Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with some reviews from December!

1) PA Glaspy-300 Miles
A nuclear warhead detonated at 300 miles above the center of the United States would effectively take out the entire electrical grid and infrastructure of the forty-eight contiguous states. Most people don’t think this is a possibility. But what if it is? What if a country like North Korea actually has the capability to do this but has led us to believe they don’t? What if they had acquired stealth technology that would let them launch a missile that we didn’t know about until it was too late to stop it?

Carly Marshall is a twenty-first century single mom. She works hard and lives modern. Take-out food, the latest technology, and all the modern conveniences of the time make up her life. She doesn’t have to worry about feeding her family. She doesn’t think twice about water coming out of the faucets. She’s on the path to advancement at her firm. Life can’t get much better. But what if it could get worse?  

Carly was abandoned by her partner Ethan and was left as a single mother to her two boys Aaron and Cameron, with help from her own parents Joel and Lauri and Ethan's prepper father Elliott. Her brother Will has had another of his premonitions of disaster and is hurrying home to be with his family as a winter storm descends. As the rest of the family prepare for Christmas together, they are unaware that North Korea is planning an EMP attack just as the festive period is beginning.

This is quite short and serves basically as a countdown to the firing of the nuclear weapon, giving us a chance to get to know the family before the disaster strikes. It has the added potential angst of the long vanished Ethan trying to make contact with one of the children he abandoned which no doubt will cause angst for Carly when she finds out. Will is only a short distance from home, driving in poor weather conditions at the disaster is about to hit, Carly's sons are spending a few days at Elliott's prepper place and she is alone at home. As I mentioned, this section of story is very much setting the scene and introducing characters but I enjoyed it and look forward to what is coming next.

Read December 2019
4 stars.

2) Gerry Griffiths-Cryptid Island
Allen Moss experiences an unexplainable and horrifying metamorphosis so shocking he might lose his sanity if it weren’t for his trusted wife, Laney, as he copes with his ever-changing body. Soon they realize Allen’s true potential and purpose when they embark on a perilous journey in a struggle to preserve the planet. Meanwhile, Professor Nora Howard, a cryptozoologist and geneticist working for an unscrupulous high-tech conglomerate, Wilde Enterprises, recruits wildlife conservationists, Jack Tremens and Miguel Walla to travel the globe searching for evidence of cryptid creatures and secure proof of their existence. Adventurous treks into the unknown filled with danger and near death as they defend themselves against bizarre beasts and voracious man-eating plants.

Soon everyone’s paths will cross in a terrifying fight for survival on CRYPTID ISLAND...the thrilling prequel to Cryptid Zoo. 

Allen has a landscape business and pulling a weed out leaves him with a strange green rash that baffles his doctor. Within hours, he turns into a plant-man hybrid which doesn't seem to bother his wife Laney at all. She merely looks up details of plants online for reference. Then plant man gets bored with his photosynthesis in the sun in his garden and wants to leave the house so they go out for a midnight walk in the park where the drug dealers and criminals are and manage to get attacked by them. As normal people do. Scared they have killed the criminal, they phone for the emergency services on Laney's phone, then realise they need to flee-to the Amazon jungle. I'd like to know how Allen got there without the authorities seeing he is a plant! Of course he then becomes a plant god who scares the local natives and starts fighting the loggers. Right. This whole first part of the story streched reality further than I could deal with. 

Later, Allen discovers all his new superpowers including the ability to turn a plain island into a leafy plant filled paradise with his magic touch. I didn't even get to the part where the cryptid hunters from Cryptid Zoo come into it. I just found Allen's story so weird and dumb that I lost all interest in the book. I noticed that the sequel to Cryptid Zoo also features Allen and his very dumb wife Laney which really puts me off reading the book now. Laney can't seem to avoid running into trouble and getting kidnapped every five minutes, which was a bit frustrating. While Cryptid Zoo was enjoyable, this prequel just didn't work for me.

Read December 2019
DNF 2 stars.

3) William Meikle-Operation Siberia (S Squad #3)
When Captain John Banks and his squad are sent to investigate a zoo in Siberia, he expects to find tigers, bears, maybe elk But there is something there that is new, yet very, very old. Beasts that haven't walked the Earth since the last Ice Age have been cloned, revived, and set loose to roam free. And some of them are very hungry.

The third adventure for the team sees them accompanying three scientists sent by the United Nations to review a zoo, created by a rich Russian, before he can open it to the public. Banks and his team are shocked to see all the extinct animals roaming-strange lions, mammoths, direwolves and a tribe of Sasquatches. The scientists are sure that the animals have been tampered with during development to make them bigger and scarier and Banks is ready to pull his team out when the creatures suddenly start to break free and Banks has to keep his men and the scientists alive until rescue can come. 

