Kronos Rising - Purgatory by Max Hawthorne

 

From the Back Cover

Can even a demon survive Hell on Earth? (Comes with 4 full-color, graphic art illustrations!)

Tartarus’s reactor still burns in the aftermath of the Kraken’s fury as a reborn Jake Braddock steps out of the Remora submersible, with murder on his mind. He finds himself in the last place he expected to be: Diablo Caldera, the savage, Cretaceous-era island where the pliosaurs infesting the world’s oceans came from. Undeterred, the seven-foot man-reptile advances. But his plan to exact revenge upon the man who ruined his life and murdered the woman he loves runs into a brick wall.

A wall with teeth.

Diablo’s primeval jungles are infested with legions of Homo sauridae, the man-eating creatures created as a result of Eric Grayson’s vile experiments. Jake soon finds himself embroiled in a bloody fight for his life. The bipedal saurians are a mindless, slavering mob. They cannot be reasoned with. Even worse, they’re starving.

And Jake is on the menu.

If you're a fan of dinosaur books for adults like Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Lost World, must read adventure books like Greig Beck's To the Center of the Earth series, or amazing action stories a la Steve Alten's Meg franchise, you're going to LOVE the Kronos Rising series!

Kronos Rising - Book 6 

Purgatory by Max Hawthorne

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

The above is true even for the readers of fiction. Max has waited 2 whole years to unleash the final episode of the Kronos Rising Paleo-fiction blockbuster series that I hope to be able to write about before the year is out if I am able to catch up with all the rest of my pendency's.

The last book Kraken Vol 3 which had brought us a mega match up made in paleo-heaven with the goliath sized pliosaurs duly enhanced by humans (as if their basic capabilities were less) vs the kraken (Octopus giganteus), that too a female and on a revenge spree for her brood and her mate in that order.

The end had left us with tantalizing Easter Eggs, about the protagonist Braddock brothers father who was the original series hero when Max unleashed his first pliosaur on earth and who had through machinations by the primary antagonist of the series, no surprise that it is not the Apex predators but his one time acquaintance Grayson. He who had become a sort of Messiah across the world with his death row convict rehabilitation program, Last Chancers and who had also become the mentor of the Braddock brothers especially the younger Dr. Dirk; despite being the unseen hand behind every tragedy that had befallen the Braddock family. This included actually feeding their mother to a pliosaur and Machiavellian transmutation of the father.

Grayson deserved a comeuppance and it would have been brutally nice if Garm the older of the Braddock siblings had got a hand in the process, ruthless, brutal Garm who died while discharging his duties to prevent a new apocalypse because of the Kraken's eggs.

But full credit to Max that he decided that the story circle needed to close with the original hero Jake Braddock walking into the most unfriendly environment of the planet, the Diablo Caldera, original containment zone of the pliosaurs.

The bonus was Dr. Grayson who was also in the vehicle.

The current occupants of the Caldera were the Dr. Grayson's series of failed experiments with Jake being the only success, all others slavish to their hunger.

So in Purgatory we have Jake as the lone wall between Grayson and the slathering mutants. Revenge could be the only motivation for Jake to fight and protect Grayson from being devoured alive by his own creations.

Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.

Jake has had an eternity to measure his hate and assess the loss that had befallen his family. His immense loss was immeasurable and the loss of his wife his one true love and one who was a lover of human kind, one of the first who promoted conservation and she had paid her penalty very early in her life.

The children he never came to know. Their loves their lives.

His descent to cannibalism propelled by the Cretaceous bacteria and subsequent mutation was in itself a grisly and gory trip.

All these would add up to his hate and tempered by time.

Max had added some colored pictures of is imagination in this book. we can see his imagined Jake Braddock who seem to me an anime character right out of Dragonball Z. A cross between that and the Hulk. 😂

👇

An advancement over the Homo sapiens with the ability to live in a semi aquatic surroundings. 

The pictures which are a part of this short novelette show some of the water running dinosaurs, Jake and the castoffs.  

Water running dino's

The best part of this short novelette is that it stays true to its story, it is a short story about revenge and is basically tying up all the loose ends of the Kronos Sextuplet and ending the series on a high. 

I believe it attains both its motives admirably and it is only the shortness of the novelette that deters me from giving it the full monty, i.e. 5*.

The revenge drama lives up to all the brouhaha and we see a docile Grayson sticking close to Jake even though he realizes that his fate is not going too be any better. He just hopes that Jake's initial upbringing and his history as a lawman will deter him from going all the way. 

It does but he doesn't.  

With all the horrors of the previous novels for the series readers or the sheer numbers of the caldera castoffs, results of experiments, Grayson gets an apex position as an arch villain and lives up to his billing with the reader hating him with all strength possible. 

Everytime as a reader I start reading a book, I want to visualise and detest the villain and Grayson exceeds expectations as does Max. 

The book delivers at breakneck speed and the ending is right up there with the best. 

Lately had been a bit disappointed that Max had not released anything in paleo fiction or monster mayhem and this book had managed to escape my notice for sometime.  

This is a 4 star read. Docked one star because of its length, way too short, just around an hours reading at half throttle.

Please do not forget to post your comments. I am an equal opportunity person so would love to hear your love or your hate for the review or book in any order. Please write what you did not like or whether the book was an absolute disaster for you and why.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5052517612