I received an free electronic copy of this from NetGalley for my review. Wonderful book, beautiful writing. He writes in a knowledgeable, descriptive format with a theme that flows into an exciting story.

A rollicking adventure set int he wilds of Africa. Told from the POV from both the ex soldiers trying to save the elephants and the opposing poachers whom are trying to earn money to support their families this puts a different twist on a familiar story. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the arc.

Absolutely brilliant. Likely the best thing I've read this year. Plot, character, action & timeliness make for an exceptional read. More like this, PLEASE!

Great novel, highly recommend for those who enjoy the genre. Will be recommending for immediate purchase.

When I accepted this book I did not realize I had read it before. I had not been good about reviews when I read it. The book shows the clash of cultures and ways of life. How do you live in such a harsh part of the world? The author describes the beauty as well as harshness. I don't find the characters all that interesting. I was more caught up in the landscapes and animals. I liked the book.

The Last Savanna is an early Mike Bond novel set in Africa. The descriptions are wonderful, but the story of chasing poachers and a trek through the desert didn’t resonate enough with me. The characters are well drawn, but it’s too far out of my mystery comfort zone, though I love his later Pono books.

Wow, this was very different. The author let us follow inside the thoughts of every single character including the animals. Took a little while to get into but it was great. The end did surprise me though but that is good. Often the end is to predictable. I really liked this story. I have to thank #MandevillaPress and #Netgalley for letting me read The Last Savanna by Mike Bond.

I've read several books by Mike Bond and I've enjoyed them all. This one was no exception. Fast paced and easy to read. I highly recommend this book.

I really wanted to like this book but sadly just not for me.
The writing is good but characterisation is very important to me and I couldn't engage with any of them. I'm sure The Last Savanna will appeal to a lot of people but I'm not one of them.

Be ready for a lot of surprises. Lots of unexpected twists and turns. Great read. This is the third book by Mr. Bond that I have read and I have 'SNOW' waiting in the wings. A real adventure - this time in the deserts of Africa!! Makes you feel like you're there. I know I read it with a drink always available.
It seems fantastic that these stories are based on his real life experiences!!
Another of Mike Bond's book recommended.

I found The Last Savanna a very descriptive book that makes you really feel and see what's going on while you read it. There are a couple of parts where you are reading the thoughts of a poor lion and elephant when they are being killed and I literally felt sick due to how awful it all was.
Several times while reading this book I really had to stop and wonder how sad it is that there are humans on earth that can the things described because they are just so desperate to live and have no other choice.
You constantly feel sorry for all of the characters and there really is no positive things I can mention, but I guess this dark and desperate mood is exactly what the author was going for to really open up the eyes of the reader.
I did struggle to finish reading this book and really had to force myself to push through to the end. The ending did surprise me and made me feel even more disappointed because it definitely wasn't what I was expecting to happen. After reading The Last Savanna I felt extremely glad that I don't live in those conditions or have to deal with the issues raised on a daily basis.
In all honesty I just found this book really sad. I know that the author is trying to get a very important message across about what happens in this part of the world so I guess they've done a good job.

I have found out that I just don't like reading Mike Bond's work.  This should have been a good book, but I don't like his stuff.

I cannot in good faith give a review of this book because I couldn't get past Chapter 6. The first chapter immediately drew me and held me tight. The next five completely lost me. I kept falling asleep in the middle of each chapter and finally gave up after finishing the fifth. It may have gotten better, I just don't know. And never will. This one is going back on the shelf.

A very well written book. The description of East Africa made me want to know more about the area. A very good read and thought provoking.

DNF at 60%

The book blurb does not accurately reflect what this novel is actually about. Instead of receiving a novel about poaching and a group who are fighting against it we get a bland, cliche filled novel.

The beginning was okay as the reader is introduced to the poaches at work. The reader gets to view the poachers as people with dreams, goals and troubles and not just as monsters. I liked this as I've never liked one-dimensional baddies. Once MacAdam was introduced to the novel it took a turn for the worst. He was an unremarkable and unlikable character. Then Rebecca was added as a love interest and the only feature she introduces to the novel is for a prize to be rescued/one. I also disliked the writing style as I found it too convoluted, I understand Mike Bond was trying to describe the wonder of Africa but it just came off as long, unnecessary and boring.

If I could describe this novel in one cliche it would be "damsel in distress."

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.

The Last Savanna is a gritty thrilling mystery. While i like the the writing style and the story line,I found the book much too violent for my tastes. But I guess that is the way of life in the Savanna!

This book was not my cup of tea. Set in Africa, MacLean is an Englishman who leaves his wife to go hunt ivory poachers. Simultaneously, the book follows Warwar, one of the poachers, after he kills a bull (male elephant) in revenge for killing his brother (and for the ivory, of course). I made it through about a third of the book before I stopped. The story seemed disjointed, and I was constantly getting lost. Warwar’s alone.... and all of the sudden people are around him.... he’s chasing the bull, and all the sudden the bull is dead? I think the writing style and the subject matter weren’t meshing with my interests, causing me to accidentally miss parts of the story. Other key details turned me off, such as the poachers drinking a mixture of camel blood and milk. This is a very strong, masculine story that I’m sure will appeal to a lot of people, just not me.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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.