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Medusa Project #2
Medusa Rising
SHE'S A DOCTOR. A HEALER. CAN SHE KILL IN THE NAME OF GOOD?Dr. Aleesha Gautier had asked herself that question many times since joining the Medusa Project, the United States' first all-woman Special Ops team. Could she take lives--even to protect national security--when her every instinct screamed to save them?Her first official mission--taking back a hijacked cruise ship--brought her face-to-face with her greatest fear: bad guys she would have to kill to save innocent lives. And one hijacker who might not be what he appeared. The mission could only end in death--unless Aleesha's choice to trust the wrong man was right....
304 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 13, 2005
5 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
About the author
Cindy Dees
173 books1,953 followersCindy Dees started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan.
After earning a degree in Russian and East European studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in the history of the Air Force. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the “C-5” Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, she got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval reenacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001.
After earning a degree in Russian and East European studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in the history of the Air Force. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the “C-5” Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, she got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval reenacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 5, 2020
At best this is romantic suspense, with the barest suggestion of romance.
The heroine and her all-female team almost single-handedly save the day, with the help of the all-female passengers. The heroine saves the hero's life and literally has to carry him out.
Aleesha is a part of the Medusas, an all-female Special Forces team, and each team member has the code name of a snake. It started out with Aleesha diving in the ocean as a part of a practice drill with the Navy Seals who acted as simulated terrorists. Aleesha I said to have the Sight, voodoo intuitions and does voodoo breathing tricks. She kept doing a Jamaican accent at the worst possible times, while the SEAL was dying, and at the hospital. Not the time for jokes.
She argued with her officer about being able to go on the mission alone after she discovered the SEALs had tampered with her dive partner's gear. Vanessa made Aleesha the leader of the practice run and let her decide if the team wanted to do it. That seemed really wrong to me, this rogue type of behavior where the person takes it on themselves to make their own decisions.
I did like when Aleesha, during practice in which she had to get through trip wire set by the SEALs, had the idea to use those as bait and set her own trip wires that they weren't expecting. At the meeting later they all had tense jaws and they knew they were going to get it.
For the practice on the ship in which they had to take it from the SEALs, Aleesha had the idea to contact Vanessa's Delta Force lieutenant colonel boyfriend, to get his help. He decided to pose as a Navy officer working on the ship. Aleesha had her team dress as the welding team and welded the door shut so the SEALs were trapped inside. The women expected a blanket party and slept at a motel so the SEALs couldn't haze them. They set up training charge explosives to cover the sound of them welding the doors shut. But it was ruined as they all got beeped to go on an operation.
It turned out that Viktor's #2, Michael, was the informant. He's the one who was working undercover for two years to bring Viktor down. And Viktor had heard that there was an informant so he suddenly made the test run on the cruise ship into the real thing.
The SEALs were sleeping on the way over like it was routine for them but when Vanessa shifter all their eyes opened, alert.
I liked their training exercises and working with the SEALs, and how the military worked with the president. They went over all possible scenarios for where the hijackers, crew, and passengers were on the ship. And they labeled the decks based on letters and sections with numbers so they could relay the information to the SEALs and they would place figurines on the model of the ship.
They used regular talk on the radios in case the ship had radio frequency scanners. Her talk with Bud, the SEAL team leader, was so funny, I actually smiled while reading. Not only clever in that he told her he was 5 minutes away to indicate the ship had changed 5 degrees, but he used the word beach to mean they're going west. And when she said said if he was shacking up with another woman, she would kill him, that was when I smiled. He was her fake boyfriend over the radio and be called her hot stuff and other names like Pussycat and made it sound R-rated. Too bad they weren't the ones getting together because that would have been a cute moment. They'd shopped for tourist-y clothes to blend in with the passengers.
It was another good moment when an alarm went off indicating a hatch had been opened but the woman in charge lied to Michael and said it was a drop in oil pressure and Michael knew it wasn't and that someone boarded the ship but he went along with it.
