The Forgotten Holocaust by Scott Mariani (SWE/ENG)

The Forgotten Holocaust by Scott Mariani
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

SWEDISH REVIEW

Ett brutalt mord.
En fasansfull hemlighet.
Endast en man kan avslöja sanningen.

Den före detta elitsoldaten Ben Hope återvänder till Irland för att fly från sina problem, men det dröjer inte länge förrän de dyker upp igen.

Ett brutalt mord på en ung kvinna gör att Ben slängs in i en livsfarlig sammansvärjning och en hetsig jakt över hela jorden tar fart. En jakt med bara ett fåtal ledtrådar.

Sökandet för honom till Oklahoma, USA, där en fasansfull historisk hemlighet, undangömd sedan 150 år, snart kommer att avslöjas. Ben måste bara förstå vad det är han ska leta efter – innan det är för sent. Mördarna är nämligen beredda att göra allt för att dölja sanningen …

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Först måste jag bara säga att den svenska titeln till boken är inte världens bästa. Hur The Forgotten Holocaust på svenska får titeln Dolda är för mig ett mysterium.

När det gäller berättelsen så var den bra, inte perfekt men jag fann att den till stor del funkade. Då detta är den första boken jag har läst skriven av Scott Mariani så tycker jag personligen att det var enkelt att komma in i handlingen trots att det var bok 10 i serien om Ben Hope. Jag gillar Ben Hope, han är en intressant karaktär. Nu har han "hemma" efter strul med ett inställt bröllop (kan förstå hans ex-fästmö) och det dröjer inte lång tid innan han hamnar mitt i ett mord som har rötter i det förflutna och som kommer att föra honom till Amerika där en kvinna ligger risigt till efter att ha bevittnat något hon skulle mått bra av att inte se.

Jag gillade bokens handling. Det var intressant och tragiskt. Men jag tycker att boken förlorade farten runt slutet. Berättelsen funkade bäst när Ben arbetade med att lista ut sanningen om mordet och kom sanningen på spåret. Men när han kom till Amerika som kände jag att berättelsen inte alls flöt på på samma sätt som den hade gjort innan. Nog för att jag gillar spänning och action, men här fann jag att det pågick lite för länge. Dock så gillade jag upplösningen även om jag inte var överväldigad av den. Men jag gillade att man till slut fick svaret på varför så många behövde dö i boken, varför hemligheten var så viktigt att skydda. 

Dolda är läsvärd och jag vill läsa fler böcker i serien och tursamt nog har jag en ebook att läsa, men jag lär väl inte komma till den fören 2020 med tanke på hur mycket jag har att läsa.

Tack till HarperCollins Nordic för recensionexemplaret!

ENGLISH REVIEW

The breathtaking new adventure starring Ben Hope

A lost, aimless and hard-drinking Ben Hope has wandered back to his old haunt in Ireland. The ex-SAS soldier is searching for peace, but trouble soon appears when Kirsten Hall, a young journalist, is brutally murdered right in front of him. Unable to prevent it, Ben is driven by guilt to hunt down the killers. All he has to go on is a handful of clues from Kirsten’s research – but how can the journals of Lady Stamford, the wife of an English lord during the time of the Irish Great Famine, have put Kirsten in mortal danger?

Ben’s quest for the truth leads him across the world and finally to Oklahoma, USA, where a deadly secret awaits. What connects the journals, a wealthy American politician and an intrigue surrounding the Irish famine?

What Ben uncovers is a shocking historical conspiracy linked to the deaths of some two million people: a veritable holocaust that time has all but forgotten. Those who are still profiting from the lies and corruption of the time, and who are ready to kill anyone to protect their secret, are about to pay... 

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I want to start by saying that the Swedish title for the book sucks! For some reason, they chose Dolda that means The Hidden as a title. How going from The Forgotten Holocaust to that one is a mystery to me.

As for the story, it was good, not perfectly good, but still enjoyable to read. As a first-time reader of Scott Mariani did the book work quite good, despite this being the 10th book and jumping into a series doesn't always work. But, this time, it did. I quickly found my footing and soon I was caught up in the story about mass murder and atrocity. Ben Hope is an interesting character, he hasn't been back home for a long time before he is pulled into a murder case with roots in the past that will take him to America and a woman that has witnessed something that she would have been better of not have seen.

