Taking a break from all the I-love-me pictures I’m going to review some books I’ve read recently.
First up is Mark Ellis’ “Cryptozoica”. This novel follows the basic premise of Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” and Doyle’s “Lost World” taking place on a lost island in the South China sea where a band of pulp action misfits wind up getting stranded. The book takes a while to really get moving as the first half is mostly about character development and double crosses.
Aside from that this book definitely delivered by combining Dinosaurs, Pulp heroes, and the kind of off beat science you expect to find in books like “Technology of the Gods,” By David Hatcher Childress or “The 12th Planet” by Zacharia Sitchin. You have a lost civilization from an antediluvian past, a evil midget with a napoleon complex, and a Triad mob war all going on at the same time.
I wrote a more extensive review at Amazon that you can check out if you like, this one is a must for action-adventure and pulp fans.
Next up is Day by Day Armageddon 2: Beyond Exile. Highly anticipated by zombie fiction fans (yes, that is a genre) DBDA2 did not disappoint. Like the first in the series this is the type of book you will probably tear through in a day. Written in the format of the journal of a Air Force pilot’s struggle to survive the zombie apocalypse it follows his day to day fight against the undead.
Things really get hot towards the second half of the book as we find our survivor stranded and alone deep behind “enemy lines” out in the hinterlands with massive hordes of zombies plowing across what is left of America. The book ends with a glimpse of an intelligence report hinting at what will happen in DBDA3, its a major plot twist and well worth the read.
Beyond Exile definitely has it’s share of twists and keeps you guess as to what is going to happen next. My only complaint is that one player in the book called “Remote Six” appears out of nowhere and saves our survivor several times. While Remote Six is a interesting concept in the book I thought it’s assistance seemed like a bit of a cop out at times. Still, this is a five star book, check it out.
Finally we have one from the long running Executioner series, “Volatile Agent”. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit and was sorry to hear that this ghost writer for the series has since moved on to other projects. This time we have Mack Bolan in West Africa attempting to locate a freelance agent who has information everyone and his brother in the intel community is desperate to lay their hands on.
Bolan was surprisingly human and fallible in this novel which was something I liked and a departure from many of the Executioner novels these days. He makes mistakes, misses shots, has a horrible HALO jump, gets shot, in short he takes a hell of a beating and barely survives.
The research done for this novel was also surprisingly good, the HALO jump towards the beginning of the book was fairly well done and well described. Most authors screw it up by writing about Bolan having his reserve strapped in front (like a static line jump) or by talking about 20 minutes of free fall time!
Well worth the time for fans of the genre.
Reflexive Fire 