Ramblings of a Book Wench: Review of the Joe Ledger Series by Jonathan Maberry

This is a rundown of the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry. I first came to know of the fantastic series a few years ago when the Advanced Reader’s Copy of Patient Zero came across the ARC Bookshelf at work. I worked at Barnes & Noble at the time, so every once in a while, we got to see the new books a month or so before they came out. I picked up Patient Zero based on the cover, since it was epic, and after reading the back I was hooked. I love me some zombies and this promised to be a great new take on the zombie book. Well, since that fateful day, I have been hooked ever since to Maberry’s great series, and have even branched out to his other books: Rot & Ruin and Dead of Night. There’s a Deep Pine series that I have to track down, as well. Anyhoo. So here now is my little run through of the series so far, book four, Assassin’s Code comes out early April. When that comes out and I’ve read it, I’ll add it to this great series recap.

First, Patient Zero. It’s always good to start with the first in the series. This book introduces us to Joe Ledger, a beat-down and demon-beleaguered Baltimore cop who is suddenly approached by Mr. Church and asked to join a super-secret government agency. After some hesitation, Joe agrees to join Mr. Church’s little agency, known as the DMS, or Department of Military Sciences, and through one of the most badass “I’m the alpha of the group” scenes ever put to paper, becomes the leader of an elite team of solider called Echo Team. And then the reader is sent on a break-neck thrill ride through the world of biological warfare and terrorism… and zombies. Joe Ledger and his Echo Team are thrown into the mix to try and stop a small terrorist sect that have engineered a zombie virus and are threatening to release it into the populous. The amazing thing about this zombie virus is that it is based in real science. True, Maberry takes the current technology and studies of prions and other molecular beings and then takes it to the next level of where it could go in the next few years. He also does this with the next two novels, but anyhoo, back to Patient Zero…. This book is a tour de force of machismo and testosterone, Die Hard, 28 Days Later, Rambo, Terminator, Night of the Living Dead, and 300 all rolled into one.

If you’re looking for a novel that has some character-defining moment or personal growth, go pick up a Jodi Piccoult novel. Patient Zero smacks you in the face with an AK-47 and never lets you go, never apologizes for the violence, the locker room talk, and the sheer manliness of the characters, action, and ends-justify-the-means mentality of this book. I read this book in less than two days, and I was physically depleted after the last page because of the ride I had just been put through.

The next book in this series is The Dragon Factory. And the testosterone-fueled ride continues with this volume. Now the Echo Team is faced with two groups of mad scientists who are using genetically engineered monsters to help divert attention from the true horror: genetically-based bioweapons. Let me explain. There are certain conditions that are race-based, such as sickle cell anemia affects mostly an African-based population, and those of Jewish descent are affected by another disease that escapes me at this moment. The scientists, who we discover are really Nazi scientists who have kept themselves alive all this time and have perfected their horrible craft. Echo Team is charged with tracking down the epicenter of the genetic experimentation and shut it down before they can release the toxins into the environment. This time around, Dragon Factory has a bit more character development (gasp!) with Joe and another DMS agent Grace Courtland (a love interest?!) that just added an extra 1-2 punch to the already high-tension situations of the book. The ending of this book almost made me throw the book across the room in my frustration and sheer “I can’t believe you did that, Maberry! How could you do that!?” reaction to how it ended. Oh, I was mad. And with the way that it ends, you know that there’s going to be a third volume to this series…

And King of Plagues picks up where The Dragon Factory leaves off. Now Echo Team, broken and still trying to pick up the pieces after the events of Factory, has to try to figure out who is behind a string of terrorist attacks in London and other cities, and how these events all connect to each other. The story bounces back and forth between the DMS/Echo Team scrambling to play catch up with the Seven Kings, a group of ultra-powerful men who have their little hands in every aspect of government, security, and world economy, to showing the behind-the-scenes action of the Kings as they unleash their plan. We also get a little surprise in this volume with a friend of ours coming back from Patient Zero, which adds a whole new level of intrigue to the events as they unfold. This volume had a slower pace as compared to the previous two, but it was still intriguing and suspenseful. Some of the machismo was missing in King of Plagues, but that followed in line with the broken team, picking of the pieces, Joe trying to get his groove back after the severe blow DMS received from the scientists in Dragon Factory. So it was only right to not be quite as balls-to-the-wall Die Hard as the team was before. At the end of the book, though, Echo Team rediscovered their stones and got badass on the Kings and saved the day (of course). And like with Dragon Factory, Kings ends with a cliffhanger and you know there’s a fourth one coming to help stitch together some of the loose ends and new threats revealed at the end of the book.

Of course I can’t give you a review of the fourth volume because it hasn’t come out yet. The book, Assassin’s Code, hits book shelves April 10, 2012. My copy is due to be shipped from the warehouses of Barnes & Noble April 10, 2012, and I should get it about 4 days after that. I’m excited and will be watching my mailbox for a BN.com box like a hawk.

Okay, so it wouldn’t be a Bookwench review if I didn’t score the books of the Joe Ledger series—individually and as a series as a whole. So here are the ratings, 1 (literary hari kari) to 10 (literary orgasmic bliss):

Patient Zero: 9

The Dragon Factory: 8

King of Plagues: 7.5

Series as a whole: 8.5

I cannot recommend this series highly enough. You need to get this series. You need to read this series. If you don’t, you’re missing out on one hell of a ride.

And if you have already picked up this series, and you're waiting for Assassin's Code to drop, there are some "in-between" novels to pick up in the mean time. They are set between the three main novels and fill a few of the gaps between main novels. They are "stand alone", as the series claims to be, but it you don't read these books in order, you will be a little lost; and now that Maberry has given us in-betweeners, you really need to read them in order. I haven't gotten the in-betweeners since they are all eBooks and I don't do well reading for long periods of time over computer screens, but I will list them for you so, in you are unlike me, you can read more about Joe Ledger and the Echo Team.