Petey's Fiction Review

 

Primal Shadows

by Alan Dean Foster

Maybe he's running from his past, or, perhaps, he's running toward his future. Regardless, after a night of drinking in the bar of Port Moresby's finest hotel, and great sex with the seductive woman he met there, Steve Bohannon awakens, on the following morning, with a colossal headache, only to find his wallet and $2000 in cash and traveler's checks missing. To Bohannon's way of thinking, getting rolled is injurious to his pride; tracking down the woman who stole his money is the only thing that can restore it.

With ex-pat Sorley McCracken as guide, Bohannon travels up-country in pursuit of the lovely Tai Tennison and her ally, the legendary Ragnarok Stenhammer, into the primal shadows of Papua New Guinea's mountainous jungles, a primitive region so remote that it's virtually untouched by modern civilization. This land is home to the world's largest butterflies, the world's largest spiders and the world's largest fresh-water turtles. It's also home to crocodiles, poisonous snakes, headhunter tribes, and leeches that become unwelcome passengers with every step. If these things don't get you, then mosquitoes and biting flies will.

When at last the pursuers catch up to their quarry, the situation changes; they're recruited to serve a larger, more important cause. Gold—untold wealth—becomes the new objective, and unexpected dangers lurk at every turn as a cascading chain of events threatens to end lives, or change them forever. But, if the adventurers can survive long enough to emerge from the primal shadows of PNG's steaming jungles, they'll have money and memories—and stories to last a lifetime.

Primal Shadows author Alan Dean Foster writes in multiple genres. These include historical, horror, fantasy, western, detective, sci-fi and contemporary fiction, some of which have found their way onto the New York Times bestseller list. A traveler to exotic locations around the world, he lives in Prescott, Arizona.

Visit Alan's Web site at www.alandeanfoster.com/

Review by Phil Hanson

Click on the title to order your copy of Primal Shadows.

Copyright © 2005 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.

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