A well written, very atmospheric novel. It was a quick read for me. (4-star review on Amazon)

A very interesting book. The author described Africa very well I loved all the details.

I had trouble with it keeping my interest but the story is a great coverage of the problems of Kenya. Investigating the poachers of the area who are killing the elephants. Life is tough in the area for everyone. Along the way an archeologist is kidnapped and taken with them as they travel. She eventually gets away but trying to get by on her own is tougher but she feared for her life and so took the chance.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2KHHAUVJ32L04/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8

I received an free electronic copy of this from NetGalley for my review. Wonderful book, beautiful writing. The writing is so detailed you feel like you are in Africa. Ivory poachers are gunning down Africa’s last elephants and former SAS officer Ian MacAdam who leads a commando squad against them.

I should have been writing this review as I went because the book kept turning unexpected corners, changing my opinions along the way. It begins by telling the story from the perspective of the poachers, the lawmen and even the animals - a fascinating way to tell the story, but pretty graphic in several places.

When I was about halfway through the book I decided I couldn't take any more and was ready to add it to the "Did Not Finish" shelf, but since the publisher had given me the copy without cost to read and review, I felt I owed it to them to keep reading. Suddenly it turned into a love story which I certainly was not expecting, and even though I'm not much of a romantic, it added a new, interesting storyline that made me want to keep reading, though there was a sexual encounter that had me skimming for a while. My favorite part of the book was that ultimately what began as a story of the food chain ended as story of the food chain. I'll stop there to avoid spoilers.

The descriptions of the desert, the animals and the people were fascinating, though eventually became tedious. I trust they were accurate, and if so, introduced me to a part of the world I knew little about. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of foreign terms that at times made the story difficult to follow.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mandevilla Press for making the book available!

Author - 1⭐️
Story - 1/2⭐️
Ending - 1/2⭐️
Offensiveness - 1/2⭐️
Recommend - 1/2⭐️

The Last Savanna by Mike bond.
As ivory poachers are gunning down Africa’s last elephants, former SAS officer Ian MacAdam leads a commando squad against them. He pursues the poachers through jungled mountains and searing deserts, only to find they have kidnapped a young archaeologist, Rebecca Hecht, whom he once loved and bitterly lost. He embarks on a desperate trek to save not only Rebecca but his own soul in an Africa torn apart by wars, overpopulation and the slaughter of its last wildlife. Based on the author’s own experiences pursuing elephant poachers in the wilds of East Africa, The Last Savanna is an intense personal memoir of humanity’s ancient heartland, the beauty of its perilous deserts, jungles, and savannas, and the deep, abiding power of love.
A very good read with good characters. Different to what I usually read. 4*. Netgalley and author buzz.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I am looking forward to more from this author.

The Last Savanna used a fascinating storytelling voice. I was immediately taken on a journey to a country I've never been to. Although I didn't particularly like this book, I can appreciate it as a work of art.

“The Last Savanna" was a difficult read. I expected a lyrical book that swept me into the heart of Africa and its problems, but had a lot of trouble getting into the story. It took 3 chapters before we really got to the characters-- an overly long set up. The the point of view switches between five characters, and does this multiple times in the same chapter, without a space between paragraphs to set the POVs apart-- sloppy writing and editing. The story, about MacAdam, a man who loves Africa more than his wife, agrees to help on a government-backed raid against Somali poachers, is okay. But the characters were not consistent--they had one way of thinking in the beginning and then spouted different ideals later on, as if the author took many years to write the book and later on in the book had forgotten what he'd set up at the beginning. I didn't like the end of the story. So, not recommended.

Mike Bond's The Last Savanna (Mandevilla Press 2013) is one of the most darkly beautiful books you will ever read. If it were non-fiction, you'd consider him a nature writer of the caliber of Matthiesen but more dystopian. Read these snippets:

"Like malaria, Africa. Once bitten you can never shake it."

"The shoulder-high thorn bushes grew thicker near the stream. The downslope breeze twirled their strong, dusty scents among their gnarled trunks."

"He waited for the comforting twitter of sunbirds in the streamside acacias, the muffled snuffling of warthogs, or the swish of vervet monkeys in the branches..."
..
"Shaking flies from his muzzle, he trotted through the scrub and bent his head to suck the water flashing and bubbling over the black stones. The old lioness..."
This is the story of a man who's lived his entire life in Africa's wild beauty. He's raised his children, built his ranch, and now become old and complacent. His wife has given up persuading him to leave and in his heart of hearts, he knows he'd leave her before giving up on the dream that has always included Africa, even though it seems unrequited. Like the African land around him, he's dying. His hope in the bright future that Africa always represented is being killed by poachers and corrupt governments and his wife's constant nagging to leave. As a last chance to redeem his dream, he agrees to join an old African friend who is committed to stopping the poachers that are decimating Africa's great herds. That goal dramatically changes when an internationally-recognized archaeologist he knows is kidnapped. Now, his journey has a goal that's much closer to home.

