrews is a US Navy veteran, Park Leadership Fellow, and former submarine officer with a psychology degree from Vanderbilt and a masters in business from Cornell University. Brian also is a principal contributor at Career Authors, a site dedicated to advancing the careers of aspiring and published writers.

Jeffrey Wilson has worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon. He served in the US Navy for fourteen years and made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast–based SEAL Team. He and his wife, Wendy, live in Southwest Florida with their four children.

To learn more, visit their website.

SONS OF VALOR III: WAR MACHINE with Andrews & Wilson