Action/Adventure

Hotshot pilot Leo Eddowes is afraid of nothing and no one. So when she's asked to evacuate a man from the wilds of Alaska, she doesn't hesitate. But with enemies in close pursuit and the weather turning sour, what should have been a simple mission quickly shifts to disaster.

And there's only one way out.

When Elias Thorne disappeared, he was America's most wanted. Now he's spent more than a decade in one of the most remote places on earth, guarding a dangerous secret. Leo's arrival, quickly followed by a team of expert hunters, leaves him no choice but to join forces with her—and run. Neither is prepared for their reluctant partnership to flare into something as wild and untamed as the frozen world around them...but as desperately cold days melt into scorchingly hot nights, Leo and Elias must learn to dig deep, trust in each other, and forge a bond as strong as the forces of nature.

Stranded together in a frozen wilderness,There's nowhere left to run...

‘Uncharted’ was the book I was chomping at the bits to read ever since I finished ‘Whiteout’—a brilliant run-for-your-life-and survive (in the extreme cold) type of story. Much like its predecessor, ‘Uncharted’ is written in the same vein where survival at all costs while dodging a shadowy enemy is pretty much what the whole book is about.

It’s breathless action the whole way, from start to finish, obscuring perhaps, even the finer details of why Elias and Leo were where they were in the first place. There was quite some time spent in confusion as you’re only given bits and pieces of their histories and motivations, but even those are put aside with Anders’s relentless focus on overcoming obstacle after obstacle as they outrun a mysterious helicopter and a corporation nipping at their heels.

While I could appreciate both Leo’s and Elias’s tenacity in constantly staying a step ahead, I couldn’t quite get their attraction at first—which seemed to pop out as a result of dangerous head injuries—as it felt too much like a adrenaline-fuelled reaction to danger rather than actual emotional development. If they were exhausted by the sheer number of obstacles they had to conquer, so was I as well just reading about them…more so when over half the book rolled around and they’d made little forward progress in both plot and action.

But I really like Ander’s writing and that really, was the main thing that propelled me forward to the book’s somewhat rushed conclusion. That said, I wasn’t sure by the end of it all, where the larger narrative arc was heading and did wish that this aspect of the story was less opaque and piecemeal.