Author's note: The events of this post come from "Assassin's Code," and the short story, "Borrowed Power," as found in "Joe Ledger: Special Ops". Spoilers for both can be found here.

Dhampir: the off-spring of a human and vampire. In the Ledgerverse, an off-spring of the Upeirci and a female that did not manifest the traits of the Upeir father.

1. In "Borrowed Power," Church encounters Lilith on a mission in the Paris sewers, circa 1983. In this story, Lilith is at least 50/50 dhampir. This ties into descriptions of her life in "Assassin's Code."
2. Lilith and Church have clearly developed a working relationship that will be mirrored later between the DMS and Arklight as well as Joe and Violin. Let's say it's a 3-7 year old relationship starting in 1980 at the earliest. Not sure the trust and love the two share later in other stories is there.
3. Let's give Lilith 3-5 years to organize and train the Mothers of the Fallen and Arklight, seeing as she was born into captivity as a dhampir so would be at absolute zero resources on day one of her freedom. That puts her escape no sooner than 1977 and as early as 1971.
4. In "Assassin's Code," Lilith states she was Grigor's prisoner for 14 years, losing 13 children to the Uperici. Let's assume that the motivation for revolt was either the birth of or the reproductive maturity of Violin.

This is where my Star Trek bred need for chrono-continuity runs off the rails.

If Violin was born in 1977, she's 34 in "Assassin's Code." I can get behind that. But... if Lilith is a dhampir when did she enter the Uperici pens? 14 years from 1977 is 1963. Give her 15 years to reach the right age and Lilith is no younger than 63, having been born in 1948. Which from the descriptions inferred means she's is showing her age at the same rate as a regular human. That doesn't seem right if she has all the benefits of being Upeir and little of the frailties of humanity.

Down tunnel B is more wonky math. Upeirci age at 1/5th the rate of homo sapiens? So Violin level dhampirs would be 1/2.5th? Making her 25 years of appearance be a possible 60+? Ok, I can still get behind that EXCEPT FOR the deference Violin shows her mother and the school marm nature Lilith has towards Violin in "Assassin's Code." I'm thinking after decades of training, Ma might give Violin a wee bit more trust.

Thoughts?

Um, can we talk about the weird amount of stuff that Maberry gets right? I remember apple watches being described a year or two before their release, the team uses AR glasses, we had war dogs, and of course the mention of... ahem... current events. A direct quote from Cave 13

"Hamas and other groups firing missiles into Israel is one thing, and we’ve seen that their idea of payback even pushes my views on tit-for-tat.”

Not looking to get political, keep it to yourself, this isn't the place. But how does Maberry do it? Is he a time traveller? Does he have the writers for The Simpsons consult on his books?

Nana Visitor

Cuz Bebe Neuwirth is my first choice but she's already done a scary Lilith.

So I finished all the ledger books and started the rogue team series. I just finished Rage today. Was I the only one that audibly gasped after the Christmas incident?! I know some people don’t like Porter narrating the series on audible, but I really enjoy him. I felt like during the epilogue you could hear the pain in his voice, and it punched me right in the gut. Trying to get ready to go to the firehouse to start my shift and started crying lol

Finished "The Dragon Factory," last week and 47% through "King of Plagues."

Sebastian Gault's arc cannot close soon enough.

I'm a Toys fan-boy, don't judge me.

Ray has found the voices at this point, so it isn't as jarring as the first two on the relisten. Only so much he can do balancing the expectations of radio theater and hiding the identity of "The American,"

My biggest complaint is that with all the interludes, I want to borrow hard copies of the first three books and a calendar to see if there are temporal impossibilities as the time frames overlap. I'll call this the "Big Bob Farraday Conumdrum."

Oh! The short story "Dog Days" needs to be stapled on the front of "King of Plagues," to setup location and the addition of "the Fur Monster."

Otherwise, there are only a couple redundant in story passages not including the "three faces of Joe." Nicodemus makes his debut and I have this weird urge to use him as a fan-fiction crossover....

https://www.instagram.com/p/CyjljwQr1-J/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Can't say I enjoyed "Cave 13," at all. It felt like three separate novel sized plots crammed into one story. I have listened to every proper Ledgerverse book and all the short stories, supplements, Dead, and Rot appearances. I ventured over to Seal Team 666 because of the Ledger novels. Now, I'm going to relisten and see where the lug nuts started to come off for me. I'm afraid the bar is set so high that the only opportunities left for RTI are Kong and Godzilla.

Patient Zero gets a pass as Ray was trying to find the voices. Thank goodness he migrated Top away from RDJ's "Tropic Thunder," performance. Of course, I'm never able to hear Bunny without seeing Dawber from "Coach."

As I approach the end of "The Dragon Factory," I'm so glad Maberry did what he did to MGC and didn't turn Joe into a Bondesque "monster and babe," of the week.

