Joe Ledger has gone way off the reservation in this thriller. He had a breakdown which was likely compounded by Mr. Sunday influencing his mind from afar. He killed his tracking tags and disappeared into the darkness literally and metaphorically. While Rogue Team International tries to make sense of clues found in the Balkan hit, they keep getting hints of a big operation planned by Kuga and company. Ledger on his own is following a trail that points to Kuga's big bash. Finally there are several nice big boss battles to finish off the book while letting a few villains escape for the next round. A satisfying read.

The fact that it's a Joe Ledger book, makes me a bit bias. However, once you go Joe, you don't go back.
After the ending of the previous book, I was concerned that Jonathan Mayberry may end up going a ROGUE, and that he did! In the best way possible!
I love that Joe is a beautifully flawed human, and in this book we get a deeper glimpse into his tormented mind. And of course, he fights back the darkness within, all while kicking ass and saving the world.
Highly recommended for any Ledger fan!

‘JOE LEDGER’s world has been torn apart. The people closest to him have been savagely murdered, and Ledger is on the hunt for the killers. His already fragile psyche has cracked apart, allowing a dangerous darkness to overwhelm him.’

The one aspect of diving into a series I can never get enough of, be it novels that center around a central or group of diverse characters is the authors’ unique ability to make me the reader feel like I’ve known them for years, even though we’ve just met.

Be it friend or foe, I can’t help but succumb to the incessant urge to learn more about them as I seek answers to questions like: What makes them tick? How did they first meet?

So yes, Dear Readers, I am officially a fan of not only Joe Ledger, but also the bad*ss women and men Mayberry’s created, and I can’t wait to read more about them!

Also, sans spoilers, I will say if you’re a fan of Joe R. Lansdale books…

Well, You will have to read the book and find out for your selves. ;)

RELENTLESS—Highly Recommend!

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin, for providing me with an eGalley of RELENTLESS at the request of an honest review.

Note: I purchased the Audiobook (published by Macmillan Audio) of RELENTLESS, read by Ray Porter—who does an excellent job portraying all the characters.

Jonathan maberry never disappoints. All the Joe Ledger stuff is great. Tons of action, scifi, a little bit of horror sprinkled in. Kepp em coming!

I don't know how Maberry keeps doing it, but the new Rogue Team International just keeps getting better and better and this is only book two. I can't wait to see what happens next with Joe (poor Joe) who goes through some very dark moments in this book and the reason why is mind blowing. The rest of the team is featured and just as strong as ever Top and Bunny doing their own side-op was just as gripping and the ending... oh. my. god. There is a moment in the middle of the book that had me holding my breath, it involves Ghost (I won't say anymore), but if you've read this book then you know what I'm referring to.

If you haven't read the Joe Ledger series, I highly recommend doing so from the beginning... it's fast paced, loaded with action, and heart numbing moments that will leave you wanting more.

Jonathan Maberry delivers a stunningly insightful narrative with characters transformed by lives in the “storm lands” (what Maberry’s characters use to describe trauma) and their fight to save themselves, each other and the world. As usual, Maberry delivers a compelling action-packed narrative combined with complex characters whose interior lives resonate with readers.

[I received a free ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.]

Joe Ledger is back and it's a relentless battle for revenge. Somebody made the mistake of killing Joe's family and leaving him alive, his already fractured personality slides that much closer to having his dark side take permanent control. This second in the Rogue Team International series takes Joe so deep into the abyss he might not make it back out.

*I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book provided by Netgalley*

These books get better and better with each one! Jonathan Maberry is a masterful story teller, and Joe Ledger is one of the best characters ever created. I have read all of these books in the series, and the stories never feel repetitive or stale. The characters are amazingly written and super entertaining. I cannot get enough of these books!

Relentless was a great entrant into the world Maberry has created; strong enough to hold its own as a stand-alone novel (I had not read any of Maberry's prior Ledger novels), but with enough links to past and future stories to entice the reader to go back and look for more in the future. His action scenes are tight and well written; at no point does Maberry get sloppy or allow the combat to feel stilted or repetitive. I especially enjoyed the style of worldbuilding, as exposition felt either minimal or natural to the scene occurring. I definitely am planning on going back and reading more within this universe; this was a great summer or beach read.

