Axl: Sons of Chaos MC - Riley Rollins

One of the best romances I've read to date!
It started out with so much intensity. The life of this biker is not for the faint of heart. He is bad-ass!! Axl is also hot as heck! 
So then Holly comes into the picture in a whirlwind, so-to-speak.
We can't resist Axl so how is she expected to?!
I love how this book comes together at the end. The reader gets everything they could ever hope for and more!
I literally loved this book so much that I almost read it in one sitting! I just didn't want to stop.
Yup, it's a good one. Can't say that enough!

 Sigma Force #14, Another hair raising, death defying, action packed, FANTASTIC read from James Rollins. If you haven't read the entire series yet I really recommend it, it's history, science, religion, and action adventure all rolled into one. Another nice thing, IMO, is I don't think you have to read the others to enjoy and follow this one. There are a few things references to a certain person in a past book but nothing to major, and the major characters are all established and there are quite a few characters to keep track of fortunately they are split into two groups, sometimes three, and with the third person POV you follow everyone, and in this books case you even follow the evolution of an AI.

Seichan and Monk's two daughters are missing, Kat is in the hospital barely hanging on, and now Monk, Gray, and their team have to track down a young woman and her AI before an overzealous group that goes back to the time of the Spanish Inquisition get their hands on it and unleash a new kind of hell on the world. Gray and Monk are torn between finding Seichan, who is pregnant with Gray's unborn baby,with Monk's two daughters and once again saving the world but the person who took them wants the AI too so in order to get them back they need the AI. It also helps that they know Seichan and what she's capable of, Monk's daughters couldn't be in better, safer hands even at eight months pregnant she's deadly.

I'm an emotional reader, I will laugh out loud in public at funny parts and I WILL bawl my eyes out if the situation calls for it. The beginning of this book and the end of the book had me in tears, big fat ugly tears. The rest of the time I was at the edge of my seat and holding my breath it was intense. It stands for reason that Rollins is one of my top five favorite authors he delivers, with every single book you get an action packed, emotional, educational, entertaining read. Each new book is my favorite and this is no exception this book wrecked me in all the best ways.   

I received a copy from Netgalley.

I initially requested this one because I liked the previous book I’d read by the same author. I had no idea it was actually a companion novel to Burning until I was half way through and looking up something else on Goodreads.

This was an interesting book, after reading the first two or three chapters slowly, I read the rest in a couple of hours one evening. I just couldn’t put it down. I wasn’t completely blown away with the book, I can’t even say I really liked all the characters that much. There was just something about the story and the way the plot unwound that made me want to keep reading and just had to know what was going on and how it all wound up together.

Trigger Warnings: Suicide.

The novel tells the story of teenager Charlotte, starting off when she’s a very young child, her mother who is some sort of doctor giving her genius tests (which Charlotte is not very good at) her mother has certain expectations of what sort of girl Charlotte should be.  You get the impression that Charlotte doesn’t really care about her mother’s expectations, even at a very young age. Skip ahead to a teenager in a posh prep school. Charlotte is in the principal’s office one of her best friends Devon, has recently committed suicide in a very short time since her other best friend Ariel also committed suicide. Both were bright, smart and popular.

Charlotte doesn’t seem to fit the bill with the other smart kids in the school. The kids in the school are all very smart to genius. She’s struggling in her classes and not making the grade. Her mom is a very prestigious (and very rich) alumni. She’s about to pull Charlotte from the school on the principal’s advice, failing grades and the sudden deaths of her two best friends very close together and Charlotte’s attitude seems to be very blasé about everything.

Whilst packing her stuff Charlotte finds a package left by one of her deceased friends containing a strange note and a tiny bottle saying “Drink me”. Charlotte realises there must be something more going on, she can’t stop thinking about the note. She realises she wants to find out what it means and will have to be at the school to do that. When almost overnight her physical appearance improves and her (really bitchy) mom notices too. She uses this and manages to convince her mom to let her stay at the school for the rest of the semester contingent on her grades rapidly improving.

The plot is fairly fast paced and there’s enough intrigue that kept me interested when Charlotte finds more notes and more clues left by Ariel and realises at one point that she found the notes and clues left for her in the wrong order. The mystery deepens, Charlotte’s relationship with Jack is getting more and more intense and she’s got the added irritation of fending off Zoe who seems determined to make things difficult for her.

The characters were kind of flat, I couldn’t really identify with Charlotte much, she was cold and aloof and had a sort of above it all vibe about her. There was an interesting morality grey area to the plot as it developed as well. It definitely takes a darker twist towards the end, and that’s where it ties in with the previous novel Burning. It can be read as a standalone, there’s very little that gives away anything to do with Burning’s actual plot but if you’ve read Burning there’s an “ahhh” moment when you realise the connection.

