Customer Reviews

Blood Revenge

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First, let me share an excerpt from the book jacket with you since there doesn't seem to be one listed in the book description:

"James Bali was just beginning a twelve-hour shift when the call came in. The local coast guard base has radioed ahead that a cutter had rescued victims from an unknown tragedy. They reported that one survivor was recovered from an oil platform in the Gulf... Dr. Bali and a hospital nurse moved quickly to the helicopter. Bali briefly consulted with one of the coast guard pilots. With the help of the pilot, the doctor climbed into the aircraft to check on the patient. His first thought was that he was staring at some kind of rubber corpse and that this was all some kind of joke, or possibly a coast guard training scenario. But he quickly discarded that idea. Dr. Bali stood silently and shook off a confused stare..."

So begins the main story of Blood Revenge. The story starts off with some background from 30 years ago that sets up the situation in which the "terrorists" are indoctrinated. We then move ahead to today and a terrible event in the final preparation stages. A terrible bio terror attack is on the horizon, and a few doctors and intelligence officers are the only ones who can stop it.

Blood Revenge starts a bit slow with a few details to setup the situation that becomes out story.

The story is quite enjoyable, though it moves around quite a bit. Blood Revenge won't win an award on it's literary genius, but the story is quite enjoyable, and the plot takes us all the way to the end for the big finale. It's not the best terror thriller I have ever read, but I did enjoy the book.

At just over 250 pages, the story is a pretty quick read, and it's good enough to keep you up later than you expected.

If you enjoy suspenseful thrillers or bio terror plots, you will enjoy Blood Revenge.

I enjoyed the twists and parallel plot themes. As someone who had tired of the regular pattern thriller novel with an unrealistic plot or headline character with super-human abilities, this was a refreshing change. The characters all seem real and the plot even more so. The story jumps around a bit but kept me entertained as the good guys and gals fight to stop the release of a potent virus.

If you're looking for great literary work this is not the book for you, but if you are looking for an exciting fast past story then buy this book. The book follows a cast of characters as they track down a group of rouge students from far east who are set on invoking pain on the United State population. Many other action novels get caught up in the details and go off on tangents. This book does not do that. The book is fun from start to finish.

I blame the low rating on this book on the apparently absent editor as much as on the author. This book seems to have arrived on market without editing. The characters are shallow and unsympathetic, the action is disjointed, and on nearly every page there is a spelling or grammar error. It is an intriguing theme which had much more potential than was delivered.

In 1974 on Xiamen Island Tan and Jan Yi welcome the ruling Communist Party to their home where they plot to remove their opposition to returning China and back to the glory days of the Maoist revolution. When their two children, fourteen year old Ellen and her older brother Ren almost die in their cleansing, they send them to American where they attend the Leyden Academy in Yakima.

Also in 1974, Lieutenant Suan Moon is conducting biological weapon research in Vladivostok, but still grieving the death of his wife and unborn child, he insures the future of his son Doug in America before killing himself and his project. However, he died in vain as his government watched him closely and obtained copies of his research while his son attends the Leyden Academy in Yakima.

In 2004 the patient plotting of the 1970s begin to prove fruitful. Three years later while a hurricane bears down the Gulf Coast, Providence Hospital sexagenarian Dr. James Bali receives a frantic call from the Coast Guard in which they are bringing in survivors from an accident not yet investigated including someone taken from an oil platform. Dr. Bali meets the rescue helicopter only to find a corpse that had been somehow rubberized. He knows what he is looking at though he prayed he never would see this outside of some horror text book. Biological warfare has come to Mobile.

This is a fast-paced tale with a modern day Manchurian Candidate like spin to the plot. The story line starts off in low gear as the players and their background are provided, but once Bali meets the survivor and the vulcanized corpses, Blood Revenge never looks back as the plot accelerates to ultra speed. The race against the terrorist doomsday clock by the lead character and a few other heroes struggling to prevent a horrific calamity make for a super thriller.

