Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:    Pestilence

SERIES:   The Four Horsemen

AUTHOR:   T. A. Chase

LENGTH:     170 Pages

BLURB:

For Pestilence, the White Horseman, love becomes the most powerful cure.

Having lost his wife and child during the Black Death, Pestilence accepts the fate destiny has given him as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For centuries, Pestilence did his job, spreading plagues and disease around the world. He does it to keep the balance between good and evil, yet he hates every minute of it. He longs to be left alone, but suddenly fate seems to have a different plan for him.

When Bart Winston stumbles into an Amazon clearing, he’s terribly ill and sure he’s going to die. A tall white-haired man with unusual black eyes catches him in his arms and Bart’s life takes a turn into the unbelievable. Blaming the whole situation on his illness might have worked, but as he gets better and learns about the strange man who heals him, Bart must accept there are more things in the world than he ever guessed.

Pestilence and Bart heal each other, and begin to wonder if there can be a future for the White Horseman and the mortal he’s fallen in love with.

REVIEW:

Portraying Pestilence as an Italian Doctor named Aldo Bianchi, a man who hung himself following the death of his family during the Black Death in Europe in the 1300’s, was an interesting concept and pulled me into the story.

When Bartholomew Winston, III is abandoned in the Amazon jungle by his lover and the rest of their team, he stumbles through the jungle, becoming more and more ill as he goes. Little does he know that he has contracted an unknown illness while in the jungle, and he will die without help.

When he stumbles into a clearing and meets a strange man with pure white hair, and strangely black irises in his eyes, he has stumbled onto one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Pestilence in the flesh. Will Pestilence, whose specialty is giving humans illness, be able to save this particular human? What will happen when the Horseman and the human discover they might have developed feelings for each other?

I liked this book well enough, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that it had some, what I would call, fairly major editing issues, even though it shows two editors’ names at the beginning who I’m assuming re-edited it for this Pride Publishing re-release. The errors I would have thought would have been caught by someone, anyone, before it was released as a Second Edition.  Here are some examples:

• At one point Bart is referred to as being a Brit, and the expedition is referred to as a British one, and then suddenly it is a Harvard funded expedition, and Bart is an American.   It also went from being some sort of possibly clandestine expedition, since the government officials didn’t notify Pest about it, to being an expedition by a major US university. Harvard wouldn’t sponsor a clandestine expedition.
• At one point when they arrive in Washington, DC, Pest tells Bart that he never learned to drive. Later on, Pest drives while Bart sits in the passenger seat.
• Bart’s full name is Bartholomew Winston III. Yet it says that his parents were orphans who met in a foster home. While Bart’s grandfather’s name might have been the same, it didn’t appear to make sense to me. That one might just be me being too picky.

Overall, this was an interesting concept and storyline. I muddled through it by looking past the discrepancies, with minor headshakes and the occasional grumbling growl when the inconsistencies were so blatant. The story, while never edge of my seat interesting, was readable and I guess I liked it for what it was, but I would have liked a lot more oomph.  It is a book about Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but Pest didn’t seem very butch and alpha to me.  In fact, he read as kind of a wimpy guy and I don’t think enough time was spent on developing either his or Bart’s characters.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Pride Publishing

Amazon 

ARe