Joe Ledger is back at the head of a new team. The Department of Military Science has been revamped as Rogue Team International and based out of Omfori Island in Greece. Joe is on the hunt for his arch nemesis, Raphael Santoro and his "daughter," Eve. Santoro and Eve are working as the hands for Kuga, an international arms dealer, who is an equal opportunity asshole, selling weapons to anyone who can pay for them. He has developed a new exoskeleton for combat troops that not only increases a soldier's fighting ability, it is rigged to inject a concoction that will cause the soldier to become enhanced and then destroy the combat unit by detonating a blast. Joe goes off the reservation under the thrall of something he calls the Darkness. He is operating without sanction from Mr. Church and he often does not know what he is doing during a fugue state. Ghost stays by his side, however, until he is shot and injured. Joe has to take him to a vet he knows in Florida. Joe is beginning to come back from the Darkness episode and the vet helps him further, but things are spiralling out of control. Top and Bunny have infiltrated a band of soldiers being trained to use the exoskeletons and are soon privy to details as to when the suits will be initially displayed, during a conference for all fifty-five governors of the United States and its territories. Joe has to get to LaBorde TX and hook up with Hap Collins and Leonard Pine to save the day. As he always does. Joe takes a beating and keeps on ticking. Hats off for the salute to Joe R. Lansdale. Another exhilarating adrenaline ride!

My love for the Joe Ledger series has been pretty well documented and as of late so has my disenchantment with how the books are going. This disenchantment continues with Relentless, the second book in the Rogue Team International series. To be honest, I was so disappointed with Rage that I truly had no intention of requesting Relentless. However, my love of the previous books won out, and I convinced myself that maybe Rage was just a one-off. I mean, there were a few books in the previous Joe Ledger series that I wasn't precisely over the moon about.
Relentless was a fitting title...for a book that was relentlessly boring. While it almost certainly wasn't what the author intended, the continuous recycling of the same villains means that the books have lodged themselves in a rut that seems to be getting deeper with each successive story. One that isn't helped by Maberry's relentless need to tell readers exactly how fucked up Joe Ledger currently is. Like, okay, we get it. Joe went through some horrible shit and he took a left turn at Kill -'em-all-bquerque. Completely understandable. Revolving half of a book around it? Not so understandable.
Reading Relentless quickly became a cycle of

Joe's gone dark, everyone's worried.
Oh, hi, very familiar bad guy.
Joe's gone dark, everyone's worried.
Oh, hi, second very familiar bad guy.
Joe's gone dark, everyone's worried.
Oh, hi, third very familiar bad guy.
....and so on and so forth.
While logically one can understand that yes, bad guys very much would try to attack big social events, exactly how many times are Joe and RTI going to kick bad guy ass in a crowded auditorium before Joe slips off after the big bad down a hallway so that they can fight isolated from the rest of the crowd?
And we get it. Joe is super super SUPER bad ass. Like SUPER. And Bug is really, really, really smart and good with computers. Doc Holliday is amazingly perky when things get horrible. Bunny is really big (and by the way he played volleyball and could have went to the Olympics). And Top is old for what he's doing, but super dangerous. And Church is/maybe isn't/is/maybe isn't/is/maybe isn't some sort of semi-supernatural guy that we should be super glad is on the good guy's side. Really. We. Get. It.
There are not a lot of series I follow the way that I followed this one, but I've seen it happen in those too, so part of me wonders if it's just something that happens. That authors get so stuck in a certain groove with their books that after a while they all start to sound the exact same. Or maybe they hit upon what they consider the money-making formula and just go straight for that in an effort to rake in the cash. (Which, look, writing is hard and a lot of writers don't even make enough to quit their day job, so going for what rakes in the money makes sense as a business even if it's a disservice to the story and the characters. Still sucks to see as a reader though.)
Putting aside my dissatisfaction as a long-time reader, I will say that there are suitable amounts of action and the pacing is okay but the ending felt a little weird. There was a lot of build up for something that ended up being over fairly quick and I do not feel like Maberry brought his A-game for this book. The writing felt lower-quality than expected and there was no real reason to care about anyone or anything in the story.
This was a hard review to write when I look back at the earlier books and how much affection I had for them, but it is what it is, and what it no longer is. Relentless was a painful slog for all the action that it contained therein, and I'm going to walk away from the series at this point rather than write another potentially bad review for a series I used to love.

If you enjoy VERY graphic violence that goes on and on then this ones for you. If, like me, you don’t then you won’t. Although the plot was ok I couldn’t get past the gruesomeness.
Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc

Relentless is the 2nd book in the Rogue Team International series (but it looks like there are previous Joe Ledger books too). Even though the author did a great job introducing the characters and giving a brief background, I wish I read the previous book first. Because it sure sounded like Christmas Eve was a doozy.

Mayberry is an exceptional storyteller. This book has a dark and exciting plot with non-stop, guns a-blazing action. Short chapters made the book easy to read. I look forward to reading other books from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Jonathan Maberry for a copy of "Relentless" in exchange of an honest review.

This is the sequel to Rage, which follows ten(!) previous Joe Ledger novels and numerous short stories. However, Maberry introduces all the characters with a brief background, so you can jump right in here if you want. This does give some spoilers for previous books.

At the end of Rage, the bad guys hit Ledger pretty hard, so here he goes all John Wick on them. But the rest of the team remains busy trying to foil the bad guys’ next scheme, which involves super suits and something that sounded like the loaders in Alien.

