My latest book review
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October 25th, 2007 by Andrew Ian Dodge
Palawan
C D Williams
A little under 250 pages with a nice tropical scene on the cover might lead you to believe that this was a fluffy little novel about romance in the South Seas. And that is just the point of the cover, to lure you into this rip-roaring thriller with Islamic terrorists and ‘Nam vets. Locals as diverse as the lush tropical jungle of the Philippines and Sin City aka Las Vegas add to a nice mixture here.
This is a great thriller that never once drags anywhere. The pace is quick, the novel is well laid out and the editing is better than most mass market paperbacks. The fact that Williams has pulled off a timely terrorist thriller with more pace and less verbiage than the mighty Tom Clancy is to be applauded.
This is a perfect novel for someone flying from the East Coast of the US to Vegas. A perfect travel novel that has enough to get you distracted but not enough to get turgid. I highly recommend this novel and feel almost intimidated that this is Williams’ debut.
The novel would make a perfect movie, as long as Williams could make sure the baddies stay the same. Methinks there is a great script right below the surface. Let me assure you that it does not read like a script made into a novel.
If you are in search of a good novel to while away a few hours before you sleep at night might I suggest Palawan?
For more information go to: www.cdwilliams.com
Charles D. Williams was born in Sacramento, California. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard. When he retired twenty-seven years later, he was a Chief Warrant Officer. His career took him to many exotic ports of call while serving on Coast Guard ships, including several trips to the Philippines. Williams served in Vietnam in 1967. From1969 to1971 he was the medical corpsman assigned to a remote U.S. Coast Guard station located on the southwest coast of Palawan Island. Chuck makes his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is currently working on three new writing projects, including both a prequel and a sequel to Palawan and a memoir of some of his own adventures.
The Author is a Life Member of the following organizations:
Veterans of Foreign Wars
Military Officers Association of America
Coast Guard Combat Veterans Association
Please visit my website: http://www.cdwilliams.com
Lisa sat at the dressing table in her quarters at the Christian mission. The sheen on her skin was part perspiration and part mosquito repellant. She listened to the night call of the geckos and reflected on the previous week as she combed her shoulder length hair before turning in for the night. Her body clock was still playing catch up after having traveled half way around the world. Her home was in the high desert country of the American Southwest and she wondered if she would ever get used to the humidity. It was the rainy season on Palawan.
The geckos went silent and the door to her room suddenly flew open. The image of a man appeared in the dressing table mirror. She jumped out of her chair, knocking it over, and spun around. Standing in the doorway was a young Filipino man with a wispy mustache. He was short, maybe 5 feet 4 inches tall. He was slightly built with a mop of blue black hair over a pair of wild, dark brown eyes. The intruder was wearing a sleeveless white tee shirt over loose baggy trousers and had rubber sandals on his feet. Hanging at his waist was a large bolo knife in a wooden scabbard, the AK47 assault rifle in his hands was pointed directly at her chest.
Lisa gasped, then stammered, “What do you want?”
He spoke in heavily accented English, “No talk, no sound, you make sound, you die”.
The worst nightmare of Lisa’s young life had just begun.
The island of Palawan protrudes like a dagger thrust out from the rest of the Philippine Archipelago deep into the South China Sea. The small islands in the Balabac Straights fall like drops of blood from the tip of the dagger onto the island of Borneo. The East side of Palawan forms the western boundary of the Sulu Sea. The island has a spine of mountains running its entire length and some of the thickest triple canopy rainforests this side of the Amazon Basin.
Southwest Palawan is one of the last wild places on the planet. Of the more than seven thousand islands that make up the Republic of the Philippines, many could be said to be remote, but Palawan is the place that Filipinos refer to as the last frontier. It is the home to many rare species of flora and fauna that do not exist anywhere else, not even in other parts of the Philippines. It is also home to a number of indigenous peoples, some of whom are jungle dwellers with no written language who are just a couple steps out of the Stone Age. The list of things on Palawan Island that could kill you was already long. Now, Abu Sayyaf terrorists could be added to that list.