Memories of the Sword

★★★
“Looks lovely, yet literally loses the plot.”

memoriesoftheswordThe first 30 minutes of this are truly splendid: it’s got wonderful visuals, along the lines of Hero or House of Flying Daggers. But then, it’s as if the makers completely forgot about the story-line. The remainder of the two hours consists of semi-random scenes, half in flashback, featuring characters who apparently change names at random. While it still looks awesome, unless you have a detailed synopsis printed out in advance, you’re going to be reduced to going “Ooh!” and “Eh?” in roughly equal proportions.

As best as I can tell, the story is this. Hong-ee (Kim), also known as Seoi-hee, is a young martial arts prodigy, trained since birth by her blind foster mother, Seol-rang (Jeon), a.k.a Wallso. After Hong-ee’s talents become public knowledge, Wallso reveals the motive for the training. A long time ago, as Seol-rang, she was one of three rebel group leaders. The group were betrayed to the authorities by another leader, Deok-gi (Lee BH), who was rewarded with a position as the ruler’s right-hand man, and is now known as Yoo-Baek. He once loved Seol-rang, and realizes that Hong-ee is the daughter of the third leader, Poong-Cheon. [Fortunately, he was killed by Deok-gi, so does not complicate the plot further, under that or any other name] She has been brought up to act as an instrument of revenge, driven by the knowledge that Yoo-Baek killed her parents.

There is, it appears, a bit more than that going on, particularly in the middle hour where… other stuff happens. For example, there’s the inevitable romance between Seoi-hee and another young fighter, Yoo-Baek’s champion, Yull (Lee JH). This seems to have been added purely for cynically commercial purposes, though since it largely tanked at the Korean box-office… The action scenes are generally well-staged, though some of the CGI looks more than a little unconvincing. Some moments reminded me of Shaolin Soccer, and there has been close to 15 years of technological advances since then. It’s on more solid footing when using wire-fu, and both female leads are convincing enough in their skills.

The high level of confusion likely generated, however, means this isn’t going to be much more than empty emotional experience. You’re left so busy trying to figure out who’s doing what to whom, and why, you don’t have time to care about the participants. That’s why it falls so significantly short of the films it’s clearly trying to imitate, particularly Crouching Tiger. Instead, what you have here is purely cinema as spectacle. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with this approach, of course. It’s just that when so much effort has been put into the technical aspects, you’re inevitably left wishing for more. If only the film’s heart and soul had been as diligently worked on as its cinematography.

Dir: Park Heung-sik
Star: Kim Go-eun. Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Byung-hun, Lee Jun-ho

Mythica: The Necromancer

★★★½
“In which Mythica levels up…”

mythica3Was it really less than a year ago I watched and reviewed the first two entries in the series? Feels much longer somehow, which probably indicates how little of an impression they made. This is rather better, I think. The special effects have gone from “best not looked at directly” to “actually enhancing the feel of the film,” especially when magic spells start flying. Central character Marek (Stone) is coming into her own, but the increased power poses increasingly difficult moral choices. That’s especially so, because nemesis Szorlok is closing in on his goal, of getting all four fragments of the DarkSpore, which will allow him to unleash an undead army on the world. How far will Marek and her allies be prepared to go, in order to stop him?

Here, however, the quest is somewhat tangential. Fighter Thane is captured by the head of the Thieves’ Guild, and used as leverage, forcing the other three on a mission to retrieve some cargo. To make sure they comply, he sends along his creepy minion, Betylla (Brodie), who uses beetles to communicate with his master. However, Szorlok is lurking in wait, and just when they think they’ve completed their task, and can return to free Thane… We’re back on the main storyline again, and the “Redthorns” (as the team has taken to calling themselves, a homage to the team of mentor Obi-Wan ) may be heading towards a significant reduction in permanent staffing levels. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

If there is still very much the feel of an AD&D adventure here, the players here seem to be growing into their roles, with a better sense of the relationships between them. Here, the most interesting arc belong to priestess Teela (Posener), who has to decide what matters to her, and where her faith lies on that scale of importance. Particularly toward the end, it’s certainly the darkest in the series, and you get a sense that this is going to be an increasing theme. Shit’s getting real, as I believe they say.  Turns out this is now a five-film series, rather than the three I wrote in an earlier review. With one piece of the DarkSpore still left for Szorlok to acquire, I’ve a feeling after this one that I know what the fourth installment is going to involve, setting up a grandstand finale.

