A Betrayed Archaeologist. A Ghost from the Past. A Dozen Worthy Sacrifices.
Expedition leader Hiram Kane is holed up in his native England recovering from wounds both physical and mental, when his family receives a mysterious anonymous letter that dredges up nightmares from the past. Could it also offer a ray of unexpected hope?
Across the world planet beneath a forgotten Aztec pyramid, a betrayed archaeology professor is about to unleash his wrath.
How? Brutally murdering a dozen innocent victims in an ancient sacrificial ritual.
When the modern and ancient worlds collide and the unhinged professor starts committing unimaginable blood-spilling atrocities on the adolescent virgins, Kane is forced to make an impossible choice;
Can he sacrifice the love of his life to save the innocent girls?
This book starts with the main story being about Hiram finding his long-lost brother, and a side story about a disgraced archaeologist coming up with a plan to get back at those who hurt him.
Hiram lost his younger brother years ago when he was 10 and his brother was 8, and now he receives a letter from a person claiming to be his now-adult brother who lives in Mexico. Hiram decides to go down to Mexico to meet his brother Danny and to finally get some closure as to what happened to his younger brother.
To be honest, this arc was probably my least favorite part of the story. I was expecting Danny to have been kidnapped, but he wasn’t. He chose to leave the family of his own free will at 8 years old and then chose to never go back. This was just astonishing to me. How do you decide at 8 years old that you are going to be ok living on your own? The book doesn’t really explain if Hiram’s parents were ever abusive towards Danny, it was just a few misheard conversations. I know we have all had times where we overheard something or misinterpreted something and thought that our parents or siblings didn’t love us anymore. We’ve also had times where we decided to “run away.” But for an 8-year-old to run away and then just STAY away for years and years, without even trying to contact his or her parents when they weren’t even abusive? That’s definitely not normal behavior at all. I hope that this behavior is actually discussed in future installments of the Hiram Kane series.
Besides this rather strange arc, I enjoyed the rest of this thriller! The former professor had such an interesting backstory, and I almost thought that I could forgive him for his crimes before he had started killing the girls. Honestly, he was disgraced in such a stupid way. I couldn’t blame him for being upset. But then he just got crazier and crazier as the story got on, and I saw more and more of the professor slipping away as he started to believe the facade that he had created for himself. By the end, I realized that the professor was completely gone, and only a madman was left. All I wonder is what happened to Rafe? Is he going to pop up in another book? So many questions that I am going to need answers for.
Once the action in this story starts, it REALLY starts. I was actually a bit shocked by the sheer gore in this story, I definitely cringed during some parts. If you don’t like gore, this is definitely not the book for you. I have read a few of the Hiram Kane stories, and this one definitely ranks pretty high on the gore. For me, I actually liked the fact that the story didn’t shy away from gore. It really added to the intensity of the action scenes and made me really feel as if the girl’s lives were really on the line. Unlike many other stories that pretend to kill people and then reveal to the reader that it was really all fake. This book almost had me crying at times, it was just that good.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new adult thriller-mystery novel to read.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books
