Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies

On March 9, 2020August 20, 2022 By The Unseen LibraryIn English Translation, Fantasy3 Comments

Black Leviathan Cover

Publisher: Tor (Trade Paperback – 25 February 2020)

English Edition Translated by Lucy Van Cleef

Length: 331 pages

My Rating: 4.25 out 5 stars

Get ready for an exciting fantasy adventure from acclaimed German author, Bernd Perplies, with Black Leviathan, an extremely fun and inventive novel that is essentially Moby Dick with dragons.

Bernd Perplies is a best-selling German fantasy and science fiction writer who debuted in 2008 with his first book, Son of the Curse Bringer. He has since authored several different series, including the Star Trek Prometheus trilogy, which he co-wrote with Christian Humberg and which were the first Star Trek books licensed to be written outside of the United States. Black Leviathan was initially released back in 2017 in Germany under the title The Dragon Hunter, and it is the first book in his Sea of Clouds series. This is the first one of Perplies’s solo books to be released in English (his Star Trek books got an English releases), and it was translated by Lucy Van Cleef.

Welcome to the Cloudmere, a floating expanse of thick cloud, mists, floating islands and mountain tops high above the ground. Thanks to the magical kyrillian crystals, which allow anything holding them to float in the air, airships now also fly through the Cloudmere attempting to harvest the useful resources available in this harsh landscape. The most valuable of resources come from the dragons, the ferocious beasts that soar amongst the clouds and mountains. Various species of dragons exist, each with their own special talents and defences, and each of which are valuable in their own way. However, hunting dragons is a dangerous occupation, and only the bravest, the most skilled or the extremely desperate set out into the Cloudmere as a drachenjäger, a dragon hunter.

Lian is a young man living in the floating city of Skargakar. The city’s entire economy revolves around the hunting and processing of dragons, and Lian himself makes a small earning carving kyrillian crystals. Lian also looks after his father, Lonjar Draksmasher, a famed drachenjäger of yesteryear whose injuries have driven him to drink. But when Lonjar is murdered in front of him, Lian instinctively gets revenge on the criminal who killed him, and now needs to get out of town quickly or face the wrath of his victim’s father, the most dangerous crime lord in the city. Taking up his father’s magical hunting spear and accompanied by his best friend, Canzo, Lian seeks work aboard one of the many drachenjäger ships leaving the city. The only one willing to take them on is the infamous Carryola.

Boarding the Carryola they find themselves working with an eclectic and effective crew of drachenjägers, and Lian believes that he has reached relative safety. However, the captain of the Carryola, Adaron, has an obsession that may prove to be the doom of Lian and the rest of the crew. Adaron is determined to hunt down and kill the Firstborn Gargantuan, a rare Black Leviathan dragon, a creature out of legends and one of the most destructive beings lurking in the Cloudmere. Now caught between a powerful dragon and a crazed captain, Lian must find a way to survive, but he quickly learns that death is always lying just around the corner in the Cloudmere.

This turned out to be a fantastic and deeply enjoyable fantasy adventure novel which I had an absolute blast reading. Black Leviathan features a fast-paced and action-packed story of a group of dragon hunters flying around in the sky chasing after a mythical and gigantic dragon, and what’s not to love about that? Perplies introduces a ship full of distinctive and compelling characters (most of whom you shouldn’t get too attached to), including an obsessive and ruthless captain, and sets them up against a powerful foe. This results in quite a fun and exciting novel, and I enjoyed some of the intriguing directions that Perplies took the story. While some elements of the story are a little bit typical of action adventure novels, such as characters whose death is a foregone conclusion the moment you meet them, this was an excellent story that is extremely easy to enjoy, and very hard to put down.