I liked the big mystery, it was intriguing and tragic. However, I thought the story lost a bit of steam towards the end of the book. I think the story worked best for me at least when Ben was finding out the truth of the murder he couldn't stop at the beginning of the book. When he got to America the story just got a bit less engrossing. I usually like action, but this time, I found it a bit going on and on a bit too long time for my taste. I did like the last minute revelation when you get the big explanation to all the killing explained. Although I was not overwhelmed by it. 

The Forgotten Holocaust was a good book. I want to read more of the books in the series and I do have an Ebook waiting for me to get to (around 2020 I think when I see my TBR mountain)

Thanks to HarperCollins Nordic for the review copy!

Beyond the Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child + Giveaway

BLURB

That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now…

With these words begins Gideon Crew's latest, most dangerous, most high-stakes assignment yet. Failure will mean nothing short of the end of humankind on earth.

Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite--the largest ever discovered--from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic waters and broke apart, sinking-along with its unique cargo-to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed.
But this was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space.

Now, that organism has implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface-and it is growing. If it is not destroyed, the planet will be doomed. There is only one hope: for Glinn and his team to annihilate it, a task which requires Gideon's expertise with nuclear weapons. But as Gideon and his colleagues soon discover, the "meteorite" has a mind of its own-and it has no intention of going quietly…

REVIEW

I haven't read any of the previous books in the Gideon Crew's series, despite being a long-time fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child nor have I read Ice Limit, the book that this is a sequel too. However, I did find that it was very easy to get into this book because the past events that happened in the Ice Limit are explained in the beginning of this book. 

I did, however, find that I was struggling somewhat with the story when I started the book. A group of men trying to stop what was thought of as a meteor, but turned out to be an alien organism from space? How exciting can that be I wondered? However, it turned out it could be quite exciting and as I found at around midnight when I had to put down the book after I had read around half of it.

What I liked about the story is that I could not predict what would happen, the turns the story would take and that one could never be sure who would live and who would die and the extent the alien life form would take to ensure its survival. I especially loved the part of the book when everything started to go to hell on the ship. This is the kind of book that I would love to see turned into a movie (or a miniseries since movies sometimes are way too short).

So, the book started kind of slow to me, I was a bit worried that I would not love it as much as I love Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Pendergast series, but I was sucked into the story and I ended enjoying the book far more than I thought when I started it. One definitely doesn't have to have read Ice Limit, but I do think fans of that book will love this book!

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for providing me with a free copy for an honest review!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Preston and Child are co-authors of the Agent Pendergast series as well as the Gideon Crew series. Their novels Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were chosen in an NPR poll as two of the hundred greatest thrillers ever written. Preston's acclaimed nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, is being made into a movie. Lincoln Child has published six novels of his own, including the bestseller The Forgotten Room.

WEBSITE:

PrestonChild.com

FACEBOOK:

http://facebook.com/PrestonandChild

2 US/CANADA WINNERS WILL RECEIVE A COPY OF BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT BY DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD!

Beyond the Ice Limit by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

The 6th Extinction by James Rollins

The 6th Extinction by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a masterful epic of timeless mystery and ripped-from-the-headlines scientific intrigue, New York Times bestselling author James Rollins takes mankind to its endpoint, to a fate written in rock and ice in an event known as The Sixth Extinction.

A remote military research station broadcasts a frantic distress call that ends with a chilling message: Kill us all. When soldiers arrive to investigate, they discover everyone in the lab is dead—not just the scientists, but every living thing for fifty square miles is annihilated: every animal, plant, and insect, even bacteria. The land is completely sterile—and the blight is spreading.

To prevent the inevitable, Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma must decipher a threat that rises out of the distant past, a time when Antarctica was green and Earth’s life balanced on a knife edge. Following clues from an ancient map rescued from the lost Library of Alexandria, Sigma will make a shocking discovery involving a prehistoric continent, and a new form of death buried under miles of ice.

From millennia-old secrets out of the frozen past to mysteries buried deep in the darkest jungles of today, Sigma will face its greatest challenge yet: stopping the coming extinction of mankind.