Michael asked for someone to bring the men their food and Aleesha volunteered. I liked the reaction from the higher ups when the women reported Aleesha had gone off with one of the hijackers. Jack was told to control his team. It was a good moment when Michael shoved Aleesha into a room and told her to tell the other passengers that help was coming. He grabbed her and she took a chop at his arms. He knocked her down and she did the same to him, ended up landing on him and he laughed. He told her who he really was, British SIS. Viktor came to the room to see what was going on and Aleesha was trapped with no way out, so she took her shirt and bra off and got in bed as a cover.
The first book involved them saving Jack in another country. It made me want to read that to see what happened.
It was funny that she paraded around the entire ship in a dress and then blatantly went into a stateroom so Michael would know where she was at to come and talk to her. Her door opened in the night and she jumped him and took him, and he laughed underneath her again and said Uncle. He had checked the database and knew she wasn't a passenger or crew member.
Aleesha told him she wanted in to learn more about the hijackers, and Michael told her to bring him breakfast at 10 in his stateroom and wear the sexy white shorts she had on today.
When she went in the men were having a meeting and she got to gather IDs for the men, and heard their plan to dock at Haiti at trade hostages for fuel and food. Jack had the idea to clear the port and replace the dock workers with their men on a nearby ship who could service the ship.
Michael had one of the men tell her to bring him lunch to the bridge and when she got there he told her she was late and treated her disdainfully for show. She served him last and when he asked what she brought him to drink she said hemlock and he choked. He told her to cut his salad and she fingered the knife and looked at his crotch, which caused him to choke again.
Aleesha risked herself and the women by having all the mothers of the kids under 3 dock with them, pretending to be sick so they could be with their kids. Michael had her come to his room, mad at the risk she'd taken. Viktor came and Michael told her to strip and get in bed. After Vicktor left Michael asked if she wanted to be his woman.
Another training mission was when Jack had roamed around on a ship playing a bad guy and they avoided him by using surveillance cameras and radios. I liked that Aleesha snuck around the ship looking for things when Michael was at the cameras.
I had such a problem with Michael. He kept yanking her in and out of rooms, pushing her up against walls, grabbing her with a biting, painful grip. But when she was searching for safe places to put the kids, he realized the SEALs were almost here and he threw her down on top of a table, pinched her nerves so she couldn't use her arms, and he held her down with his body and kissed her roughly to show domination. That was the final straw. And of course Aleesha ended up kissing him back, getting into it.
I didn't even think they were going to have sex. It was one of those situations of "We might not have tomorrow. Let's do it tonight." And as I feared, she skipped right over the sex. She brushed over the act with one sentence speaking of the slide of flesh on flesh and sated exhaustion. That sure worked for me....
Viktor had hidden mines in the ocean without telling his team about it. He'd secretly been working with another team that set the explosives and he knew the U.S. would be coming around this time before the hurricane blew in. So the SEAL team that was supposed to carry out the rescue mission was blown up and most injured and had to call it off. The women were on their own after they had already secured the kids and had shot some terrorists so they had to carry it out.
I found it really unrealistic and wrong that Jack didn't say one word about being afraid for Vanessa. If they're so in love then why wasn't he afraid for her life when he knew they were trapped on their own with a shoot out imminent? And when he contacted them and some with Aleesha, all he said was "Give Viper my best." Your best? What the hell does that mean? Who even says that in this day and age?
They killed all the terrorists and the last two were Viktor and Michael. Viktor must've figured out that the spy was Michael because he tried to shoot him and Aleesha realized that if she shot him first Viktor would give up on him and she could save Michael that way. So that's what she did. She "had" to shoot Michael. Never a fan of that ploy. And the whole time I couldn’t wait for Viktor to feel that massive betrayal that the second-in-command that he’d been trusting for 2 years was actually a spy, and we didn’t that moment.
