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…

Please note Vostok is a sequel to The Loch. If you haven’t read that first then there is a good chance you’ll miss out on some important elements of this on-going story. Also this review may contain a few minor spoilers. East Antarctica: The coldest, most desolate location on Earth. Two-and-a-half miles below the ice cap is Vostok, a six thousand square mile liquid lake, over a thousand feet deep, left untouched for more than 15 million years. Now, marine biologist Zachary Wallace and two other scientists aboard a submersible tethered to a laser will journey 13,000 feet beneath the ice into this unexplored realm to discover Mesozoic life forms long believed extinct and an object of immense power responsible for the evolution of modern man. When I am looking for a story that I know I am going to enjoy, I always find myself drawn to fiction featuring monsters. There is something insanely entertaining about humanity going up against creatures that they haven’t seen before, and are totally unprepared for. The Loch by Steve Alten had exactly that premise, and I enjoyed that for the most part, so when the opportunity to read the sequel came along I was…

Loch Ness holds secrets, ancient and deadly. Does a monster inhabit its depths, or is it just myth? Why, after thousands of reported sightings and dozens of expeditions, is there still no hard evidence? Marine biologist Zachary Wallace knows, but the shock of his near-drowning as a child on Loch Ness have buried all memories of the incident. Now, a near-death experience suffered while on expedition in the Sargasso Sea has caused these long-forgotten memories to re-surface. Haunted by vivid night terrors, stricken by a sudden fear of the water, Zach finds he can no longer function as a scientist. Unable to cope, his career all but over, he stumbles down a path of self-destruction…until he receives contact from his estranged father…a man he has not seen since his parents’ divorced and he left Scotland as a boy. Angus Wallace, a wily Highlander who never worked an honest day in his life, is on trial for murdering his business partner. Only Zachary can prove his innocence – if he is innocent, but to do so means confronting the nightmare that nearly killed him seventeen years earlier. I’ll admit it; I am a sucker for a good thriller. You just can’t…

Please note this is novel is a direct sequel to The Mayan Resurrection and third in an on-going series. This review may contain potential spoilers for those who have not read books one and two. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Fate comes full circle… It is 2047: fourteen years since Jacob Gabriel descended into the Mayan netherworld, while his twin brother turned from their chosen path, opting to remain behind.   Immanuel Gabriel – still running from the forces that hunt his bloodline – believes his actions proved his role in the Mayan prophecy to be nothing but an ancient myth. Now, though, he will realize his mistake.  As the prophecy begins to repeat itself and mankind once again faces annihilation, Immanuel learns there was only ever one person with the power to end the cycle of destruction: himself. Three successive generations of the Gabriel family have now been involved in the race to save the Earth from itself. This novel finally brings them all together, no mean feat when at least one of them has been dead for decades. The action moves from 2047 back to 1990 and then forward again to the eve of the apocalyptic event the Mayans predicted…

Please note The Mayan Resurrection is the direct sequel to The Mayan Prophecy and the following review will likely contain spoilers for those that have not read the first novel. The prize was our salvation. The price was his soul. After sacrificing himself to preserve the human race, Michael Gabriel is imprisoned in a torturous, purgatory-like dimension in the Mayan netherworld. The Mayan prophecy states that the Hero Twins – Michael’s sons Jacob and Immanuel, born to his wife Dominique the year after his entrapment  – must travel to the Mayan realm in their twentieth year to free and resurrect him. Yet it also carries a warning. Born on the same day as the twins is a dark force that threatens their destiny. This, the Abomination – the female yin to their yang – represents evil in its purest form, and will not yield until they succumb to its temptation. The 21st December 2012, the winter solstice has come and gone and the prophecised apocalypse has been averted by Michael Gabriel. He has saved all of humanity by sacrificing himself. The Mayan Resurrection picks up a few months after the events in the climax of The Mayan Prophecy and follows…

An ancient prophecy. An evil older than mankind. It is the beginning of the end. I was about three or four pages into The Mayan Prophecy by Steve Alten when I had a niggling suspicion that everything seemed awfully familiar. After bit of hunting around at the front of the book I discovered that the novel was originally published under the title Domain back in 2001. Though I had read it before, I decided to re-read and refresh my opinion of the novel. The Mayan calendar runs out on the 21st December 2012. Some have predicted that this heralds the end of mankind. The novel uses this premise as the basis for a thriller/science fiction adventure. In a Miami mental asylum inmate Michael ‘Mick’ Gabriel has spent the last eleven years incarcerated in solitary confinement for attacking a politician. He forms a relationship with the new psychiatric intern, Dominique Vazquez, who is assigned to care for him. As she gets to know him, she learns about his unconventional upbringing in South America. Mick was raised by his archaeologist father, Julius, amongst the ancient ruins of the Mayan culture. Julius, having spent decades researching the Mayan’s lost history, firmly believed that…