I’m not sure if they spent more money here; it does feel more expensive. Either way, I’m a bit more hopeful the film will be able to deliver on what it’s building up to, than after the last installment. New director Smith was cinematographer on those, and brings a suitably epic feel to proceedings, mixing the practical and visual effects into a coherent whole. I found myself sufficiently enthusiastic to head straight into part four, with more anticipation than I’ve felt to this point.

Dir: A. Todd Smith
Star: Melanie Stone, Jake Stormoen, Nicola Posener, Philip Brodie

Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell

Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆½

modesty1British author Peter O’Donnell created the iconic character of Modesty Blaise in 1963 as the heroine of an action adventure comic strip. He didn’t do the art work for the strip (that was done by four successive artists altogether), but he was responsible for the storylines and printed matter during the whole 38-year run, continuing until 2001. (These original strips are currently being reprinted as a series of graphic novels.) It quickly proved popular enough that 20th-Century Fox enlisted him to write a screenplay for a spin-off movie, which he did. However, he approached the character and the project seriously; and the filmmakers decided that they wanted to produce a parody of the James Bond films instead.

So, they brought in another writer to rework his screenplay, and ended up only keeping one sentence of it. Surprisingly, though, they asked O’Donnell, not his replacement, to do the novelization. He did –but he used his screenplay as the basis. That became the book I’m reviewing here, which was published in 1965 and sparked a long-running series of novels and stories, all with original plots distinct from those of the comic strips. (Meanwhile, the movie, with its caricature of Modesty in the main role, hit the screens in 1966, but failed to spark any fan enthusiasm comparable to what the books and comics generated.)

O”Donnell’s Modesty is a fascinating, complex and layered character, with an unusual back-story that’s provided in its basics at the beginning of this book, but fleshed out more as the tale unfolds. Born about 1939 –she doesn’t know exactly when, nor what her real name and nationality is– she was orphaned as a small child in the chaos and atrocities of World War II, and wandered alone through the Balkans and Middle East, sometimes living in refugee or DP camps. Exposed to a lot of danger and brutality, she survived against all odds because she learned to defend herself and to develop a tough, pragmatic mentality. As a tween, she was mentored by another refugee, a former university professor (whom she protected, rather than the other way around) who taught her a great deal; intelligent and gifted with a good memory, she’s well-educated as a result.

Winding up in Tangier at 17, she soon succeeded to the leadership of a criminal gang, and built it into a substantial international organization, the Network, that engaged in art and jewel thefts, currency manipulations, smuggling, and intelligence brokering. She did NOT, however, engage in drug or sex trafficking (and sometimes provided the authorities with tips that enabled them to bust drug operations); her criminal activities violated the law, but never her own personal moral code and sense of honor. (It was during her Network days that she forged her abiding friendship with Willie Garvin, a skilled knife-fighter whose life had pretty much hit bottom until she saw his potential and recruited him; he would become her lieutenant and faithful sidekick.) Having amassed her goal of half a million pounds sterling by the time she was about 25, she turned the Network over to its regional bosses and she and Willie (also wealthy by that time) retired to a quiet life in England.