I also have issues with Charlotte and her two best friends, Ariel and Devon, the reader learns some pretty unsettling things about the two girls as Charlotte delves into the mystery as what caused them both to commit suicide within weeks of each other. These girls were supposed to have been the tight knit group that everyone wanted to be part of, yet there was a sense of underlying threat rather than close female friendship with Ariel as the ring leader and Devon following with Charlotte trailing behind. There was a sense of rivalry and tension that was supposed to be uncomfortable but more annoying than anything else.

There was an eye rolling side plot revolving around Ariel’s former boyfriend Jack who was close with Charlotte and Charlotte had always had a thing for but never did anything cause Ariel got there first even though it’s completely obvious Charlotte liked him. Jack is a typical nice guy, good looking with rich parents. His dad has an important job – senator or judge or something along those lines (can’t remember which) but Jack doesn’t seem interested in following those footsteps and like Charlotte doesn’t seem that interested in the classes at the prep school. He and Charlotte redevelop their friendship which of course develops into something more. She (of course) gets to see the side of him that no one else really gets to see.  Then Charlotte notices Jack starts rapidly improving in grades and stuff like she did. The romance angle was irritating.

It was a fairly quick read and definitely interesting, not something I would call a favourite but definitely worth a go if you like prep school mysteries and are intrigued by unlikeable characters.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for approving my request to view the title.

If the biblical plagues of Egypt truly happened--could they happen again--on a global scale?

Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, comes stumbling out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story. The mystery deepens when an autopsy uncovers a bizarre corruption: someone had begun to mummify the professor's body--while he was still alive.

His strange remains are returned to London for further study, when alarming news arrives from Egypt. The medical team who had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease, one that is quickly spreading throughout Cairo. Fearing the worst, a colleague of the professor reaches out to a longtime friend: Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force. The call is urgent, for Professor McCabe had vanished into the desert while searching for proof of the ten plagues of Moses. As the pandemic grows, a disturbing question arises.

Are those plagues starting again?

The Seventh Plague is the 12th book in the Sigma Force series and Painter Crowe, Grey Pierce, Seichan, and Kowalski, etc. are back trying to save the world from a deadly threat. This time it seems that they deadly plagues from the Bible could happen again.

This book did not have intense and wonderful thrilling feeling that the last book had. However, it was interesting to read, the idea that the plagues could have happened for real and the theory for it and I loved the historical part of the book that Rollins' included Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla in the story, although they did not have a large part in the whole story (unfortunately).

I wanted to like this book so much!  It sounded like such interesting fun from the blurb and I enjoyed the James Rollins book I read earlier this year, so I was looking forward to another action-filled thriller with some cool religiously supernatural overtones.  Vampire priests!  Woot!

Ugh.

That's not what I got.

First off, the female lead, the heroine, Erin... well, she spent half her time hiding behind the big, strong, blond, soldier protector guy who could make her warm with just a faint touch in the midst of all the danger of the damned world.  Every time something remotely dangerous approached, there was the big dumb hero thrusting her behind him. 

Speaking of big dumb hero, his name was Jordan, which is fine.  Jordan is a unisex name.  The only problem with this is that Jordan is a name I have used in my own writing for years as a woman's name.  So that bugged me from beginning to end.  *LOL*  Most people probably won't have this problem though.

Overall, this book had a really sexist vibe to it. Not only was Jordan 'protecting' Erin every chance he got and not only were the both of them getting turned on by the slightest of things in the midst of great danger or focus, the whole plot of the book hinged on sex it seemed.  Now I know that vampires are supposed to be sexy and all, but neither author is very good at writing sexy to prove it for one thing - and for another it all read like the downfall of all the good and holy came at the hands of the woman and her seduction of the defenseless priest.

I also felt that some of the ideas were really good and could have been expounded upon more but the authors maybe didn't have the facility to go deeper?  I dunno... I felt they missed the mark on a lot of the historical stuff.  And there was A LOT of historical stuff in this book - maybe too much.  Masada, Christ's Life, Saint Peter, Hitler, Rasputin, the siege of St. Petersburg, medieval Hungary.... just so so so much and alot of it just glossed over. 

But of course we have the improbable love story of Erin and Jordan - oh, did I mention that I think the story takes place over 2 days - 3 max?   Yeah, well, the number of times that we were treated to adolescent reactions from both of these characters was really over the top. 

I could go on because so much of this book left me unsatisfied.  And in the end... well... we don't really get much closure at all.  Oh... Erin and Jordan like each other.  *RME*  I don't know that I'll pick up the second book in this series.  Maybe, but I doubt it.  I think I'll probably stick to Rollins' Sigma Force novels instead for ridiculous, crazy action thrillers.