Non-stop action and suspense from the first page. From the onset we know we aren't dealing with every day people. We quickly find out there are very scientifically enhanced men who are imprisoned as death row inmates just waiting to escape. When they do, all hell breaks loose and the story just rockets from there to get them back and under control. It's a fast, violent ride and you have to remember these aren't normal bodies taking all the physical action. At the end there are lots of questions of how much was planned and by whom, not cliff hangers, but the psychological and physical orchestration of the events to put the USA in almost total destruction, lots of thoughts on that. The sad reality is as I'm writing this, a virulent flu is causing panic in areas of the country and if it were to get worse, just how closely will life imitate the citizens in this story, that's actually more frightening.

I was recently provided with a copy of Scott Reardon's "The Dark Continent," published under the Aspen Press imprint. This novel belongs to the Horror genre and rather quickly put me in mind of Stephen King's "The Stand."
Any of you who are familiar with that horror classic will be aware of what high praise this is. Essentially, the story's roots are in the familiar vein of mad scientists tamper with nature (in this instance using stem cells to create super soldiers out of particularly vicious serial killers). The potential for mayhem fairly leaps into the mind of anyone familiar with this genre of fiction. The reason, however, that I compare it to an iconic work like "The Stand" is that it repeatedly pushes the boundary of its genre as the author attempts, with mixed success, to explore a variety of philosophical issues related to good and evil and how they manifest themselves in our society. The graphic violence builds to a crescendo not resolved until the very end of the book, although it is slow going initially. The text is not without issues in Reardon's handling of his materials, but most readers, especially those hooked on the horror genre, are likely to find the book hard to put down after they once "get into it." Don't be put off by my mention of philosophical struggles as the author takes care, for the most part, to exercise restraint in building these elements into the text so that they are stimulating rather than overtly intrusive (think of "The Exorcist" for another example of this kind of thing).

The Dark Continent is the latest story by Scott Reardon. Although this book would be classified as a sci-fi story, with technology being what it is today it certainly makes the reader wonder how close science is to what is described by Mr Reardon. Lots of edge of your seat moments. I want to thank Net Galley and Aspen Press for the copy to review.

When I first requested this book, I did not realize that it was the second book in a series. It read well as a stand alone book though.

On an oil rig in a remote area of Alaska, government researchers and doctors are doing the unthinkable. Death row inmates are being used as lab rats to enhance the human body, to create a new race of super soldiers The stem cell therapy worked, and created humans that were stronger, faster, smarter, and more deadly than thought possible. When things start to go array and the inmates escape, they are set on only one thing, ultimate destruction. The story follows these inmates, the doctors who created them, and all who got in their way.

This book is broken up into two parts. The first few chapters are a bit slow and choppy, but then the story really picks up as you begin to learn about the characters, and feel the terror at what is happening. It scared me to think about the governments role in our own lives and how much we may or may not know about what actually goes on. The storyline is pretty violent though, and detracted from what you were supposed to be focusing on. But the story had me hooked and I needed to know what was going to happen, so I kept going. The second part of the book still had that bit of terror running through it, but I also started to feel frustration at the constant cat and mouse game that was being played. The excessive violence in this half was almost too much for me at points and I got to the point where I couldn't wait for it to be over. The end wraps up quickly and maybe a bit too neatly.

Overall, this story invoked a fear in me that I wasn't expecting and kept me reading until the end. It was way too violent for me, but may not bother others as much.

Thank you Netgalley and Aspen Press for giving me the chance to read and review this book.

I would like to thank netgalley and aspen press for the review copy...now to my review.

So to start with I would recommend reading the first book, I didn’t and I was confused by some things but mostly it was explained later in the book. I’ll start with the opening...it was unneeded the whole intro about Tom in Canada was really unneeded in my opinion.

Moving past that it starts to pick up rapidly hearing about Karl in China and moving to Dr. Ellen Azamor arriving on the oil rig that contains the subjects, to the subjects escaping the rig and even the swim from the rig to the mainland was thrilling.

Then it kinda just flatlined and around the 60% mark I was struggling to finish it, there was a few minor issues I found as well like, there was words missing from sentences which, to me, are hardly that big of a deal but I know to a lot of people it might be a big deal.

So in conclusion I’m gonna have to give it three stars because although I feel like the intro was not needed and it flatlined I did enjoy the largest portion of the book. I would certainly recommend it for a read but I would suggest reading the first book for full understanding.

Good book! Reminded me of The Twelve - a group of death row inmates experimented on by unaccountable agency. "experiments' then break out to wreak havoc.