The book opens about a year later, when she’s bored and restive, increasingly aware that she’s psychologically geared to find fulfillment and purpose in high-risk physical action, and doesn’t feel really alive when she’s vegetating without it. At this point, she’s approached by Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of British Intelligence (who did business with her, through Willie, when she was brokering items of information that interested the British government). As partial payment to a Middle Eastern sheik for an oil concession, Britain is shipping ten million pounds worth of diamonds from South Africa to Beirut –and there are rumors that the secrecy of the shipment has been compromised, and that someone may be out to steal it. Being aware of Modesty’s unique wide knowledge of, and contacts in, the international underworld, Tarrant would like her to check this out for him. First, though, she’ll have another priority on the agenda –rescuing Willie (also bored and restive) from the South American prison where he’s awaiting execution, having been a mercenary on the losing side in a civil war.

modesty2O’Donnell is a master of characterization; not just Modesty and Willie, but all of the secondary characters here too, are wonderfully wrought, full-orbed and realistic. The plotting is taut and well-paced, with no unnecessary filler, and there’s a real sense of danger and challenge. It’s clear that the author has a very good working knowledge of traditional Arab culture, which adds texture here. Unlike Ian Fleming, he doesn’t go in for far-fetched gadgetry, but he does endow his heroine and hero with some believable gadgets and an ability to secrete them on their person. He writes action scenes that are clear, vivid and gripping; and he sets his action in the context of a moral framework –recognizable good is pitted here against genuine evil, and O’Donnell makes us root wholeheartedly for the former and despise the latter. Modesty herself is no plaster saint; I didn’t approve of everything she’s done in her life, or every aspect of her lifestyle now. But I could understand her motivations, and didn’t have any trouble liking and respecting her as a heroine –she has a lot of very real virtues, is a born leader and as valiant a fighter as ever lived, cares about others and treats them decently, and respects innocent life (and will spare adversaries’ lives at times when some people in her shoes probably wouldn’t).

At one point, O’Donnell makes use of a double coincidence in his plotting, which some critics might fault him for. (But that personally didn’t bother me much; I ascribed it to the action of providence.) And while he drops the names of various firearms models to lend verisimilitude to his narrative, he makes a couple of bloopers in his treatment of guns. Also, he describes technical processes at places in the narrative in more detail than I would (I have a low tolerance for that kind of thing), but he usually has a good reason to, and does it with reasonable clarity; some fans will actually regard this as a strength of the writing. One major character displays some sexist attitudes, but I didn’t think O’Donnell was sharing in or justifying them, just realistically depicting the way many males in 1965 thought (and still do).

There’s a high body count here, but the violence is handled quickly and cleanly; while some of the villains are sadists, O”Donnell isn’t. There’s some bad language, and a certain amount of religious profanity, but no obscenity. While there’s no explicit sex, it’s made clear that unmarried sex took place a few times, and will again; Willie and Modesty are single, but not celibate. (Their relationship with each other, though, is perfectly chaste and Platonic –they genuinely do love each other, and would die for each other, but as true friends, not as erotic partners.)

In this book, it’s noted in passing that Modesty has been raped twice in her life. As it stands, that’s just a reflection of the tragic fact that women in our world often do face a lot of sexual violence; and she isn’t defined by the experience, and doesn’t have a victim mentality that allows it to permanently scar her life, which is positive modeling. But I’m told by other readers that in the other books of the series (though not the comics) Modesty tends to be raped quite frequently. To me, that’s a disturbing amount of sexual violence for one character to have to undergo; and it does seem like a morbid overuse of the motif. But that said, I’m still invested enough in this heroine and her future adventures to continue reading the series!

Author: Peter O’Donnell
Publisher: Souvenir Press, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

My Young Auntie

★★★½
“Serious kung fu, light gags.”

youngauntieHui won the Best Actress award at the first ever Hong Kong Film Awards for her role in this 1981 film, in which she plays Cheng Tai-nun, a young martial-arts expert who marries an elderly landowner so that his unscrupulous brother won’t be able to take the landowner’s assets upon his death. Instead, title passes to Tai-nun, who heads off to Canton to stay with her (much older) nephew, Yu Cheng-chuan (Lau), and his son Yu Tao (Ho), whose hip, young ways clash badly with Tai-nun much more traditionalist views. But the brother plans to steal the dead to what he considers “his” estate, and it’s up to Tao and Tai-nun to prevent that – with the help of a roster of elder relatives and Cheng-chuan, who must also be coached in the ways of kung-fu.

