There Are No More Elephants in This Book Than in Africa!

The Last Savanna by Mike Bond
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The BEST thing about this book is its cover! The basic story could have been told in about 100 pages but the author padded it with repetitive descriptions of heat and thirst, meaningless ruminations of its characters that had nothing to do with the disappearing wildness of the continent. The " hero " is selfish and shallow--says that through fear of lions devouring the human inhabitants, they have practically eradicated lions. That may be true, but he continues to say that through that same fear, man has created marriage and the ownership of women---what?? This Ian Macadam has agreed to go with a native ranger to apprehend some elephant poachers. Then he discovers that a married woman after whom he has lusted for years ( having ONCE had sex with her ) has been kidnapped by the poachers. All of a sudden the quest is the freedom of this woman. Throughout the book, when we are in Macadam's head, he is pining away for her. Yet, never once, while in Rebecca's head--she of the blond hair and milky white skin--do we ever hear her think of Ian. Her old boyfriend in Paris, her father, her two sons and her much older and colder husband, yes, but not Ian. Oh, well, she did reject him after all, despite the earth rocking sex!

Then there are the poachers, three Somali's of the same clan--with their own conflicts. Just too boring.

The wordiness, convoluted thoughts of the characters, leading me to believe that more often than not they are delirious from heat stroke and lack of water, the repetitiveness made me want to give up on this book, but instead, I scanned a lot and was happy, after checking numerous times to see how many more pages of this was left, to find that the end was at hand and everybody except an old lion and Rebecca were still alive. She planning on living life to the bone--my hope was that it would be a bare bone left behind by the old lion once he'd feasted on her.

Actually, maybe that is how it ended, hence the wonderful shot of the winner on the cover! This was a Goodreads giveaway so I felt it necessary to finish and review it, otherwise I would have given it a toss after about the first 50 pages.

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