Code Zero: Joe Ledger, Book 6

I’m going out on a limb here and say that Code Zero, which is a sequel to Patient Zero, has blown the roof off the world!In Patient Zero, Joe Ledger and his team were in a battle with zombies. Because a terrorist mastermind was responsible for the production of lethal biological weapons.Ledger and Team Echo are now fighting for control of the same biological weapons from a new mastermind, Mother Night is her name.And she is a computer genius who has stolen the weapons to use against the world. She is successful in her goals and her plans, but that is before Joe Ledger and the DMS figure things out.Joe Ledger is still working with the DMS (Department of Military Science), and his team. They are working overtime to get their hands on Mother Night.Ledger is not going to allow the public to be destroyed by this lunatic who lets dangerous viruses spread through the city and then the country. No way!I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s as good as the first book, Patient Zero. Code Zero is longer in pages. Like the first book. It has very short chapters, which makes the book flow faster.The only problem I have with this book is that the author has the habit of introducing new characters, then he gives them a background. A whole lot of information about them.Then he has them killed. Right after you have known him or liked him. He is blown away or mauled to death by a creature. This is why I don’t like getting to know a new character.Five stars. 💫💫💫💫💫

"Code Zero" is Jonathan Maberry's latest offering in his explosively violent Joe Ledger series-although chronologically the story unfolds immediately following "Patient Zero", the series' debut. It is rife with all the elements that legions of Joe Ledger fans have come to expect; extreme violence, lots of gore, mastermind villains, strange or aberrational creatures and killers, and high tech weapons. Deacon Church, Aunt Sallie, and the rest of the Department of Military Sciences (DMS) are included as well as Top, Bunny, and other new and old members of Joe's Echo Team. And one must not forget Joe's warrior dog, Ghost, who may be the most endearing killer dog in literature."Code Zero" focuses on an apparently anarchical cell creating murder and destruction randomly across the US led by a woman known as Mother Night with expressed desires to create anarchy and destruction but which is ultimately aimed at destroying Church, Ledger, the DMS, and the USA as we know it. As Echo Team scrambles to find and stop Mother Night, her minions attack the DMS "Locker" where all the deadly bio weapons from previous encounters have been stored. Soon, Ledger's task is magnified with the random appearance of zombies, "berserkers" and deadly viruses that are sudden additions to Mother Night's arsenal.Can Joe and his wounded team emerge victorious over an enemy fortified with myriad deadly bio weapons --a foe who even seems able to neutralize MindReader, the uber computer of the DMS? And just who really is Mother Night, the diabolically evil leader who seems to know way too much about Joe, Church, and MindReader? "Code Zero" embarks on a suspense filled thrill-a-minute ride to answer these questions. My only quibble is that the series is beginning to get overly formulaic in recent efforts by recycling villains and monsters at the expense of freshness. This series is highly recommended for fans of action thrillers and supernatural antagonists.

This sucker is very fast paced and keeps you guessing the whole time. The plot and time line was spot on and the action was constant. Any reader of sci-fi, special forces or monster mysteries would love this one. While each Joe Ledger novel is written to be a stand alone tale, I would recommend to everyone to start with Patient Zero and read them in order. Spoiler alert: I so wish Mother Night could have hung around for a few books because she was a true test for Joe and the DMs and so deliciously evil. The climax of this book is shocking but when you stop to think about it if that scenario, or one like it, ever plays out then the solution used my have actually been a bit on the compassionate side.That being said I have two knocks against this one. The first is the number of first person monologues which are either Joe patting himself on the back or making some chest thumping observation of his skill set, dripping with machismo. The other thing that bugged me was the editing. I read this on my Kindle, which is how I do all my reading, and it seems that no one read through the book before putting it out. Switching tenses in the middle of a sentence, the wrong word used, that instead of then for example, and missing words just to name a few. It just throws me out of my immersion when I have to stop and figure out how it was meant to be said. I don't know if it was just the Kindle version or if the book version was the same but a little more attention to detail would go a long way.All in all a great example sci-fi/horror and worthy of the Joe Ledger name.

Maberry's idea here is to take the first five books of his Joe Ledger series and throw them altogether. He imagines what would happen if one of the genius' in the DMS had been gradually using its resources to become extremely powerful. By building a computer system as powerful as MindReader, Mother Night gains access to all the threats that Ledger has faced over the last few years- weaponized diseases, the monstrous Berserkers and the seif-al-din pathogen- the zombie plague.Inevitably Ledger and the DMS have to try and control Mother Night's chaos and fight off all these terrible things. It very much feels like a best of Joe Ledger so we get the cool computer stuff, Joe going properly psycho and some of the best zombie scenes I have ever read. Seriously, awesome zombie stuff goes on in here.The real strength of this book is the villain. Mother Night is very different from the rich, organised terrorists of the previous books. She's a one-woman show, a genius gone mad. Her real identity is fairly obvious to us the reader from the start and we are given an origin story through a series of "interludes", although at times this did feel like shoving the character in between the first few books.The big problem with this book is that the proportion of it narrated by Ledger is lower than usual. Although Joe Ledger has the best scenes, the proportion of the book actually featuring him is really rather small. Instead Maberry spends a lot of time looking at a series of characters bossed around by Mother Night who commit terrible, but pretty small-scale, terrorist attacks. Some of these worked stunningly well (a hero in Disneyland was a real highlight) but others felt like unnecessary weight to the book. There's also an unnecessarily long amount of time focusing on Ludo Monk, a mad assassin who is waiting for Mother Night's order to kill one of Ledger's loved ones. I guess it is supposed to build up tension but he pretty much just sits around doing nothing.For me, this was a real hit and miss book. The hits in it were absolutely superb and the best of Maberry's spy/horror series. But there were a lot of misses, bits of storytelling that Maberry had come up with but really didn't add anything to the plot.

I found this book a bit of a departure from the series in some ways - but also a step back up in quality. Where I found the other books to be a bit too much of a slow start before really kicking in to the full story line (and associated explanations), I found this book a bit better at juggling that aspect - whilst still retaining enough of a reveal to make the last 50 pages not frivolous.Joe Ledger continues to go strong in this book, and as ever with the series, new characters are introduced and old characters are killed. I think the execution could have been done a bit better, perhaps, but if you're this far into the series then by now you reasonably know what you're expecting.I definitely enjoyed it a bit more than the last couple of books, but that might just be me.

An excellent sequel to Patient Zero, although not quite as good....... Still a Very worthy follow up and an interesting story arc.Joe Ledger has moved on after the events and losses of Patient Zero, and this time finds himself and his team confronted by those 'menaces' he thought they had destroyed in previous stories....these include Berserkers, various plagues and worst of all, Strain 12 of the original plague from Patient Zero.........In strain 12 the zombies maintain their intelligence and are faster and stronger than the 'usual' walking dead......Who is Mother Night ??...Is she behind all this and Why ?.....As incidents continue throughout the world Ledger and the DMS find themselves ( and the public ) under attack and the normally, extremely helpful computer system Mindreader is unable to 'detect' where the attacks are coming from and indeed seems to be 'hacked'......All in all, a rollicking good read, and a very worthy addition to the series...Can't wait for the next one....Enjoy.Cheers,Bob

This is the 6th book in the Joe Ledger series and is amazing , if you like the first five this one will blow your mind. Excellent plot characters storyline amazing fast paced action terror love friendship trust betrayal !!!!!Will make you want moreJust brilliant

I love these books!Mayberry writes with such engrossing style, fast paced action all the waySpoiler alert - check out the Rot and Ruin series...