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For fans of World War Z, a chilling mystery, an ancient threat, and a race against time to save humanity--inspired by the true events of the Dyatlov Pass incident Russia, 1959. Nine members of a Soviet mountaineering team on an ambitious expedition into the Ural Mountains are found dead, victims of massive and bizarre injuries. The Dyatlov Pass incident, as this grisly event came to be known, remains unexplained to this day.Iraq, 2019. Ex-soldier-turned-mercenary Cameron Becker is escorting a Russian businessman named Luka Belikov through Baghdad. It seems like a routine job, until Belikov is abducted on Becker's watch. After forming an uneasy alliance with WHO medic Lori Dalton, Becker sets out to uncover the truth behind the attack, and quickly realizes he's caught in the middle of something far bigger and more dangerous. As bio-terrorists prepare to unleash a virus that causes humans to descend into ravenous madness, the pair are thrust into a desperate race against time to prevent a global plague that could wipe out human civilization. Who is behind the attack? What do they want? And how can humanity hope to survive? Becker and Dalton's answers may just lie deep within the icy wastes of the Ural Mountains ...
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Dark Harvest by Will Jordan
https://medium.com/@peterseanEsq/book-review-dark-harvest-is-a-first-rate-thriller-830db1d98c80
This is a page-turner, or, whatever the equivalent is when you listen to it as an audiobook.
Will Jordan offers the Youtube video channel known as the Critical Drinker. He opines about science fiction, fantasy, and gaming offerings. I have found his opinions to be invariably insightful and informative. His usual complaint about modern stories is that they either don't make the character engaging or they don't present the story conflict in a way that captures the readers' attention.
This book shows he can practice what he preaches.
The story opens with a girl returning a crystal to a cave. It then shifts to Cameron Becker, a former American Special Ops soldier turned private contractor. Becker's team is ambushed, the person it was hired to protect is kidnapped. Becker then pursues the kidnappers across the desert where he wanders into a town of zombies. At the same time, Lori Dalton, a WHO communicable disease medical specialist, is investigating the town. The signs are that the zombie outbreak is a virus tailored by terrorists.
From that point, Becker and Dalton are chasing after the virus in an effort to prevent it from being unleashed on the world. The action is high-level, with enough breaks for the reader to get to know Becker and Dalton. We get involved with Becker and Dalton and care about them as they run through the maze to figure out what the virus is, how to stop it, and where to find the antidote. The character moments do not get in the way of the action, which merits this book being a worthy entry in the “thriller” category. My attention to the story did not flag.