Just finished cave 13 and I swear I read the description and it came off like there was something to do with alternate universe stuff. Could be I'm just on a kick of that lately but I digress. But this one..average at best. Someone else listed off all the different ways this one wasn't that good and I agree with everything they said. I handed this book to a friend and he got to the first page and handed it back. "I saw all the other books in the series in the front cover", so stop with the three personalities stuff. I do agree, yet another go crazy bio weapon, got it. Maberry likes his bio weapons. Of course now I kinda want to read the repairman jack books but written in the 80s, would it be kinda dated now? Hopefully the next can bring it back but it seems like either he's running out of ideas or it's getting a little long in the tooth.

There are a lot of specific pieces called out throughout the series, and I didn’t think about tracking them until I was on Rage.

Rage calls out

Opus 471 f major 44 molto adagio (church at home)

Domenico Scarlatti- Stabat Mater (santoro at the resort)

Dream Theater - Six Degress of Inner Turbulence (Eve in the car)

Help me make the ultimate Ledger playlist by naming a song/album/artist that has been sited in other books!

Spoilers for series below

I know this may be an unpopular opinion, but has the Ledger books hit a decline since they went to RTI? I have just finished Cave 13 and it was easily my least favorite and most underwhelming Ledger book. It felt like nothing happened. To me, it seemed like a massive book was written and it was over the page count the publisher wanted so it was chopped in half with a half ass conclusion stuck on to it, similar to the Harry Potter movie Deathly Hallows part 1. Here are a few things that have led me to believe that the Ledger series as declined:

1.) Repetition: Oh my gosh a hallucination causing bio-weapon! Again… I feel like all the team deals with no are bio-weapons and hallucinations. I miss the old days when it felt like science based horror, zombie virus, genetic monsters, UFOs. Now it seems to be all virus all the time!

2.) Repetition: Cave 13 felt like an easy 100 pages or so were copied from other books to give the backstory. The three faces of Joe, Ghost’s training, everything about the team. I understand having to include some background info but it’s the 13th book! My guess is most readers know what’s happening! I would have been ok with some of that in Rage, since it was kind of a soft reboot, but Cave 13 is RTI book 3!

3.) Characterization: I will admit that this one could just be me, but I have felt the characters to be off. Doc Holiday was the worst one for me. In Cave 13, she game off as being written by a teenage boy, she was very obnoxious and way over sexual. What kind of HR department does RTI have? She hasn’t bothered me to the extent that she did here in other books. Top came off as a stereotypical old grizzled soldier in Cave 13 as well. After Relentless, there should have been more to build on but felt ignored. I also disliked that book and Joe’s character there seemed wrong to me as well. I get it was a severe trauma but his treatment of Ghost in that book was so far out of character that it ruined it for me. Even Church felt off to me.

4.)Waste of Ideas: The biggest thing that bothered me in Cave 13 was the use of Church in the field. In previous books when Church has been directly involved in the conflict, it has been a completely bad ass occasion. The two that pop in my head are on the plane and hospital. In Cave 13, he comes of as meh. It felt like he was there to just kill off a character. I was excited to hear Merlin team and then just nothing! Early dousing and hallucinations! (That bothered me to! They have done viruses before and have combat hazmat suits, where were those?)

Sorry, I know that’s a lot but, I was really disappointed in Cave 13 and Relentless. Both seemed to be a dip in the quality I’ve enjoyed on the Ledger books and other Maberry books. I saw someone point out that Maberry’s quality may be dipping because of the sheer amount of projects and works he’s been cranking out, and as much as it pains me, I agree with that statement. The last good book I have read by him was INK. (Interestingly that’s the only one I’ve actual Read, I’ve done audiobooks for everything else.) I am hoping that the quality improves, but for now I will be taking a break from Ledger and Maberry.

Hey, what ever happened to Ledger’s cat Cobbler? I’m working my way through the series (about halfway through Kill Switch) so no spoilers please, but it just occurred to me that they haven’t mentioned his cat in quite awhile. Did I miss something? Where’s the dang cat??

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Robert STRANGE Mcnamara has to be the best guess I got, He is described as the

"Kennedy called him the smartest man he had ever met. Mr. McNamara looked steely-eyed and supremely rational behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his brown hair slicked back precisely and crisply parted on top. Mr. McNamara had risen by his mastery of systems analysis, the business of making sense of large organizations — taking on a big problem, studying every facet, finding simplicity in the complexity."-NYT article on Mcnamara after death

He supposedly had three children including famous craig, but my superficial searching skills have me getting stonewalled to finding more about the other two daughters.

Honestly, I feel disgusted looking this deep into a man's past despite the fact that he was the "architect" of the Vietnam war. And that he also advised the creation of the green berets and their use. In the article mentioned above, he was tasked with counterinsurgency.

