• Author: Avanti Centrea
• Publisher: Thunder Creek Press
• Publishing year: 2022
• Duration: little over 9hrs (380 pages)
• Series: Stryker
• ISBN: 979-8986316413
• My rating: 3/5

Synopsis:

Royal secrets. Epic lies. This “dangerous” and controversial standalone thriller from international bestselling VanOps author Avanti Centrae is a fast-paced bombshell of a story about truth and courage.

Born a goddess, Cleopatra died a prisoner. But the cobra’s deadly kiss was just the beginning…

Global Thriller First Place Winner — Chanticleer International Book Awards
Runner Up — Paris Book Festival

Bari, Italy, present day. Think tank Special Ops leader Timothy Stryker and his wife Angie, a self-made CEO, haven’t exactly been seeing eye-to-eye. They take a much-needed Italian holiday, but it comes to a shocking end when Angie and their daughter are kidnapped.

Still raw from the death of their infant son, Stryker is desperate to rescue Angie and reconcile their differences. As he works to locate the captors’ lair, he discovers the kidnappers are behind a string of recent assassinations and attempting another high-profile hit in only seven days. But when he learns their plans for his only remaining child, the scab on his heart tears open and blood begins to spill.

Working from inside her brutal captors’ high-security compound, Angie realizes the cabal is hiding an ancient secret using modern propaganda techniques. And as Stryker races hitmen across India, Egypt, and Greece to thwart the next assassination and save his family, he has to connect a series of deadly dots tracing all the way back to the time of Cleopatra. Ultimately, the estranged pair must shake the deeply buried pillars of western civilization to save their four-year-old daughter from an unspeakable fate.

Review:

A combination of Jason Bourne and Indiana Jones…

I was lucky to be offered this book by the publisher of this book and received the ebook and audiobook. I normally don’t like audiobooks but as my agenda was pretty full with books I was offered by writers and publishers, I decided to give it a go. It took me a while to get into it, as said I’m normally no fan of ‘listening’ to books, but I persevered and finished it in a short amount of time.

Let me start with the story:

The least you can say about this story is that it is fast-paced and thrilling, never dull and full of action scenes: shootings, chases (either car or on foot) and even the kidnapping at the start of the book was a thrill to read (or hear, in my case)

The story about the ‘Sons of Adam’ and Cleopatra’s hidden diary felt a bit far fetched but when the story evolved and I got immersed more and more (and the reasoning became clearer) I felt it gave a good base for this book, where womenhating men over the ages came together in a cult that kidnapped women and sold them off in a human trafficking ring.

And then on to the audio:

Tim Campbell was the narrator, his voice perfect for the parts where he had to read the scenes, adding enough emphasis to his warm timbre when describing those. But the parts where I absolutely cringed were those where he had to do a woman’s voice (different women in the story all sounded the same, like obedient ‘sexy’ women) and his lack of ability to portray different English accents was horrible (sorry but Italian English does not sound like a South American who speaks English, same with someone from Greece!)

This does not bode well for future audiobooks for me… but in this case I kind of had no alternative (my phone screen is too small to be able to read entire books on, I just don’t like it… but is it preferable over this audiobook? Might as well be, yes!)

Will I try another audiobook in the future? Maybe… but I’m not inclined to look for Audible or Storytel so I could listen to them more frequently now.

I enjoyed the story, as an action tale. But it wasn’t my favourite either, let me be completely honest with you… it all felt a bit too convenient and too over the top… reminds me of eighties action movies… those often had that same tendency. Will I read the other Stryker novels after this one, when they are released? Not sure… changes are I will, because I don’t like unfinished business but time will tell… and there’s so much else to discover still… we’ll see!