#BookReview: Forsaken by Michael McBride

Read Book 1 First… And Be Glad You Have This Book On Hand. This is one of those sequels that picks up from the first book and directly uses its base to tell this book’s story. So if you haven’t read Book 1 (Subhuman) yet, start there first. But go ahead and buy this book so you have it on hand when you finish Subhuman.

If you like classic horror/ scifi tales along the lines of Aliens, The Thing, or even Jurassic Park… you’re gonna want to pick up this series. If you’re looking for a Crichton-esque technothriller or a Preston/Child-esque dark mystery or a Brett Battles-esque tale of global peril… you’re gonna want to pick up this series.

Indeed, my *only* quibble here, and I happen to be in somewhat of a rare/ possibly unique position to have it, is that here, in this ostensibly horror/ scifi tale, McBride creates a bigger and more ominous global threat than his alter ego Michael Laurence has created by the end of his own Book 2 in the Exinction Agenda series (which is still awesome in its own right, as more of a police procedural/ scifi action thriller). That noted… I happen to be glad I have an ARC of the next book in this series, Mutation, which releases in just 10 days from the time I write this review. Very much recommended.

This review of Forsaken by Michael McBride was originally written on September 20, 2020.

Featured New Release Of The Week: The Annihilation Protocol by Michael Laurence

This week we’re looking at an intense thriller with an interesting potential pivot point to a young series. This week, we’re looking at The Annihilation Protocol by Michael Laurence.

If you’re looking for a James Rollins / Matthew Reilly / Jeremy Robinson level balls to the wall, barely have time to breathe thriller… you’ve found one. Here, Laurence uses chemical weapons so creatively at times that it is truly hard to imagine him not drawing the attention of various US Federal agencies in real life. He also manages to incorporate one particular WWII era group very effectively into the backstory of this tale, to horrific portent in the actual tale itself.

More importantly for the overall direction of the series, Laurence manages to skillfully introduce what could very well be a key pivot point for the series. While the initial premise of a secret group working to eliminate a large portion of humanity is what drew me into this series and is where I hope the series is allowed to continue to go, to do that effectively the series needs to travel to areas it has yet to go even by the end of this tale. But going *there* could be a bit more problematic than some would like, and so, pivot points are introduced. Let me be as clear as the purest crystal though: I want this series to go in a direction where the bad guys truly try to kill off a large portion of humanity – Thanos level at *minimum* – and the good guys at least attempt to stop them. Those stories don’t get told often enough with the truly global scale they truly need to be effective, and this series even by the end of this tale still hold promise that it could go there and be phenomenal.

But the pivot introduced in this tale is very nearly as interesting, and could in fact be a nice little wrinkle in the overall “extinction threat” genre. Indeed, it could even serve as a way to have a somewhat definitive endpoint similar to the initial target of eliminating or saving humanity, and because of this could serve to help keep the action taut and furious. While I would be a bit disappointed if this option is pursued over the extinction threat, Laurence shows here that this would be but a quibble and that he is more than capable of delivering on a superb tale in that direction as well.

In the end, I’m hooked on this series and I’m gonna follow it as long as Laurence keeps writing them, no matter where he eventually takes it. I hope you’ll join me on the ride. 😀

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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#BookReview: The Extinction Agenda by Michael Laurence

Great Setup. In this book, Laurence does an excellent job of telling a complete tale that winds up setting up a compelling overall mythos. There are a couple of issues that others may criticize more heavily than I will, but I thought that at minimum these issues didn’t really detract from the overall story. In fact, the one most likely to be criticized actually serves as a plausible motivation generally, that Laurence works to great effect in his telling of this tale. Action fans will love the sequences in this book, which can be very inventive.

Overall truly a strong tale, but unfortunately for me the entire series will be compared to another that wrapped up last year and had a very similar premise (and was astounding) – Brett Battles’ PROJECT EDEN series. This particular effort does well in differentiating itself in key ways from that effort, and I look forward to seeing how this series progresses. Very much recommended.

This review of The Extinction Agenda by Michael Laruence was originally published on September 7, 2019.