There’s three-quarters of a very good film here, and Hui is amazing; not someone to whom I’d paid any attention before, she was both lithe and graceful. This isn’t limited to her fighting skills. Perhaps the peak of the film is a masked ball which Tai-nun is tricked into attending by Tao, and her lack of dance skills are embarrassingly exposed, in a range of genres from tango to swing. It’s brilliant, because you get a real appreciation for the coordination required in making yourself look incredibly uncoordinated. That this turns into a massive and well choreographed sword-fight, with Tai-nun dressed as Marie Antoinette [at a guess] is merely a very pleasant bonus. Director Lau went on to helm Drunken Master II and this has much the same approach, combining comedy and action to good effect; the laughter flows naturally from the characters, rather than (as so often) appearing forced; the caption from the trailer, quoted at the top, gets it about right.

The main problem is a final third which unceremoniously shunts Tai-nun off to one side, with the climax pitting Tao and his older uncles against their thieving relative, as they try to get the property deed back to its rightful owner. If decent enough, there’s nothing at all to separate it from a plethora of other films of its kind and type from the era, and you just wish they had given Hui – perhaps with Ho – a final chance to shine, instead of all but eliminating her from the movie that bears her character’s name. Still, if you can keep your brain around the blizzard of generational family loyalties (or, alternatively, ignore them completely), you’re in for a fun time. If it could fairly be accused of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the wall, more than enough sticks to justify it, and Hui makes for a striking heroine, whose other films I am clearly going to have to chase down.

Dir: Lau Kar Leung
Star: Kara Hui, Hsiao Ho, Lau Kar Leung, Wang Lung Wei, Gordon Liu

Mother

★★★½
“The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

motherBong is best known in the West for recent SF film, Snowpiercer, and also for monster movie The Host, but this, which came between those two, is somewhat less of a genre piece. A woman, known only as “Mother” (Kim), lives with her… intellectually-challenged, shall we say, shy son Do-joon (Won) in a small Korean town, making her living as a seller of medicinal herbs and grey-market acupuncturist. When a local schoolgirl is found dead, with one of Do-joon’s golf-balls next to her, he’s immediately the prime suspect, and the police investigation doesn’t bother looking much further. His lawyer is no help, and when the easily-fooled Do-Joon is browbeaten into signing a confession, it appears the case is closed. The only one still convinced of his incident is his Mom, who begins a quest, along with her son’s semi-delinquent friend, Jin-Tae (Jin), to find the truth behind the murder.

Be careful what you wish for, could be the moral of the story here, for the results of Mother’s investigation might not necessarily be what she wants to find. The film deliberately keeps the question of Do-Joon’s guilt or otherwise unresolved, almost until the very end. I suspect any Hollywood version of the same story would not have the guts to walk that tight-rope for as long, and it’s that tension between the audience’s uncertainty and Mother’s absolute, unwavering commitment to, and belief in, her son’s innocence, which largely keeps this interesting as things move forward. You desperately want her faith to be justified; I’ve been in a similar situation, someone I know having been arrested and charged with multiple murders, and denial is an entirely natural reaction. I can only imagine what it’s like for a mother, but in this case, her relentless and fearless pursuit of the real killer is what moves the film into our territory.

It’s not perfect, with neither the opening nor the end being as strong as the middle section deserves, and the resonance of Kim’s history as an actress is largely lost – I wasn’t aware she had spent much of her career in Korea playing the motherly type. There are also moments of strange irrelevance, such as when the cops taking Do-Joon away, are involved in a car crash, for absolutely no reason; it’s not referred to at any other point in the film, and seems a pointless diversion in a film that’s probably overlong, at 129 minutes. However, there’s enough meat here, and a very good central performance, to overcome the weaknesses, and make for an interesting and uniquely independent twist on the female detective sub-genre.

