Reviewed by Cheryl K

TITLE:  Whisper

AUTHOR:  Tal Bauer

NARRATOR:  John Solo

PUBLISHER:  Tantor

LENGTH:  25 hrs and  55 mins

RELEASE DATE: July 27, 2021

BLURB:

On September 11th, 2001, Kris Caldera was a junior member of the CIA’s Alec Station, the unit dedicated to finding and stopping Osama Bin Laden. They failed.

Ten days later, he was on the ground in Afghanistan with a Special Forces team. On the battlefield, he meets Special Forces Sergeant David Haddad. David – Arab American, Muslim, and gay – becomes the man Kris loves, the man he lives for, and the man he kills for, through the long years of the raging wars.

When a botched mission rips David from Kris’ life, Kris’ world falls into ruin and ash.

After being captured, tortured to the edge of his life, and left for dead by his comrades, David doesn’t know how much of himself is left. He vanished in the tribal belt of Pakistan, and the man who walks out almost a decade later is someone new: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.

Intelligence from multiple sources overseas points to something new. Something deadly and moving to strike the United States. Intercepts say an army from Khorasan, the land of the dead where the Apocalypse of Islam will rise, is coming. And, at the head of this army, a shadowy figure the US hasn’t seen before: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.

David is coming home.

Contains mature themes.

REVIEW:

The top notch narration evokes all the emotion surrounding the events of 9/11. Voices were spot on-from Kris’s Dawood to Bush and all the middle eastern people. This book covers the days following 9/11, and how one CIA analyst works to save the world and finds love along the way. I will warn you that this book does contain scenes of torture as an interrogator method. If you are easily triggered, you should read the full blurb on this book.

When the book was written and released in 2018, I read it once and swore I would never read it again. Why you ask- this book is super intense and an emotional roller coaster. Our main characters are Kris and David (Dawood). Kris was recruited out of college by the CIA for his language Skills – After 9/11, he is tapped to be on the first CIA team with boots on the ground in Afghanistan. He’s a key player in negotiating with the Afghani leaders and War lords facing the Taliban. A special forces team is added to the initial CIA team. Part of the team is David-team Medic. As everything escalates, our main characters remain together and overcome bias about gays in the CIA and military. We journey with Kris and David for many years. As they move through the years, they experience happiness and tragedy, will they remain together or will the tragedy separate them forever. As a new threat looms, will Kris be able to save the world one last time? This book covers a vast date range from 2001 to 2018 of the war on terrorism. This book is heart wrenchingly great. Tal Bauer shines a light on a time in our recent past and shines it on the good and bad sides of humanity, lore and war. He melds the Muslim faith brilliantly into a understandable, relatable religion. For a life changing experience and a massive book hangover, you need to listen to this book.

I am not sure how to properly convey how much this performance by narrator John Solo, brought the book to life for me. John’s performance of this book is his best ever. In my humble opinion John’s narration and Tal’s words are a match made in paradise.

John embraces Kris’s early years as an out and proud gay man smoothly shifting to the battle-hardened man trying to move on with his life. He inhabits the internal conflict David experiences on his journey from military medic to practicing Muslim, bent on saving the world. The cast of characters in this story is immense. John was able to embody everyone distinctly from President’s GW Bush to Obama to Vice President Cheney. He brought his A game when conveying the range of emotion and intensity of each scene – His dialect work was also fantastic. He transitioned smoothly from English to Dari to Russian. whatever language was required, John made it sound easy and like he’d been speaking these languages for quite a while. Through John’s performance of the book, I was able to pick up on so many things I missed when I read this book, back in 2018.

This book and the narration embrace all the nuances of a romantic historical suspense thriller.  I can’t recommend this book enough.  If you want an insider’s view of the events before and after 9/11 with a little romance thrown in for good measure, this is the book for you. Once you hear John perform Tal’s words, you will be spoiled for other narrator/author combinations. I can’t wait to hear their next collaboration.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

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