This sequel to White Blood (2007) picks up where that one left off. It's 1917, and Scottish-Russian naturalist Charlie Doig is hell-bent on revenge against Glebov, the man responsible for the death of Charlie's wife. Against the backdrop of Russia in the early days of the Revolution, Fleming sends Charlie and his faithful bodyguard, the Mongolian Kobi, across the vast country in pursuit of Glebov. Along the way Charlie picks up a ragtag collection of traveling companions and hatches an audacious plan to steal a fortune in gold from the people who stole it from the Czar. This is a hugely entertaining novel, vivid in its historical detail, full of highly charged emotion and plenty of wit and intrigue. The author is Ian Fleming's nephew, and he seems to have inherited his uncle's storytelling gifts. Fans of fast-paced adventure will find plenty to like here.--Pitt, David Copyright 2009 Booklist

Some readers may find the jaunty, jokey voice of 28-year-old naturalist Charlie Doig, the narrator of Fleming's turgid sequel to White Blood (2008), at odds with his graphic accounts of atrocities in 1917 Russia. Others, perhaps fans of the James Bond books of the author's uncle, Ian Fleming, will overlook the mismatch between tone and content. Early on, Doig comments, "I'd had a beetle named after me, catalogued the passerines of Central Asia, survived typhus, had my only family members slain by the Bolsheviks-and been compelled to shoot my wife. If that isn't learning the hard way, I don't know what is." Forced to put his wife out of her misery after a Bolshevik fiend raped and tortured her, Doig sets out on a quest for vengeance. A scheme to steal 690 tons of gold thickens the plot. The late George Macdonald Fraser did a far better job of combining a realistic historical backdrop with sex and violence (and humor) in his Flashman series. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

More swashbuckling adventures in revolutionary Russia for Charlie Doig. The opening pages of this talky sequel rapidly regurgitate the plot of its predecessor (White Blood, 2007). Part-Scottish, part Russian Charlie was an award-winning naturalist when tragedy struck in 1917. At his family home in provincial Smolensk, many of his aristocratic family members were killed by evil Bolsheviks. Worst of all, Charlie's beautiful bride of just seven days, his cousin Elizaveta, was gang-raped and razor-slashed. She begged Charlie to shoot her; he complied. Narrator Charlie's mission now is to hunt down and kill the ringleader of this act of class warfare, a Bolshie named Glebov. The third most powerful man in Russia after Lenin and Trotsky, Glebov is also a comic-strip villainnothing necessarily wrong with that in a no-frills thriller, but what we expect as a tradeoff for lack of characterization is plenty of excitement, and we don't get it. Tipped off that Glebov has gone East to handle the counterrevolutionary White Russians and supervise the Tsar's murder, Charlie buys a locomotive in St. Petersburg and sets off with a motley crew, among them his new love interest. While he enjoys plowing hot-to-trot Xenia, Charlie is not the stud he used to be; his wife's death weighs heavily on his widower's conscience. As his train moves slowly across Russia, he learns of a huge stash of Tsarist gold in the river town of Kazan. Reds, Whites and Czechs are all circling the stash, and where there's gold, there's Glebov, so Charlie has the chance to kill two birds with one stone. The long-delayed showdown with his nemesis comes in a Kazan monastery as Charlie's cohorts secure the gold on barges. Even at the climax, when Fleming finally provides some real action, there are so many competing adversaries in the melee that it's not very satisfying. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.