One of the best parts of Black Leviathan is the clever and inventive new world that Perplies has created as a backdrop for his fun story. The author did an outstanding job producing a unique fantasy world up in the clouds, filled with all manner of sentient races, exotic locations and intriguing magical technologies, all of which prove to be really fascinating to explore throughout the course of the story. The Cloudmere is an amazing location for a fantasy novel, and I really enjoyed seeing an entire book spent up in the clouds, either in floating cities or aboard magically powered airships. However, the highlight of this new world has to be the various species of dragons that roam the Cloudmere and dragon hunters that chase after them. Black Leviathan features a world where dragon hunting is a vast and profitable industry, and it is really quite interesting to see the various aspects of dragon hunting and its subsequent applications within this novel. There are some obvious similarities between this fictional dragon hunting industry and the real-life historical whale hunting industry and was really cool to see Perplies reinvent this iconic historical trade with fantasy creatures, floating ships and a sea of clouds.

The dragon hunting aspect of the book also results in some pretty incredible action sequences. There are some really exciting and fun dragon hunting scenes featured throughout Black Leviathan and watching the crew of an airship attempt to take down a dragon in mid-air was easily some of my favourite parts of the entire book. Perplies came up with some very clever hunting techniques for his drachenjäger, and it was very cool to see all of them unfold, especially as many require the protagonist to jump onto the back of the targeted dragon and kill them while riding on their back. This fantasy world also has many different types of dragon with a variety of different abilities (some breath fire, some have sword-like tails), each of which results a different sort of hunt with its own range of difficulties. Of course, the biggest hunt of all is when they catch up with Gargantuan, the titular Black Leviathan, the largest and most powerful dragon in the Cloudmere. That hunt goes about as well as expected, and it was extremely exciting to see the crew attempt to use their tried-and-tested techniques against this beast.

I mentioned at the start of this review that Black Leviathan was a bit like Moby Dick. That is because it features a captain who is obsessed with killing a specific rare beast who wronged him years ago, in this case a black dragon rather than a white whale. The entirety of this feud is actually shown in this book, as the first two chapters deal with Adaron’s first ship getting destroyed by Gargantuan, with nearly all his friends dying, including his fiancé, whose hand he was holding when she was eaten (with Adaron left holding her severed arm). As a result, the Adaron we see in the present is a much harder man who bears a great hatred for all dragons and is determined to find and kill Gargantuan no matter the cost. This results in a great story of obsession and hatred as Adaron scours the Cloudmere for his prey, while also attempting to kill any other dragon he comes across. The author has done a great job showing Adaron as an eccentric and damaged character from the first time the protagonist meets him. Not only does he order his own whipping every time a member of his crew gets killed by a dragon but he also keeps the skeletal hand of his fiancé in his cabin as a constant reminder of his mission to kill his prey. However, as the book progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that his obsession with finding Gargantuan has driven him insane. Not only does Adaron sacrifice his crew’s safety to locate the dragon but he ignores the concerns of the people serving under them and he even utilises dark practices to find his prey. This all results in a great final showdown with Gargantuan at the end of the book, and I think that the author did an amazing job concluding this captivating story arc.

Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies is an excellent and deeply enjoyable fantasy adventure that combines a great central story with an extremely creative fantasy world to create a compelling and fun read. This book is filled to the brim with action and adventure and is guaranteed to get any fantasy lover’s pulse racing. I really loved this book, and I look forward to any future English releases of Perplies work. I do note that Perplies released a second book in this series in 2018, The World Finder, and hopefully we’ll get to see that in English in the next year or so.

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The Holdout by Graham Moore

On March 4, 2020August 20, 2022 By The Unseen LibraryIn Audiobook, Five-Star Books, Murder Mystery, Thriller4 Comments

Publisher: Orion/Penguin Random House Audio (Audiobook – 18 February 2020)

Series: Standalone

Length: 10 hours and 15 minutes

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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From acclaimed author Graham Moore comes an amazing new thriller story that is one part legal drama, one part murder mystery and 100 per cent awesome: The Holdout.

