Unforgiven
Lindsay McKenna
ISBN-13: 9780373617487
Seriously.

Oh. My. God.

Ever had a book where you just *knew* you’d read that before?
Unforgiven is the story of a part Apache / part "Jaguar" Sniper who gets put into Ecquador to kill the leader of the locals because he’s terrorizing the mining company.

I read another book with a "Jaguar People" theme, which also had an Apache Military guy after the local troublemaker in South America. I don’t recall the name or who wrote it, but… It was way too similar. But nevermind. I was prepared to give this a shot anyway.
So. I start off and from the get go the hero seems incredibly weak. Too weak to be "the top sniper" in the Marines.
He’s in prison because he tried to kill the general who raped and murdered his wife and daughter, but managed to "vanish" the DNA evidence and get Mr. Top Sniper locked up for 20 years. (Uh-huh.) Then a CIA agent comes and offers to give him his freedom (in Equador) after he kills the guy who is causing mayhem for a mining company there – but he’s never allowed back into the US or he’ll go back to prison. (Right. The US Government asks him to kill someone and then won’t allow him back in the country? I’d question that, but HE doesn’t… nevermind.)
The night before he goes he has a vision of a woman and falls instantly in love. (Book hit the wall at this point.)
I forced myself to pick the book up again, but she’d already lost me. Anyway.
He gets there, the local rich nice girl is the perpetrator of the mayhem and she’s also a shapeshifting Jaguar. A lot of explanation of the "Warriors for the Light" at this point and how his parents trained him and whatnot. OK.
SHE already knows not only who he is but also why he is there. (Nowhere is it explained how she would know this.) and she’s wrestling with the fact that she’s attracted to her killer. He finds and shoots the "elusive" mayhem maker the first night on her tail, when the "agents" who were after her haven’t been able to get a bead on the ghost for 2 years. She wears a vest and shapeshifts (she always ends up dressed as she was, complete with guns and everything after btw) into a jaguar and escapes.
Two weeks later she goes to see him again and finds out he’s been existing on candy bars. She offers food and he spills his guts to her about his past. (Picture the book hitting the wall again kthx)
It gets really convaluted and idiotic after this (yeah like it isn’t already) he goes all emo and cries a lot (He’s a freaking MILITARY SNIPER!!) there are pages (plural!) of explanation of how all the mysticism works and while they compare notes of the stories they were told ("Oooo your story is the same!") and they recover a magic artifact and there is suddenly a "save the world" myth and all kinds of wild setting up sequels going on (oh yah, I am well aware of it kthx)…
They fall in lurve (just like the legend says), she goes to convince his enemies by means of a lock of hair, his papers and his sniper rifle that she killed him (Show me the head, then I might believe it) and his saving her and both of them ending up in the shower… ok. Fine. The second they are done with sex in the shower… she knows she’s pregnant. (More legends incoming!) I’m not kidding, she *knows* instantly. Come ON now… that’s just so 80’s…
Oh and the emerald mine doesn’t belong to the bad guy either, it belongs to a peasant whom they found dead in the jungle after he’s been missing a few years.

Time to finish the book, right?

WRONG.

"Two months later" You end up enduring no less than 30 pages of a "historian/archeologist" who tells them about some tablets she found in Machu Pichu —- insert regurgitation of *everything* you already read 8 times from several angles about this legend…
MAN… Don’t bother with it.

Tags: Doorstopper, Lindsay McKenna, Rubbish, Unforgiven