Legend: An Event Group Thriller (Event Group Thrillers)

David Golemon

Edition	Mass Market Paperback
List Price	$7.99
	$7.99 (Save 0%)

Published by	St. Martin's Paperbacks
Release date	2008-07-01
ISBN	0312945949
Availability	Usually ships in 24 hours

The Event Group is comprised of the nation?s most brilliant men and women in the fields of science, philosophy, and the military. Led by Major Jack Collins, their job is to find the truth behind the world?s greatest unsolved myths. And this time, Collins and his crew will dare to uncover a terrifying secret?about the long-vanished tribe of the Incas?that?s buried deep within the Amazon Basin.

The last expedition into the depths and darkness of the Amazon claimed the lives of a female professor and her team. Now the Event Group, using cutting-edge technology exclusively designed by the U.S. military, will travel to the ends of the earth?from Brazil to the Little Bighorn to the Arlington National Cemetery?to bring new meaning to an ancient disaster?or bury the legend forever?or die trying.

Customer Reviews - courtesy of Amazon.com ( Marked4Sale.com is not responsible for review content )

Golemon's 'Legend', A Tedious Read

David Golemon's book reminds me of a low budget Hollywood suspense thriller released in the motion picture graveyard of February and staring Vin Diesel or 'The Rock'. It's written on an almost juvenile level with very little depth and contains dialog that is often awkward or downright cheesy.

I'm surprised by the positive reviews, as I found the book to be a shallow cookie cutter story line that might make you wonder if IKEA might have suddenly entered the book publishing business.

The story revolves around the mysterious 'Event Group', which is yet another secretive government agency; as if the CIA, FBI, NSA, and Secret Service weren't enough. But the Event Group is apparently more important than its peers, as is treats the other agencies like red-haired step-children compared to itself.

At times, the book is quite tedious to read, as you are well aware of what is going to happen over the next 25-50 pages, but are forced to endure the vanilla action scenes.

Picture stereotypical action hero running through a barrage of bullets, never failing to escape injury, but taking plenty of bad guys down with him, while his enemies can't seem to hit the broadside of a barn, even though they are 'highly trained' military personnel and hold every possible tactical advantage.

As for the characters, Golemon apparently feels character development equates to giving a character a name, a gender and describing their professional background in science, government and military service; though somewhere in story, I do believe I spotted a token black guy.

As such, you could care less about any of the characters and they are little more than a name and a rank.

The story moves along quickly, but it is a pretty horrid plot. Without spoiling the suspense for you (some sarcasm there), let's just say that it is very convenient that some of the worlds most excavated historical sites suddenly turn up large artifacts the week of this story unfolding.

'Hmmm, who knew this treasure chest had anything useful in it. We should have opened it a long time ago.'

I also found several editing issues throughout the book, but without bogging down this review, I'll let them be. Just be aware that a literature masterpiece, this book is not.

All-in-all, I'd be surprised if Golemon could get better than a 'C' in a college creative writing class and I'm surprised he was ever published.

In summary, this novel is almost 'fan fiction' modeled after any number of existing story lines, and Golemon just changed the names and the setting. Ok, it's not quite that generic, but its close.

Unless you're stuck in a situation where you have to buy a book from a grocery store isle to alleviate your boredom, I'd certainly pass on anything written by Golemon. Even if, there has to be something else available. At the very least, read something else again; you'll get very much the same experience but with better writing.

Not Just a Legend this Event

Legend, the second installment of the Event Group series is in many ways very different than the first book. The first installment is very fast paced, lots of snappy dialog, the action non-stop, and it is one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Also, EVENT scared the bejeezus out of me. The style of writing in book one is just different than this book. Not worse, just not the same. Golemon switches writing gears and pens this book in a more literary style. I thought this one was just a bit long and drawn out but it pays off at the end. The reader must have a bit of patience and give the author their trust. The first half of the book is a slow build, a warm up approach that in my opinion does take too long, Also, there are way too many characters bouncing all over the place too fast like Mexican Jumping Beans. The reader feels like a ping pong ball ricocheting hither and yon, finding it hard to keep track of who is who and what their part was. In book one there is more character development to set up the main key players. You dont see that here. This book falls under the assumption that you already know who they are and why they do what they do. So I dont think you could really read Legend, without reading Event first, or you'd be floundering a bit as to what is going on and why the Group does what they do. But even though this needed a tad bit of editing, and although there were too many characters and one too many side plots, the author does manage to weave this convoluted story into one heck of great story. He pulls all the threads together very nicely so that when you are done, you are happier than you were during the first half of the story. One thing that I thought was better in this installment was that the action scenes were more believable, not so over-the-top James Bond-like. I have to admit on a whole, looking at the big picture, Event was better for me. It was more exciting and had you on the edge of your seat, and as I said earlier, it was much scarier. When reading Event, I could barely breathe. Legend is still excellent, it just holds a steadier pace and maintains about the same level of thrill and intrique from start to finish. I was not scared at all in this book. Golemon is creative, and he is a good writer, one worth watching in the future. The literary writing style in this book was better I think, and the scare factor was better in book one. So I loved them both for different reasons and would highly recommend them both. I just ordered book three and can not wait to dive in. This is fun stuff for sure, a sort of blending of Robert Doherty's Area 51 series and the television show Stargate SG1. Pure entertainment at it's best!

A Good Adventure

I stumbled across this book by accident. I'd never heard of either the author or the Event Group, yet when I saw his photo in the back, it looked awful familiar.

This is a long story and has lots of twist, turns, characters, and locations. Though some may find it confusing, I had no trouble following along with things except toward the end when everything came together and I had some trouble keeping track of who was who. My biggest problem was his mixing of points of view within scenes. He does plenty of that, yet it wasn't so bad it turned me off. It has all the elements of a good action/adventure/thriller, and even has some icky bugs in it. It is good plot driven, third person thrills, from start to finish. Even the implausible aspects were not enough to turn me off. After all, it's fiction!

I can't say he's just as good, or better than James Rollins, but he still writes an excellent story that kept my attention. Recommended.

Warning - don't read this book!!!

The book is the worst piece of dog do-do I've ever "tried" to read. I couldn't get through much more than a hundred pages before I wanted to fling it to the moon. One of the biggest problems with the book is that the story leaps from one side of the world to the other, without giving you a chance to find out who is who and how all of it ties together. There are some creatures running amok in Brazilian Amazonia and then there's anthrax in some old boat on the island of Okinawa. There are apparent good guys in Washington; apparent bad guys in Spain. And the characterizations are as limp as a festering dinosaur. The book jacket equated this book with the work of Cussler and Rollins. Wrong! This Golemon writes like a teenager who seen too many movies based on comic books. (Hey, dude, the conquistadors didn't use flintlocks in the early 1500s; they used matchlocks!) I sure wasted my money on this tripe. Anybody need $8.00 worth of toilet paper?

Fantastic!

What a great second effort from this author. This was an exciting story from start to finish and personally I thought it was better than the frist book Goleman wrote. I am anxiously awaiting the third installment of the Event Group. Very good characters and great story lines. Sometimes these kinds of books get formulaic, but so far Goleman has avoided that pitfall. Way to go!