leahrosereads's Reviews (1.04k)

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry is the first novel in his Joe Ledger series, and it’s a fantastic first novel in a series.

I thought Maberry did an excellent job introducing his main character, Joe Ledger - the BAMF Baltimore detective recruited into a secret government organization, the Department of Military Sciences (DMS). He’s a smart mouthed cop with excellent investigative skills, with a ruthless personality when his Warrior personality comes out to play.

He and Echo Team work together to attempt to stop terrorists from releasing a plague that would cause a zombie apocalypse. It's a rough ride for the DMS and Joe, as they scramble to succeed.

Joe Ledger and the DMS are at it again. Saving the world against freaking monsters. Although, this wasn't my favorite book of the series, I still loved it. Biblical plagues and a Goddess using Twitter to spread the fear and the hate. Awesome plot.

But poor Joe. Always being thrust into situations that could get him killed. He's got so many cat lives, it's insane.

The King of Plagues brought one of my favorite bad guys back in this story (Toys), as well as introducing one of my favorite creepy characters in ANY novel: Nicodemus. I love that toady dude. So creepy. So excellent.

I also really enjoy how Jonathan Maberry allows the readers to see inside the bad guys' heads. It makes for a lot of yelling at the books, because I knew what was happening prior to Joe knowing. And, I just wanted to help him out.

A re-read to prepare myself for Book 6 of the series.

The Dragon Factory is Book 2 of the Joe Ledger series, and it was a fantastically fast paced read. Joe Ledger, Echo Team, Grace Courtland, Alpha Team, and the DMS face another extremely horrendous plot to destroy the world in this book. An Extinction Wave cooked up by Nazis to take out most of the human population, and to cause chaos. How do you even fight that type of evil? Our heroes did though, and in the end they succeeded, but not without their own losses.

I thought The Dragon Factory was an excellent second novel in this series, and is personally my third favorite out of the current 5 (Extinction Machine, Patient Zero, then this one).

Time to start The King of Plagues.

This was a reread on my part. And still as awesome as I remember it.

Joe Ledger, Echo Team and the DMS are back and fighting more monsters. Zombies? Nah, they've been there, done that. This time it's freaking vampires. Vampires with

nukes

. Oh yes, it's one of those stories.

Our Big Bads in Assassin's Code are: my favorite creeper: Father Nicodemus. My god, I love this guy. He's just eerie and demonic and still completely a mystery. Next up, is Hugo Vox. Met him in Book 3 and

because of the cancer,

I was hoping he'd die a slow and agonizing death. That didn't happen, unfortunately. The leader of the vampires, Grigor, rounds up the last of the Big Bads in this book. He may not have been immortal, in the sense that vampire mythology shows, but he was old, ruthless, and truly evil.

Outside of the main plot, there was also the sad story of Lilith, Violin, and the Mothers of the Fallen. I'm happy they get their revenge/vengeance in the end.

Overall, while this wasn't my favorite book of the series, it's definitely up there. I loved that Father Nicodemus was back, and I was happy to see Mr. Church have more of a central role in this book. It felt like we got to see a little bit more of a human side of Mr. Church, and I loved it.

Wow!

Before reading Extinction Machine by Jonathan Maberry, my favorite book in the Joe Ledger series was Patient Zero. I felt like it had the right amount of intrigue, it had the perfect bad guys, it had just enough action to keep me on the edge of my seat, and the story, the characters (both Main and Secondary) held my attention from start to finish. It was a book that I COULDN'T put down. I didn't WANT to for a second. I finished Patient Zero hours upon getting it.

And it was the same for Extinction Machine. I COULD NOT quit reading this book. Although I wish I got more of the story in Joe's POV, I wasn't put off by all of the third person POVs that were in Extinction Machine.

Prior to reading it, Patient Zero was my favorite in the series, but Extinction Machine has since surpassed Patient Zero to me. While I love zombie books, I feel like the topics in Extinction Machine hit all the right notes while I was reading. Aliens? Check. Conspiracy Theories/Nuts/etc.? Check. Suspense? Check. Big bads? Check.

And then, there were the emotions that were constants as I was reading. Depending on the POV, I was either annoyed, in tears, happy, nervous, etc. This book really did put my emotions through the ringer. Maybe I get too involved in the story...but let's face it, who doesn't?

I just loved the story. Every part of it, and I can't wait for the next Ledger story to come out. I can't wait to see where the characters go from here, because it was so intense that the characters have changed or will be changed from the experiences they encountered in Extinction Machine.

