New Release: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION by David Bruns and JR Olson

A military thriller by two US Navy veterans that could be ripped from today’s headlines

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Patriot Games meets The Fourth Protocol in this riveting story of modern-day nuclear terrorism.

In 2003, the world watched as coalition forces toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, then searched—unsuccessfully—for the weapons of mass destruction they were certain existed.

None were ever found, but they do exist. On the eve of the invasion, a handful of nuclear weapons was smuggled out of Iraq and hidden in the most unlikely of places—Iran.

Now, as the threat of WMDs fades into a late-night punch line, a shadowy Iranian faction waits for the perfect moment to unleash Saddam Hussein’s nuclear legacy on the West.

Brendan McHugh, a Navy SEAL, meets a mysterious Iranian diplomat on a raid in Iraq. His former girlfriend and FBI linguist discovers a link to Iran among a group of captured jihadis. And pulling it all together is a CIA analyst who can’t forget about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs—even if it costs him his career.

What the reviewers are saying

(Don’t miss Ceri London’s review below!)

 “Fans of Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, or Nelson DeMille should feel right at home with this story of lost nukes, Navy SEALS, intelligence agency operatives, and up-to-minute global politics.”

“An intense, wild ride, hang on to your hats.”

“WMD weaves global politics and fundamentalism with love and hard-hitting action, all against a backdrop of real-world events. A…scary exploration of what might have been!”

“A visual page-turner, WMD is art that imitates life.”

 

AVAILABLE IN PRINT & EBOOK

 Amazon

Barnes & Noble

 

About the Authors

 

JR and David

 

David Bruns and JR Olson are both graduates of the US Naval Academy and share a combined 35 years of service in the US Navy.

Weapons of Mass Deception is their first co-authored work.  For more information, visit davidbruns.com

 

MY REVIEW

 

Weapons of Mass Deception by David Bruns

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There were scenes of action in Weapons of Mass Deception when I just knew that the two authors must have had so much fun plotting out this book. Their real-life military experience shines through, adding even more credibility to a political thriller that sometimes tracks so closely to recent events I began to wonder if the authors possessed a crystal ball at the time of writing. The level of research gave me a greater appreciation of the complexities of life and politics in the Middle East than I had before.

The story captures snapshots of the lives of six flawed and interesting characters covering a wide spectrum of professional and personal developments across several years, the steady pace enlivened with intense scenes of military action and personal drama. Every now and again the lives of these six characters cross over, enough for the reader to understand the significance, sometimes ahead of the characters creating an air of looming suspense. Always in the background is the menacing threat that the world is about to discover the whereabouts of some famous missing nuclear weapons.

I loved how the three baddies in this story were given equal billing with WMD’s heroes. The back stories of Hashem Aboud, Rafiq Roshed, and U.S. Navy officer Brendan McHugh are particularly well drawn. For me, Brendan was the main hero, oh so hopeless with his personal relationships, but I found myself as much immersed in Rafiq’s personal story as I was rooting for Brendan and FBI Special Agent Liz Soroush to get their act together.

Beautifully written, convincingly detailed, and professionally edited, WMD weaves global politics and fundamentalism with love and hard-hitting action, all against a backdrop of real-world events. A well thought out thriller, but also a fascinating and scary exploration of what might have been!

Highly recommended!

(I received an advance review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.)

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TWO EXCITING NEW RELEASES BY SCI FI AUTHOR DAVID BRUNS

Author David Bruns has released Sacrifice, his third book in the Dream Guild Chronicles as well as an Amish science fiction story, The Yesterday Adjustment.

Followers of my blog will know that  I am enjoying his Dream Guild series and my review of his latest release, Sacrifice, will be published very shortly. Suffice to say, I loved it!

In the meantime, an introduction to both releases by the author:

The science fantasy series, The Dream Guild Chronicles, tells a different kind of first contact story—one from the alien’s point of view.

IRRADIANCE, Book One, imagines the kind of dystopian world you might get if you paired Big Brother from 1984 with A Wrinkle in Time. Maribel, a scientist, uncovers an ecological disaster that makes her reexamine everything she thought she knew about her Community. In desperation, Maribel flees her home world with her family and a few friends.

In SIGHT, Book Two, the storyline focuses on Sariah, Maribel’s daughter. Her parents are frantic to find her a new home safe from the long arm of the Community. But new worlds are fraught with new dangers, and SIGHT will keep you on the edge of your seat as you follow Sariah trying to navigate the superstitions of hunter-gatherer tribal culture.

Now imagine Lost in Space crash landing into an ancient Incan civilization and you have SACRIFICE, Book Three of The Dream Guild Chronicles.

If crash landing isn’t bad enough, a crew member is taken captive by the natives. A rescue attempt, a firefight and one crewman is left for dead.

But he’s very much alive.

Alone, light-years from everyone who cares about him, Gideon navigates royal politics, tribal rituals, and ancient prophecies as he struggles to take back the artifact that will let him reconnect with his family.

And if you’re in the mood for something shorter, you might want to try The Yesterday Adjustment.

Synopsis:

Washington crossing the Delaware, Truman dropping the atomic bomb, TRACE rebels capturing the first Transport portal at Columbia. All examples of inflection events that fundamentally altered the trajectory of mankind’s future.

After more than a half-century at war, Transport is desperate for a way to defeat the rebels once and for all. Enter Damien Strickland, Time Operative agent. His mission: posing as an Amish man, go back in time and make sure the rebel attack on the Columbia portal fails.

The mission takes an unexpected turn when he meets Amos Troyer, the man who will grow up to become the feared leader of the rebel forces. But Amos in this timeline is only a harmless sixteen year old Amish boy.