They had to rescue all of the kids in the bottom of the ship as it sank, and Michael ended up passing out from blood loss and shock and hypothermia. Aleesha insisted on saving him and carried him out all by herself. He was stabilized and would need to be operated on to fix his broken collarbone that she'd hit. They promised to spend time together and she went above deck where all the passengers cheered them on. Aleesha and Michael weren't even together at the end! This is not a romance, in any way. It was 99% military mission and 1% romance. I actually don't even know why the romance was in here, like it was supposed to be, like authors think readers want romance, but this was clearly an author who didn't want to write it. If there aren't sex scenes, it's not romance. If the characters spend like 5% of their time together, there's no basis for a relationship.
I really don't like books that take place over a span of a few days. She was only on board the ship for a few days and had sex with Michael the last night. I get it happens, but I'm not a fan of characters sleeping together when they only met a few days ago and don't know anything about each other.
Their order of triage was to care for civilians first, then themselves, and then the terrorists.
Aleesha was the one with ALL of the ideas. Vanessa, the team leader, looked like an incompetent idiot in comparison and I wondered why Aleesha wasn't the leader if she was the one making all the decisions and all of the other women were following her.
I was waiting for Jack to reunite with Vanessa, but that happened while Aleesha was with Michael below deck and by the time she came up Jack came out and only briefly smiled at Vanessa. Boy, the book is hot to the touch at all the heat between this couple.
The woman terrorist was unaccounted for so we know she'll make an appearance in the next book somehow. I can’t read romance with no sex and this was way too much military and not enough emotions, character background, thoughts and feelings.
The heroine and her all-female team almost single-handedly save the day, with the help of the all-female passengers. The heroine saves the hero's life and literally has to carry him out.
Aleesha is a part of the Medusas, an all-female Special Forces team, and each team member has the code name of a snake. It started out with Aleesha diving in the ocean as a part of a practice drill with the Navy Seals who acted as simulated terrorists. Aleesha I said to have the Sight, voodoo intuitions and does voodoo breathing tricks. She kept doing a Jamaican accent at the worst possible times, while the SEAL was dying, and at the hospital. Not the time for jokes.
She argued with her officer about being able to go on the mission alone after she discovered the SEALs had tampered with her dive partner's gear. Vanessa made Aleesha the leader of the practice run and let her decide if the team wanted to do it. That seemed really wrong to me, this rogue type of behavior where the person takes it on themselves to make their own decisions.
I did like when Aleesha, during practice in which she had to get through trip wire set by the SEALs, had the idea to use those as bait and set her own trip wires that they weren't expecting. At the meeting later they all had tense jaws and they knew they were going to get it.
For the practice on the ship in which they had to take it from the SEALs, Aleesha had the idea to contact Vanessa's Delta Force lieutenant colonel boyfriend, to get his help. He decided to pose as a Navy officer working on the ship. Aleesha had her team dress as the welding team and welded the door shut so the SEALs were trapped inside. The women expected a blanket party and slept at a motel so the SEALs couldn't haze them. They set up training charge explosives to cover the sound of them welding the doors shut. But it was ruined as they all got beeped to go on an operation.
It turned out that Viktor's #2, Michael, was the informant. He's the one who was working undercover for two years to bring Viktor down. And Viktor had heard that there was an informant so he suddenly made the test run on the cruise ship into the real thing.
The SEALs were sleeping on the way over like it was routine for them but when Vanessa shifter all their eyes opened, alert.
I liked their training exercises and working with the SEALs, and how the military worked with the president. They went over all possible scenarios for where the hijackers, crew, and passengers were on the ship. And they labeled the decks based on letters and sections with numbers so they could relay the information to the SEALs and they would place figurines on the model of the ship.
They used regular talk on the radios in case the ship had radio frequency scanners. Her talk with Bud, the SEAL team leader, was so funny, I actually smiled while reading. Not only clever in that he told her he was 5 minutes away to indicate the ship had changed 5 degrees, but he used the word beach to mean they're going west. And when she said said if he was shacking up with another woman, she would kill him, that was when I smiled. He was her fake boyfriend over the radio and be called her hot stuff and other names like Pussycat and made it sound R-rated. Too bad they weren't the ones getting together because that would have been a cute moment. They'd shopped for tourist-y clothes to blend in with the passengers.
