ARISEN Operators book 1: Fall of the Third Temple, by Michael Stephen Fuchs book Review
This is a brutal, blistering, loud-as-artillery novel about a woman who refuses to die, even when the world keeps trying to take away every reason she has to live. ARISEN: Operators, Volume I – The Fall of the Third Temple reads like Michael Bay got hold of a Tier‑1 memoir and decided to film it with live ammo and real operators.
A protagonist forged alone
Yaël Sion starts the book as a Sayeret Matkal operator on the B Team, already at the sharpest tip of Israel’s special operations spear. She is highly trained, utterly lethal, and already damaged before the first infected ever breaches a perimeter. The pandemic doesn’t create a hero; it strips her down to the core of what she already is: mission‑driven, relentless, and almost suicidally self‑reliant.
As Israel collapses, Yaël’s escape becomes a Mediterranean odyssey in a Mark I Combatant Craft Medium stolen from a Shayetet 13 base. She keeps trying to build some kind of life raft out of human connection, inviting a Sayeret teammate, a Shayetet 13 medic, a British soldier, a clueless father, and finally a French SOF operator of the Commando Jaubert to come with her. Every time, they refuse. Every time, the world punishes their choice and her hope. The message is brutal and consistent: attachment is something this universe will not let her keep.
Michael Bay with a soul
The action is pure cinematic excess, and that is meant as praise. Gunfights explode with the kind of technical detail and momentum that make you hear the brass hitting the deck. Naval special operations, CQB, and mass‑casualty chaos are rendered in set pieces that feel like they were storyboarded for a big-budget film: the desperate fight aboard her special operations craft, the storm‑tossed Mediterranean crossing, the rescue by a French carrier that plays like the third act of an action movie.
What keeps it from becoming an empty spectacle is the emotional payload riding under all that fire and fury. Each time Yaël reaches out, tries to save a little girl like Blue Bell, to offer a last‑minute lifeline to someone standing on the edge of the apocalypse, she is really trying to prove that she is more than a weapon. Each refusal, each death, drives her further into the role of lone wolf, but the book never lets her off the hook emotionally. She feels every loss. She carries all of them.
A hard-edged hero’s journey
This is the hero’s journey without comfort. Only endurance. Yaël is always alone on the X, always the one who moves forward while everyone else freezes, rationalizes, or dies. The Mediterranean arc, especially, functions as a crucible: the boat holed below the waterline, the impossible storm, the moment she has to let her last pieces of kit sink away as she fights to keep her head above water. By the time she drags herself into that four‑star hotel basement, she is essentially down to skin, scar tissue, and sheer will.
For readers who want a neat character arc with healing and closure, this book will feel like a punch in the throat. For those who understand that some warriors survive by embracing isolation as armor, Yaël Sion is one of the most compelling, terrifying, and strangely moving protagonists to come out of modern military fiction.
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Treat yourself this holiday season to Michael Stephen Fuchs’ “Arisen: Operators, Book 1“. I suggest the audible version skillfully narrated by R.C. Bray. One brief listen to the sample, and you’ll be hooked. You can pick that up here.
** Editor’s Note: Thinking about subscribing to SOFREP? You can support Veteran Journalism & do it now for only $1 for your first year. Pull the trigger on this amazing offer HERE. – GDM
