Monkey Business [Drunk Monkeys 1]

Tymber Dalton has outdone herself with this military thriller/mystery/romance series! In the first of this 10-book series, we meet the Drunk Monkeys, a 20-man SOTIF (Special Operations & Tactical Infiltration Force) team for the first time. To find out why they're called the Drunk Monkeys, you'll just have to read the book! The team is paired into ten teams of two men each. This is Doc, Tango & Celia's story. It's the year 2142 & the world has truly gone insane. Long story short, North Korea lured, blackmailed & imprisoned a group of scientists to create a lethal, contagious, virulent virus with no cure which is nearly 100% fatal. But that wasn't nearly enough for North Korea's Mighty Leader. A separate team creates a drug that addicts instantaneously with just one dose. Both the virus & the drug are dubbed "Kite." Mixing the two, giving the virus-laced drug to addicts in the prison camp where the labs are located, is insanity. But when inmates escape, fleeing over the border into China, that's when all hell breaks loose. To stop the spread of this lunacy, China nukes North Korea into oblivion. But that doesn't stop Kite (the drug or the virus). It just ends North Korea. Soon, all of Asia is infected with Kite & battling nuclear radiation. Enter the Drunk Monkeys, SOTIF Team 1. Their mission? Find out if any of the scientists who created Kite (the virus) are still alive, acquire them & bring them back to the States to create a cure. They're the world's only hope! Fast forward to March 2143. Celia Jorgens is young newspaper researcher from Chicago who desperately wants to be a reporter. The whole Kite situation is hardly a secret but, for now, it hasn't truly affected America. Her fellow researcher, Mike, is a genius with computers, hacking & accessing all kinds of information. With Mike's help, Celia learns that one of the scientists on the "List," Dr. Pho Quong, has escaped North Korea with his family, emigrating to Australia. Celia's never had a reporting job before, never even left the country. With Kite rampaging across the world, she's more than scared & uncertain. But she wants this story so badly. With Mike's help, she pushes her fears aside & heads down under to Oz. The Drunk Monkeys are also on their way to Oz. They have the same intel as Celia, but they're better trained & equipped. As they make their way from Vietnam to Australia, they finalize their plans to find Dr. Quong & his family & take them to safety. Little do they know that their plans have put them on a collision course with not only Celia but others, unknown people & factors. As events go sideways, Celia, the Drunk Monkeys, Dr. Quong & maybe the entire continent of Australia, are put at risk in a way from which they may never recover. From here, the story takes off in a million different directions, seemingly all at once. Will Celia be successful in locating Dr. Quong or will the Drunk Monkeys get there before her? Can any of them avoid the ever growing Kite epidemic? Can they even find Dr. Quong? If so, will he be able to reverse engineer a cure? What about all those unknowns? They're certainly not out there for kicks. The Drunk Monkeys have enemies, more than they know. There are so many questions, so many ways this could go wrong. The Drunk Monkeys series is one of the best series I've ever read! Who knew when Tymber Dalton first wrote this series that it would be so timely & current in 2016/17? Ms. Dalton crosses genres with apparent ease & talent. This series was first published in 2014, long before today's world, but it so closely creates today's political conditions, rises in power of evangelical/fundamentalist Christian movements & the surge in megachurches & their influence over nearly aspect of American life, it's eerily predictive. That it's also dead-on accurate about other current world events is even scarier. This series is amazingly brilliant. I can't give any higher praise to a series than to say it's equally as relevant & important as 1984, Brave New World, or The Handmaid's Tale. I give this series my highest recommendation!

Loved all her other series, but just can't get into this book.was very disappointed.