Harriet Klausner

The premise of the story is intriguing , but I'm sorry to say the execution is horrible. I can't understand the reviews that claim this is a "fast-paced" and "exciting" story; it is actually slow and plodding, with useless diversions into superficial "romances". The characters had great potential, but they end up as shallow stick figures. The good guys and gals are portrayed as self-centered idiots stumbling along after the super smart bad guys, and the bad guys and gal are one dimensional; they might as well be robots. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is a "Brad Thor" novel like I did, its definitely NOT! Thankfully I only paid 5 bucks for the Kindle edition. I give it 2 stars based strictly on the potential of the storyline. If you need a boring book that will make you decide to turn off the lights and go to sleep, this is the book for you.

The product description of this novel starts with: `In an extraordinarily relevant novel, Blood Revenge catalogs two independent decisions by two families, and the unplanned convergence of their decisions - a non- stop story of vengeance and intrigue pitting east vs west.' In summary, the novel is about bioterrorism in contemporary USA with its genesis in events that took place in China and North Korea in the mid 1970s.

The threat of bioterrorism is indeed relevant, but unfortunately there are a number of flaws in this novel. Take these two sentences: `The man was still a good thirty yards away, but Gwen Saunders could tell he was headed her way. It was difficult to make out all his features: his hair was shrouded in a turbine, and much of his face was covered with short, pubic-like hair.' I don't know where that second sentence takes you, but it took me right out of the story. I blame the turbine. Unfortunately for the flow of the story, that imagery was with me for the three hours it took me to finish the novel.

Clearly, other readers have enjoyed this novel more than I have. Sometimes, if the story is engrossing enough I can ignore editing issues. This time I couldn't. And that is a pity because my focus on poor or absent editing got in the way of the `fast-moving action' and made it difficult to focus on the flow of the novel. What was a potentially good or even great story was undermined by average execution and poor attention to detail. That turbine has a lot to answer for.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I have read 1000's of books over the last 50 years and this one is by far at the bottom of the list! There is no continuity of the story line and the jumping around leaves one to wonder if the author did the writing while on drugs.

In addition, the price charged for the book is way out of line compared to other books.....17.95 for 240+- pages of utter clutter is terrible.

It seems that he is trying to make money based on his last name. Brad Thor is a super writer, this guy will never make it!

This is a fast paced thriller about sleeper Chinese and North Korean agents planning a biological terror attack in the US. However what could have been an interesting plot is spoiled by the total absence of character development and by very poor editing.

There are a host of characters and none of them are padded out so that we never understand their motivations, where they came from or what they are doing. The plot is clumsy and over-complicated and the writing is incredibly amateur - a CD is partially "extruded" from a radio, a man's beard is described as "pubic-like", a man on an airplane smiles at a woman queuing for the toilets "through the painful aroma".

This book held my attention until the very last word. I hated to put it down and found myself reading far into the night.

BLOOD REVENGE is a timely story about biological warfare. Beginning when the key players were young children and running through their early adulthood, it shows how events that happened years ago effect our actions of today. It takes the CDC, the Army, the Coast Guard, NIA and Naval Intelligence to bring down the pair of deadly assassins.

From the first breakout, Brian Walker, John Pierce and Kate Jensen work feverously to stop the bio-attack before it can be deployed. John falls for a programmer he saved from an attacker but before the relationship can go very far, she becomes infected with the virus. At this point, there is no way to stop the deadly ending and she becomes a casualty of the bio-game. This only makes John all the more dedicated to stopping it.

Brian and Kate also have a relationship and now that they are working on the same team and project, there might be a chance for them to take it to the next level. But they have to find the biologist who is creating the virus before they can have the time to do that.

From school pals to the board room of the brother of the biologist to the wealthy home of the second assassin to the back room lab of the biologist herself, you will see just how lives and ideas become intertwined to become the world's worst threat. The ending has a twist I never saw coming but one that I really liked. I hope to see more books by this author.

Poorly written, terrible research on methodology, unbelievable scenarios. It's even uses the wrong words in the wrong place such as "insight" instead of "incite" I am so very disappointed in this book and author that all I can say is "Crap, what a waste of $5 and the time I spent reading such complete drivel" I would have burnt it except I bought it on kindle but rest assured I will be deleting it so I can get back the space on my device for something better, like empty space. I can say this strongly enough, A COMPLETE waste.