Please note Consequence is the fifth book in the ongoing series The Race. If you haven’t read books one to four then the following review will no doubt feature some minor spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya! Joanna survived another brutal race and the Runner rebellion. But now she must work with Von Zimmer to try and save a village on an Ethiopian coffee plantation from annihilation. Can they face their personal issues and survive their cruellest adversary yet? Time for another episode from The Race series by Joan De La Haye. Regular readers of The Eloquent Page will know I have looked at all the other books so far, feel free to check them out via this link. It would be remiss of me if I didn’t include a quick review of the latest tale that’s available. We’re on to book five, Consequence, and Joanna finds herself knee deep in trouble once again. She does have a real knack for getting into all manner of scrapes. Just as well she is more than able to look after herself. The action picks up in the aftermath of the last race. Though Joanna is still recuperating from her last traumatic…

Please note, The Three Secret Cities is the fifth book in an ongoing series. If you haven’t read books one to four then it is highly likely that the following review is going to contain some minor spoilery type elements. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! A shadow world behind the real world When Jack West, Jr. won the Great Games, he threw the four legendary kingdoms into turmoil. A world with its own history, rules and prisons Now these dark forces are coming after Jack…in ruthless fashion. That is reaching into our world…explosively With the end of all things rapidly approaching, Jack must find the Three Secret Cities, three incredible lost cities of legend. It’s an impossible task by any reckoning, but Jack must do it while he is being hunted…by the greatest hunters in history. I suspect each time Matthew Reilly sits down to write a new book he asks himself the same question. “How can I push the action quotient further than I did last time?” The good news, from our perspective at least, is that he keeps managing it. I can sum up each new Matthew Reilly novel in four simple words – Bigger, Better, Faster,…

Please note, events in There Before The Chaos take place after the end of The Indranan War trilogy. If I were you, I’d be inclined to read those three books first, if you haven’t already. If you don’t then it is highly likely this review will contain spoilery type stuff. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The battle for the throne is over. The war for the galaxy is just beginning. Hail Bristol, former gunrunner and newly-crowned Empress of Indrana, looks forward to retiring her gun and rebuilding her Empire in peace. After a bloody civil war laced with regicide, betrayal, and foreign plots, Hail and her people are braced for years of necessary reconstruction and reform. But when Indrana’s closest ally asks Hail to intervene in an interstellar military crisis, she must instead embark on the highest stakes diplomatic mission the Empire has ever faced. Caught between two alien civilizations at each other’s throats, she must uncover each side’s true intentions before all of humanity becomes collateral damage in a full-blown galactic war. As a book reviewer, who has been around for a while*, I find myself in an incredibly fortunate position. From time to time publishers send me…

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he saw but still can’t prove exists-Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a PhD in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub.Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’s never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. Occasionally I get lucky and my two main hobbies intersect. It will come as…

Welcome to the Freemee lifestyle app: They can give you confidence, power, fame and all the friends in the world. But what will they take in return? When a teenager is shot dead after chasing a criminal in the street, investigating journalist Cynthia Bonsant is led to the popular social media platform Freemee, a competitor to Facebook whose lifestyle app claims to give you everything you need to succeed in life. But there is someone who warns against its evils: Zero, the world’s most-wanted activist, known for exposing the toxic truths behind social media giants and their pursuit of total control. As Cynthia gets closer to unravelling the evil mastermind behind the Freemee site, she herself becomes a target. But in this world of hidden cameras, data glasses and hyper-smart phones there is nowhere to hide . . . Currently, it feels like a day can’t go by without a new technology related scandal appearing in our headlines. Everyone from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, to corrupt foreign governments are having a go at manipulating data to further their own ends. We live in an information age, where data is collateral, and every aspect of our lives is available for analysis….

As a child he was smuggled to the Middle East from his London home, to be trained as one of the most elite insurgent soldiers of his generation. For years he was forced to do things no child should do, for a cause he couldn’t believe in. But while his brothers were preparing to kill, he was looking for a way out. Now, on the eve of the deadliest coordinated terrorist attacks Europe has ever seen, he’ll finally get his chance. He will break free and hunt down those responsible for making him a monster. He must draw on all his training, all of his deadly skills to survive. He is Sleeper 13. When it comes reading action thrillers, I have a few criteria that the story needs to meet. Firstly, the plot has to capture and hold my attention. A well-judged sense of pace is also key, and if the story manages to pull off a cinematic feel, so much the better. Rob Sinclair’s latest novel, Sleeper 13, ticks all these boxes and then some. At its heart, Sleeper 13 has a fascinating premise. The central protagonist has been trained for years as a terrorist, and it is what…

