Craig Zerf

My Thoughts:

Great start to a promising new-to-me series!

This is my first Craig Zerf read and I am fast becoming a fan. His author's voice is compelling enough to make me buy book 2, target="_top">Wolf Spirit, even though it does not have synopsis. Having no synopsis is very annoying...

This is also my first Matt Waldron listen. He reads fine. I just sometimes wish he would give some characters a different voice than his usual ones that would be more befitting the character. Like deepen his voice a little perhaps when he is reading the lines of a deep-voiced character. Like that. He does sometimes does it. But not all the time.

The plot is pretty straight-forward. Hero meets bad guys. There was a fight. Boom! Boom! Blood and gore... More bad guys, more fight. The end. But hey, this is urban fantasy, not crime fiction!

This book is violent so I do not recommend it to young readers.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Writing Style = 4.5
Ending = 4
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 3.5
Pace = 4
Plot = 3.5
Narration = 4

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries… (meer)

The entire story takes place in South Africa and reunites a nun with a former soldier - Garrett Storm immediately leaves New York when his former friend asks for his help. Children from the local orphanages are disappearing. The police is not interested in helping because children are known to run away on a whim and the streets are filled with orphans.

Garrett and the Zulu bodyguard from the orphanage start an investigation to locate the missing children. They are also helped with a former soldier, Brian, who served together with Garrett when in the military.

It's determined that the gangs running the cities have many layers and only one man runs them all. Every time the trio gets close to an answer, the gangs are one step ahead. AIDS is a major epidemic in Africa and many believe that having intercourse with young children will cure the disease. The gangs are kidnapping the children and selling them like a pharmacy dispenses medicine.

The local Catholic Bishop is a secret sniper that has a reputation throughout Africa. He joins Garrett and his Zulu friend to put an end to the gangs and stop the kidnapping of children. They are often outgunned and the fights are graphic - the trio leaving bodies everywhere. Do they succeed or will they all die trying? You'll have to read the story to find out.

If you are a fan of action and don't mind the gore or typos, then this book is for you. Once it gets going, it's difficult to put down.

John Podlaski, author
"Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel" and "When Can I Stop Running?"… (meer)