Ledger also has his dog with him, which I see in Rage. So there’s lots of fighting and blood and violence and testosterone mixed with character moments. It’s a good balance. Pacing and characters are really good. At the back of the book you’ll find Maberry’s music playlist for the book.

Language: Occasional strong language
Sexual Content: A little bit that is semi-graphic; consent is questionable
Violence: Lots—very bloody, often gruesome

Picking where we left off in Rage (JOE LEDGER/RTI #1), Maberry takes Joe Ledger down a dark path, right up to the door, then Sparta kicks him through it, slams it, leans against it and giggles madly. First it’s a Joker giggle. Then it becomes a full on Pennywise giggle.

5/5 dark and bloody little penguins seeking vengeance.
🔪🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🔪
ARC from NetGalley.

Relentless by Jonathan Mayberry

Joe Ledeger’s world has been torn apart. The people closest to him have been savagely murdered and he is on the hunt for the killers.

I don’t usually read military thrillers, but this book was filled with explosion, biowarfare, and excitement. It was very gory at times. No respect for humans. Many abbreviations that I didn’t understand..

This violent action/adventure book stars Joe Ledger, a gritty determined no-nonsense action hero, as he seeks out revenge on a couple of particularly nasty bad guys that were responsible for killing his family.

This reads like a nonstop action movie, something like a Jason Statham type, but with James Bond-like weapons and gadgets. The plot is not the most creative ever, but that doesn't really seem to be the point of the book. It was simply an action adventure with a ton of cool weapons and an unstoppable hero out for revenge.

I had not read any other books in this series, but after reading this one I feel like it probably would've added quite a bit to the story if I had been familiar with the previous books. As it stand though, it wasn't confusing, I just didn't have the same level of attachment to the characters that one might have if they had read multiple books. Still, the ending was pretty satisfying, and pretty much in line with this type of book or movie.

Overall, your enjoyment of this book will probably depend on how much you like this genre. If you're a fan of action movies with lots of shooting and violence, with standard archetype action hero leads, then I could see you enjoying this book.

I didn't know this book was part of an ongoing series until I was about halfway through. Didn't matter, though, it's easy to follow and easier to enjoy. Lots of action, lots of intrigue, and a very satisfying ending. Highly recommended!

Here we go again! We got Joe Ledger back but not the way he was. If you have read Rage, the first Rogue Team International book, or any of the DMS series, you know that Joe has been through a lot. By the way, if you haven’t read them, where have you been? Get on it! In Rage Joe was finally pushed to his breaking point. Relentless starts right up soon after the events of that book. Joe and his team are doing what they do, they are saving the world. But something snaps in Joe and he has to go it alone.

This book had a different feel than previous Joe Ledger books. They were never bright and sunny affairs. This one took that darkness to a different level. Joe was not really Joe. The change was coming. It really had to and this book was the natural next step in Joe’s journey. Usually there is the villain who is not always clear, sometimes it is a character in the present book who has a double life and sometimes it is someone from the past. Either way, we didn’t always know who the Big Bad was until late in the book. This time we know pretty quickly who all of the players are and what they are capable of doing.

Our team is split up and working toward the same goal form vastly different directions. I love the amount of Top and Bunny in this book. The two can carry a book if needed. The banter and the way they work together could drive it’s own story. Not that I want less Joe! No! Still, never too much Top and Bunny.

And TOYS! More Toys in this one and I’d like even more in the future. The way Joe and Toys interact shows the two sides of both characters in ways not apparent in the interaction of any other two characters. I wanted more Toys, and I think I’ve mentioned it in previous reviews. I also wanted more Ghost and I appreciate that, too!

Joe and Ghost have a pretty hard book here. Their relationship is probably the strongest in the book but what they have been through together tests even that. You have to love dogs to really get how strong that bond can be. Reading about that bond always gets me, but we’ve lost two of our oldest dogs during this pandemic, so it gets me in the feels a little more than usual.

Basically, Jonathan Maberry hit all of the right notes with this one. He took a character that we readers have grown to love and put him somewhere unlovable. The reader needs to see Joe in a way we don’t want to see him and we have to understand. I think he succeeded.

A new shade for a familiar Joe Ledger.

Maberry knows how to keep his readers on the edge of their seats. This Joe Ledger book definitely does that. It covers new (emotion) territory for Joe and his team and creates a vibe unlike any other in the genre.

Joe walks a very different path than Havoc Team in this one, and it is a much darker path too. One that makes you want to read through the small space between your fingers, because you don’t want to see, but can’t look away.

As with the other Ledger books, this is a non-stop action thriller that has all the tech and weapons that we crave in these types of novels. Bullets fly, people die, bad guys do bad things. The true magic comes from the dark and disturbing emotions plaguing Joe Ledger.

If you are a fan of Maberry, or any of his Ledger books, I would definitely recommend it.