Dir: Bong Joon-ho
Star: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo, Yoon Je-moon

Momentum

★★★
“Momentum runs out.”

momentumAlex Farraday (Kurylenko) is part of a gang of jewel thieves, who have just pulled off a very successful heist in South Africa. Unfortunately, along with the diamonds, they have also acquired a flash drive which contains the plans of a rogue Senator (Freeman), to stage another 9/11 in order to generate wealth for him and his buddies. Needless to say, he’s not happy about it, and sends his minion, Mr. Washington (Purefoy), to retrieve the incriminating hardware and tidy up the loose ends – consisting of Alex and her associates.

That’s certainly a terser synopsis than usual, yet it’s more than enough, because this is a film that does not care too much for complexities of plot. It is a cinematic shark, in that whenever it stops moving, the audience’s interest dies. The good news is, particularly in the first half, that never happens, with Alex being pursued and harried by Washington and his minions [sub-henchmen?] from hotel room to the house of her former boyfriend and not-so-former partner, where a disgruntled wife is most unhappy by Alex’s unexpected phone-call, and on from there to an abandoned warehouse. This section is thoroughly entertaining, unfolding at a breathless and non-stop pace, and Kurylenko lives up to the action potential she showed in The Assassin Next Door, surviving on pure adrenaline, as well as her smarts and combat skills – for, it turns out, she has a long, shadowy past of such things.

The problems are much more in the second half, when Campanelli abandons a shamelessly breathless and kinetic approach, replacing it mostly with scenes in which heroine and villain banter awkwardly, while the latter threatens to inflict unspeakable tortures on her. This, needless to say, is rather less interesting and the film dissolves into a disappointing series of expected shenanigans, for which the drive is a MacGuffin. It doesn’t help that the whole “Senator” subplot is so woefully under-developed – I believe Freeman took on the role as a favour to the director – they really shouldn’t have bothered, instead just leaving both the contents and the shadowy owner unspecified.

I did enjoy Kurylenko, who also handles her action sequences creditably, with occasional upticks into impressive, though just about everyone else in the cast is more or less forgettable, and there isn’t enough new in the script to make it worthy of note. Campanelli is a long time cameraman, known in particular for his work with Clint Eastwood, and he apparently had to quit American Sniper to make this, his directorial debut. If the early going shows a great deal of promise, it appears he ran out of steam and ideas thereafter. Rather than building on its solid foundation, this is a film that seems content to stop any ascent there, admire the view for a bit, and coast downhill thereafter without expending significant further effort.

Dir: Stephen Campanelli
Star: Olga Kurylenko, James Purefoy, Morgan Freeman, Jenna Saras

Mythica: The Darkspore

★★½
“Dungeons and Dragons. This time with a dungeon. And a dragon.”

mythicaThe original movie sat in my “pending” pile for so long, that the sequel showed up about a week after finally reviewing it. So I thought I might as well fast-track that one, and see how it compares. The answer is likely, not quite as well, much though it goes over the same, well-worn fantasy/D&D tropes. Our four adventurers from the first movie are still about, though haughty cleric Teela (Posener) now has a dead sister, which she blames Marek (Stone), the rapidly XP-gaining magic-user.  is warned by her mentor, Gojun Pye (Kevin Sorbo, in much the same kind of cameo are last time), that evil necromancer Szorlok is watching her, seeing the darkness which lurks within her soul.

Szorlok and sidekick Kishkumen are searching to reassemble the titular artefact, which was cracked to four pieces in a previous age. Cutting to the chase rather faster than the script here does, they capture our hereoes, along with newcomer Hairgel the dark elf [ok, not his actual name, but you’ll understand why I call him that when you see him] and hold Teela as a hostage, using her as leverage so her friends will retrieve the stone.

