9mm Blues by Keith Melton [Review]

9mm Blues (Thorn Knights #1) by Keith Melton
Format: ebook
Source: provided for review
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: November 8, 2015

Thorn Knights
1. 9mm Blues - Kindle

Keith Melton
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Synopsis (Goodreads):

Flesh-eating ghouls. A kidnapped child. A knight's honor caught in the crossfire...

Christopher Hill is a knight in the Order of the Thorn—the sacred order of soldiers armed with submachine guns, swords, and magic. Their mission is simple: destroy the ancient, profane evils that prey upon humanity.

But that mission becomes far more complicated when a young boy is kidnapped by flesh-eating ghouls, turning a routine search-and-destroy mission into a nightmare standoff. Barricaded inside a run-down house, the ghouls gain a deadly upper hand, and while the body count rises, Hill finds himself caught in a power struggle within the order that puts his life, and his honor, at risk, and threatens both the mission and the boy Hill has vowed to see home safe, no matter what...

Thoughts on 9mm Blues: I liked this book. Chris Hill and his faithful stray worked for me. He has a rough job killing things that no one should ever have to go head to head with and he does it with humor. Forced humor sometimes because those aforementioned things aren't very funny, but humor all the same.

Then a child goes missing and Hill has to balance the idea of an innocent in the hands of monsters who do terrible, terrible things against the mission. Throw in new team members who he doesn't quite trust and things get sticky fast.

Literally sticky, in some cases. Those ghouls die hard and messy. As ghouls often do.

Flat out, this book has plenty of grit and guts. It doesn't pull any punches when it comes to what the monsters are capable of. A lot of badness, as it turns out. A lot of badness.

Then you have the moral dilemma Hill is battling with. One child's life versus many lives the knights could save by taking out the head monster. Things are tense in more ways than one as Hill and his teammates race against the clock.

I liked the world. I liked the tension. I liked the bad guys. Not liked-liked, but I liked seeing them taken out and ratcheting the tension higher with their crazy.

And I liked the loyalty of the dog. *thumbs up*