This was so not what I expected, but in a good way. At first. It was a book in two parts. This was also a follow-up book to Reardon's Prometheus Man which I haven't read, but you didn't need to read it to follow the action.

The story started off really well. It seemed a bit sci-fi and I thought it may devolve into some horror. All good. On a de-commissioned oil rig off the Alaskan coast the Government is conducting ultra secret research into augmenting human beings into ultimate warriors with superior strength and speed using stem cell technology. Only the procedure ends up killing the test subjects after turning them into unpredictable killing machines. Only one man has survived for any length of time. Tom Reese, and here I'm guessing he must have escaped the program at the end of the first book, is in hiding with his girlfriend Silvana when they come for him again and they go on the run.

Meanwhile, Dr Azamor, a psychiatrist, is rushed to the oil rig to assist with screening the current test subjects. They have 15 death row prisoners that have had the procedure and one of them, Kronin, a giant of a man, is so strangely persuasive that he somehow forced his last psychiatrist to commit suicide. They are scared of him. Then a huge storm lashes the sea and the electronic security measures fail when the power goes out. you can guess what happens next.

At that point the book turned into a dystopian, apocalyptic gore fest that went on a bit too long as Tom (finally re-captured by the CIA) and his death defying handler Karl Lyons take on an army of super human fighters who want to literally destroy the joint. At one point I thought - perhaps this story is a metaphor for our corrupt, nihilistic society as Kronin seemed to ponder the meaning, or lack thereof of life and society. But it got a bit too negative for that. In the end, it was feeling like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies.

If you like fast paced, no supercharged, action and with plenty of violence and gore thrown in you will love this. I thought the story had promise and it ended on a better note but the constant killing took something away from any possible message the story may have had IMHO.

With lots of helpful reviews already posted, I'll just comment that I liked this overall. It's a solid thriller with good action and interesting characters. Recommended for those seeking a tense scifi tale.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

3 and 1 / 2 stars

Warning: much violence and gore. Do not read if you are timid about those things.

The world has gone crazy with extreme violence and skyhigh unemployment. Shadowy, scary people are hunting other people. Unnamed government agencies are taking over. Or, are they?

In order to prepare for the war they predict is coming, in order to create the “perfect” soldier, a horrible experiment is taking place. Death row inmates have been chosen to participate. What will be the outcome?

Tom Reese, the only surviving test subject of the first round of “stem cell enhancement” and still relatively sane, is on the run with his girlfriend. They have been found by agents of the government. A wild chase ensues.

Meanwhile, Karl Lyons, undercover CIA Agent, is captured in China and sent to a place where you get “disappeared.” Badly beaten under the guise of “interrogation,” he plans a bold escape from the facility.

In a secret location in the ocean near Sitka, Alaska, a freak storm hits the old oil derrick that is not anchored to the bottom. The derrick rocks, is damaged and the inhabitants are released!

When Tom and Karl team up to do something about the escaped convicts running wild and being destructive throughout the US, things get very tense and wild.

Dr. Azamor, a psychiatrist, also stars in this book. She is an interesting character with some interesting ideas. I like the way that psychology is used in the first half of the book. Dr. Azamor constantly questioning herself and speaking with the various inmates, especially Kronin. Kronin's manipulation of the people to whom he spoke reminded me strongly of Hannibal Lector and his machinations regarding the use of other people.

This is a fast-paced, tension-filled story of what happens when self-important men get ideas above their stations. It was well written and for the most part followed a logical path. There were a few typos and the novel sometimes took leaps that I couldn't quite follow. All in all an engaging read. If you like apocalyptic reads, this book is for you.

I want to thank NetGalley and Aspen Press for forwarding to me a copy of this good book for me to read, enjoy and review.

From the start, the pull is magnetic, the action explosive and the tension is running at a fevered pitch as good versus evil turn the United States into a boiling torrent of blood. Once again, the government and science have gone off on an ill-advised tangent, all in the name of building the perfect deadly fighting machine that didn’t implode on itself and degenerate. When some brilliant entity decides to use death row inmates to turn into super soldiers, what did they think would happen? Only one person had ever survived the change without becoming a twisted version of himself and now he is about to become a target, as well as the only person with a prayer of ending the nightmare created when uncontrolled inmates escape and reign down terror on the country.

Can Tom stay alive long enough to stop the evil that is manipulating the population? THE DARK CONTINENT by Scott Reardon explains enough backstory that I could understand the gist of what transpired in book one. Non-stop action, over-the-top brutality and twisted evil, this one was hard to turn away from, in spite of the gore. A battle between conscience and cruelty, animal instincts and survival! This dark sci-fi tale is as creepy for the imagined possibilities as it is for the written word.