The Long Autumn is coming to an end. For almost a century after the coming of The Sisters, the surviving peoples of rainswept England have huddled in small communities and on isolated farms, scavenging the remains of the old society. But now society, of a kind, is starting to rebuild itself. In Kent, a brutal tyranny is starting to look West. In the Cotswolds, something terrible and only vaguely-glimpsed is happening. And in a little corner of Berkshire two families are at war with each other. After decades of simply trying to survive, the battle to inherit this brutal new world is beginning. A couple of years ago I picked up Europe in Autumn on a whim. I was travelling and needed something to divert my attention while on a flight (don’t get me started on how much I loathe flying). In the departure lounge I purchased the novel with absolutely no expectations. Something about the blurb captured my attention, but I had never heard of the author and had no idea what was in store. A couple of hours later the plane landed and I don’t think I had blinked during the entire flight. Dave Hutchison’s Fractured Europe novels…

Please note, Retribution is the fourth book in an ongoing series. With that in mind you’ll probably not be surprised when I tell you this review will likely contain spoilers. After surviving the wilds of Siberia and a fight to the death with Snezhana, Joanna is back running for her life on the island where it all began. Will she be able to survive the wholesale slaughter of The Race, the machinations of The Organisation behind it all, as well as Elena’s thirst for revenge? Regular readers will know I have been reviewing each new book in The Race series by Joan De La Haye. Book four, Retribution, has now released into the wild so it seems like the perfect time to jot down a few thoughts*. Joanna Parypinski has fully embraced her life as a runner. She has accepted that this is now her lot in life. Through training and some appropriately cutting edge medical treatment, she is at her physical peak. Her patron, the ever enigmatic Von Zimmer, has offered her a chance to help in shaping the world. Joanna is prepared; she will be the best runner and she win the next Race. From her perspective it…

Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister’s. It adopts her sister’s personality, recreating her through a life lived online. But this virtual version of her knows things it shouldn’t be possible to know. It’s almost as if the missing girl is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud. But that’s impossible. Isn’t it? I’m sure many of you have a digital assistant in your home. It doesn’t matter if you use Siri or Cortana, Google or Alexa* it’s all still a bit of a novelty isn’t it? Flash forward five or ten years from now, and it will be commonplace. We’ll all have our own assistants that are with us twenty-four seven. A virtual presence that knows you better than you know yourself and caters for you every whim. Sounds blissful doesn’t it? Heather Child’s debut novel, Everything About You, uses this as a jumping off point.  The big question it ponders – what if this most intimate of relationships wasn’t all it appeared to be.  Many of us live big chunk of our lives online. Who…

Please note Besieged is the third book in this series. If you haven’t read book one and two then I suspect this review is going to contain some spoilery moments. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Joanna has survived the wilds of Siberia only to find herself under attack from all sides as well as from within the safety of her Patron’s inner sanctum. With a war brewing and attempted assassinations, will she be able to save herself and those closest to her? Most importantly, will she be able to keep her head in a fight to the death with no rules? When it comes to thrillers, I enjoy the unrestrained escapism of the genre. I firmly believe you need to go all out. Action/adventure stories should be fuelled by one hundred percent pure adrenaline. It should leave you breathless and always hungry for more. The Race by Joan De La Haye does exactly that. Published as part of an ongoing collection of short novels, each new episode is worth waiting for. Joanna Parypinki is settling into her life as part of the global conspiracy that is The Race. Wars are fought, economies are covertly manipulated, and billions of people…

Happy New Year! Please note: Marked for Revenge is a direct sequel to Marked for Life. If you haven’t read the first book in this trilogy then it is possible the following review may contain minor spoilers. Consider yourself duly warned… When a Thai girl overdoses smuggling drugs, the trail points to Danilo, the one criminal MMA-trained public prosecutor Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy. Eager to erase any evidence of her sordid childhood, Berzelius must secretly hunt down this deadly nemesis with whom she shares a horrific past. Meanwhile, the police are zeroing in on the elusive head of the long-entrenched Swedish narcotics trade, who goes by the name The Old Man. No one has ever encountered this diabolical mastermind in person; he is like a shadow, but a shadow who commands extreme respect. Who is this overarching drug lord? Berzelius craves to know his identity, even as she clandestinely tracks Danilo, who has threatened to out her for who she really is. She knows she must kill him first, before he can reveal her secrets. If she fails, she will lose everything. As she prepares for the fight of her life, Berzelius discovers an even more explosive and…