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Greg Barron (1)

Forfatter af Rotten Gods

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4 Works 45 Members 8 Reviews

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Image credit: Greg Barron

Serier

Værker af Greg Barron

Rotten Gods (2012) 28 eksemplarer
Savage Tide (2013) 12 eksemplarer
Lethal sky (2014) 4 eksemplarer

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Australian

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Set primarily in Dubai, Yemen & Somalia over seven days Rotten Gods is a rather interesting book. It's set in an undated, presumably, not too far off future where ocean levels have risen destroying vast stretches of arable and habitable land, economies are crumbling and the first world continues to pollute despite the climate damage manifesting.

A conference is held in Dubai to try and bring society back from the brink of environmental collapse, all major heads of state attend however things go astray when muslim extremists take over the building and hold the crowd & heads of state to ransom.

The real juice of the story however is the characters themselves as they work towards resolving the situations they find themselves in - an airline pilot whose children have been taken hostage as bargaining chips, a odd Somalia intelligence agent, a UN security worker intent on finding the wife of one of the terrorist leaders.

Whilst it starts off interesting, the story slowly gets more and more gripping until it becomes hard to put down until you finish, it's not hard to see why it was ranked in the '50 books you can't put down' list.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
HenriMoreaux | 4 andre anmeldelser | Feb 5, 2018 |
Greg Barron’s SAVAGE TIDE is the follow up to ROTTEN GODS and once again pits intelligence officer Marika Hartmann and friends against a particularly nasty breed of evil-doers bent on causing the collapse of civilisation. It opens with a confrontingly realistic massacre of a group of school children and their teachers in eastern Africa. The people responsible for this atrocity are led by one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. And this incident is only the beginning of what he has planned.

Marika works for the squirreliest arm of Britain’s Secret Service and along with ex-Special Forces operative PJ Johnson and a small team they cross some of the hottest spots in the world today a they try to get ahead of the terrorists. Who make the job even harder by having a well-placed operatives in unexpected quarters including near the centre of operations at Marika’s home base.

Barron make this more than the standard thriller on two levels. He offers intelligent insights into the mass of complexity that is modern international relations and includes some fantastically memorable characters. Like Kifimbo, a soldier and Marika’s local guide in Somalia, who is haunted by the things he has seen and becomes attached to the infant survivor of the massacre he witnesses. And Ayanna, the Somali village girl who dreams of a different life than the one she is destined for. Even the bad guys are fleshed out so that readers understand what motivates their actions even when we find them abhorrent.

As with the first book I did find SAVAGE TIDE a bit long, too densely detailed at some points, but it seemed to move at a quicker pace and I was compelled to keep reading. The short chapters, each showing action from London to Iran to Somalia and a half-dozen other places besides, help provide the sense of speed the novel offers. It’s always a good sign that a book will leave a lasting impression when, days later, I am still wondering how a character is coping with the injuries they incurred. I hope there’ll be a third novel in the series so I can find out.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
bsquaredinoz | 2 andre anmeldelser | Jul 2, 2014 |
Normally I quite like political thrillers, but this one wasn't for me.
 
Markeret
austcrimefiction | 2 andre anmeldelser | Oct 25, 2013 |
This is a follow up to Rotten Gods and like that book is a bit slow to start with, but does pick up with lots of action to move the story along. Set in the near future this hints at the effects climate change will have on this world. Mostly enjoyable.

However...................

There are two aspects to this book that annoy me and make it less enjoyable than it should be. The first is the way in which the "unknown Syrian" was treated. He was clearly a risk, a plant and playing with them, but yet DRFS fell for it all and in the end allowed him to escape. He should have had a bullet to the head. He should not have been given a seaside holiday with internet access. Any organisation that would grant such access to a terrorist is just totally inept. This is something I do not think would ever happen in reality, no matter what was promised. This is such a let down in the story. The other issue is the spy in the DRFS. The handling of this was just wrong and when they came for him, he just walked out the door. This sequence of events was just a bit too far from reality for me.

I know this is a work of fiction, however, in some books straying too far from a reality is just unbelievable.

I can see it now, the "Unknown Syrian" being the terrorist of the moment in the next book.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
Balthazar-Lawson | 2 andre anmeldelser | Aug 13, 2013 |

Hæderspriser

Statistikker

Værker
4
Medlemmer
45
Popularitet
#340,917
Vurdering
4.0
Anmeldelser
8
ISBN
17