Review: Devotees will love, but this modernized, quasi-mythology thriller on steroids is not for everyone.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 17, 2014
Mythical, an e-book by C. E. Martin is the first of his Stone Soldiers series in which, immediately following the dedication, he offers a most apt caveat: "This novel contains graphic violence and pulp action that may be too extreme for sensitive readers."After a prologue where a huge giant rips the hearts out of a couple of travelers, the story unfolds with a group of high school graduates celebrating with a trip with their bikes into the Arizona desert. Here they come upon a burnt-out boat with a badly wounded corpse. They leave and bivouac for the night where they are awakened by arrival of the formerly presumed dead man now transformed into a living large, heavily muscled person. They discover that he is impervious to knife thrusts and bullets and really is quite friendly. Two of the teens continue to accompany him and discover this almost indestructible man is part of a governmental organization whose mission is to find and eliminate the mythical figure to which we were introduced in the Prologue.As the author states, the tale is replete with "graphic violence and pulp action". As such, it is well done and might best be described as a story dealing with a variety of modernized quasi-mythology that has been placed on steroids. Aficionados should enjoy. Reviewed by John H. Manhold, award winning fiction/non-fiction author.