Set in the rich Amish science-fiction world of Michael Bunker’s PENNSYLVANIA, The Yesterday Adjustment is James Bond meets Harrison Ford in the The Witness.

 

About the author:  DAVID BRUNS

I grew up on a small farm in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. We didn’t have a TV, so my reading habit gradually grew into a reading obsession. After high school, I was accepted to the United States Naval Academy where I earned a Bachelors of Science in Honors English (That’s not a typo. I’m probably the only English major you’ll ever meet who had to take multiple semesters of calculus, physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, naval architecture and weapons systems just so I could get to read some Shakespeare. It was totally worth it.)

I spent six years as a commissioned officer in the nuclear-powered submarine force chasing Russian submarines. Then the Cold War ended and I became a civilian. For the next two decades, I schlepped my way around the globe as an itinerant executive in the high-tech sector, and even did a stint with a Silicon Valley startup.

In 2013, I took a break from corporate life and wrote a book. I enjoyed it so much that I wrote another (better) book, the first in the science fantasy series, The Dream Guild Chronicles.

My wife and I are self-confessed travel junkies. We’re immensely proud of the fact that both our children had to get extra pages in their passports in order to fit all their visa stamps. Together, we’ve visited over two dozen different countries and almost all fifty states, but Minnesota is home.

Where to find David Brun’s work:

IRRADIANCE:  http://amzn.com/B00IRG97SK

SIGHT:  http://amzn.com/B00KLQ6AB6

SACRIFICE:  http://amzn.com/B00OQTE9D0

The Yesterday Adjustment:  http://amzn.com/B00OJFP2DW

Website: http://davidbruns.com

 

Review for SIGHT: The Dream Guild Chronicles – Book Two by David Bruns

Sight by David Bruns

In the exciting sequel to Irradiance, it’s been four months since the six refugees fled the dystopian Community of Sindra, and already the Joined adults are showing signs of sickness. In their search for a new home, time is not their ally.

A routine planetary survey goes horribly wrong, leaving a native boy near death. In a desperate attempt to save his life, the boy is given a transfusion of Sariah’s blood—and the crew makes an amazing discovery.

Sariah is adopted into the boy’s clan as the Fountain of Dreams, the mysterious girl from the stars who brought them the gift of dreams. But superstitions run deep in the clan and not everyone is happy with the new freedoms, especially Nisador, the tribe’s Sacred Mother.

Sariah learns the ways of the clan are harsh—even deadly.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 

Not too long ago I reviewed Irradiance, Book One in The Dream Guild Chronicles, and had been eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. So when David gifted me Sight, I tucked it away for my holiday! What decadent pleasure – the Tuscany sun, a shaded terrace overlooking rolling vinyards,  a glass of wine, and Sight.

This is my review:

In Book One of The Dream Guild Chronicles, I was captivated by one family’s fight to escape a sophisticated society, a commune of telepaths, whose leaders are prepared to commit any atrocity and ignore any danger to preserve their way of life. In Sight, the second book in the series, Maribel and Reese are searching for a home for their daughter, Sariah, and they believe the inhabitants of an Earth-like planet can provide Sariah her destined future.

Sight is Sariah’s tale and her immersion into her new adopted family reveals a fascinating culture. I stepped into Sariah’s new world and watched a girl grow into a young woman, torn between her heart and duty as layer upon layer of clan history is slowly divulged.

David Bruns creates a world of dream bubbles and inner sight, mystical orbs and Sacred Mothers. This society that has taken Sariah into its midst has a ranking system that promotes jealousy and competition as well as courage and compassion. But when the powerful do not abide by the code of honour at its heart, Sariah becomes a victim of envy and suspicion as traditional laws turn young love into a dirty secret and allow her elders to dictate her life under the guise of duty for the common good.

As the story reaches its dramatic conclusion, the source of the Sacred Mother’s rule over the clan alters Sariah’s life forever. The ending is quick and signals the start of a new chapter in the character’s lives, a signature of the author I am discovering. Fortunately, there are questions still to answer as the fate of Reese, Maribel and Sariah’s twin, Gideon, remains unknown.

Roll on Book Three!

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Review of “Irradiance by David Bruns”

Irradiance by David Bruns (http://davidbruns.com/)

Irradiance by David Bruns

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful start to a promising series.

I love stories that gradually unravel a hard core warning at its centre. I often wonder if an author wrote a story to a theme, or whether the themes evolved out of the writing.

For me, Irradiance tells the story of one family discovering utopia is based on a lie. It captures the tipping point where society is no longer compatible with individual freedom, and where the illusion of happiness is found by unquestioning adherence to dogma. A paradigm where political leaders are so chained to their ideology, their quest for perfection, they would rather drag everyone over the cliff than allow a few brave souls to forge a different path.

David Bruns has created a world where purity has no room for compassion or love, and where life can be “recycled” the moment it ceases to have value for the greater good. This society is shocking. Brutal. Callous. Right to the end, its citizens, even the protagonists, seemed switched off to the true horror of their culture, the urgency of their situation struggling to break through their learned adherence to society’s diktats.

The pace moves steadily forward with vivid and detailed world building at the beginning, picking up as events spiral out of control towards the end. I loved the gradual awakening of Maribel and Resse to the power of their emotions, that they now had words to legitimise their feelings for each other. Each had their own gifts and I enjoyed the science explored through both characters.

Irradiance is the start of a much bigger story where the children will no doubt come into their own. I am very much looking forward to the next in this series.

(Disclosure: I was gifted a copy of this book in the hope of a review. I’m delighted to say I enjoyed it!)

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