While this is his story, it is told variously through the eyes of an Eland who must risk its life for a drink of water, an African man trying to harvest the hide of a lion to pay for his sons' schooling:

"...yellow furious eyes, the impossibly broad square jaws framed in its colossal black mane nearing as the lion thrust himself up the trunk, his front paws the size of a man’s belly, their yellow curved claws shattering bark as they dug into the wood."

... and an elephant who is killed by hunters:

"The softest sweetest leaves of the baobab tree are high in the top branches, and the young elephant was determined to get them. ... She dropped to four feet and ripped away mouthfuls of lower, bitter stems, grunting at their dusty, rough taste. Without listening she heard ripping soil behind her as her sister pulled up chunks of murram grass, the crackling of boughs from a neighboring tree as old aunt yanked them down, the squeal of baby bull calf as he waited for the tasty leaves."

This is a darkly atmospheric tale of the eternal battle between man and Nature, the powerful and emotional struggle that is man's primacy and weakness, his goodness and evil, and what that means to Africa.

A few more snippets I think you'll enjoy:

"...he gathered dry leaves from the base of a thorn bush, and with his simi cut thin strips of bark from a small tamarind tree. These he piled near the lioness; then he ran to an umbrella acacia and snapped twigs from the edge of its canopy where giraffes had browsed the leaves and killed the branches. Something black moved through the gray scrub silvered by moonlight − a low, hunchbacked scurrying silhouette..."

--will be featured on my blog WordDreams Sept. 1st (http://wp.me/p90mx-40O)

In Bond’s latest adventure a special unit of soldiers in East Africa tracks down elephant poachers and searches for a female archaeologist who’s been kidnapped.
Ian MacAdam, formerly of the British Special Forces, is living an unhappy married life on an African ranch. He agrees to join a team to combat poachers targeting Kenya’s elephants, which are dangerously low in numbers. But when a trio of Somali men assaults a camp of archaeologists, it becomes personal for MacAdam. One of the people taken hostage is Rebecca Hecht, MacAdam’s former girlfriend. He braves the vast, unforgiving desert to rescue the woman he still loves. The novel is sheer intensity, depicting the immense, arid land and never-ending scenes of people trekking across it. The villains are clear from the beginning: a Samburu warrior survives the harsh desert and its resident animals only to be gunned down by a Somali poacher, simply for the warrior’s lion pelt. Despite this, the three men holding Rebecca captive—Ibrahim, Rashid and Warwar—are so strongly developed that the youngest, Warwar, is almost sympathetic (to both readers and Rebecca); though he wants to sell or ransom the woman, the other two see no value in her and would rather kill her. The fierce African heat radiates from the pages; mosquitoes zoom around characters, and the air burns MacAdam’s throat, while his perspiration blinds him. But it’s the volatile nature of nature itself that gives the story its greatest distinction. Kenya is inhabited by creatures both beautiful and menacing. That MacAdam is out to save the elephants doesn’t stop a buffalo from charging him; when Rebecca tries to escape her captors, she realizes that a trailing leopard could be a much more unpleasant enemy. Readers should brace themselves for the book’s unabated savagery, mostly, if not all, from its human characters: A scene of poachers attacking and killing elephants is not easy to forget. But it does allow for a bit of zealous glee when MacAdam convinces himself to help track down poachers “to hunt the only animal worth hunting.

I haven't been able to complete this book. I'm finding it very detailed and hard for me to follow that style of writing. I will try it again in the future.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Mike Bond and Mandevilla Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

I always enjoy Mike Bond. This is a gem of a novel, bringing us into and through parts of Africa with clarity and a sense of the heart of this country that we don't often see. The story itself is fine - a mystery well tempered and told. The jewel is the love of this world Mike Bond is able to share with us in and around his tale - the world that will not outlive us all unless we fight for change.

By the time I finished “The Last Savanna,” I felt I had read several different books by at least as many authors. This book came highly recommended, and I expected much more than I received.

The book had a quirky start, taking almost three chapters until readers are finally introduced to some of the characters. I get that the author was trying to set the tone of the story, a lengthy survival of the fittest lesson taught over and over. By the time I was halfway through the story, I had almost come to appreciate the long setup. About that time, the whole story structure began to fall apart.

Author Mike Bond had developed a fairly decent story by then. MacAdam, a man more in love with his adopted country than his wife, agrees to help on a government-backed raid against Somali poachers. When the poachers split up, three come across Rebecca and her husband. The husband runs off and the poachers kidnap Rebecca, who happens to be MacAdam’s former lover. MacAdam begins a quest to find and save Rebecca (who he still loves), and the rest of the story revolves around those two and the three poaches, Ibrahim, Rashid, and Warwar.

