The Instructor by T. R. Hendricks

March 10, 2023

The Instructor by T. R. Hendricks

Derek Harrington, a retired Marine who teaches survival skills, is hired by a fringe survivalist group to teach advanced military tactics in a remote wilderness area. The group's leader has promised to pay him $20,000 for four weeks' work, which will go a long way toward Derek's delinquent child support payments as well as the care home for his invalid father. It sounds too good to be true but he takes the job anyway. He warns a friend in the FBI of his suspicions about the group, agreeing to update the FBI weekly. As Derek teaches extreme boot camp tactics, he gradually realizes that the group leader's influence extends a lot farther than just living off the grid and staying under the government's radar.

I'm not big on spy/covert ops books (too much fighting, shooting, beating, screaming, killing, and rather complicated plots), so this one wasn't for me. Anytime people deliberately go off the grid, you know it's not going to end well. And yet people continue to do it. First book in a planned series. Fans of Jack Reacher as well as readers who enjoy spy books and plots against the government should enjoy this thriller.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling

March 4, 2023

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling

Set in the far north of Canada, in a virtual ghost town called Dominion Lake, three different groups of people are following different agendas: a group of glamorous prostitutes, a female paramilitary unit stationed at an abandoned meteorological post called White Alice, and a warehouse full of men who are doing some kind of manual labor that has to do with mining. Why? That question is barely answered and not in any kind of satisfactory way.

Interesting premise but too many themes: mineral rights, global warming/climate change, ecology, indigenous peoples, patriarchy, privilege, etc. I didn't connect with or care about any of the characters, and the three narrative threads barely came together at the end. It felt like the author was trying to write something like Station Eleven (which I loved) where seemingly separate stories are inextricably linked. Overall disappointing.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

The frozen northern regions of Canada

The Poison Garden by Alex Marwood

January 25, 2020

The Poison Garden by Alex Marwood

After dozens of dead bodies are discovered at the compound of a survivalist cult in a remote area of Wales, police find one adult and a few children are the only survivors.  Romy is the single adult to survive.  She is pregnant and hiding her pregnancy because she fears that the police won’t let her go if they find out.  Romy and her two younger siblings are taken in by their aunt, their only living relative, who grew up in a fundamentalist religious colony outside London.  But as soon as Romy is away from the prying eyes of authority, she begins searching for other cult members who were either absent at the time of the murder/suicide, or left the compound years earlier, and it soon becomes clear that Romy has her own agenda. 

Who doesn’t love a good cult book?  This one has overtones of the Jonestown mass suicides in Guyana in 1978.  Unlike Marwood’s previous books, The Poison Garden isn’t really mystery or a thriller, although there is plenty of suspense about life within the survivalist cult and as the former cult members try to assimilate (or not) into their new surroundings.  There were a number of errors in the text, so I hope a good editor went through and corrected the text before publication (for example, Romy was in the hospital for several weeks after being removed from the compound – since present day passages are set in 2016, a routine blood test or physical exam would almost certainly have revealed her pregnancy).  A fast and entertaining read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.