The film seems to have forgotten that it was the characters, and the interplay between them, which was its predecessor’s strongest suit. When we get that, it still shines, yet you’re well into the second half of the movie before the party is reassembled and gets going on anything resembling an actual adventure. Up until then, you get a rather boring set of navel-gazing, mostly based around Marek agonizing about whether she is being turned to the dark side, with a side-helping of angst from Teela.

The script also decides to inject romantic elements this time, with Teela falling for the group’s fighter, Thane (Johnson), and if you don’t like that one, why not try Marek and Hairgel’s blossoming relationship. It wasn’t just the 12-year-old boy in me who was wrinkling his nose up at all this sissy stuff. Things do perk up a bit more in the second half, when there is actually a quest to be competed, with the poison infecting Teela adding a useful “ticking clock” to proceedings. However, the battles were underwhelming, both against a pretty mediocre CGI dragon, and facing Kishkumen and his forces, whose main tactic appears to be to form a circle around their target, then attack one at a time. If you’ve seen a seventies martial-arts film, you’ll know the technique.

Not to say it’s worthless, with Marek’s character and powers developing nicely; she’s clearly more adept than she was first time out, when a puff of smoke was a challenge. With great power, as we all know, comes great responsibility, and I just wish the makers would put more effort into that aspect. Because if the planned five films come to pass. they’re going to need the balance to tilt away from tedious romance and whiny soul-searching, and back toward thrilling adventure.

Dir: Anne K. Black
Star: Melanie Stone, Adam Johnson, Jake Stormoen, Nicola Posener

Mythica: A Quest for Heroes

★★★
“Dungeons & Dragons. Without dungeons. Or dragons.”

mythicaI could virtually hear the d20s rolling for chunks of this one. Not to say that is a bad thing as such; it quite took me back to my college days, when I spent far more time than I should, lurking in the corners of the student union, trying to nurse my ferociously-toasted paladin through another death-trap! The heroine here is Marek (Stone), a slave with a club foot who has higher aspirations, dabbles in magic, and runs away from her master to seek her fame and fortune. She talks her way into a mission no other adventurer will accept, rescuing the sister of haughty high priestess Teela (Posener), who has been kidnapped by orcs, and adds a gruff fighter, Thane (Johnson), and sly thief Dagen (Stormoen) to complete the parade of obvious stereotypes, er, sorry, I meant to write “party of adventurers”. They head off to follow the orcs, only to find Teela’s sister is not there, and is apparently with a far bigger, more unpleasant monster, possessing a lot more hit points and higher armour-class.

All my cynicism (which you may just have been able to detect in the above) aside, I actually didn’t hate this, despite its horribly derivative nature and failure to deliver any kind of ending [it being the first in an intended three-part saga coughHobbitcough]. Far from it, actually: if painfully obvious, the characters are still fun to be around, and the actors embrace them with gusto, which help bring them to life. Marek, in particular, has the potential to have a good character arc, since she appears to possess occult talents, which are only scratched here, coming out in dire emergencies – conveniently for the story! She is disabled, but not defined by it. Save a couple of scenes, such as the one where she begs Teela’s to heal her,  it’s easy to forget her impediment, and there’s no doubting her courage, wits and loyalty, which make for a winning combination in a fantasy lead.

About the only name you’ll recognize here is Kevin Sorbo, who has basically one scene as Marek’s magical mentor, though I get the feeling he will be back in subsequent parts. Still, if you rent this expecting more based on the promotional material, you’ll be disappointed. Fortunately, I had no such preconceptions, and was able to enjoy what is, in many way, a throwback to the eighties and nineties when, it seems, there was a new one of these out every other time I went to the video-store. [Usually made in Argentina. For Roger Corman] If I can’t say I am anticipating future installments with breathless excitement, I can’t say I will actively avoid them either; mild anticipation is likely about the mark. Coming from someone who has sat through his share of bad genre entries, that’s no mean feat.