It was another good moment when an alarm went off indicating a hatch had been opened but the woman in charge lied to Michael and said it was a drop in oil pressure and Michael knew it wasn't and that someone boarded the ship but he went along with it.
Michael asked for someone to bring the men their food and Aleesha volunteered. I liked the reaction from the higher ups when the women reported Aleesha had gone off with one of the hijackers. Jack was told to control his team. It was a good moment when Michael shoved Aleesha into a room and told her to tell the other passengers that help was coming. He grabbed her and she took a chop at his arms. He knocked her down and she did the same to him, ended up landing on him and he laughed. He told her who he really was, British SIS. Viktor came to the room to see what was going on and Aleesha was trapped with no way out, so she took her shirt and bra off and got in bed as a cover.
The first book involved them saving Jack in another country. It made me want to read that to see what happened.
It was funny that she paraded around the entire ship in a dress and then blatantly went into a stateroom so Michael would know where she was at to come and talk to her. Her door opened in the night and she jumped him and took him, and he laughed underneath her again and said Uncle. He had checked the database and knew she wasn't a passenger or crew member.
Aleesha told him she wanted in to learn more about the hijackers, and Michael told her to bring him breakfast at 10 in his stateroom and wear the sexy white shorts she had on today.
When she went in the men were having a meeting and she got to gather IDs for the men, and heard their plan to dock at Haiti at trade hostages for fuel and food. Jack had the idea to clear the port and replace the dock workers with their men on a nearby ship who could service the ship.
Michael had one of the men tell her to bring him lunch to the bridge and when she got there he told her she was late and treated her disdainfully for show. She served him last and when he asked what she brought him to drink she said hemlock and he choked. He told her to cut his salad and she fingered the knife and looked at his crotch, which caused him to choke again.
Aleesha risked herself and the women by having all the mothers of the kids under 3 dock with them, pretending to be sick so they could be with their kids. Michael had her come to his room, mad at the risk she'd taken. Viktor came and Michael told her to strip and get in bed. After Vicktor left Michael asked if she wanted to be his woman.
Another training mission was when Jack had roamed around on a ship playing a bad guy and they avoided him by using surveillance cameras and radios. I liked that Aleesha snuck around the ship looking for things when Michael was at the cameras.
I had such a problem with Michael. He kept yanking her in and out of rooms, pushing her up against walls, grabbing her with a biting, painful grip. But when she was searching for safe places to put the kids, he realized the SEALs were almost here and he threw her down on top of a table, pinched her nerves so she couldn't use her arms, and he held her down with his body and kissed her roughly to show domination. That was the final straw. And of course Aleesha ended up kissing him back, getting into it.
I didn't even think they were going to have sex. It was one of those situations of "We might not have tomorrow. Let's do it tonight." And as I feared, she skipped right over the sex. She brushed over the act with one sentence speaking of the slide of flesh on flesh and sated exhaustion. That sure worked for me....
Viktor had hidden mines in the ocean without telling his team about it. He'd secretly been working with another team that set the explosives and he knew the U.S. would be coming around this time before the hurricane blew in. So the SEAL team that was supposed to carry out the rescue mission was blown up and most injured and had to call it off. The women were on their own after they had already secured the kids and had shot some terrorists so they had to carry it out.
I found it really unrealistic and wrong that Jack didn't say one word about being afraid for Vanessa. If they're so in love then why wasn't he afraid for her life when he knew they were trapped on their own with a shoot out imminent? And when he contacted them and some with Aleesha, all he said was "Give Viper my best." Your best? What the hell does that mean? Who even says that in this day and age?
They killed all the terrorists and the last two were Viktor and Michael. Viktor must've figured out that the spy was Michael because he tried to shoot him and Aleesha realized that if she shot him first Viktor would give up on him and she could save Michael that way. So that's what she did. She "had" to shoot Michael. Never a fan of that ploy. And the whole time I couldn’t wait for Viktor to feel that massive betrayal that the second-in-command that he’d been trusting for 2 years was actually a spy, and we didn’t that moment.
