Ed's Mini Book Review - The King of Plagues (A Joe Ledger Novel)

Book three from Jonathan Mayberry starring Counter-terrorism agent extraordinaire , Joe Ledger, brings the series back to the roots of the first book in the series, Patient Zero. I was having a discussion about Joe Ledger books with a friend of mine, who was the one that turned me onto Patient Zero, and she said that she wasn't going to pick up The King of Plagues because she couldn't stand The Dragon Factory. I liked The Dragon Factory as it was more of an actioner, but I agree with her that it didn't have the same feel as Patient Zero.

The King of Plagues recaptures that Patient Zero feel and I think a good part of recapturing that feel is the return of some characters from the first book that I won't give away but it made me cheer a bit inside to see them back. Another way this brings things back is the plot of of our dastardly villains this go around, we are back to bio-terror. Sure you could say that the last one was bio-terror in that there were bio-engineered thingies (a pure technical term) but this is the stuff that strikes a cord with people today, the viral threat.

To complete the feel of the first book, we get Joe Ledger kicking ass, which to be fair, he did a lot of in The Dragon Factory. My main gripe with the last book was that the DMS was sort of reactionary, basically stumbling in the right direction and here we get the DMS being pro-active in seeing through leads and solving some mysteries to drive them in the case. There was a little bit too much lamenting some of the things that happened in the last book for my liking as I like books that can stand on their own and not need the previous to know what's going on and that is the case in this book. Also the references to the first book with some of the background on returning characters may turn new readers off and they may feel that they don't know fully what is going on. If you are a dedicated reader of the series, though, you should be in good shape and I think that The King of Plagues will have you looking forward to more Joe Ledger books.

My Grade: B+

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - The Dragon Factory

Action. Check.

Kick assery. Check.

Science mumbo jumbo. Check.

Decent but not great follow-up. Check.

The second book featuring ass kicker extraordinaire, Joe Ledger, surprisingly picks up shortly after the events of our first encounter with Joe and the DMS (Department of Military Science), Patient Zero. The fist book was a fast paced, zombie-esque thrill ride that was a breath of fresh air to the zombie book genre. Away from the 'survival horror' themed zombie books, the first Joe Ledger book are like a mash-up of Splinter Cell and World War Z (perhaps called it a 'viral thriller'). Shortly after dealing with the zombie virus in the first book, we have Joe and his team facing off against competing genetic manipulators, one faction making super soldiers while the other is making gene based bio-weapons.

A lot of this book feels the same, villains backstabbing each other, the cloak and dagger of Mr. Church and the DMS, and, of course, lots of action. Another problem with this Ledger adventure, is that a lot of time is spent not knowing what is going on and our heroes do very little to figure things out, the machinations of the bad guys are literally just handed over to them which makes the end game seem like a bit of a cop out. Also, I had a real problem with the actions of the main villain at the end.

Did all this mean I didn't enjoy it? Hell no! Joe Ledger kicks major a$$ in a Jack Bauer sort of way (Legder is actually compare to Bauer at one point). Bad Jack stories are still good stories and bad Ledger stories are good ones as well. This one even isn't a bad story, it's just a flawed one and not up to par with Patient Zero.

My Grade: B

LL