The Holdout is an outstanding standalone book that I have been looking forward to for a little while now. I really enjoyed the sound of the premise when I first heard about it, so I was really glad when I received a copy of this book. Moore is probably best known as a Hollywood screenwriter, having written the screenplay for The Imitation Game, which won him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. However, Moore is also a novelist, having previously written two books, The Sherlockian and The Last Days of Night, the latter of which I read and enjoyed back in 2016. The Holdout is Moore’s first foray into contemporary fiction, and he has produced quite a fantastic read.

It was the trial of the century. Jessica Silver, the 15-year-old heiress to a vast fortune, vanishes and the prime suspect is her African American teacher, Bobby Nock, with whom she was having an inappropriate relationship. With substantial evidence against him, a verdict of guilty for Jessica’s murder seemed assured, until one juror voted not guilty. This one holdout, Maya Seale, refused to alter her verdict and was eventually able to convince the other jurors to change their votes. Their resulting decision would shock the country and change the juror’s lives forever.

Now, 10 years later, Maya is a successful defence attorney who has tried her hardest to move on from the infamous trial that ruined her life, until Rick Leonard, her fellow former juror and secret lover during the trial, tracks her down. Rick has spent the last 10 years obsessing with case, believing that they let a guilty man go free. Now, to mark the 10th anniversary of the trial, a true-crime show wants to interview each of the jurors in the hotel they were sequestered at during the trial. At the end of the interview, they will be presented with new evidence that Rick has uncovered which he believes definitively proves Bobby Nock’s guilt. While initially reluctant to go, Maya ends up making an appearance, only to find Rick dead in her hotel room.

Now the prime suspect in Rick’s death, Maya is forced to relive the infamy that has dogged her for years. Determined to prove her innocence, Maya begins interviewing the only potential witnesses to the crime, the former members of the jury who were gathered at the hotel. However, her investigation reveals that Rick has been digging up dirt on each of the former jurors, and several of them may have had a motive to kill him. As she digs deep, Maya begins to believe that the solution to this current murder lies in the trial that brought them together. Did they let a guilty man go free all those years ago, and is that decision coming back to haunt them with lethal consequences?

Wow, just wow, this was a pretty incredible thriller novel. Moore has pulled together quite a compelling and complex read which presents the reader with a fantastic and intricate story that combines an excellent legal thriller with a captivating murder mystery to create a first-rate read.

The Holdout’s story is told in alternating chapters, with half of the chapters set back during the original trial in 2009, and the rest of the book is set 10 years later in the present day. The 2019 chapters are told exclusively from the point of view of Maya as she attempts to uncover who killed Rick Leonard, while each of the chapters set in the past are told from the perspective of a different juror as they observe the events surrounding the trial. This is a really clever storytelling technique as it presents the reader with two connected but distinct storylines. The storyline set during the original trial is a legal drama-thriller in the vein of 12 Angry Men or Runaway Jury, and it shows various points of the Bobby Knock murder trial and the jury deliberations that followed. Through the author’s use of multiple perspectives, the reader is able to see how the various members of the jury came to their ultimate verdict, what factors influenced their decisions and what they thought about the various people involved in the case and their fellow jurors. The storyline set in the present day, on the other hand, reads more like a murder mystery, and it deals with the protagonist’s hunt to find Rick’s killer in order to prove her innocence. Both of these separate storylines work extremely well together, especially as the Maya storyline explores the impacts of the events that occurred during the older timeline. I also think that Moore did an excellent job jumping between the various time periods and character perspectives, and this clever storytelling style helped to create a compelling read with a fun flow to it.

At the centre of this novel lies two fantastic and complex mystery storylines set around 10 years apart. The first one of these revolves around what happened to Jessica Silver in 2009, while the other involves the murder of Rick Leonard in 2019. Both of these separate cases are really intriguing, and they present the reader with some clever twists, compelling potential theories, alternative suspects and conflicting evidence, so much so that the eventual solutions to these mysteries are actually quite surprising. While both of these two mysteries work really well by themselves, the real beauty is in the way that they combine together throughout the book. The solution to the Rick Leonard murder is strongly rooted to the original 2009 trial with the jury, while the eventual revelation about Jessica Silver doesn’t come out until the events of the 2019 murder are concluded. I really enjoyed seeing both of these mysteries come together, and it was cool to see the motives for one case be revealed in a prior timeline, while the protagonist investigated in the present.