I was invited to receive a complimentary copy from NetGalley and Aspen Press! This is my honest and voluntary review.

The United States government is researching and attempting to enhance the bodies of test subjects on an unsanctioned oil rig just off the coast of Alaska. These fifteen men not the first but they were chosen for a reason - they're all on death-row. Not only to the researchers succeed in their endeavor but they get more than they bargain for in the process. The subjects are led to escape by the mysterious and exceedingly intelligent death-row inmate with no apparent background and other than the fact he's on that rig he doesn't exist. 

Tom Reese and Karl Lyons are the two of the select few people that fully understand what the test subjects are capable of but even they are blindsided. Forced to cross portions of the United States that have been ripped apart, isolated and in the dark they will come face to face with the horror of the government's hubris.

I love reading author's descriptions of abandoned cities, a lot of times they seem more realistic and easier to imagine than descriptions of highly populated cities. You could almost split this book into two genres via the internal split of Book I and Book II - the atmosphere of each section is quite varied. The couple of chapters of the story shortly before Book II starts seems rushed after such a long escalation. I'm honestly also wondering how the good doctor kept up at sea as much as she is. The ending of the novel was also fairly anticlimactic in my opinion and suffers the same fate as the last chapters of Book I mentioned previously. The book overall is fairly fast paced with a lot of action, bits of horror, gore, murder, murder and more murder. The murder and gore in the book can get a little repetitive after a while and seems to be there more for a shock factor than anything else. I would also like to note that this book is the second in a series, the first book being The Prometheus Man. It isn't essential that you read The Prometheus Man first because I believe this book functions well on its own but I believe that the backstory would be beneficial to fully grasp the certain interactions and background information in The Dark Continent.

There are portions of this book that remind me of Resident Evil - mainly the God gene the prisoners are enhanced with (without the monster and zombie aspect of Resident Evil) and the location. I could definitely see a Resident Evil game taking place somewhere similar to the Alaskan oil rig the test subjects are kept on or the abandoned Chinese city of Kangbashi. If I were to play this book as a game I would expect it to be a similar play style to the Resident Evil series. There are also certain elements of it that remind me of Fallout. Instead of irradiated Yao Guai or Deathclaws the suspects are similar to a human appearing version of a Super Mutant. The factions that blossom in Book II are also reminiscent of Fallout but more of the bloodthirsty carnage variety than The Minutemen and The Brotherhood of Steel. I'm sure that this book will remind any reader of movies, books or video games that they've experienced as some portions of the book are similar to works in these areas. 

There really is A LOT of gore and indiscriminate murder in this book. I really do mean indiscriminate - men, women, young, old, children etc. If you are sensitive to books about mass murder, in depth descriptions of murder and gore I would avoid it. I would suggest this novel to those who love books that feature conspiracies, action, war, thrillers, horror, societal collapse, and apocalyptic type events. I would like to thank NetGalley and Aspen Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fast paced action story. Government created super human monsters combined with cool guys don’t look at explosions. I liked this story quite a bit. I plan on reading the first book in this series, The Prometheus Man because there’s a great backstory that I missed. If a third book comes out, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat.

This book reminds me of a staff pick from Powells’ Bookstore – a great airplane read. Good job Scott.

Let me start by saying this is the second book of the series, and I never read the first. My opinion is of the second novel alone.

I may not have had much back story, but the story was a thrill. It was gruesome and violent - realistic and scary. It pushes a lot of ideas that make you wonder, “ Could this really happen?”

Dangerous men are sent off the coast of Alaska for illegal stem cell research. Imagine the worlds worst injected and made to be superhuman. Two men find out about the illegal testing going on and head to the location to stop it. Que eerie sly thriller in one... two....

Fast moving writing and action that makes you tear through the pages waiting for what happens next.

Intense read. I suspect a book three is in the making. 4 stars

*Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange of my honest review.

Intense and violent, yet fascinating. Parts of the book are horror, but I couldn't turn away. A gripping page-turner. Read with all the lights on.

*** I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review ***

OK, so there was a point when reading this book where I just went... what happened. The first half really had me going with a horror thriller kind of vibe, trying to figure out what the heck the researchers were doing and all of this backstory, but then the second half left me scratching my head.

The book itself: Like it was really going somewhere with all of the "who did what" and "what happened here" among all the other things going on. It gave me the creepy vibes that I look for when I read horror books. I liked that! I also felt like I didn't have to go back to read the first book and was just able to jump cheerily in to reading this one, which I'm grateful for.

