The Hero Virus - Russell Dumper

‘The Hero Virus’ tells the thrilling story of Chris Taylor, who is hanging on to life by a thread.

Recently widowed, his only reason to carry on is his faithful Labrador, but even that doesn’t stop his willingness to gamble with death every day. When his companion suffers a violent demise, Taylor thinks he has nothing left to live for, until he discovers he has chanced upon a precious gift… he has become very ill.

The illness gives him special powers and, fairly soon, the authorities are swooping on to the ever-increasing list of cases. The Hero Virus might be different to other illnesses, but it’s no less dangerous. The effect it has on the world, though, is wildly different to any other virus that has come before. The unique reaction of the human body to infection means that everyone wants it. And some will do anything to get it.

How do you stop a pandemic when there are people who will kill for the virus? How do you stop people getting infected when they’re willing to die for it? How do you stop the infected when they have abilities nobody has ever seen before?

What did I think?

I was drawn to The Hero Virus as I do like my superhero films and this is like X-Men on steroids with mutations resulting from a viral infection.  It's a really interesting premise and you can't help but draw comparisons with the coronavirus pandemic with one huge difference: the hero virus is something that everyone wants to be infected with.

Widower Chris Taylor has suicidal thoughts every day as he puts a gun loaded with a single bullet to his mouth and presses the trigger.  The resulting click means he's not dying today and must get on with his empty life with just his dog for company.  When his dog dies from a mystery infection, Chris also becomes ill but rather than wake up weaker, he wakes up a LOT stronger.

As the virus spreads, the authorities try to contain the infection but the population want to get superpowers too and they will do anything to get infected.  It's gorey at times and the writing is very vivid so I did find my stomach clenching at some of the scenes.  It would be a fantastic film and it was almost like a film was playing in my head whilst I was reading the book.

Vividly written with an imaginative and original plot, The Hero Virus is a high-octane thriller that is packed with action.  It's a real page-turner with a jaw-dropping ending that made me actually gasp out loud.  I can't imagine anyone not enjoying this book, even if you think it's not your usual genre - give it a go!  Very highly recommended.

Many thanks to Russell Dumper for sending me a gifted paperback to read and review; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

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BLOG TOUR: Belly Woman - Benjamin Black

What happens to pregnant women when a humanitarian catastrophe strikes?

Belly Woman shines a light on a story often left untold.

May, 2014. Sierra Leone is ranked the country with the highest death rate of pregnant women in the world. The same month, Ebola crosses in from neighbouring Guinea. Arriving a few weeks later, Dr Benjamin Black finds himself at the centre of an exponential Ebola outbreak. From impossible decisions on the maternity ward to moral dilemmas at the Ebola Treatment Centres. One mistake, one error of judgment, could spell disaster.

An eye-opening work of reportage and advocacy, Belly Woman chronicles the inside journey through an unfolding global health crisis and the struggle to save the lives of young mothers. As Black reckons with the demons of the past, he must try to learn the lessons for a different, more resilient, future.

 

What did I think?

Belly Woman is a medical memoir set during the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014 to 2016 and I think it's important to mention the trigger warnings for this book.  There are a lot of miscarriages and stillbirths so it might prove difficult reading for anyone who has experienced this themselves, however, the western experience of such devastating events is in stark contrast to the experiences depicted in this book.

Dr Benjamin Black was there on the front line but instead of feeling proud of everything he accomplished in Sierra Leone he feels ashamed.  Ashamed he couldn't do more...ashamed that so many pregnant women didn't leave his care with a live baby...ashamed of the health service we take for granted but don't support enough...I could go on.  Note that this is my interpretation of Benjamin Black's feeling of shame as I completely understood why he would feel that way.

For a non-fiction book, the pacing is incredibly fast as it is so well written and full of drama that it feels as if it's a fiction novel.  Unfortunately for the people of West Africa, this story is very real.  Before COVID-19 there was Ebola, but this mainly affected Africa so to most of us in the UK it was simply a foreign news story.  This is the true story of Ebola and its devastating effect.

Harrowing, honest and raw, Belly Woman is a powerful and unforgettable novel that everyone should read.  Very highly recommended.

I received a digital ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

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Lockdown - Peter May

 

'They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eighty percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren't good.'

A CITY IN QUARANTINE

London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed.

A MURDERED CHILD

At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified.

A POWERFUL CONSPIRACY

D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first - the virus or the killers?

Written over fifteen years ago, this prescient, suspenseful thriller is set against a backdrop of a capital city in quarantine, and explores human experience in the grip of a killer virus.

What did I think?

I bought Lockdown as a lockdown 2020 gift for my parents as they are both fans of Peter May.  I love the fact that Peter May wrote this book in 2005 but the publishers thought it was too unrealistic to publish whereas now it is all too realistic as we're living it.  There's actually a rather gruesome part of the book that I found to be a little unbelievable but it certainly wasn't anything to do with the depiction of the pandemic.

The main character of Jack MacNeil is having a bad final day at work: the discovery of a bag of bones have halted construction of a much needed hospital and once again Jack puts work before his family with devastating consequences.  How the story links together is nothing short of brilliant and I was on the edge of my seat throughout but I'll say no more as I don't want to release any plot spoilers in my review.

It's Peter May so it goes without saying that it's well-written but his ability to weave an engaging yet somewhat complex story is second-to-none.  The characters are believable and so incredibly flawed that you can't help rooting for them and the plot is simply breathtaking.  Of course, you can't help but compare and contrast this imaginary pandemic to our very real one but at the end of the day this is fiction and if I wanted to read a book about a real pandemic I would look in the non-fiction section.

It would have been an absolute tragedy for Lockdown to remain unpublished so if there's one good thing to result from the Coronavirus pandemic, this is it!  It's also a stark reminder to pay attention to that all-important work/life balance, which I think many of us have reassessed over the past 18 months.  Brilliant, gripping and stomach-churningly realistic, Lockdown is a must-read for thriller fans.

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BLOG TOUR: Last One At The Party - Bethany Clift

THE END OF EVERYTHING WAS HER BEGINNING

It's December 2023 and the world as we know it has ended.

The human race has been wiped out by a virus called 6DM ('Six Days Maximum' - the longest you've got before your body destroys itself).

But somehow, in London, one woman is still alive. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants, hiding how she feels and desperately trying to fit in. A woman who is entirely unprepared to face a future on her own.

Now, with only an abandoned golden retriever for company, she must travel through burning cities, avoiding rotting corpses and ravenous rats on a final journey to discover if she really is the last surviving person on earth.

And with no one else to live for, who will she become now that she's completely alone?

What did I think?

Wow what a book!  I admit to being a bit scared to read Last One at the Party but whilst the 6DM virus is scary, the story is funny, hopeful and soul-searching.  Although I could have easily read this book in one sitting, I chose to read it over 3 days to fully experience and contemplate the extraordinary story.

With an unnamed protagonist who appears to be the only survivor of a global pandemic, the reader is taken on a literal and metaphorical journey as our heroine searches for survivors and learns the skills needed to keep herself alive.  Written in the form of a diary, we experience everything from the horrific impact of the virus to her hopes and fears, and even get to know more about her past through reminiscences.  

The writing is stunning and amazingly vivid and I think the solitary nature of the story made me visualise a Hitchcock style movie in my head, which I think is exactly what the author was going for as the filmmaker does get a mention later in the book.  Despite the subject matter, the writing is often surprisingly witty and I often found myself laughing out loud one minute and being covered in goosebumps the next.

Bethany Clift wrote Last One at the Party before the Covid-19 pandemic, however, she added in references to our current day pandemic when editing her debut novel.  I read this in the lovely letter to the reader that the author has included at the start of the book and it really helped to get myself in the right frame of mind before I started reading the story.  We often read to escape real life so reading a novel about a pandemic during a pandemic kind of defeats the object, however, although it does have some similarities to the Covid-19 pandemic it is ultimately a story of survival and one woman's incredible journey to find happiness in the simple things.

Don't be scared to read it, Last One at the Party is completely awesome and an absolute must read.  Although it's a real goosebump-frenzy kind of book it's also a humourous, hopeful and powerful read.  An incredibly impressive debut from an exceptionally talented new author and with film rights already having been sold to Ridley Scott, I can't wait to see this breathtaking novel brought to life on screen.

If you only read one book this year make sure it's Last One at the Party; this book is sure to be the biggest debut of 2021.  5 huge stars from me!

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC to read and review for the blog tour; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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About the author:

Bethany Clift is a graduate of the Northern Film School and has had projects in development with Eon and Film 4, as well as being a director of her own production company. Last One At The Party is her debut novel.

Social media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Beth_Clift

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beth_writes_stuff/ 

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The Waiting Rooms - Eve Smith

Swinging from South Africa to England: one woman’s hunt for her birth mother in an all-too-believable near future in which an antibiotic crisis has decimated the population. A prescient, thrilling debut.

Decades of spiralling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis. Ordinary infections are untreatable, and a scratch from a pet can kill. A sacrifice is required to keep the majority safe: no one over seventy is allowed new antibiotics. The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’ … hospitals where no one ever gets well.

Twenty years after the crisis takes hold, Kate begins a search for her birth mother, armed only with her name and her age. As Kate unearths disturbing facts about her mother’s past, she puts her family in danger and risks losing everything. Because Kate is not the only secret that her mother is hiding. Someone else is looking for her, too.

Sweeping from an all-too-real modern Britain to a pre-crisis South Africa, The Waiting Rooms is epic in scope, richly populated with unforgettable characters, and a tense, haunting vision of a future that is only a few mutations away.

What did I think?

Maybe during a global pandemic wasn't the best time to read a book with a similar setting, as The Waiting Rooms scared the bejesus out of me!  Although I think even without the current crisis, The Waiting Rooms is so scarily realistic that you can easily imagine it happening.  

The Waiting Rooms is set in past and present and told from the viewpoints of Lily, Mary and Kate.  In the present day, Lily is living in a residential home and approaching her 70th birthday, however, 70 is not an age to be celebrated in this dystopian Britain as that is the age from which antibiotics are no longer given making even the smallest infection fatal.  Kate is a nurse and just beginning the search for her birth mother after the death of her adoptive mother.  The key to both Lily and Kate's lives is in the past as we read about Mary who is a research scientist looking at healing properties of plants in South Africa before becoming involved in a scandal that rocked the medical world.

Eve Smith has written such an exceptional novel that it left me completely gobsmacked.  I really shouldn't have been shocked but I was totally floored to discover how much of The Waiting Rooms is based on actual medical research.  It's so scarily believable that it's giving me goosebumps just thinking about it now.  This is a book that should have been way beyond its time but instead has been released at a time when it's as real as watching the news.

Hard-hitting, thought-provoking and scarily realistic, The Waiting Rooms should be on everyone's bookshelf.  This is absolutely outstanding writing from Eve Smith; it's almost as if her predictions have come true so I'm both fascinated and terrified to read what she writes next.  So highly recommended, The Waiting Rooms is a definite MUST read.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

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BLOG TOUR: Shadow - James Swallow

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of NOMAD and EXILE, things are about to go viral for Marc Dane in his most dangerous adventure yet . . .

Marc Dane is Britain’s answer to Jason Bourne, and it is about to go viral in his most thrilling and dangerous adventure yet. . .

Marc and his partner - former US Delta Force sniper Lucy Keyes - are pitted against their most terrifying challenge yet, when a genius bio-researcher with the ability to create a deadly biological weapon is kidnapped by a ruthless terrorist. 

Their desperate search for the missing scientist takes them across the world, from the desolate wilderness of Iceland to the slums of the Near East and the dark underbelly of a fracturing Europe, where they will discover a shocking atrocity in the making. 

Backed by shadowy interests, a cadre of hardline ultra-right-wing extremists plan to unleash a lethal virus among the population of a major European city. 

Only Marc Dane can prevent this devastating attack from taking place - before a whole continent is plunged into terror...

What did I think?

I have wanted to read a James Swallow book for a while and as much as I don't like to jump into the middle of series, I decided to start with Shadow, which is book 4 of the Marc Dane series.  I can say with conviction that you can most definitely read Shadow as a standalone thriller but I'm even more eager to read the previous books now as there is such an amazing dynamic between the main characters, Marc and Lucy.

Marc Dane is a former MI6 data guy who has been thrust into the action, and there isn't half some action in Shadow as a worldwide hunt begins to stop a deadly bioweapon from releasing a killer virus.  I found the idea of a bioprinter that can create deadly viruses at the touch of a button very scary indeed and would like to think it's science fiction but a quick google tells me otherwise.  It's amazing to think that bioprinting could be used for transplants in the future but as with anything that is created to benefit people there is always the risk that someone will manipulate it for their own ends.  A theoretical Dr Evil could hold the whole world to ransom; thanks for the nightmares, James Swallow!

There is an awful lot going on in Shadow and I got myself a bit mixed up at times over who was who, but I couldn't stop reading as I needed to find out what was going to happen next.  I loved the character of Marc Dane, especially as he can quote the original Star Wars trilogy from memory, and I thought of him as a kind of geeky James Bond.  The geek in me also loved that Star Wars was mentioned on page 77 as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was released in 1977.  I love little details, or coincidences, like this.

Shadow is a full-throttle, high-octane, action-packed thriller; I am now chomping at the bit to read more Marc Dane and Lucy Keyes books.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

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