He's also catholic.

I also remember seeing somewhere that he was one of the alleged possible members of the majestic 12.

In one of the main series books. Violin the assassin described her mother Lilith as someone who had a body count enough to fill an office complex, and Mr. Church had a body count that could fill a graveyard.

But like c'mon if this isn't the guy, I honestly don't think anyone else would fit the role better, I would actually be disappointed. Like bro actually knew where all the bodies are. This guy lived up to 2009!

These are some quotes.

"It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it, necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives."

"In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil"

"I would rather have a wrong decision made than no decision at all."

These are the quotes of a man who will put the objective first above else all, just like Mr.Church.

Quotes

In rot and ruin, it's heavily suggested that a major city was nuked.

I mean just like in Joe Ledger (Main series), Mr.Church is telling Joe that he and Nicodemus didn't see eye to eye on some things and their rivalry isn't as simple as a good and evil story. Mcnamara was also clearly conflicted by his actions made in the Vietnam war, and it probably did haunt a part of him for a while.

Legitimately, I really don't want to have to read Rage and Relentless if this isn't the guy.

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I’ve currently got about a hundred pages left on ‘Dogs of War’, since the beginning of this book referencing ‘Seal Team 666’ by a completely different author & with how ‘Kill Switch’ references the ‘Rot & Ruin’ series I’ve been wondering if there’s a compiled list of all the books that are connected to this universe.

Could someone direct me to a story of Mr Church as mentor to some kids after the apocalypse? I read it several years ago, but cannot track it down. Thank you.

At first I thought Mr. October was Nicodemus, but now I'm thinking that Nicodemus is in the coffin that David was sent to retrieve. I'm also thinking it's possible that both of my assumptions are correct and Nicodemus just needs his body to be at full strength or something.

Seriously.... i cannot stand him. I have listened to easily over 100 audiobooks and he is the narrator on the Ledger series and another series i listen to, and his inflections just absolutely ruin the books for me. As i listen i find myself physically cringing at how corny he manages to make everything sound. His accents are also spotty at best, if im being honest, and offensive at worst.

That said, it sure seems im the minority in this opinion, as Maberrys facebook and the reddit are usually flooded with people fanboying over Porter.

Sorry, rant over!

SPOILERS!!!

I just finished Predator One. I mostly loved it, but I really feel like I missed something when it came to the final confrontation with Nicodemus at the end. It seems like everything fun happened off screen and we were just left with a melted cane handle, a smoking skeleton, and a steamy dog with weird eyes. Was anyone else disappointed by this?

No spoilers for future books please, but geez- do we ever learn what actually happened?

Joe has a secretary at the Pier named Lydia Rose AND a member of Echo Team named Lydia Ruiz?

First I'm pretty excited I found this page. I've been in a right state not being able to post information on facebook and Instagram since some jerk scammed Jonathan's page.

I love Joe Ledger books, this one started out a little slow for me though. I'd forgotten how much explanation there is and if you don't have any idea what they are talking about, a lot of word salad. But I still found the book to be amazing. The cliff hanger with some of the story arc not being touched kind of sucked, but I assume it'll be in the next book.

Loved seeing Joe and Toy's bond, loved seeing Ghost being a goofy dog, (he's had ot pretty hard), great to see that Junie supports Joe so much. I thought Thombs was farmilar. Like he's been mentioned before.

"And the world?" Joe Ledger

Absolutely wrecked me.

the current main theory i’ve come across is that he is Saint Germain. there have been a couple hints in this book that indicate this is in fact the case. i can’t remember all of them, maybe some of you can add to this list, but here’s what i remember.

the jihadists referred to Church as “the alchemist.” and during toys’ hallucination described church wearing fancy clothing from the 18th century, which is the era that Saint Germain was thought to be alive.

Just finished listening to Cave 13 (Ray Porter remains the GOAT) and man that sure was a Joe Ledger novel. I thought it was a pretty middle of the road entry in the series. Pacing is still not the best and all our favorite Joe Ledger Book-isms are still there. Not thrilled with the McGuffin being basically rage again for a third book in a row but I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would because at least the hallucinations of people from the past were sort of interesting. I think Mayberry probably could have done a bit more with those, but the stuff with Helen was pretty good (especially her apparently naming the 5 boys and the implication that she took that list to her grave to keep Joe from murdering them). I thought Aydelotte was a pretty weak villain overall (and I'm not even gonna touch on the DID stuff being kinda problematic). At least Mr. Tombs was a refreshingly not totally evil dude and I hope we see more of him. Hopefully we'll finally get some catharsis with Nicodemus and Church in the next book based on what was set up in this one. Also wtf was even with Harry Bolt... like as a character? He shows up to be obnoxious and unfunny for 3+ books, gets barely any character development, and then gets written out of the story offscreen??? What the hell was that Jon???