I also had a great appreciation for the legal aspects of The Holdout, as the author dives deep in the United States court system and shows off what happens during a murder trial. There are some tricky legal scenes throughout this book, and one of the major appeals of the 2009 storylines is seeing the entirety of the murder trial unfold. Moore also does a great job exploring how the jury system works and how jurors deliberate and decide upon a person’s innocence and guilt. There are some intriguing examinations of the jury system throughout the book, and it was interesting to see what information they are given and how a jury could come up with one verdict when the rest of the country has already decided. The use of multiple perspectives works well during the 2009 part of the book, and I quite enjoyed seeing how the disparate jurors had different opinions about the information presented to them. The 2019 storyline also contains some intriguing legal scenes which are shown from the perspective of Maya as a successful defence attorney. As a result, these scenes contain fascinating information about legal strategy and defence plans, and it was a little scary to consider innocent people being advised that their best legal strategy for a crime they didn’t commit was to claim self-defence. The Holdout also tried to show the chaos that surrounds a high profile court case, including examining the crazy media coverage, the impact of public perception, and the fact that people involved are often more concerned with making money or advancing their careers rather than finding out who actually committed the crime. All of this is extremely fascinating, and I enjoyed seeing Moore’s take on the current legal system, especially as he comes across as somewhat critical of it at times.

Moore has also filled this book with a number of complex and relatable characters in the form of the jurors, who you get to know throughout the course of both storylines. Thanks to the two separate timelines, you get to see how the events of the trial affected these people as each of them had their lives completely ruined thanks to one decision they made 10 years ago. Thanks to the use of multiple perspectives during the earlier timeline, you actually get to briefly see inside the mind of each of the jurors, and explore how events in their past lives, plus the stress of the trial helped influence their verdict. I also found it fascinating to see how the not-guilty verdict impacted on other characters associated with the trial, such as the family of Jessica Silver and the accused, Bobby Nock. This was especially true in the case of Bobby, who, despite being found innocent, was controversially prosecuted for another crime and was then subsequently hounded by the media for years, resulting in some compelling scenes around this character in the 2019 storyline. I also have to point out the underlying theme of obsession that the author expertly inserted into this story. Obsession with the trial affected several characters within the book, causing many of them to act in unpredictable ways to achieve their goals. This obsession came from a number of places, including from guilt, a sense of righteousness, a desire for revenge or to find justice, and it was quite compelling to see what this obsession drove some characters to do. One member of the jury in particular is driven to do some very dark things that were completely out of character to the person who was introduced in the earlier storyline, and this characters development was extremely fascinating to behold. Moore did an amazing job with these characters, and I really liked seeing how the events depicted in the book influenced and impacted them.

I ended up listening to the audiobook format of The Holdout, which was narrated by Abby Craden. The Holdout audiobook runs for just over 10 hours and I found myself flying through this novel, especially when I became obsessed with working out the overall solutions to this book. Craden is an excellent audiobook narrator, and I previously enjoyed her work on Recursion by Black Crouch last year. For The Holdout, Craden comes up with a number of distinctive voices for the various characters featured within the book. Each of these voices fit their respective characters extremely well, and I think that Craden did a good job portraying these character’s various ethnicities and genders. All of this really helped me to enjoy this incredible story, and this format comes highly recommended as a result.

The Holdout was an absolutely incredible read that does a fantastic job showcasing Graham Moore’s superb skill as a master storyteller. This amazing novel expertly combines together a compelling legal thriller with an addictive murder mystery in order to produce a first-rate story with some captivating twists and intriguing character developments. The Holdout gets a full five-star rating from me, and I am very excited to see what this remarkable author produces next.

