Book Review: Ebola K by Bobby Adair

In 1989 the Ebola virus mutated to into an airborne strain that infected humans for the first time on American soil in Reston, Virginia. Through belated containment efforts and luck, nobody died. Now, in the remote East African village of Kapchorwa, the Ebola virus has mutated into another airborne strain without losing any of its deadly potency.

In this thriller, terrorists stumble across this new, fully lethal strain and while the world fearfully watches the growing epidemic in West Africa as Sierra Leone goes into country-wide lockdown, only a few Americans are aware of Ebola K and the danger it poses—to be the deadliest pandemic in the history of mankind.

Can they do anything to protect themselves from this killer disease? Can they stop the terrorists?

My Review: 
Austin and Rashid are in Uganda where Austin is teaching street kids who otherwise would not get an education of any kind. There is an Ebola outbreak in nearby Sierra Leone which they are trying not to think about and they are alarmed when the car driver mentions rumours of Ebola in their area area. Six days later the boys return to their community and find it like a ghost town, the hospital overrun with infected people. Now Austin and Rashid are faced with the very real prospect of becoming infected from a strain that could be airborne. At their homes, relatives of both boys are concerned at the danger that their relatives are in and Rashid's brother Najid sets out on a rescue mission but he also wants revenge on the western nations who will let all the people there die and only try to protect their own countries.

In Pakistan, a group of young men have been recruited to train as jihadis, abandoning their western lives to become deadly instruments of evil. Najid decides to use his influence to buy these young men for his revenge mission, taking them to the Ebola hotspot to get them infected before planning to send them home on aircraft to the western world to infect their own countries. The jihadists have no idea what their mission is going to be, told instead that photographs are being taken of their aid work so they can more easily pass inspection at immigration when they return home but a few are having second thoughts about what they got mixed up in.

I so much wanted to love this book as anything about Ebola is interesting and the terrorism plot with an airborne strain sounded like exactly my kind of read. The plot itself is ok and the way the story is written is fine but I really didn't like most of the characters which made it hard to really get into the book. First there was the spoiled brat who decides to leave the west to become a jihadi. I am never going to like this character but it seems we are meant to have some kind of sympathy for him when he begins to have doubts about what he is involved in? Sorry mate, too late, you are scum! You were ready to attack innocent people for your cause so I look forward to your death in agony buster. Austin's sister Olivia is supposed to be smart if she is working for the NSA but she comes across as a dopey bimbo who is flirting with a sleazy expert while they discuss Ebola. That whole section was just weird. As for the annoying step mum Heidi who is constantly pestering the officials to look for Austin, hang up on her and block her calls from getting through instead of pandering to the annoying woman and then complaining about her!!! Don't even get me started on Najid and his stupid revenge mission.

Austin is the clean cut all American hero who is selflessly helping the poor Africans on his charity break abroad-a bit of a cliche but I guess I found him ok. The most interesting member of his family is his father Paul, who has been anxiously watching the outbreak news and trying to get in touch with his son. Paul fears for an outbreak in the US because of the danger of international travel spreading the disease, so he takes measures to start prepping for the worst. I did at least find his behaviour a bit more realistic than most of the other cast. I did also quite like Rashid. I really felt sorry for the poor people in the community that nobody seemed to care about and were just left to die horrible deaths, along with the heroic staff who gave their lives to try and help them in the hospital. I felt worse for them than a couple of random Americans wandering constantly into trouble to be honest. Why return to   the community after being warned of an outbreak there! I'd be off to the nearest medical place to get checked out!

I did feel at times that the plot was wandering about all over the place. Najid was moaning about no help going to the poor Africans from the west but when the medical teams try to get to the town to help, Najid just has them all killed. Yes that is really going to help the people. I notice that he wasn't trying to give any treatment to the people of the town, just to his brother, so what does that say about him and his stupid morality stance? I found sections of the book frustrating like that and the plot did drag in a few places. The female characters as usual were dumb and annoying, which really drives me mad in these apocalypse books. It got to the stage where I just lost interest incertain plotlines though I did finish the book. I won't be reading on with the rest of the series though.

Read March 2019.
2/2.5 stars?