I first read a Mike Bond book I found on NetGalley and it was drawn in by the intense emotions he brings with his work. To quote my husband "is this a true story? I feel like I am living it with the author". The Last Savanna has that same feel and I am sure as I read more of his offerings, they will carry the same intensity. There are very few authors that can bring to the pages the feeling that you have experienced the story from within as Bond can.

The Last Savanna is set in Africa and details the Somali ivory poachers, Ian MacAdams the hunter with his love of country and disintegrating personal life and Rebecca Hecht - MacAdams former love and archeologist who is kidnapped by one of the poachers.
There is a quote in the book "Like Malaria, Africa. Once bitten you can never shake it." The book reads much the same, once you start it you can not put it down.

This book exceedingly hard to follow. I found myself skipping pages at a time. If you are interested in a story about the CIA in Guatemala, you might like this book. A lot of blood and killing. I would recommend this for an older teenage male. Not my cup of tea. I received this copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book has been around for a while and when it was offered on Net Galley I read the blurb and thought it might make for an interesting read, but I was wrong in my assessment. It was not. There were several problems, not least of which was the bait-and-switch wherein the blurb led me to believe this was to be about fighting those who murder elephants for their ivory, when it was really just a sad story about some obsessive old dude who can't get out of his head this woman with whom he had a one night stand decades before, and now is unaccountably obsessed with for no good reason (not that there is ever a good reason for obsession!). Worse, this guy is married and this told me that he was a sleaze. Why would I root for him?

Add to this the delight the author takes in describing scene after scene of blood, gore, and slaughter, including for the entire opening segment of this novel, and it turned me right off, because when there was no gore, there was unending tedium and mind-numbing introspection which turned me off further. I'm not a fan of Kirkus reviews. I routinely avoid them because they never met a novel they didn't like, which means their reviews are utterly worthless. It's reached a point where if I see that a book has been reviewed by Kirkus, I walk the other way. This is ironic because if I'd happened to have seen their review, I would have known to avoid this novel like the plague! They said it "Will make readers sweat with its relentless pace and blistering descriptions of the African sun." I would have known for sure from that mindless garbage, that it was precisely the opposite.

Dorothy and Ian MacAdam have lived on a ranch in Kenya for a long time, yet despite their supposed love of Africa, neither is happy, and Dorothy wants out of there, whereas Ian is just a jerk who cares nothing for anyone but himself. At the drop of a hat, he abandons his wife purportedly to go hunting poachers even though neither he nor we have been offered a solid reason for him to go. As it happens, his 'obsession chick' is, by amazing coincidence, kidnapped for ransom for no good reason, by some itinerant and laughably brutal caricatures of Somalis, and suddenly Ian is galvanized to chase them. The hell with the elephants. From that point on, no one cares about poachers. The bait-and-switch made it about kidnappers. The novel should have been titled "Like Women for Elephants."

You know if the Africans were serious about stopping the elephant and rhino slaughter, they would track down and tranquilize every last one of them and remove their horns and tusks, and they would keep doing this until all the lowlife scum poachers have been forced to give up their evil and brutal trade for lack of bounty, and have found something else to do. Problem solved. There's no reason to kill the animals if there's nothing for the poachers to benefit from, yet this slaughter goes on and endlessly with these animals being slowly wiped-out because no-one evidently has the good sense or the guts to step-up and remove the incentive.

This would have been a much better story had it been about someone doing precisely that: sneaking around under the governments' noses, and avoiding poachers, and getting it done, but instead of something new and different we got precisely the same and that was precisely the problem with this story: it offered nothing new or original.

It did not help that the story-telling, particularly the violence, was so overly-dramatized that it became a joke, with people being shot and flying backwards in the air from the impact of the bullets which simply doesn't happen except in asinine Hollywood depictions. Bullets are so small and dense, and move so fast that they're through you before you even notice the impact and they sure as hell don't kick you backwards like you're a circus acrobat, not even if they break a bone. And there is no way they're going to kick a huge elephant's head around from the impact either. Puleeze! These descriptions were a joke and constantly kicked me out of suspension of disbelief and helped to ruin this story.

