Brief Book Review for: 'The Golden City' (Author John Twelve Hawks) (2009)

 4/5 Stars ****
The Golden City is a novel by action/sci-fi author John Twelve Hawks. It was released in the USA in September of 2009, and it is the 3rd book in the Fourth Realm Trilogy. I highly recommend this series if you are a fan of sci-fi adventure books that have a fast pace and lots of action (eg Dan Brown books), because I can tell you by experience that you will not want to put this book down and will likely read the entire thing in one or just a few sittings. The 3 books in this trilogy follow a Harlequin-warrior named Maya and a Traveler named Gabriel, and many of the people around them as they fight an endless battle against a secret organization called the Tabula (aka the Brethren) who control the human population via most of the governments in the world, corporations, surveillance systems, financial transactions, and 1984-style Big Brother tactics. The whole lot of which is termed the Vast Machine. So they are the resistance fighting the never-ending struggle against this Vast Machine and those who seek total control and total force over all humanity. The themes are very similar to those of The Matrix, and they confront real life realities about many of the new technologies that have actually infiltrated our global society, the erosion of privacy and individual freedoms in the name of security, and of course what it all means from a somewhat schizophrenic point of view...its just a story kids....really...Check this trilogy out if you are into sci-fi, conspiracy thrillers, and lots of action.

Brief Book Review for 'The Dark River' by John Twelve Hawks (2007)

The Dark River (2007
  by Author John Twelve Hawks
My Rating:  4/5 Stars ****

I just finished the second book in this Fourth Realm Trilogy, titled The Dark River (published in 2007) by mysterious author John Twelve Hawks. This book is a continuation of the first (titled The Traveler (2005)), and now I have just started to read the third. I highly recommend these books to anybody, though you may come out of reading them just a bit paranoid and worried about loss of privacy in the modern world we are ever-creating and expanding with all of the new technologies that allow one's every move and decision to be monitored, evaluated, and judged by artificial intelligence programs (great, just great!). This book, like the first, and I presume the 3rd as well, is an action-thriller and you will have trouble putting it down once you get into the story a bit, as you will constantly want to know what is going to happen next. There is a bit of a sci-fi touch to this book as well and the style is reminiscent of Dan Brown, although I am not sure author's like to be compared like that but that is my take after reading the first two books. Nonetheless, like Dan Brown's books, I can easily see this series being made into a movie trilogy. For more info on this book check out the wikipedia page HERE, and remember, its just a story....really......!