Dir: Anne K. Black
Star: Melanie Stone, Adam Johnson, Jake Stormoen, Nicola Posener

Moon Called, by Patricia Briggs

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

mooncalledUrban fantasy is a sub-genre I still haven’t explored much; but I’d heard a lot of good things about Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series. When a generous Goodreads friend offered me her copy of the series opener when she finished reading it, rather than let it gather dust on her shelf, I grabbed it up, and as my rating indicates, I’m glad I did.

Mercy’s a were-coyote, living in an alternate U.S. much like ours, except that here the “lesser fae” (brownies, kelpies, etc.) are public knowledge –but other types of supernatural or magic-practicing beings are not. She’s is the out-of-wedlock daughter of a Blackfoot Indian shape-shifter, who died in an accident before she was born, and a white mother who had a werewolf relative in her family three generations back. When she found Mercy in coyote form in her crib, she arranged to have her fostered in a small, werewolf-dominated community in the wilds of Montana. Hence, Mercy’s quite knowledgeable about werewolves and their ways. Vampires and a gremlin are also parts of her social world, though werewolves play the biggest role.

Both the urban fantasy novels with female protagonists that I read earlier were actually written later than this one, so didn’t influence it; the most germinal influence on all three was probably the early Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton. What they take in common from that influence is the idea of a strong young (or young-appearing) heroine with supernatural traits, in a modern urban setting, interacting with supernatural beings of various types, and capable of handling herself in physical combat situations if she has to. Within that concept, though, there’s room for considerable individuality and uniqueness in the way it’s developed. As a writer, Briggs is very much her own person, and her heroine and fictional vision aren’t clones of any other.

At the core of this novel, of course, and the main ingredient in its appeal, is the well-drawn, round-character figure of Mercy herself. She’s a kindhearted person who genuinely cares about others and their needs, and who attracts friendship by being a friend. Her shape-shifting is a part of who she is that she’s come to accept; but she still feels isolated because of it, even from her human family (more her problem than theirs) and lonely as the only one of her kind that she knows. Though no plaster saint, she’s a practicing Christian. No gun/sword for hire, she’s chosen a peaceful, though male-dominated, trade as a auto mechanic, and when our story opens, hasn’t been involved in violence before. But she’s well aware that she lives in a violent, dangerous world. A purple belt in karate, she’s a concealed carry permit holder who owns at least three guns (and makes her own silver bullets), physically strong, smart and possessing an inner core of resolution that’s prepared to do what needs doing in a crisis. So she’s prepared to face trouble and danger –and that’s just as well, because it’s about to find her, and people that she’s befriended and cares about. (The violence in the book isn’t gratuitous or graphic, however.)

The arrival of a strange werewolf teen starts the novel off with a note of mystery, which quickly escalates into a gripping plot built around a shadowy conspiracy, that keeps you guessing right down to the denouement. All of the other major characters, and even most of the secondary ones, are well developed and vivid; the author’s prose flows easily, and she incorporates just the right amount of description. While the action isn’t non-stop, the action scenes are effective. A strong point of the novel is the development of the werewolf subculture, which feels real enough to suspend disbelief. Briggs’ werewolves are more like Anthony Boucher’s than like the traditional, moon-crazed psychopaths out to kill anything that moves (I greatly prefer the former, so that’s a plus); they’re not innately evil just because they’re lycanthropes, and they can have some really good personal qualities. (They also take true wolf form, though larger and with more varied coloring, not a man-wolf hybrid form, and have some wolf behavioral characteristics even in their human form.) But they do have a predatory animal nature they need to control, and believable dominance issues.

The Tri-Cities metropolitan area of southeastern Washington state, where Mercy lives, is a real place (population in the 270,000 range), and apparently accurately described; the map that Briggs includes is a helpful feature. Although Mercy had a teenage attraction to one of the werewolf characters (and they still have some feelings for each other), and there’s also some attraction between her and another male character, with a kiss at one point, I would not characterize the book as “paranormal romance.” That element is a decidedly minor thread in the plotting, and Mercy’s feelings aren’t focused on one object.