I always like the idea of a zoo with deadly creatures that escape and target the humans and I've read quite a few now. I liked that they went for the Siberian location and used different extinct animals instead of just dinosaurs. There is steady action happening which keeps the plot interesting but I do feel that Banks kept moving around the complex too much instead of concentrating on finding a defendable position and staying there until help comes. They have the weapons but common sense had deserted then as they kept moving from place to place and constantly getting into more trouble instead of staying put beside the food where they had been reasonably safe. It was a little annoying. The trouble I had with the book is that I felt Banks was killing animals when it wasn't necessary and a few of these incidents left me feeling a bit upset-it was hard to read about some of the animal deaths. Overall it was another decent read and an interesting plot.

Read December 2019
3 stars. 

4) Lucas Pederson-Dark Water
Jörmungandr is an ancient Norse sea monster. Thought to be purely a myth until a battleship is torn a part by one. With his brother on that ship, former Navy Seal and deep-sea diver, Miles Raine, sets out on a personal vendetta against the creature and hopefully save his brother. Bringing with him his old Seal team, the Dagger Points, they embark on a mission that might very well be their last. But what happens when the hunters become the hunted and the dark waters reveal more than a monster?  

The first thing I would say is that this book should be read after Leviathon as there are frequent and massive plot spoilers throughout this book. Knowing how it ends and seeing the reviews of it, along with my thoughts on this one, led me to just delete Leviathon off my TBR. I really didn't like this one at all. The plot sounded good enough-a huge sea monster attacks and sinks USS Cutter but some crew may have survived in escape pods so a rescue of some kind is sorted out by the Navy. Miles, the man chosen to lead the mission is the brother of a missing sailor from the USS Cutter. He is summoned by the Admiral to a meeting to plan the mission and it is in full swing when it is gatecrashed by slimy oil company owner Murdock Jones who wants to be involved. To stop MJ, the Navy arranges for Miles to be kidnapped outside the office by his former special forces team so the oil guy can't find him. Riigghht. So MJ won't think to look for Miles at the scene of the attack on the boat where the escape pods might be. Of course not. Doh!

The book has a dreadful assortment of female characters who are weird, psychotic or in love with Miles. We have the Jenna and Emma love Miles nonsense, the weird historian who says the sea monster can only be killed with a venom filled wolf tooth as per Norse mythology, two special forces men having fights about gummy bears, constant bickering, a dumb plan...it was all over the place! Add to that the repetition. Every time a new person enters the room, the whole sea monster tooth tale has to get repeated in full and by the third telling I was getting fed up with it. Why not call a team meeting and tell everyone at the same time???  The characters are too dumb to be special forces, the plot just doesn't deliver and I lost interest before they even got out to sea.

Read December 2019
DNF 1 star. 

5) Gerry Griffiths-Cryptid Country
Six months after the Cryptid Zoo tragedy gained national attention, violent creatures still terrorize the country. Nick and Meg Wells continue to deal with the horrifying experience having to institutionalize their catatonic son, Gabe, in a facility for the mentally disturbed. Now fugitives, Jack Tremens and Professor Nora Howard must stay one step ahead of Carter Wilde’s elite army of commandos sent to hunt them down and recapture Nora’s pet creation, while the botanic-wonder Allen Moss and his wife, Laney remain in seclusion so Allen can cultivate the cure-all plant to eradicate world disease. Meanwhile, Miguel Walla, his family, and the citizens of Rocklin Falls must stay vigilant never knowing when the next vicious attack will occur in this exciting sequel to Cryptid Zoo...CRYPTID COUNTRY.  

I very much liked Cryptid Zoo as a book because of the zoo format but I haven't really taken to the prequel and sequel for that book. Cryptid Country was better than Cryptid Island. This book covers events after the zoo incident with local people on alert over the various escaped cryptids causing chaos all over the place. Nora and Jack are on the run with Lennie and are being hunted by Wilde's men. Miguel's town comes under attack by a series of deadly monsters. Nick has written a book about his family's experiences at the zoo while his son receives treatment for a mental health breakdown. Dr McCabe has been locked up in a prison owned by Wilde and is asked to keep making new creatures though his ultimate plan for them differs from Wilde's. Allen the plant man is curing the local population of ailments and cancer using his plant army and Laney gets kidnapped AGAIN. 

It's not that there's something WRONG with the book, it's just that it stretches any attempt at belief. I can deal with cryptids in a rich man's zoo and their attacks on Miguel's town which are entertaining. But the adventures of Allen the cancer treating plant God plant man, the mad doctor in prison still creating weird hybrid monsters and all the plans of James Bond style maniac Carter Wilde are just getting a bit too mad for me. How many times is Laney going to be kidnapped? It really is getting old. The road trip with Lennie was pretty dull and I don't need to be told every time it eats or takes a shit!!! It's like there are good bits but then my eye rolling begins as we get super Allen and I lose interest. I think I might be done with this series now, as much as Cryptid Circus in theory sounds good.

Read December 2019
2.5 stars.