But is it already too late?

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The 6th Extinction is book 10 in the Sigma series and you don't need to have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this book. Although it wouldn't hurt to read them in the right order. Mostly because the series is good and it's interesting to follow the character lives throughout the books.

This book starts with the destruction of a remote military research station that not only kills every single scientist in the facility, but also every living thing within fifty square miles. Animals, plants, and yes even bacteria are killed and the infestation is spreading. Now, they must find a way to stop it!

This book takes us both to the jungles of South America and the icy world of Antarctica as the agents of Sigma has to find a way to stop the spreading that kills everything in its way.

The book is split into two parts; Commander Gray Pierce and others travelers to Antarctica looking for the answers below the ice and Painter Crowe and his group is going after the scientist that created the scourge and who was kidnapped when the military research station was destroyed. I preferred the Antarctic part of the book, it was most interesting with the lost world under the ice and also the one that felt most adventurous.

Meanwhile, Crowe and his team are trying to find the scientist that was kidnapped by the evil man that wanted to destroy the world that we know. The problem for me with the storyline was that It just got to scientific sometimes, too much scientific babble that dragged the story a bit. It was fundamentally interesting the idea that something could be so devastation dangerous that it could kill everything alive, but it just sometimes felt like the scientific babble just went on and on. That could really be why I just preferred what was going on with Pierce and the others because they had to fight for their lives constantly in Antarctica and the world below was so fantastic and dangerous. Yes, there was danger in Brazil, but I just felt less interested in the storyline.

I liked the book, I think it is well-written and fascinating to read. Yes, sometimes the science went above my head, but that only makes me more impressed because it does make the book feel very well researched. Although it did now and then go on a bit too long for my taste. But still, in essence, a really good book.

Quicksand by Gigi Pandian

Quicksand by Gigi Pandian
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Historian Jaya Jones has settled in San Francisco when she gets a letter from Lane Peters, an old fling, with a ticket to Paris. She has her doubts about going, she has a great job and leaving at the start of the term isn't the best thing, but in the end thanks to a little help from a friend she is able to leave her job for a week to see Lane again. But of course, nothing goes as planned...

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I had no problems getting into the story even though this is the third book in the series and the first one that I read. This is a wonderful cozy mystery book with a fantastic main character; Jaya Jones. Actually a lot of fantastic characters. We have her friends Tamarind and Sanjay back in San Francisco. Tamarind is a librarian and Sanjay magician. Then, of course, there is Lane Peters, he just happens to be a very good thief and now someone needs his help and they think leverage in the form of blackmail against Jaya is a perfect idea. So Lane and Jaya must help the criminal North with a theft. Finally, have we Sébastien an old magician that helps Lane and Jaya when they are in France.

The story was wonderful and a page turner and I found it amusing to read about Mont Saint Michel again. Never read about the place before, but this is the second book this year I read about when the story takes place on the island.

The story was wonderful and a page turner and I found it amusing to read about Mont Saint Michel again. Never read about the place before this year, but this is the second book that brings up the place and where much of the story takes place. Also, even though I enjoyed all the characters I must admit that I found North to do the most intriguing, yes I know he is the baddie, but he was such a wonderful character and I do have a bit of a weakness for great baddies. So, I like him and I hope to read about him more in future books.

In the end, I want to say that Gigi Pandian has written a book that really suited me and if you like I like cozy mystery books, then I would recommend checking out this book and the rest of the books in the series. I'm lucky, I already own the first two books!

I received a copy from the publisher and France book tours in return for an honest review!

Old Earth by Gary Grossman

Old Earth by Gary Grossman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Galileo Galilei makes in 1601 a discovery in the mountains of eastern Italy that could cause turmoil in the world; that could bring down governments and shatter people's faith in religions.

In the present time, a group of people on a university dig in Montana headed by paleontologist Quinn McCauley stumbles over a discovery that a secret group of people for over 400 years have done everything to keep a secret and the secret group will do anything to stop the discovery to be revealed. They stopped Galilei and they have stopped everyone else that has been close to discovering the secret during the centuries. McCauley and fellow paleontologist Katrina Alpert tries to understand what they have found in the mountains at the same time is running out for them...the group will stop at nothing to keep the secret from getting out.