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Just Watch Me by Jeff Lindsay

On January 12, 2020August 20, 2022 By The Unseen LibraryIn Thriller10 Comments

Just Watch Me Cover.jpg

Publisher: Orion (Trade Paperback – 10 December 2019)

Series: Riley Wolfe series – Book One

Length: 358 pages

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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From one of the world’s most popular thriller authors, Jeff Lindsay, comes Just Watch Me, an electrifying heist novel that pits an intriguing new protagonist against impossible odds.

Prepare to meet Riley Wolfe, the world’s greatest thief. Wolfe is a master of disguise, an expert con artist and a true devotee of the ridiculous heist. There is nothing he can’t steal, and he lives to target the super-rich with his capers in order to make them suffer. However, Wolfe is starting to get bored. His last few heists have gone off without a hitch and he is looking for a challenge. But his new target might be truly impossible to steal, even for him.

Wolfe has his eyes on some of the most impressive treasures in the world, the Crown Jewels of Iran, and in particular the Daryayeh-E-Noor, a gigantic pink diamond that is valued beyond compare. With the jewels finally out of Iran and in New York for a tour, Wolfe knows that this is the time to steal them. They have been placed within the most secure gallery in the country, which utilises impenetrable security systems, state-of-the-art alarms and a small army of former special forces soldiers acting as guards. In addition, a regiment of the lethal Iranian Revolutionary Guard are also standing watch, ready to kill anyone who gets too close. With these security measures in place, the jewels appear to be beyond the reach of any potential thieves, no matter how careful or elaborate their plan may be, and anyone who tries is going to end up dead. However, Wolfe is no ordinary thief, and he has come up with a cunning scheme that no one else would have ever thought of. If all his planning succeeds, he will have an opportunity to make off with the jewels. But with all manner of complications in front of him and a determined FBI agent hunting down his past, can even the great Riley Wolfe succeed, or will his most daring heist be his last?

When I first saw that Jeff Lindsay was doing a heist novel, I knew that I was going to have to grab a copy of it. Lindsay is a bestselling thriller author who debuted in 1994 with the novel Tropical Depression. Lindsay is of course best known for his Dexter series, which was adapted into a highly popular television series. While I have not had the pleasure of reading any of Lindsay’s work prior to this book, I did really enjoy the first few seasons of the Dexter television show, so I was really interested in seeing the author’s take on a heist novel. I am really glad that I checked Just Watch Me out as Lindsay has produced a deeply compelling and exceedingly fun novel that not only contains a really cool heist story, but which also features another complex protagonist for the reader to sink their teeth into.

First of all, let’s talk heists. For Just Watch Me, Lindsay came up with a very interesting heist scenario which sees one man try to break into a massively secure gallery guarded by some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, as well as some of the deadliest killers. The story follows Wolfe as he attempts to find some way into the building that everyone agrees in impenetrable, and while he initially encounters major setbacks, he eventually comes up with an audacious plan to get in. This plan is very bold and complicated, and involves a lot of manipulation, disguises, seduction, confidence work, forgeries, doublecrosses and even a couple of well-placed murders. All of this comes together into one fun and exciting conclusion which sees everyone understand the full extent of the plan. Lindsay paces out all the parts of the heist extremely well, and I really enjoyed how the entire thing unfolded, especially as it was a cool, roundabout way to attempt to steal something from a gallery. The heist proves to be an exceptional centre to the whole narrative, and I really enjoyed seeing how this part of the book progressed.

I also liked the way that Lindsay utilised multiple viewpoints to tell this story. While several chapters are told from the protagonist’s point of view using the first-person perspective, a large amount of the book is actually told from the perspective of the book’s side characters. These side characters include a range of different people, such as Wolfe’s allies, the people he is trying to manipulate, the FBI agent hunting him and even several bystanders who are caught up in the whole heist. All of these different viewpoints help to show off the various angles of the heist, which I felt helped enhance this part of the story. It was also really cool to see how normal people, including police officers, guards, gallery employees and some of his marks, perceive the various disguises he comes up with or the confidence tricks that he is pulling. I loved seeing this outside perspective of Wolfe’s criminal techniques, and it was a great way to portray a large amount of the heist.