As a fangirl of Jonathan Maberry's work, I very rarely feel he does any wrong when it comes to his novels, and Code Zero is no exception to that. However, I don't feel like I'm being biased in this novel's case. Maberry did a lot right in Code Zero.

The bad guys were extremely bad, Joe and the DMS were behind throughout the novel, and although I yelled at my book when they weren't connecting the dots, I was happy with everything about this book.

Joe and the DMS had to reface a lot of the monsters of their past in this novel, and I loved seeing the Beserkers (The Dragon Factory), seif al din (Patient Zero), and the fast acting diseases from The King of Plagues making their presence known. I really have always wondered what happened to everything that the DMS has come across over the years, so I was happy this book answered that question, even though it was a bloody, disastrous outcome for the DMS.

The big bads in this book were Mother Night and her anarchist children. And boy oh boy was she just an absolute B! I loved how she was developed and the flashbacks of her story. Just phenomenal work all around on this character.

Also, VP Collins makes his presence known in this book, and while we've known he was a bastard since The Dragon Factory, and I've wanted him dead in every book he's been present in,

I didn't feel his death was adequate in this. Fucking suicide! Are you kidding me? I wanted him to suffer a horrible horrible death, maybe via a room of walkers or, even more preferably, in a room alone with Mr. Church or Joe.

Outside of the main plot of the story, I really loved seeing Junie and Joe's relationship, but it wasn't overdone, which I was personally thankful for. I want to read about Joe kicking ass, not really the romantic elements of the stories. I like that it's just an undertone of the story, and that you know they love each other, and that's enough.

I also liked seeing Violin in the book, but I wish she and Arklight had been more involved in the story, especially with how thin the DMS was stretched in Code Zero. I thought they could've helped a lot, and maybe Church's pride got the best of him in this book, or he closed himself off even more, after being betrayed.

I did like that

Violin saved Junie's life at the end of the book for Joe, especially since Violin is in love with him.

OK, I'm done. I feel like this review is turning into a rambling mess. Code Zero was amazing, you should read it!

Seriously, go now, get a copy!

This is the first novel I've read by Rainbow Rowell, and I will definitely be reading more from her.

Fangirl follows and 18 year old Freshman college student, Cather (Cath), and her day to day life trying to navigate college and becoming an "adult". She's the introvert who's never had to put herself out there, because her twin sister Wren was always there so that Cath could tag along. But, when Wren doesn't want to be her roommate in college, Cath must learn to go at this scary new world of adulthood on her own, or so she believes.

Fangirl was so realistic and charming, I couldn't put it down. I'm trying to think of faults that I found in it, but the only small issue I had was all of the Simon Snow fanfic and blurbs throughout it. I understand that fanfiction is a huge part of Cath, I just thought a little less would have still worked in the novel.

Oh Cath, how I was you when I first went to college. That nervousness of not knowing where you belong, because you didn't belong in high school, was absolutely something that I related with very well.

I just really enjoyed reading the about her day to day life and even the Mama drama wasn't over the top. I think it just added a dimension to Cath (and Wren) and made them more real to me. No one has a perfect life, and Rainbow Rowell showed faults and issues in people in a very honest way. It was refreshing.

Onto Levi. Oh Levi. How adorable was he? The chivalrous good guy. A dying breed in society, and yet, even he had faults that made him human and real. Just a wonderful character.

Really all of the cast of characters were great. I loved Reagan and the dad. I disliked Nick in the end, but really liked him in the beginning. I was, however, nervous that there was going to be an awkward love triangle between Cath, Nick, and Levi (

there isn't, and I'm very happy about that

).

Just really a great novel. I would recommend this to anyone who loves a happy ending.

Required reading in high school, however, I absolutely loved this novel. The Wanting Seed is THE reason I began reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. I loved the setting of the novel, and how terrifyingly realistic it was.

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone, and I would recommend Anthony Burgess' other works as well.

[I had forgotten to take this off of my To-Read Shelf]

Already a huge fan of John Green's work, The Fault in Our Stars clinched John Green as being one of my all time favorite authors.

TFIOS was an amazing, heart-wrenching tale. Hazel and Augustus were very well developed characters, and I was rooting for them (in the hopes that this would be a fairy tale story). But, it wasn't, it really couldn't be with two main characters going through cancer.

Absolutely fantastic, and I am looking forward to reading whatever John Green comes out with next.