Chimera

A Jim Chapel Mission, Book 1

By: David Wellington

Narrated by: John Pruden

Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Afghanistan veteran Jim Chapel has been enlisted in a new war. This time it's in his own backyard...and even more deadly.

A small band of fugitives escapes from a secret upstate New York military facility, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Each fugitive has a target - an innocent civilian - and will not stop until that target has been eliminated.

Wounded Special Forces veteran Jim Chapel has been stuck behind a desk rather than out in the field, but medical technology has finally caught up with his ambitions. Coupled with his unstoppable determination, it will take him back to where he thrives: the thick of the action.

Drafted into a new war, this time in our homeland, Chapel is tasked with hunting a group of escapees from a top-secret military compound - all extremely deadly, genetically modified killers - and unraveling the mystery behind their existence. Aided by an enigmatic woman named Angel and a courageous, beautiful veterinarian, Chapel begins a cross-country hunt to stop the murders. But are the killers really rogues? Or are they part of a sinister conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels?

©2013 David Wellington (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers

Lord of the Flies Mixed with vampires+ Gov Corupt

Another good story by David Wellington, as I mentioned in headline he took a lot of different story lines put them in a blender and out comes a better than average story.
I enjoy the variety of characters, you are comfortable with his mainstay charactersJim Chapel and his on again,off again girlfriend...and his villains are unique fron saddest to super human.
The reader turned another great job

Never A Dull Moment

This book is full of political intrigue. Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Makes you wonder if this could be happening for real in some secret place.

Relationships

Compelling story with people who are relatable and compassionate. Making the antagonists semi human made them easier not to root for.

Joe Ledger you have some Competition

Please find this complete review and all my others at audiobookreviewer dot com

David Wellington sucked me right in with the opening mysterious explosion and the release of several ominous black eyed people, from there I had to devour the rest of Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission. This was an action packed military somewhat sci-fi-ish thrill ride. Jim Chapel turned out to be a very dynamic character and Wellington made an interesting choice by having him be an amputee, something that I was not expecting. Fear not folks Chapel has been outfitted with a state of the art prosthetic that is so realistic people don't normally notice, and it doesn't shoot missiles or anything like that.

Hackers, spies, war hero’s and monsters

I almost didn’t listen on after the first chapter. Happy to report the story picked up and I found the twists at the end pretty good. Nice short summer listen.

I think I like Captain Jim Chapel

He is sorta Joe Ledgerish. He's believable as a character & still likable. I'll read book 2. I liked his sidekick Julia and Angel & even the flight attendant! All strong women. What a smart author.

I LOVED this book! Simply one of the best!

I haved listed to the vampire trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed it as well. There is so much action and drama that its hard to put down. I found myself thinking about the story between times i was able to set time aside to listen to the story. Without going too much into a spoiler alert, let me say that the characters were drawn to such a way that when one character got killed, i felt justice was served in the way "he" died because of the horrible way he dispatched one of the characters. I really felt a tightening in my chest when the "driver" died.
I will be waiting for book 2 of the Jim Chapel Mission series or pretty much any book David Wellington publishes: I have become a true fan of David Wellington!

How much did I hate this book? A lot.

I'm shocked that people seem to like this book. I couldn't even finish it... getting about halfway through before finally giving up.

The main character has no development and seems like a cardboard cut-out. He has a prosthetic arm and for some reason the author is obsessed with it. At first I thought he was simply using the fake arm as some sort of analogy to Jim Chapel being a "broken" man, but in all honesty the arm is probably the most interesting character of of the entire book.

So our hero Jim Chapel... who as you will hear over and over is missing an arm, is for some inexplicable reason chosen as the ONE person to go flying all over the country looking for some virus-carrying mutants. The whole world ends if they infect anyone. So the US Govt picks a wounded desk jockey who hasn't been in action in years to find these weirdos. But wait... Jim isn't told anything about his mission! We're told over and over how important the mission is...but Jim can't be told anything because of the "need to know". It's one of the absolute dumbest set-ups I've read in a long time.

The rest of what I read was Jim bumbling around the country looking for these mutants. He saves a girl...they fall in love... it's just a mess of a novel.

Did I mention the dialogue? It's probably the worst part of the book. Stilted and tired, the dialogue is horrid. Made only worse by the narration because the narrator makes Jim Chapel sound EXACTLY like John Wayne. His other "voices" are not much better and he reads the entire book about 20% slower than he should...enunciating each and every syllable of the bad dialogue.

I assume the last half of the book was just as bad as the first half... in fact, it was only getting worse when I quit listening.

I love Jonathan Mayberry's Joe Ledger series and this sounded like it could be a fun listen in that vein. It isn't. Mayberry's prose is Shakespeare compared to this novel.