Review: A Chimeric Illusion
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2013
The cursed city, Mao Balegh,is the ruins of an ancient  site where Genghis Khan, mad with power, and red-eyed with blood thirst revenge because he blamed the citizens for killing his favorite grandson, slaughtered 100,000 people. Later, Buddhist monks inhabited the area until it was destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.Army Ranger Sergeant Jordan Stone, a team leader for the Joint Expedition Forensic Facility (JEFF),receives news that an archaeologist group has been massacred amidst the ruins of Shahr-e-Gholghol.A ten year old girl is the only traumatized survivor. No other bodies were found, earning speculation that they were carried off by a leap of leopards. A belief arose that the girl was possessed by an escaped djinn.Rollins and Cantrell meld their skills in this intricate adventure by blending action, historical fact and fiction with the mysterious unknown.A transmission, barely discernible, was supposedly in Bactrian. "A lost language of  Afghanistan. It has not been spoken since....for centuries." The whispery words said, "The girl is ours."This short story version is an introduction for the Rollins and Cantrell New series, The Blood Gospel, which is the first book in the Order of the Sanguine series.