Paleontologist Grant Coleman teaches at Robeson University, but has a nice side job writing creature feature fiction during his downtime. His success as an author gets him invited to be the guest of honor at a writers’ conference at an African safari lodge.
He arrives to find the conference cancelled. Lionel Van Rooyen has commandeered the entire lodge for his personal safari, a hunt travelling up what the locals call the River of Death. He’s leading a team of mercenary poachers to kill the mythical zuhwiri, a giant rhinoceros.
When Van Rooyen’s cryptid expert guide fails to show up, he forces Grant to take his place. The cross-river passage becomes a gauntlet of attacks by jungle animals, some of which should have been extinct for a few million years. Danger lurks around every bend, in every tree, and even beneath their feet.
Grant has survived some close calls before, but the odds are against him now. No one has ever returned from a passage up the River of Death.