They had to rescue all of the kids in the bottom of the ship as it sank, and Michael ended up passing out from blood loss and shock and hypothermia. Aleesha insisted on saving him and carried him out all by herself. He was stabilized and would need to be operated on to fix his broken collarbone that she'd hit. They promised to spend time together and she went above deck where all the passengers cheered them on. Aleesha and Michael weren't even together at the end! This is not a romance, in any way. It was 99% military mission and 1% romance. I actually don't even know why the romance was in here, like it was supposed to be, like authors think readers want romance, but this was clearly an author who didn't want to write it. If there aren't sex scenes, it's not romance. If the characters spend like 5% of their time together, there's no basis for a relationship.
I really don't like books that take place over a span of a few days. She was only on board the ship for a few days and had sex with Michael the last night. I get it happens, but I'm not a fan of characters sleeping together when they only met a few days ago and don't know anything about each other.
Their order of triage was to care for civilians first, then themselves, and then the terrorists.
Aleesha was the one with ALL of the ideas. Vanessa, the team leader, looked like an incompetent idiot in comparison and I wondered why Aleesha wasn't the leader if she was the one making all the decisions and all of the other women were following her.
I was waiting for Jack to reunite with Vanessa, but that happened while Aleesha was with Michael below deck and by the time she came up Jack came out and only briefly smiled at Vanessa. Boy, the book is hot to the touch at all the heat between this couple.
The woman terrorist was unaccounted for so we know she'll make an appearance in the next book somehow. I can’t read romance with no sex and this was way too much military and not enough emotions, character background, thoughts and feelings.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
July 13, 2009Hmmm.... not really a romance. More of a chick lit with some thrown in. I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't finish it.
First of all, the heroine - Aleesha, is a doctor. Highly educated and beautiful...from Jamaica. But she keeps lapsing into, for lack of a better term, Jamaica talk. Seemed not only a bit racist but not in keeping with the characters accomplishments.
Secondly, the book races through scenes. I'm all for getting on with a story but not like this book does.
The premise of the book is about female soldiers in a special ops team. But in several instances, the other characters in the book looked down upon them as wanna be's and it just didn't sit right with me, especially having a Navy background myself.
DNF. Not rating this book because I skimmed 90% of it.
First of all, the heroine - Aleesha, is a doctor. Highly educated and beautiful...from Jamaica. But she keeps lapsing into, for lack of a better term, Jamaica talk. Seemed not only a bit racist but not in keeping with the characters accomplishments.
Secondly, the book races through scenes. I'm all for getting on with a story but not like this book does.
The premise of the book is about female soldiers in a special ops team. But in several instances, the other characters in the book looked down upon them as wanna be's and it just didn't sit right with me, especially having a Navy background myself.
DNF. Not rating this book because I skimmed 90% of it.
July 9, 2023
Great read .. read whole series!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 25, 2024
Cindy Dees writes smart, fast paced and fun to read "popcorn books". Great literature they're not but great entertainment and just plain old barnburning page-turners.
Fun!!
Fun!!
October 14, 2011
I'm new to this Medusa series and happy I have a bunch of them to read. I love the whole tough women spy/agent genre so this is right up my alley. Started this on vacation at a spa and sailed through it, I'd have been done faster if the airlines didn't have this pesky no electronics on takeoffs/landings rule. Loved the first one and didn't know if the author could keep up that pace and have another story that kept me on the edge of my seat. I was wrong. Started the third one today and looking forward to the rest of this series and the others by this author.
Read
September 2, 2008Medusa Rising (Silhouette Intrigue) (Silhouette Intrigue) by Cindy Dees (2007)
September 18, 2013
loved it. the medusa books are great!
February 20, 2012
this was a good book. Not my favorite but the plot was solid and kept you on your toes. Overall a strong piece of writing.
August 17, 2013
Love this series
March 26, 2016
This should be made into a movie!!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews