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An Echo of War
by Grant Blackwood
The lives of millions are in the hands of agent Briggs Tanner!
When I first got hold of An Echo of War, I honestly wasn't sure how I was going to relate to this genre of story telling. My first instinct was oh man, this is going to be a bloody war book and something that will give me a headache and, frankly, I'll not be able to understand it. Well, I was surprisingly and pleasantly wrong and, I must say, that this story took me completely off guard. I really like it and was quite enthralled with the story line in general.
An Echo of War is about a heroic, dangerous, and thrilling journey to track down two missing vials of a virus, Kestrel, that was unexpectedly found by four soldiers in Bosnian in 1918. This deadly virus brings horrible death to those it infects and can wipe out millions of lives if placed in the wrong hands. The four soldiers who called themselves "Dark Watch" have vowed to keep Kestrel safely hidden and pass the secret along to a trusted descendent of theirs when the time called for it to continue their pact of keeping Kestrel protected.
It's 2003 and former CIA director, Jonathan Root, whose father was one of the original soldiers to steal Kestrel, is living a nightmare of his own. His wife Amelia has been kidnapped and only Jonathan knows the true reason behind the madness of his wife's kidnapping, the murders piling up from this calculated and evil vendetta and those that will likely continue if a stop cannot be put to it.
The man who will come to the aid of Jonathan Root is agent Briggs Tanner, whose mission is bigger than ever expected. Tanner will also be struggling with the dilemma of saving Susanna, his goddaughter, who has been mixed up with a man, named Litzman, who plans on carrying out a potential disaster that will happen at sea.
An Echo of War was more than I thought it would be because it took hold of me and I found myself becoming attached to the characters, feeling their anxiety, pain, fear and fury. I was drawn into their worlds and their adventures. Power packed and exhilarating are two of the words to describe Grant Blackwood's vivid writing style.
Grant Blackwood wrote with such visual excitement and the details of his characters' surroundings are sharp, clean, and chillingly alive with frightening realism that I found myself to be there in the middle of it all. There is a particular eerie and morbidly painful scene that stands out in my mind when Tanner goes searching for the missing two vials in a lake where a train has derailed and becomes the final resting place and sacred burial ground for the passengers onboard.
There is a lot of pulsating action and critical key points written in this story all leading up to a wild and dangerous journey where Tanner must go back to where it all started in the Dinaric Alps so that he can save millions of innocent lives from a horrible and deadly virus.
I immensely enjoyed the characters in this book: Briggs Tanner, Cahil, Joe McBride, Colin Oliver, Jonathan Root, and Susanna. The reason is simply the feeling I got by reading about them. Their personalities breathed life into the pages and made me, the reader, care and want to know more about them and their mission.
I'm glad I read An Echo of War and the proof of my own review staring boldly at me and the old saying, "never judge a book by its cover," is very much the truth.
Tanner, you're my hero!
Title: An Echo of War
Author: Grant Blackwood
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0515135836
Review written by: Lynda Dale MacLean
Reviewer's Rating:8
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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