Book Review: Outrider by Mark Wales

 Outrider

by

Mark Wales

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Publication date: 25th June 2024

Genre: Thriller / Military / Dystopian

Pages: 368

RRP: $34.99AU (paperback)

Source: Courtesy of the publisher

 

Review: Outrider

Australia has a new hero! Jack Dunne - Soldier, Father, Survivor.

 

I will start this review with a little insight into the author, Mark Wales. Mark is a former troop commander with the SAS and 2 x survivor contestant and 1 x winner of Survivor Australia. Great credentials to be writing a book that entails warfare and the fight to survive.

Outrider is a highly imaginative and gripping story featuring a dystopian Australia. It's 2034, Victoria and parts of SA, NT & WA have been invaded by the Chinese Communist Party. Jack Dunne is an Outrider, one of three highly trained operatives, and the Resistance's only hope of curtailing the Chinese invasion of the Hill. The Hill is an outposting in Victoria with Resistance fighters warding off the CCP's further invasion into Australia.

I found Outrider to be a powerful and haunting tale of a future Australia where a civil war has broken out between the resistance and those supporting the CCP.

The fighting scenes are quite graphic, so not for the squeamish. Wales' writing is very technical,  he knows his weapons, and there are lots of initials, acronyms and armory details which may be a bit confusing if you haven't read military thrillers before.

Wales pulls on his experience as a former troop commander with the SAS to deliver a tense and atmospheric thriller rich in strategic military scenarios and weapons beyond my comprehension.

I raced through the last third of the book - that's what I want - fast paced and tense - edge of your seat stuff.

I would have liked more on what the Chinese were doing in Australia and how they breached our defenses.

An underlying theme of a loving father / son relationship was a nice sideline to the blood and gore.

After reading Mark's fictional debut 'Outrider' I am keen to read his memoir 'Survivor: life in the SAS published in 2021.

Recommended for readers of Tom Clancy.

My rating 4 / 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

Book Review: The Hush by Sara Foster

 The Hush

by

Sara Foster

 

Everything can change in a heartbeat

 

Publisher: Harper Collins

 

Publication date: 27th October 2021

 

Genre: Thriller / Dystopian

 

Pages: 359

 

Format read: Paperback

 

Source: Courtesy Better Reading Preview 

About the book

 

Six months ago, in an English hospital, a healthy baby wouldn’t take a breath at birth. Since then there have been more tragedies, and now the country is in turmoil. The government is clamping down on people’s freedoms. The prime minister has passed new laws granting authorities sweeping powers to monitor all citizens. And young pregnant women have started going missing.

As a midwife, Emma is determined to be there for those who need her. But when her seventeen-year-old daughter Lainey finds herself in trouble, this dangerous new world becomes very real, and both women face impossible choices. The one person who might help is Emma’s estranged mother Geraldine, but reaching out to her will put them all in jeopardy …

The Hush is a new breed of near-future thriller, an unflinching look at a society close to tipping point and a story for our times, highlighting the power of female friendship through a dynamic group of women determined to triumph against the odds

 

My review

  

Keep them meek and keep them scared.

Sara Foster’s The Hush, set seven years post Covid, is a dystopian novel that is highly believable in many aspects.
Smart watches are used to monitor a person’s health, every movement and purchase. Okay not so unlike present day Australia so far. It’s all for the citizens safety. So that’s okay?

When the still birth rate begins to dramatically rise new laws are introduced to monitor all pregnancies. Then pregnant teenaged girls start to go missing.
Anyone who posts or protests about these missing girls is dealt with severely and shut down immediately. The only right people have is ‘to obey’.

The Hush is so scarily real I raced through it. I was devastated at how helpless the people were and eager to see where Sara Foster was going with the plot.

Foster gives us a society where the very existence of human beings is threatened and a Government that is consumed with control and hidden agendas.

Friendship is an over-arching theme throughout the book, along with mother / daughter relationships. Women band together to help each other putting their own lives in danger.
I enjoyed the inclusion of the teenagers and how they united and were ready to protest about the way people were being treating. The way some of the teenagers got around the constant surveillance with the watches gave me a laugh. It was so believable.

I know the media had been shut down and threatened as well but I would have liked to have seen more of the spin the media put on the events.

I liked how the parts of the book were divided into the different stages of labour, very cute.

 

My rating 4 / 5

 

Challenges Entered: Australian Women Writers Challenge AWW2021

 

                                   Aussie Author Challenge #Aussieauthor21

 

About the author

Sara Foster is the author of six previous bestselling psychological suspense novels: You Don't Know Me, The Hidden Hours, All That Is Lost Between Us, Shallow Breath, Beneath the Shadows and Come Back to Me. Sara lives in Western Australia with her husband and two daughters, and is a doctoral candidate at Curtin University.

https://www.sarafoster.com.au/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Rogue by A.J. Betts

Rogue

by

A.J. Betts

The thrilling sequel to HIVE

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Aus

Publication date: 25th June 2019

Series: The Vault #2

Genre: Science Fiction/Young Adult

Pages: 368

RRP: $16.99 AUD

Format read: B-Format uncorrected proof Paperback

Source: Courtesy of the publisher

 

Hayley has gone rogue.

She's left everything she's ever known - her friends, her bees, her whole world - all because her curiosity was too big to fit within the walls of the underwater home she was forced to flee.

But what is this new world she's come to? Has Hayley finally found somewhere she can belong?

Or will she have to keep running?

 

“I’d chosen out and this was it: hot-cold, dry-wet, bright-dark and lonely.”

Book 1 Hive ends with Hayley escaping her underwater world built with hexagonal rooms connecting like a bee hive.

In Rogue Hayley emerges into a new dystopian world. It is 2119, the ocean has risen cutting off small land masses turning them into islands. She comes ashore on a small island situated east of Tasmania, now called Terrafirma. Hayley is taken in by the caretakers of the island but a tragic accident forces them to leave the island placing them all in grave danger.

I loved this book even more than book1, Hive. Hayley’s wonder at the world around her is lusciously described and I could feel her awe at seeing a world that was bigger than the walls that had surrounded her all her life.

In a world with blood codes that can be traced Hayley’s unmarked blood becomes a precious commodity that is hunted down. Hayley wanders the land, sometimes finding the help of strangers, as she searches for a place where she can belong. Although she never forgets Will, the boy she left behind.

I rated Hive 15+ because of one graphic scene of a body being dismembered. However the writing in Rogue is simple and the storyline, although action packed, is not complex. Suited to age 10+ or younger mature readers.

“This world above the ocean isn’t perfect. What world is? It can be moody, savage and fearsome. It can be unsafe.

But it can be magnificent too. Surprising and wondrous.”

I’m looking forward to seeing what Betts comes up with next!

Read my review of Hive HERE

                        🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

 

My rating   5/5

This review is part of the Book Lover Book Review Aussie author challenge

book #33 in the Australian Women Writers challenge

A. J. Betts is an Australian author, speaker, teacher and cyclist, and has a PhD on the topic of wonder, in life and in reading. She has written four novels for young adults. Her third novel, Zac & Mia, won the 2012 Text Prize, the 2014 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award, and the 2014 Ethel Turner prize for young adults at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, was shortlisted for the 2014 Queensland Literary Award, and is available in 14 countries. It was adapted for American television by AwesomenessTV, and will soon be available globally. 

Her fourth novel, Hive, was shortlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards and 2019 ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children, and is a notable book in the Children's Book Council of Australia awards. A. J. is originally from Queensland but has lived in Fremantle since 2004.