Review: Holmes has his Watson, Ambassador Yates has his Commander Sharp
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 15, 2014
Young handsome Brad Williams raises the bar for fiendishly clever writing and for the courage to engage the reader of this series of stories of which CHADWICK YATES AND THE FOREST LABYRINTH is but the second installment in an ongoing collection. Worldly information includes a degree in journalism, which he used as a former Knoxville News Sentinel writer and magazine freelancer. Outside the box Brad is an active outdoorsman - surfing, hiking, camping caving, rock climbing - and international traveler currently living and writing in Taiwan.So important is Brad Williams introduction of this new series of tales under the name of THE ADVENTURES OF CHADWICK YATES that it seems appropriate to offer the author's description Yates' character rather than a mere summary of this volume 2 story: `Brazen, reckless, and venturesome to a fault, the Ambassador to Tanzia [Chadwick Yates] lives to sustain a consuming addiction to discovery, mortal thrill, and pleasure.  He is admirably suited to the task, being of robust physique and good digestion. A versatile, talented man, his primary gifts include an expert's shooting ability, excellent perceptions, a quick grasp of languages, and a devil-may-care adaptation to native cultures and camping in uncharted places. Having lost, in part, his soul's civility by living without laws among the savage, his often tactless remarks and condescending sentiments are as subtle as a meat cleaver and can be scandalous to any person of refinement, a fact to which he is either ignorant or uncaring.  Despite his educated vocabulary, he is capable of the vulgarity and forwardness of a dockhand, and so may be called one who lacks all traces of propriety.  However, if it serves him, he can call upon a mock social grace that a silver-tongued statesman would envy.  Even at his most unguarded and candid, his overconfidence and shamelessness endear him to no one.  Those who do by strange circumstances come to travel with Yates, however, cannot deny he is the very ideal of a woodsman, being adept in all matters pertaining to leisurely self-reliance in wild lands.  Through long and sustained practice, his ability to abide outdoors is masterly and second-nature. He is also a marked hedonist, prone to indiscretions with excitants -- particularly Faerie potions, coffee, tea, cigars, pipes, and snuff -- as well as with women and wagers.  He pretends to no code of honor or morality.  He makes his few friends through the sharing of trials, and he makes war without dread.  Boastful and proud among natives and in company with others, he refuses to be dissuaded from any desperate enterprise where even a slight chance of victory remains, and the well-being of those around him he treats as secondary to his own pursuit of action.  In a fray, he becomes an enraged fiend -- stern, void of all compassion, heedless, and fierce -- such that his own allies fear the danger that seems to surround him like an aura.  When hunting he is the shrewdest of predators, and when cornered, he is as unpredictably deadly as cape buffalo surrounded by lions.  He survives even outnumbered combat again and again through his unequaled self-styled gunmanship.  Though a keen-eyed, exceptional marksman, he relies moreso on rapid ammunition cycling and swift, posthaste aiming rather than precise accuracy, and he adapts a peculiar calmed state-of-mind when thus shooting so expeditiously.  He possesses the duality of one who is as cool as a surgeon until the scale begins to tip against him, at which exact point only he becomes as volatile as nitroglycerin.'This description of Yates by Brad Williams is far more important to the potential reader of this series, because it is obvious after one volume that the entire series will be addicting. Yates is as compelling as Harry Potter and James Bond and Sherlock Holmes etc. It is hoped this except will encourage all lovers of masculine adventure to plug in! Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, March 14