Matt and Jenny were joined again by one of Atomic Geekdom’s favorite authors Jonathan Maberry to discuss his March 4th, 2025 release of his 4th book to the Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International series - BURN TO SHINE (14th Ledger novel).
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For a recap of our previous coverage of Cave 13 visit our AG Book Club post of the 3rd in the series: Cave 13.
For audio, please check out the Atomic Geekdom Podcast to listen in.
By Matt Spaulding
** POTIENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD FOR JOE LEDGER AND ROGUE TEAM INTERNATIONAL Series **
With the latest installment in the Joe Ledger series, Jonathan Maberry has once again crafted a tense, scary, action-packed tale that, this time, really makes the reader take a hard look at the state of the real world as well.
While new readers to Joe Ledger will be able to read, understand and appreciate this novel, it’s also the one in the series that most rewards people who have been with this series from the beginning, and even readers of Maberry’s other, non-Ledger novels including the Pine Deep trilogy that began Maberry’s career. Even I, a Maberry super fan, didn’t catch all the references to other works. It will be fun to reread this some day and try again to catch every little detail.
Detail is the word with Maberry as a writer, and his attention to everything really pays off in this book. The book is peppered with flashbacks to events that lead up to the main plot, but the flashbacks aren’t in chronological order. Maberry has expertly laid them out in a manner that reveals information that is only important to know right then, as it relates to what our characters are finding out in “real time” in the main plot, or to give the reader a hint at what’s next. This means that something that happened “six months ago” can be revealed before something that happened “two years ago” because it’s more important to “right now.” It’s incredibly smart and clever and really helps keep the mystery alive. Especially to someone like me, a “mark” who is not necessarily trying to figure things out in advance, happy to go where the story takes me as it unfolds.
At the heart of Maberry’s writing, though, are his characters. Nothing that unfolds in any of his books would be tense or exciting or scary without being deeply connected to his characters. And that’s especially true here. The title of the book, Burn to Shine, is a reference to an earlier novel, Code Zero, and relates to one of the most dangerous villains in the series, so I knew right from the jump there was plenty of reason to be worried about my favorite heroes. Not that there isn’t always in these books (Joe Ledger and Co. have been through some horrible things along the way), but knowing the origin of the title of the book added to that feeling of unease. And, through the character work on the villains in this story, Maberry builds that feeling of unease pretty much right to the very end. I honestly found myself, close to the end of the novel, wondering just how on Earth everyone was going to escape the various awful situations they all found themselves in, terrified that someone (or someones) wouldn’t escape.
Conspicuously mostly absent from this novel is Mr. Church, the enigmatic leader of Rogue Team International. Church typically has a prominent role in these books, but he takes somewhat of a backseat. However, right in the last few paragraphs something major happens with Church that will leave anyone who reads it ready for the next book, Red Empire, which Maberry has said is mostly about Church and his origin, to be here now instead of next year.
One other thing this novel does really well is address the all-too-real problems of misinformation, conspiracies and radical militia groups. There were parts of the book I found myself getting uncomfortable just from how real it all was. Though this novel is not explicitly political (none of Maberry’s works are), it does address problems that exist in the real world that affect everyone, regardless of their political leanings, that could, sadly, be construed as political. But, misinformation, something that really drives the plot, is something that can come from anywhere and affect anyone, and is undoubtedly being used in real life to nefarious ends, just like in the book.
Burn To Shine is a novel that will make longtime fans of the Joe Ledger books and the rest of Maberry’s works very happy. But it is also a book that can serve very well as a primer for anyone who may read it without ever having read a Jonathan Maberry novel before, and open doors for them they didn’t know were there.