I stopped caring about any of this about a quarter of the way through, and I skimmed and skipped to about half way through, and I realized I was wasting my life reading this, when I could be reading something more engrossing, more entertaining, and more authentic. Life's too short. I cannot recommend this based on what I read.

A well written, very atmospheric novel. It was a quick read for me. (4-star review on Amazon)

A very interesting book. The author described Africa very well I loved all the details.

I had trouble with it keeping my interest but the story is a great coverage of the problems of Kenya. Investigating the poachers of the area who are killing the elephants. Life is tough in the area for everyone. Along the way an archeologist is kidnapped and taken with them as they travel. She eventually gets away but trying to get by on her own is tougher but she feared for her life and so took the chance.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2KHHAUVJ32L04/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8

I received an free electronic copy of this from NetGalley for my review. Wonderful book, beautiful writing. The writing is so detailed you feel like you are in Africa. Ivory poachers are gunning down Africa’s last elephants and former SAS officer Ian MacAdam who leads a commando squad against them.

I should have been writing this review as I went because the book kept turning unexpected corners, changing my opinions along the way. It begins by telling the story from the perspective of the poachers, the lawmen and even the animals - a fascinating way to tell the story, but pretty graphic in several places.

When I was about halfway through the book I decided I couldn't take any more and was ready to add it to the "Did Not Finish" shelf, but since the publisher had given me the copy without cost to read and review, I felt I owed it to them to keep reading. Suddenly it turned into a love story which I certainly was not expecting, and even though I'm not much of a romantic, it added a new, interesting storyline that made me want to keep reading, though there was a sexual encounter that had me skimming for a while. My favorite part of the book was that ultimately what began as a story of the food chain ended as story of the food chain. I'll stop there to avoid spoilers.

The descriptions of the desert, the animals and the people were fascinating, though eventually became tedious. I trust they were accurate, and if so, introduced me to a part of the world I knew little about. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of foreign terms that at times made the story difficult to follow.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mandevilla Press for making the book available!

Author - 1⭐️
Story - 1/2⭐️
Ending - 1/2⭐️
Offensiveness - 1/2⭐️
Recommend - 1/2⭐️

Decent armchair adventure. Took me a while to get through it.

The Last Savanna by Mike bond.
As ivory poachers are gunning down Africa’s last elephants, former SAS officer Ian MacAdam leads a commando squad against them. He pursues the poachers through jungled mountains and searing deserts, only to find they have kidnapped a young archaeologist, Rebecca Hecht, whom he once loved and bitterly lost. He embarks on a desperate trek to save not only Rebecca but his own soul in an Africa torn apart by wars, overpopulation and the slaughter of its last wildlife. Based on the author’s own experiences pursuing elephant poachers in the wilds of East Africa, The Last Savanna is an intense personal memoir of humanity’s ancient heartland, the beauty of its perilous deserts, jungles, and savannas, and the deep, abiding power of love.
A very good read with good characters. Different to what I usually read. 4*. Netgalley and author buzz.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I am looking forward to more from this author.

The Last Savanna used a fascinating storytelling voice. I was immediately taken on a journey to a country I've never been to. Although I didn't particularly like this book, I can appreciate it as a work of art.

“The Last Savanna" was a difficult read. I expected a lyrical book that swept me into the heart of Africa and its problems, but had a lot of trouble getting into the story. It took 3 chapters before we really got to the characters-- an overly long set up. The the point of view switches between five characters, and does this multiple times in the same chapter, without a space between paragraphs to set the POVs apart-- sloppy writing and editing. The story, about MacAdam, a man who loves Africa more than his wife, agrees to help on a government-backed raid against Somali poachers, is okay. But the characters were not consistent--they had one way of thinking in the beginning and then spouted different ideals later on, as if the author took many years to write the book and later on in the book had forgotten what he'd set up at the beginning. I didn't like the end of the story. So, not recommended.

Mike Bond's The Last Savanna (Mandevilla Press 2013) is one of the most darkly beautiful books you will ever read. If it were non-fiction, you'd consider him a nature writer of the caliber of Matthiesen but more dystopian. Read these snippets:

"Like malaria, Africa. Once bitten you can never shake it."

