Reviews :: Book Genre :: Thriller
This archive contains links to all of the Thriller Book Reviews we've written over the years. And no, we're not talking Michael Jackson here. If you've come here looking for something in that realm, you're in luck! We just happen to have more than a few suggestions lying around the place waiting for your perusal.
If you're looking for something else, say a book in another genre or maybe just any book that we happened to think was awesome-sauce, browse around the site for a bit and check out our reviews.
Just don't forget to let us know what you thought of a book you've read or if there's a suggestion you have for something we'd like to read! We're always like to say we found a thriller that didn't make us roll our eyes every other page or so.
Eden
Thrillers are a genre of books that I typically find myself glancing past, but every once in a while I like to dip back into the pool and see if anything has changed since last I tempted the genre fates. I think it’s more the structure and pacing that typical thrillers keep to that pulls me away from them. Short chapters that get in late, pull out early, and don’t spend a lot of time sticking around to figure out just exactly what’s going on. The fast pace seems to be of utmost importance for these stories, and consequently somewhere along the way, we lose a bit of what ultimately pulls me into any and every story that I love: the characters.
On the plus side, I’d never read anything by this author before, and to all appearances it looked like he’d been around for a while and might know what he was doing. So I was happy to give him a try.
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The Athena Protocol
Jessie, Caitlin, and Hala are a team. Not a team associated with a government or mercenary group; instead, they work for a secret organization known as Athena. With plenty of advanced tech and weapons training, their mission is to bring justice to women around the world.
While on a mission in Africa to free kidnapped schoolgirls, Jessie shoots a target instead of turning him over to the proper authorities. The resulting chaos exposes Athena to possible investigation and scrutiny and the trio of women who run Athena kick Jessie out. This is especially rough for Jessie because her mother is one of Athena’s leaders.
The main plot of Shamim Sarif’s THE ATHENA PROTOCOL focuses on what happens after Jessie’s expulsion from the group. With Jessie gone, the team will be one woman short as they travel to Belgrade, hoping to steal the evidence to stop Gregory Pavlic, a notorious human trafficker.
When Jessie uncovers information that Pavlic’s daughter, Paulina, has […]Read the rest of this review »
Every Dead Thing
I forget when or how I first came across this book, and I’ve been wanting to read it again for quite some time now so that I could write up a coherent review of it. Just never got around to it. Well, the 17th book in the series that grew from the roots of this book was recently released in the UK (US release coming mid-October), and so I figured this was as good a time as any to dive back into this one, and find out if it would be just as good this time around as I remembered it being the first time.
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Dive Smack
DIVE SMACK , Demetra Brodsky’s debut YA novel, is a fast-paced mystery that conveys both the exhilaration and exhaustion of teen life with a supernatural twist. In diving parlance, a ‘dive smack’ occurs when a diver mis-judges their entry and hits the water painfully instead of smoothly. It also describes the situation of Theo Mackey, who’s the captain of the dive team and has a good shot at a scholarship to Stanford–if he can keep the rest of his life from spiraling out of control.
When Theo is assigned a family history project at school he freaks out. Theo has a good reason though–hewas playing with matches the night his house burned down, killing his mother. He blames himself her death as well as his father’s, which followed three years later. So when Theo is assigned a family history project at school he…freaks out. The bad news is that the only way Theo can find out about his family history is by asking his alcoholic grandfather, or his Uncle Phil, […]Read the rest of this review »
Medusa Uploaded
Real politics, the actual grind and wear of backdoor committees, debates, and miles-long legislation is a snore. Unless you enjoy reading obscure case law or an inane housing clause that forbids people from living in a “den of iniquity,” you’re likely not going to enjoy any political fiction.
Luckily for you, and me, I enjoy reading such dry-as-wall-paint material.
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Good Guys
Sometimes I wonder if Urban Fantasy is stuck in the year 2005. Vampires. Werewolves. Angels. The Fae. And then once in a while, lo and behold, I find a novel that fulfills a certain niche: mages versus mages. Except this isn’t Hogwarts, or Harry Dresden walking into yet another CSI murder scene that turns into the Fae having a turf war. No. It’s Steven Brust, author of the acclaimed Vlad Taltos series, returning with his first standalone in twenty plus years. And it has all the trademarks of Brust’s usual style: dry wit, working-class grit, and a whole lot of talking. GOOD GUYS asks a simple question: Is it good to be working for a shady organization who pays you peanuts for a wage? Maybe.
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The Genius Plague
I was telling a friend about this book and the first thing that came out of my mouth was “I learned a lot about fungus.” Don’t worry! There are plenty of other fun things to recommend this book, such as NSA code breaking and creepy assassinations, but Walton has found an interesting hook and then amplified it until you will willingly read an entire book about fungus taking over people’s brains. Really.
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Alliance of Shadows
Disclaimer: Anyone familiar with my reviews will likely know that Larry Correia is my favorite author.
Once or twice a year a new Larry Correia title hits the shelves and for a brief, shimmering moment everything is right in the world. In this case the title is ALLIANCE OF SHADOWS (Amazon), Book 3 in Larry’s Dead Six collaboration with Mike Kupari. I wasn’t overly fond of DEAD SIX (EBR Review), the first book in the series, but SWORDS OF EXODUS won me over and I’ve been waiting three excruciating years for the conclusion to the trilogy. In typical Correia fashion ALLIANCE OF SHADOWS does not disappoint.
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The Beautiful Land
Tak does not lead a normal life. As a sort of Asian-American version of Man vs Wild he’s spent his life adventuring all over the world. At the opening of THE BEAUTIFUL LAND (Amazon) we discover that life isn’t going the way he planned. In the middle of a suicide attempt, Tak gets a fateful call that will give him a new purpose in life.
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Virus Thirteen
James and his wife Linda are scientists at the famous biotech company GeneFirm, where they’ve engineered a gene therapy that will eradicate cancer as we know it. But the world’s population may not get the chance to enjoy a cancer-free future when a deadly supervirus outbreak becomes a world-wide pandemic.
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