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Wow! If I would summarize this book would wow be the right word. I have a weakness for adventures books with secret societies and wild chases across the world. Hell, books like this are probably the only genre that over the top is a good thing. In an adventure's thriller the story should be over the top, the characters should be thrown into impossible situations and I don't even mind if the main characters get a bit close together in the heat of the moment, well as long as they don't decide to do it in a situation when they should think more about running and not smooching. But in this book they didn't act that stupid and I quite enjoyed McCauley and Alpert working together.

This book was fabulous to read and since I have had for years a fascination with dinosaurs was I intrigued by the story from the beginning. But I never imaged that it would be so good, so different from other adventures thrillers I have read and I liked the fact that it wasn't a "religious" hunt, no holy grail or some lost book of Jesus to find. The discovery that Galileo Galilei made was interesting and it was the very discovery that made me in the end give it five stars. It was so fantastic, so mind boggling and it was that kind of discovery that stayed with me after I read the last page. I'm still a bit amazed by it and it has been days since I read the book.

I received a copy from the publisher and Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours in return for an honest review!

The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Cotton Malone adventure involving a flaw in the United States Constitution, a mystery about Abraham Lincoln, and a political issue that’s as explosive as it is timely—not only in Malone’s world, but in ours.

September 1861: All is not as it seems.With these cryptic words, a shocking secret passed down from president to president comes to rest in the hands of Abraham Lincoln. And as the first bloody clashes of the Civil War unfold, Lincoln alone must decide how best to use this volatile knowledge: save thousands of American lives, or keep the young nation from being torn apart forever?

The present: In Utah, the fabled remains of Mormon pioneers whose nineteenth-century expedition across the desert met with a murderous end have been uncovered. In Washington, D.C., the official investigation of an international entrepreneur, an elder in the Mormon church, has sparked a political battle between the White House and a powerful United States senator. In Denmark, a Justice Department agent, missing in action, has fallen into the hands of a dangerous zealot—a man driven by divine visions to make a prophet’s words reality. And in a matter of a few short hours, Cotton Malone has gone from quietly selling books at his shop in Denmark to dodging bullets in a high-speed boat chase.

All it takes is a phone call from his former boss in Washington, and suddenly the ex-agent is racing to rescue an informant carrying critical intelligence. It’s just the kind of perilous business that Malone has been trying to leave behind, ever since he retired from the Justice Department. But once he draws enemy blood, Malone is plunged into a deadly conflict—a constitutional war secretly set in motion more than two hundred years ago by America’s Founding Fathers.

From the streets of Copenhagen to the catacombs of Salzburg to the rugged mountains of Utah, the grim specter of the Civil War looms as a dangerous conspiracy gathers power. Malone risks life, liberty, and his greatest love in a race for the truth about Abraham Lincoln—while the fate of the United States of America hangs in the balance.

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It’s only fitting that Cotton Malone goes from saving the UK from tearing apart in the last novel to trying to save the USA in this one. Unfortunately, this book isn’t as interesting to read as The King's Deception was.

This book was ok to read, not bad just not fantastic to read and the usual flow was missing. Personally, I’m not really a fan of religious fanatics and making the main bad guy a fanatic Mormon with hallucinations made me groan inside. Also, it didn’t help that I have read a kind of similar book by James Rollins called The Devil Colony that is utterly engrossing to read.

A big problem with the book was Cassiopeia Vitt role, she is usually a great character, but in this book, I just wanted to slap her and tell her to wise up. Stephanie Nelle asks her to get close to a childhood friend and the first man she ever loved. But she left him because he was a devout Mormon, and although she had grown up a Mormon she didn’t believe. Now she dupes him to believe that she has found her faith. The problem is that she seems to be totally incapable of believing that he is bad. She really wants to clear his name and is totally blind to and death to everything that happens and everything Cotton Malone, the man she supposed to love, says.

But the book wasn’t all bad, a new character Luke Daniels, nephew to the president and an agent for Magellan Billet was introduced and he was a great addition. I hope he will be in the next book. The ending was ok except the last action of Cassiopeia Vitt which was very immature.