The second half of the book was downhill from there, though. I wasn't a fan of the fact that it just threw everything out of the boat and went a different direction, nor was I really happy with the sudden incredibly patriotic theme that overtook the rest of the book. It was grating, and it didn't feel like it added anything additional to the plot this way, feeling more like an interjection of some weird feelings just because the author could (e.g. the note about the French Canadians being "backwardly cheerful" and the tidbit on tolerance/diversity).

TLDR: Not sure if I can recommend reading this just for the first half alone.

I enjoyed the first half of this book. There was a slow buildup of tension, and some interesting characters. And then the violence started. I am not generally bothered by violence in a novel. But that's all that the entire second half of the book is. At first, it was horrifying, yet fascinating. But you can only see so many arms and heads get ripped off, people murdered in a variety of creative ways, towns set to fire, etc before you just don't care anymore. All hope is lost. Don't care. The good guys get attacked. Don't care. A main character dies. Don't care. You become immune to it after awhile. Which I suppose says something in of itself, but the result was that I was bored to tears for the last quarter of this book.

"There was a secret that the world ignored, and it was this: the future wasn’t forged by majorities. The future was forged by very tiny, very motivated minorities."

NOTE: Spoilers if you haven't read book one.

This book continues the story from THE PROMETHEUS MAN and you should really read the first book to get the full effect of this story.

Illegal stem cell research on humans continues in this book. Tom Reese is back, drifting from job to job, trying to keep his identity low key - because there are people all over the world that want to find out why the experiments done on him seem to be a success.

Karl Lyons is still trying to shut down the illegal operations and when both he and Tom hear about testing going on at a deserted oil rig off the coast of Alaska, they head there (separately) to try to stop it.

What happens next I didn't expect. I enjoyed the first book even though I usually don't read spy thrillers. This book was much better to me. I liked all of it but especially about the last 2/3 of the story.

I highly recommend both books if you like spy thrillers, medical thrillers, horror tales and exciting stories.

I received this book from Aspen Press through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Let's get one thing straight - Reardon is a master at building tension and writing tone. Throughout The Dark Continent, he manages to create an ambiance of helplessness and ennui, as his characters begin to understand more and more the peril in which they've become entangled. Thrust into a situation without their consent, his three protagonists' fear and doubt are palpable, flavoring the entire novel. Reardon takes the time to set the framework of his universe, so even if you haven't read the first of the series (I hadn't read it), you don't feel lost, and he manages to do so without feeling heavy handed in his exposition. The story builds to a solid climax, with enough action to leave the reader feeling sated. I struggled to find comparable authors, but maybe a blend of Lovecraft (without the racism), Tom Clancy, Robert Parker and Brad Taylor would get you close to Reardon's style. I'm planning on tracking down book one, and keeping up with the rest of Reardon's novels.

This is a very fast paced book from beginning to end. It's full of action!
Tom has been given an injection that's supposed to make him a super human. He finds out that he's not the only one though. A lot of them have am ready died from complications from the injection while for others it's made them evil.
The sad part is this could actually happen.
I highly suggest reading this book!

So. I found this book on NetGalley and was intrigued by the description. I didn't realize when I requested it that it was the second book in a series. However, a note at the beginning mentions this and says that it's not necessary to read the first book before reading this one.

Well. I kind of disagree. Yes, this is a different story. But it does reference the first book quite a lot, to the point where I wish I would've read that book before this one. This is a standalone story but I think I would've been more comfortable with the first half of the book and the Prometheus experiments if I would've read that story first.

So. The first half of the book was a little rocky and took me a bit to get into. It follows three different characters and, honestly, I was lost for a while. Mostly because Tom and Karl's opening stories play heavily (I'm assuming) into the events of the first book.

However, once I reached the second half of the book, I was totally hooked. Once the power went out and the continent "went dark" and the world started slipping into anarchy, I loved this book a lot more. It's definitely dark and gritty and a ton of gore and action. If you're a fan of action movies, you'll probably love this book. It had lots of Apocalypse Now vibes, especially toward the end.

But, it's also definitely not exactly what the description advertises. I think I expected to get the contents of the first book. Because the description sounds more like it's about the Prometheus project. It is for the first half. But the second half of the book (and more the central theme) is about what happens when the world as we know it changes and rules no longer exist. And that's the part that really fascinated me.

So overall, I think I did like this book. It definitely took me a little bit to get into but the second half of the story was well worth it. I would recommend reading the first book before jumping into this one, just so you have a better sense of the project and of who Tom is and what happened to him. (There are definitely puzzle pieces in this book but I think I would've jived with this book better if I would've known more about Tom going in.) So if you're a fan of action or war films, I definitely recommend this book!

And thank you so much to NetGalley and Aspen Press for allowing me the chance to read and review this book!