Dead Reckoning [Paperback]

Let me tell you up front, that I'm not a huge fan of Christian fiction. I do not want to be preached at or given any token Christianity. I read sci-fi, fantasy, paranormals, romance...

Having said that, Kendig does a fantastic job of pulling you into the story and showing you how the characters have God in their lives day in and day out---not just when they're in danger, sick, etc. Nothing in the book feels like token Christianity or a sermon. I esp. loved how she showed how God worked in Reese's life. I think as a society we tend to think of military men as non-religious, but she does an amazing job of showing how God is the only reason Reese can do what he does...including killing and all the other baggage that goes with being special ops/spy-type.

Second, she has a knack for creating characters that embed themselves in your heart. You can't help worrying about them, thinking about them like they're real people....you can't, in fact, help from feeling like they ARE real people.

Overall, I stayed up waaaay too late finishing this book. A great read. One I plan to recommend to all and sundry. Looking forward to her future books!!!

Dead Reckoning means estimating a position by applying to a previously determined position. Ronie Kendig's book is so appropriately named. While she educates us about diving, she delves into political intrigue with spies that capture your heart as they run through an international nuclear arms clash.

Shiloh Blake is young, working on diving hours as a member of a team from University of California, San Diego. She wants to qualify for the Pacific Rim Challenge. However, while underwater, her team is ripped apart by bullets, killing one and severely injuring her partner Khalid. Suddenly Shiloh finds herself smack in the middle of the type of things she had tried to avoid since severing ties with her father, an international spy who had moved her around all her younger years. An angry Shiloh is propelled into the arms of Reece, who considers her an asset of the United States. Through gun fights, bombings, ambushes, death, Shiloh turns to the one who can protect her and help her accomplish her mission.

Shiloh and her partner's mission take the reader to exotic locals filled with history. The operatives are guided by clues of actions based on history and the enemies attempted act of positioning themselves in a place of supreme power. The colorful settings add intrigue to those of us unfamiliar with customs of the Middle East.

And Aras...he is one of my favorites. You'll have to read the book to find out why Shiloh made fast friends with the one who nearly sliced her neck open.

I absolutely loved this book and hope that Ms. Kendig continues with more adventures. She kept me so engrossed that I felt I was being chased and shot at stumbling to keep up with Shiloh. Her writing style pulls you in and makes you an eye witness to each and every step taken by the characters. A very good book, well worth reading. Ms. Kendig will be an auto buy for me!

I'm completely baffled by ratings for this book. This book is so dreadful that I wonder if the author has a big family who've all given her good ratings to boost sales or if the 4 star rated reviews are from folks who just don't read a lot of quality writing. The prose here just doesn't flow. The author's attempts at creative metaphors are so clumsy I winced at most of them. The writing is filled with malapropism after malapropism. Whoever was the editor on this one should be ashamed of themselves. And that's all before I get to the actual story here.
For me this books fails no matter what genre you want to put it in. If you are a fan of Christian books I simply can't see where this story would give any satisfaction. There's no real message of spirituality here unless half a dozen prayers along the lines of `God, please help me out of this tricky situation" qualifies. If that's all it takes for a book to be classified as `Christian' and sell then a lot of far better writers need to jump on that bandwagon - and fast! As far as the action/espionage thriller definition goes it's another flop. It's obvious this writer does little or no research because there's absolutely no meat on this story or on mot of the characters at all. She gives us the bad guys, a Muslim group called the Allah's Sword of Justice, but there's no back story about what the group is about nor is there any clear explanation as to why they want to set off a nuke in Pakistan and blame it on India or what they would get out of it. There's no real back story on the main characters either and what there was left me asking too many questions e.g. the hero, called Reece Jaxon (what a name right!) is supposedly Christian but we don't have any idea how or when his belief system came into being. We also learn he had some sort of pact with his sister but are never told what the pact actually is, only that his sister's engagement negates it! The heroine, Shiloh, has a real big problem with her dad the CIA agent. We know it's connected to her mother's death in a car accident Shiloh and her Mom were in when she was a kid and that Shiloh saw her mother die. Later on, we read that Shiloh was also kidnapped as a kid but never find out anything about that or if was related to the car crash! As for other characters, we learn next to nothing about any of them, they're just there.
Last word on lack of research, at one point we are told Shiloh is in London, leans out of her hotel window to see the time on Uncle Ben. The clock in London is called BIG BEN. Who doesn't know that?
I'm not a writer but I do remember being told in school and college that one should `write what you know'. It's blatantly obvious that this author doesn't know much or expect her readers to know much either.

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