Palladium

By: Leigh Turner

Narrated by: Joff Manning

Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Legend tells that the Palladium, a powerful talisman dropped from heaven by the goddess Athena, protects modern Istanbul.

What if it falls into the wrong hands?

Moments after archaeologist Elif Mutlu finds a mysterious relic in a tomb in Istanbul, terrorists kidnap her and slaughter the rest of her team.

Elif's lover, disgraced MI6 Agent John Savage, races through the city searching for Elif with the help of her brother Orhan, a proud Turkish cop who hates foreigners.

As bombs explode, Elif's captors announce they will destroy Istanbul. While she fights to stay alive, John and Orhan, pursued by cops and threatened by terrorists, must find the Palladium to save Istanbul, a living symbol of 20 million people that East and West can coexist.

©2022 Immortal Works (P)2023 Immortal Works

Breakneck pace, characters to root for

I don’t read many action thrillers--the last one was The Da Vinci Code--but a friend recommended this, and I’m so glad he did. The plot got more and more catastrophic in scale, while the description of Istanbul was so vibrant I could practically hear and smell the place. (Now I want to go there.) But the impending disaster only mattered because we got to know the characters well. The reader does a lovely job rendering the specific accents of a very international cast—you always know whose head you're in. The British diplomat hero John Savage—aptly named—has a love/hate relationship with his Turkish police pal, and the pal’s archaeologist sister, and I kept reading to find out if/how they survive. Dan Brown could take lessons. He wrote a real page turner, but the characters were cardboard. I raced through Palladium in a few days, and will now look for more titles from Leigh Turner.

Average Adventure/Thriller

Set in Istanbul, a mysterious group known as the “Elders” has recruited several terrorists teams to “End the West” through a terrorist attack on the city. There is a loose connection to an ancient artifact known as the Palladium, which must first be obtained to ensure the attack would succeed, so one team steels it and abducts the archeologist that found it (the rationale for the later is a bit thin when it is revealed much later). Fortunately, her brother Orhan is a Turkish policeman and her lover is a former British SIS officer who are on the job to get her back. Along the way they seem to always be just a step behind as the story drags on and on. Frequently there was way too much detail injected into the story and then continually repeated while doing little to advance the story, with some of the details were a bit questionable; but not enough to really detract from the overall enjoyment of the story … just don’t think about it too much and you will be fine. Over all, the lot was fairly predicable and the story mechanical enough that I had difficulty connecting to characters and plot; however, it was decent enough for light entertainment.

The narration was also pretty average … every now and then the pacing was a bit off to feel natural and the performance had difficulty differentiating the voices, but it wasn’t too hard to keep it all separate.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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