There are a couple of places where the author uses Mercy as a mouthpiece for a comment or sermon pushing “politically correct” sentiments, in a way that comes across as preachy and judgmental. This was irritating, and detracted from my rapport with the character. At one point, Briggs has Mercy holster a revolver she’s already put in her pack, and which, as noted a couple of pages later, she doesn’t even have a holster for; and she refers to semi-automatic pistols as “automatic” (a common enough mistake –at least she refers to magazines as magazines, not “clips”). But those are relatively nit-picking quibbles. Briggs has made a worthwhile contribution to the urban fantasy field, and to supernatural fiction in general, with this series debut. Its deserved popularity rests on a solid base of literary quality.

Note: While there’s no obscenity and little bad language of any kind in the book (the point is made that Mercy doesn’t appreciate profane use of God’s name), and no sexual activity of any kind, Briggs does devote a lot of attention to homosexual werewolf Warren’s relationship with his human lover

Author: Patricia Briggs
Publisher: Ace Books, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Mutant World

★½
“Well, it’s no Sharknado 2. It’s not even Sharknado 3.”

mutantworldThis SyFy original movie takes place mostly after an “Earth killer”-sized meteor has struck the Eastern seaboard of the United States. A group of Doomsday preppers, with slightly more warning than most, are able to take shelter inside their refuge, a former missile silo, and settle down to wait out the apocalypse going on above ground. 10 years later, they’re forced to send a small group back up to the surface as the result of damage to their solar panels. Leading that patrol is Melissa King (Deveaux), whose father Marcus (Kim Coates, whom you will recognize if you’re a Sons of Anarchy fan) was the leader of the group, but was trapped outside their sanctuary when the meteor hit. The patrol discovers that the radiation resulting from the impact has wiped out most of humanity – but the survivors have been mutated by it, and turned into thoroughly unpleasant monsters. Exploring further, they find what appears to be sanctuary, populated by other survivors, only to discover that when the sun goes down, they too are no longer human. Fortunately for them, assistance is at hand in the former of the Preacher (Ashanti), a motorcycle riding, warrior-priestess, who appears to be in contact with the actual remnants of mankind.

Oh, dear. The potential is here, but is buried deeper than a nuclear fallout shelter, because there is hardly any aspect that is not badly botched, right from the start: Coates, the only real “name” in the cast, is barely in the film, the kind of bait-and-switch which is rarely a good sign. The script is just terrible: what’s supposed to be a quick mission up top to fix the power, somehow spirals off into a jolly road-trip, with no apparent regard for the people back in the bunker. While the mutants’ glowing green eyes are kinda cool, that is about as far as both the imagination and the budget goes; there’s no explanation provided either, for why some people are totally mutated, some are only mutated at night (!), and others, like the Preacher, are apparently entirely untroubled by mutantism, despite wearing no more protection than a long trench-coat. And don’t even get me started on Ashanti’s performance, which is about as unconvincing as you’d expect from a singer-slash-dancer-slash-whatever.

The film is clearly trying to establish Melissa’s credentials as some kind of a bad-ass, judging by the poorly-choreographed fight she has with the shelter leader, before heading up top [also worth noting: no-one appears to have aged or been changed in the slightest by the passage of a decade, whether underground or on the surface]. Outside of very intermittent moments, it doesn’t work, though in comparison to Ashanti, Coates is positively an Oscar-winner. I did somewhat appreciate the element of role-reversal found here, with the most bad-ass roles given to the actresses. However, good intentions are never enough to overcome execution as horribly flawed as we see here. By the end, I was hoping for another meteor strike, to put both the characters and the viewers out of our mutual misery.

Dir: David Winning
Star: Holly Deveaux, Ashanti, Amber Marshall, Jason Cermak