"The shoulder-high thorn bushes grew thicker near the stream. The downslope breeze twirled their strong, dusty scents among their gnarled trunks."

"He waited for the comforting twitter of sunbirds in the streamside acacias, the muffled snuffling of warthogs, or the swish of vervet monkeys in the branches..."
..
"Shaking flies from his muzzle, he trotted through the scrub and bent his head to suck the water flashing and bubbling over the black stones. The old lioness..."
This is the story of a man who's lived his entire life in Africa's wild beauty. He's raised his children, built his ranch, and now become old and complacent. His wife has given up persuading him to leave and in his heart of hearts, he knows he'd leave her before giving up on the dream that has always included Africa, even though it seems unrequited. Like the African land around him, he's dying. His hope in the bright future that Africa always represented is being killed by poachers and corrupt governments and his wife's constant nagging to leave. As a last chance to redeem his dream, he agrees to join an old African friend who is committed to stopping the poachers that are decimating Africa's great herds. That goal dramatically changes when an internationally-recognized archaeologist he knows is kidnapped. Now, his journey has a goal that's much closer to home.

While this is his story, it is told variously through the eyes of an Eland who must risk its life for a drink of water, an African man trying to harvest the hide of a lion to pay for his sons' schooling:

"...yellow furious eyes, the impossibly broad square jaws framed in its colossal black mane nearing as the lion thrust himself up the trunk, his front paws the size of a man’s belly, their yellow curved claws shattering bark as they dug into the wood."

... and an elephant who is killed by hunters:

"The softest sweetest leaves of the baobab tree are high in the top branches, and the young elephant was determined to get them. ... She dropped to four feet and ripped away mouthfuls of lower, bitter stems, grunting at their dusty, rough taste. Without listening she heard ripping soil behind her as her sister pulled up chunks of murram grass, the crackling of boughs from a neighboring tree as old aunt yanked them down, the squeal of baby bull calf as he waited for the tasty leaves."

This is a darkly atmospheric tale of the eternal battle between man and Nature, the powerful and emotional struggle that is man's primacy and weakness, his goodness and evil, and what that means to Africa.

A few more snippets I think you'll enjoy:

"...he gathered dry leaves from the base of a thorn bush, and with his simi cut thin strips of bark from a small tamarind tree. These he piled near the lioness; then he ran to an umbrella acacia and snapped twigs from the edge of its canopy where giraffes had browsed the leaves and killed the branches. Something black moved through the gray scrub silvered by moonlight − a low, hunchbacked scurrying silhouette..."

--will be featured on my blog WordDreams Sept. 1st (http://wp.me/p90mx-40O)

In Bond’s latest adventure a special unit of soldiers in East Africa tracks down elephant poachers and searches for a female archaeologist who’s been kidnapped.
Ian MacAdam, formerly of the British Special Forces, is living an unhappy married life on an African ranch. He agrees to join a team to combat poachers targeting Kenya’s elephants, which are dangerously low in numbers. But when a trio of Somali men assaults a camp of archaeologists, it becomes personal for MacAdam. One of the people taken hostage is Rebecca Hecht, MacAdam’s former girlfriend. He braves the vast, unforgiving desert to rescue the woman he still loves. The novel is sheer intensity, depicting the immense, arid land and never-ending scenes of people trekking across it. The villains are clear from the beginning: a Samburu warrior survives the harsh desert and its resident animals only to be gunned down by a Somali poacher, simply for the warrior’s lion pelt. Despite this, the three men holding Rebecca captive—Ibrahim, Rashid and Warwar—are so strongly developed that the youngest, Warwar, is almost sympathetic (to both readers and Rebecca); though he wants to sell or ransom the woman, the other two see no value in her and would rather kill her. The fierce African heat radiates from the pages; mosquitoes zoom around characters, and the air burns MacAdam’s throat, while his perspiration blinds him. But it’s the volatile nature of nature itself that gives the story its greatest distinction. Kenya is inhabited by creatures both beautiful and menacing. That MacAdam is out to save the elephants doesn’t stop a buffalo from charging him; when Rebecca tries to escape her captors, she realizes that a trailing leopard could be a much more unpleasant enemy. Readers should brace themselves for the book’s unabated savagery, mostly, if not all, from its human characters: A scene of poachers attacking and killing elephants is not easy to forget. But it does allow for a bit of zealous glee when MacAdam convinces himself to help track down poachers “to hunt the only animal worth hunting.

