Wilderness #66

GARDEN OF EDEN

By David Thompson

Dorchester, September 2011

Shakespeare McNair has always been happiest when living in the fringes of the frontier, ever pushing the boundaries of exploration. When an old friend tells him of a valley undisturbed by the hand of man, he just can’t resist the temptation. And so he sets off to find it with Nate King, Nate’s wife, and his own wife, Blue Water Woman. But they are about to find out that every Garden of Eden has serpents lurking in the shadows. In this valley, it’s a two-legged enemy – one that slays all intruders.

At long last Dorchester has published the latest two Wilderness stories, Seed of Evil and Garden of Eden, in a single trade paperback, the cost of which is very similar to what you would have paid if both books had been published separately as regular sized paperbacks.

Both are available as ebooks too, with Seed of Evil having been available this way for sometime, and that was how I read it when it first came out and why I’m not reviewing it alongside Garden of Eden. My review of Seed of Evil can be found here.

Garden of Eden provides a lot of suspenseful reading as the King’s and McNair’s travel into an unknown valley and find themselves being stalked by ‘something’. Fleeting glimpses and strange tracks bring rise to fears and then a desperate struggle to escape the valley. You’ll have to find out just what it is that lives here for yourself, as I don’t want to reveal who or what they are here. I will say that I have seen comment by the author that they are mentioned in books that deal with Indian Legends.

As expected from the Wilderness series this story offers everything you could want: a fast moving story that’s filled with tension, action, cracking dialogue, and lots of humour. This story also reveals more of Blue Water Woman’s past, which leads to this usually in control woman being taken over by a killing rage. Why? Again you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Now, I, and the many, many other fans of this great series can only hope that Dorchester doesn’t take quite so long to publish the next two books in the series.