While the heist is a really amazing part of this book, one of the most compelling parts of Just Watch Me is actually its protagonist, Riley Wolfe. Lindsay obviously has a lot of experience writing complex and intriguing protagonists for his thrillers, and he has done an amazing job creating another one here in Wolfe. Wolfe is a master thief whose defining characteristic is an overwhelming compulsion to steal from the mega-rich, especially those who obtained their wealth by screwing over the little people in the world. Wolfe is absolutely obsessed with his crusade against the rich due to his experiences as a child, and this obsession forces him to complete his heists no matter the cost. The author spends quite a bit of time exploring Wolfe’s hatred for the rich, and it is quite fascinating to see his internal thoughts on why he is stealing from them. The reader also gets to see some of the events from the character’s childhood which form the basis for this obsession. Ironically enough, the reason we get to learn so much about Wolfe’s childhood is because one of the book’s antagonists, FBI Special Agent Frank Delgado, becomes so obsessed with learning more about him that he briefly leaves the FBI in an attempt to hunt him down (obsession is a key element of several of the book’s main characters). Delgado spends several scenes scouring the country trying to find out Wolfe’s history, which is slowly revealed throughout the course of the book. I really enjoyed that Lindsay included this dive into the character’s past, and I felt that it really complemented the main heist storyline and helped to create a fantastic overall narrative, especially as this investigation into his history, represents the biggest risk to Wolfe’s freedom.

Now, as Wolfe steals from the richest of the rich, it might be easy to assume that he’s a good guy or an anti-hero you can cheer on, but that is really not true. Not only does this protagonist come across as an excessively arrogant person who is high on himself, but he also does a ton of stuff that is totally morally wrong. For example, throughout the course of the book, Wolfe commits several murders, frames people for crimes they did not commit and totally ruins a number of people’s lives. While some of these people probably deserve to suffer at the hands of Wolfe, a bunch really did nothing wrong; they were either born into money, in his way, or merely collateral damage. In one case, he even spends time thinking about how much he respects one of his victims right before he arranges for her to be arrested for art fraud. What’s even worse is that, in many cases, Wolfe doesn’t even realise that he’s done something wrong. While he knows that he maybe should not have committed some of the murders, he totally fails to think of the emotional consequences some of his cons or manipulations will have on the people he is playing. He is even called out about some of his actions towards the end of the book by his only friend; however, he completely fails to see her point of view. Instead he merely thinks that she is overreacting and goes right back to plotting to get into her pants. Stuff like this makes Wolfe a very hard protagonist to like, and even the knowledge that his actions and viewpoint are the result of a messed-up childhood doesn’t really help. It does result in a much more compelling story though, and it was refreshing to follow a morally ambiguous protagonist. I will be interested to see if Lindsay will examine the impacts Wolfe’s actions had on some of the supporting characters in a later book, and I personally would love to see a story where one of his incidental victims attempts to hunt him down to get revenge for their ruined lives.

I have to say that I was also really impressed with all the discussions of art, paintings and other valuables that the author was able to fit into the story. Lindsay obviously did a large amount of research into the subject (his acknowledgements mention an art professor he consulted) and it was interesting to read the various discussions about art and art forgery. I have to admit that I have no real knowledge of or appreciation for art (except comic book art), but I really enjoyed all the discussions about art style and technique that were peppered throughout the novel. Overall, this was a pretty intriguing inclusion in the book, and I found it to be quite fascinating at times.

In conclusion, Just Watch Me is an amazing fast-paced heist thriller that is really worth checking out. Lindsay has come up with not only an awesome scenario that features a fun heist at the centre but also another complex and morally corrupted protagonist whose inner demons and powerful obsessions we get to explore. I really enjoyed this excellent new book from Lindsay, and I am definitely planning to grab any future novels that come out in this series.

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