I haven't been able to complete this book. I'm finding it very detailed and hard for me to follow that style of writing. I will try it again in the future.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Mike Bond and Mandevilla Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

I always enjoy Mike Bond. This is a gem of a novel, bringing us into and through parts of Africa with clarity and a sense of the heart of this country that we don't often see. The story itself is fine - a mystery well tempered and told. The jewel is the love of this world Mike Bond is able to share with us in and around his tale - the world that will not outlive us all unless we fight for change.

By the time I finished “The Last Savanna,” I felt I had read several different books by at least as many authors. This book came highly recommended, and I expected much more than I received.

The book had a quirky start, taking almost three chapters until readers are finally introduced to some of the characters. I get that the author was trying to set the tone of the story, a lengthy survival of the fittest lesson taught over and over. By the time I was halfway through the story, I had almost come to appreciate the long setup. About that time, the whole story structure began to fall apart.

Author Mike Bond had developed a fairly decent story by then. MacAdam, a man more in love with his adopted country than his wife, agrees to help on a government-backed raid against Somali poachers. When the poachers split up, three come across Rebecca and her husband. The husband runs off and the poachers kidnap Rebecca, who happens to be MacAdam’s former lover. MacAdam begins a quest to find and save Rebecca (who he still loves), and the rest of the story revolves around those two and the three poaches, Ibrahim, Rashid, and Warwar.

As the story began to pick up the pace, the author sought to flip the point of view among the five characters, and do this multiple times in the same chapter. Unfortunately, he neglected to leave the traditional space between paragraphs when doing so. At first, because I had received the book from NetGalley, I thought it might have been a “proof” copy. In order to experience the book as I thought I should, I purchased a copy from Amazon. The first surprise was that the books were identical, so either the author meant to publish it as it looks or something had happened during the upload. It was then I noticed the book had been published almost four years ago, and I was left to shake my head in frustration. It was difficult to track the characters when the formatting was sloppy (unless, of course, the author intended it to be written that way).

I settled down and continued reading, putting up with the jumbled writing. I did enjoy the way the author used his description to paint a realistic picture of Africa. Unfortunately, even that began to fade when the book started to lose its focus, both in the manner it was written as well as its characterizations. First, characters would at times begin thinking in short phrases rather than the normal sentences that had appeared in the first three quarters of the book. These short thoughts were not merely a few lines, they would go on for paragraphs. Though this only happened a few times, it was horribly distracting.

Characters who thought sanely for most of the book began to espouse beliefs totally in contrast to what readers had been told previously. When this began to happen, I lost my last shreds of faith and believability in what was transpiring. Finally, I was upset with the end of the story. Not because I had guessed the ending many, many chapters before it happened, but because I believed it would make for a weaker ending and I had hoped my guess would be incorrect.

Overall, lots of mixed feelings here. A different but okay beginning followed by some solid writing until halfway to two-thirds through, and then a muffed opportunity to finish up with a suspenseful ending. Three stars.

In a tale as sweeping as the African landscape, Bond traces the journey of elephant tusks and the men who poach them. These hunted men have reasons as varied as school tuition for children and paying the "bride price" for a beautiful young tribal woman.

Then, there are those who seek to halt the illegal trade in tusks and skins. Hunters of poachers who seek to halt the decimation: "ten years ago Kenya had three hundred thousand elephants; now we have five thousand".

As Ian MacAdam and his small group of soldiers track the poachers, they are often afraid to sleep, fearing the nocturnal animals; they sleep while walking. Their supply of water shrivels to allow only one sip per day, as they approach the nearest mapped water source. They hallucinate. They pray for death.

Camels are shot; soldiers are shot; poachers are shot. Soon, it is just MacAdam and a rescued hostage trying to put one foot in front of another.

This is an absolutely mesmerizing novel of Africa and the people and animals who live there.

I read this EARC courtesy of NetGalley and Mandevilla Press. Pub date 01/15/2014