CHARLIE BRAY’S BOOK REVIEWS
A very warm welcome to Charlie Bray’s Indie Book Reviews. If you wish to buy any of these books, click on the front cover to buy from Amazon.com or the link following the description to buy from Amazon.co.uk
IF YOU DO DECIDE TO BUY BOOKS, PLEASE BUY THEM WHILST YOU’RE LINKED THROUGH TO AMAZON FROM INDIETRIBE.
So here we go with our latest selection of great Indie books:
The Ajax Protocol by Alex Lukeman
This is Book Seven of the Project series and the collection is getting stronger and stronger.
Elizabeth Harker and her team are entrusted to protect the land of the free, but are constantly thwarted by opposing elements both at home and away. Even worse, they are being hampered by the Vice President, who, standing in for the smitten President, is no lover of the Project team and is no asset to their cause.
The latest mission is to combat a plot to kill the President and transform America into a totalitarian police state, operating without political opposition, and enforcing laws at will.
As if his hands aren’t full enough with this, Project team leader, Nick Carter, risks being distracted by his involvement with his lover and fellow team member, Selena Connor.
Novosibirsk, a small Russian town having enormous problems of its own, could well hold the key to solving the conspiracy that envelops the States and threatens world peace.
The set of circumstances portrayed in this book are indicative of what is probably bubbling away under the surface of America right now and Alex Lukeman is well equipped to mirror it in the Project collection. As well as being an extremely skilled wordsmith, he is a former marine and psychotherapist, ergo he understands clandestine activity and the minds of nutters.
Once you read this remarkable action packed book, you will order the rest of the Project collection. It’s that good!
Also available from Amazon.co.uk
THE AJAX PROTOCOL IS AVAILABLE ON A REDUCED PRICE PROMOTION FROM TODAY UNTIL THE 13th APRIL
To the Survivors by Philip G Henley
Philip Henley captures the forthcoming horror in the early part of his book, when he competently describes an outrageous phenomenon that is about to attack and desecrate the world. He cleverly links the increasing panic, dealt with by a competent government, with an innocent family who are not yet privy to the horrors that are about to unfold. Teenager Gary Tolman and his parents have recently completed the construction of a state of the art eco home, and as more and more information is released regarding the impending doom, they do their best to adapt it to an uncertain future.
As the deadly virus takes its strangle hold on the population, Gary’s parents succumb, together with 99% of the population. Gary is one of the lucky ones, or unlucky ones, to inherit a very different world. A world in which he is very much alone. He is forced to skip adolescence and leap straight into a very mature manhood, simply to survive.
Slowly but surely he meets other members of the culled human race, some friendly, some deadly. He falls in love, he makes friends, only to see their lives claimed by the virus.
It is surely a very difficult task to paint a picture of any form of optimism in the midst of such desolation. But paint it Philip Henley does, in a very accomplished manner.
To the Survivors is very much a story of survival against all odds and an exceptionally gripping read. Philip’s descriptive powers enable the reader to share his view of a very lonely, empty, and yet dangerous world, where your very existence is far from guaranteed. Yet always there is hope, always the way is lit by the far off glimmer that can always be seen.
An excellent read that will stay with you long after you have put the book away.
Also available from Amazon.co.uk
An Agent’s Demise by Philip G Henley
This is a very different tale to the one portrayed in To the Survivors, reviewed above. It is a platform from which Philip Henley is able to display his extreme versatility as an author.
An Agent’s Demise revolves around the complex happenings leading up to and beyond the second Iraq war.
A serial killer is on the loose, but these are not just random killings. They are orchestrated assassinations, carried out by someone who is nothing more than a lethal resource dispatched from on high. Not high as in the heavens, but on high as in the upper echelons of our espionage network.
And yet the assassin is not simply a puppet. He is an extremely intelligent, manipulative individual who covers his tracks by a number of cleverly organized identities and safe houses. At times he appears to be running rings around the police and authorities, and at other times the net appears to be tightening.
He is also clearly the recipient of a split personality, because when he is conducting his love life, he is a completely different animal to the one who is circling the globe, seeing people off. But then I suppose he’d have to be. Even then his mystery could prove to be his undoing, as individuals close to his lover begin to suspect he is perhaps not what he seems.
In a very complex plot, the killer, John Slater, to use one of his many names, proves to be the one constant to cling to, in both his guises, the tender lover and the ruthless killer. The story actually needs this constant as an anchor, as it continually serves to bring together many wide-ranging threads.
This amended version of An Agent’s Demise has been professionally proofread and edited, so you can now disregard certain negative reviews on Amazon, which marked it down because of grammatical errors.
A thoroughly intriguing and enjoyable book which will keep you turning the pages, right up to an unexpected end.
Also available from Amazon.co.uk
Tesla by Mark Lingane
A great book that should satisfy the author’s desire to wean a generation off games modules on to novels of this nature
It’s billed as Cyberpunk vs Steampunk.
For the uninitiated that means its characters living in a darkly frightening, futuristic world dominated by computer technology versus a genre of science fiction that typically features steam powered machinery rather than advanced technology.
Set a thousand years hence, nuclear capability has finally achieved its intended purpose and half of the northern hemisphere has gone missing.
To achieve his aim, it was essential for author, Mark Lingane to create a story that was short, sharp, constantly evolving with ridiculous amounts of action where no one important ever seems to get hurt, and make fun of current pop culture, social media, adults and technology.
Mark has achieved this. He is an extremely skilled writer who can and does frequently cross over into new and exciting genres.
From a conventional, hard working background, Sebastian, the hero of the story, finds himself being pursued by black-clad cyborgs. These beings were born as humans, but have had machines and technology added to enhance their effectiveness. They are being controlled by a central, well hidden, machine.
Sebastian is befriended by a strange bunch headed by characters Merv and Marv, who quickly become aware that he actually possesses fairly strong, if unpredictable, powers.
Sebastian becomes increasingly under threat from the cyborgs and ultimately it is left to a dying girl named Melanie to save him.
The characters, dialogue and unforeseen happenings throughout the story are extremely quirky and unusual. There are times when it appears that Mark Lingane is re-writing the very concept of a novel, which I suppose is what he set out to achieve.
Even though the story was clearly not created for an old man like me, I absolutely loved it, and I know that his actual target audience will too.
Also available from Amazon.co.uk
I hope you enjoyed reading about these four books as much as I enjoyed reviewing them. I hope to bring you some more Indie reviews soon.
Happy reading,
Charlie