As the story began to pick up the pace, the author sought to flip the point of view among the five characters, and do this multiple times in the same chapter. Unfortunately, he neglected to leave the traditional space between paragraphs when doing so. At first, because I had received the book from NetGalley, I thought it might have been a “proof” copy. In order to experience the book as I thought I should, I purchased a copy from Amazon. The first surprise was that the books were identical, so either the author meant to publish it as it looks or something had happened during the upload. It was then I noticed the book had been published almost four years ago, and I was left to shake my head in frustration. It was difficult to track the characters when the formatting was sloppy (unless, of course, the author intended it to be written that way).

I settled down and continued reading, putting up with the jumbled writing. I did enjoy the way the author used his description to paint a realistic picture of Africa. Unfortunately, even that began to fade when the book started to lose its focus, both in the manner it was written as well as its characterizations. First, characters would at times begin thinking in short phrases rather than the normal sentences that had appeared in the first three quarters of the book. These short thoughts were not merely a few lines, they would go on for paragraphs. Though this only happened a few times, it was horribly distracting.

Characters who thought sanely for most of the book began to espouse beliefs totally in contrast to what readers had been told previously. When this began to happen, I lost my last shreds of faith and believability in what was transpiring. Finally, I was upset with the end of the story. Not because I had guessed the ending many, many chapters before it happened, but because I believed it would make for a weaker ending and I had hoped my guess would be incorrect.

Overall, lots of mixed feelings here. A different but okay beginning followed by some solid writing until halfway to two-thirds through, and then a muffed opportunity to finish up with a suspenseful ending. Three stars.

In a tale as sweeping as the African landscape, Bond traces the journey of elephant tusks and the men who poach them. These hunted men have reasons as varied as school tuition for children and paying the "bride price" for a beautiful young tribal woman.

Then, there are those who seek to halt the illegal trade in tusks and skins. Hunters of poachers who seek to halt the decimation: "ten years ago Kenya had three hundred thousand elephants; now we have five thousand".

As Ian MacAdam and his small group of soldiers track the poachers, they are often afraid to sleep, fearing the nocturnal animals; they sleep while walking. Their supply of water shrivels to allow only one sip per day, as they approach the nearest mapped water source. They hallucinate. They pray for death.

Camels are shot; soldiers are shot; poachers are shot. Soon, it is just MacAdam and a rescued hostage trying to put one foot in front of another.

This is an absolutely mesmerizing novel of Africa and the people and animals who live there.

I read this EARC courtesy of NetGalley and Mandevilla Press. Pub date 01/15/2014

The author put so much description in each sentence the story barely advanced. And I was constantly trying to decifer whether the person or animal was imagining or it was actually happening. Very confusing, couldnt finish the book.

An intense psychological thriller that takes you on a journey of loss, hope and redemption. MacAdam loved Africa but Africa was destroying his marriage or was it really himself?
This novel delves deep within the main characters beliefs and hearts and brings about a full circle of life. Loyalties and friendships are questioned. Dangers all around and who can protect you? The story was believable and well built. The characters were strong and lots of emotions. I felt terrified for the characters and wasn't sure who to root for. Fantastic read.

This book pulls you in with the first chapter, a vivid description of life and death on the savanna. This is the third book by Mike Bond that I have read. One of his strengths as a writer is the quality of his descriptions of people, places, and events; at times, you feel like you are actually there. This was another enjoyable book by Mr. Bond. The book focuses on poaching in Africa, but also addresses broader issues of how Westerners have transformed Africa and African societies (not always for the best), our relationship with the world/nature, the power and importance of love, religious beliefs and beliefs regarding the value and status of women (the poachers in this story are Somali Muslims), violence, corruption, etc. One of the aspects of the book that I particularly liked was that it alternated between Macadam (Welsh, ex-military, has lived in Kenya for years, reluctant participant in anti-poacher unit), who is questioning what he wants from life and whether he has a purpose to remain in Africa, and three of the Somali poachers, in particular Warwar, the younger of the three, who is trying to prove himself to the others, but whose actions often bring increased problems, and who often thinks deeply about Allah, Islamic beliefs/practices, and clan dynamics. Adding a personal element to the chase of the poachers, it is discovered that three of the poachers, who had split off and headed north with the poached elephant tusks and lion skin, had attacked an archeological expedition and kidnapped a white woman (Rebecca), who happens to be a former love interest of Macadam, providing him with a renewed purpose for catching the poachers. The interaction between Warwar and Rebecca is quite interesting. The ending is somewhat surprising, but also rather fitting.

I have always wanted to go to Africa to see the animals and the whole African safari experience. Thanks to Mike Bond, I just did that with The Last Savanna. What a beautifully written book. With each page you find yourself saying WOW.