Review 20: Man Eaters: The Last Refuge

Man Eaters: The Last Refuge. Thomas Jacob. 2015. [April] CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 216 Pages. [Source:Amazon Purchase]

First sentence: The KG-D6 experiment is a success!

Premise/Plot: From Goodreads - The age of man is over. The age of the man eater has begun.

It's Year 3 of the Great Infection and the human race is on the brink of extinction. Seven foot man eaters roam the world, preying on anything that moves.

The Neneks are a tribe of reindeer herders living in the remote Siberian Arctic. Katya, a 15 year old boy, the son of the chieftain, comes of age in the midst of growing threats to his nomadic tribe.

After his father's sudden death, he has to lead the tribe and a ragtag group of American high school survivors across the Tundra safely. Everything is complicated when he falls in love with the beautiful Kiara.

Battling enormous odds, as he fights for his loved ones, he realizes that the greatest danger the group faces might be from the monsters within themselves.

This is a coming of age story set in a post-apocalyptic world.

My thoughts:  This book is a very quick and satisfying read.  I wish it had been longer but it has whet my appetite for more books set in this world.  The characters were believably flawed.  You had villains and no I don’t mean the man eaters I mean the humans; then you had the heroes of the story bringing their people to a relative safety.  Reading this made me both glad to not be living up in the frozen wastelands of Russia and also worried because if something inexplicable like this actually happened I would have no where to hide.

Rating 8/10

Recommendation:  Zombie fans and fans of dystopian apocalyptic futuristic fiction

Review 8: Checkmate Run

Checkmate Run. Allan Alexander. 2015. [April] Paradigm Shift Press. 483. [Source:Bostick]

First sentence: The single light bulb above the cell door suddenly came to life.

Premise/Plot:  From Amazon - The KGB agents are vicious, and they are closing in... His odds of escaping are bleak... Will he prevail although everything is muddled in a treacherous love triangle? Whom can he trust? The inevitable checkmate could bring him freedom ... or death. Checkmate Run is an adrenaline rush of a story about a precocious young man's deadly struggle to survive the brutal Soviet regime. Alex Loevsky is a medical student and an inspiringly rebellious poet. He becomes enmeshed in a breakneck battle against the rampant cruelty of the totalitarian state, where just the desire to think freely is nearly a crime on par with treason, and being born Jewish is more than a mere hindrance.

My thoughts:  This book left me with several different feelings.  It started rather slow but I am extremely glad that I followed through and finished it to the end!  This was an amazing story following Alex Loevsky a Russian Jew and his trials and tribulations of finding a way to get out of the country that decided to turn it’s back on a whole religion.  I have never read a book set during the Cold War on the communist side of the Iron Curtain.  As I said this book was a sow starter for me but I am glad that I have the philosophy that if I start it I will finish it because for me the 10^th chapter onward was some extremely riveting storytelling.

Rating 7.5/10

Recommendation:  If you enjoy fiction set in the 60’s and 70’s during the cold war then this is for you!

*I received a digital review copy for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.*