Author: Jim McLennan

Blind Woman’s Curse

  By

★★★
“The girls with the dragon tattoo”

Akemi Tachibana (Kaji) is second in command of her yakuza gang. During a battle with another group, she accidentally blinds Aiko Gouda (Tokuda), the sister of an enemy – an incident Akemi believes leaves her cursed, after a black cat laps up the blood spilled as a result. Following three years in jail, she returns to find the clan on the verge of war against their rivals, the Dobashi group. Various members of the Tachibanas are turning up dead, and with their tattoos flayed off. Turns out that Gouda has joined the Dobashi gang, with the aim of extracting vengeance on the woman who took her sight, even though Akemi has borne the guilt of that event ever since. 

When it concentrates on their relationship, the film is really good, with both actresses commanding the screen with an impressive presence. This leads to a final confrontation which certainly feels like it may have been an influence on the one at the end of Kill Bill, Volume One, between the Bride and O-Ren. What’s particularly outstanding is the surprising way in which it is resolved: based on everything you’ve seen to that point, you’d be forgiven for betting, odds-on, that there will be an oce-lot of arterial spray. There isn’t – though I’ll say not much more than that. It’s a strangely effective moment, like a Western where the two gunslingers eventually face off at high noon… and decide to go for a pint instead.

What’s considerably less effective is the stuff around the edges, much of which is silly – or, perhaps, played a great deal better on the page than the screen. For example, Akemi’s female minions each have part of a dragon tattooed on their back, so when they expose their shoulders and line up, it forms the entire thing. Which sounds really cool, but ends up looking more like a samurai version of the Human Centipede. There’s also the member of the enemy clan who goes around wearing a scarlet loin-cloth. It’s difficult to take someone as a threat, when they’ve apparently forgotten to put their pants on. In its defense, this is apparently played for comedy purposes, because he smells. Yeah. About that…

This illustrates the film’s main weakness, an apparent desire to be all things to all viewers. I’m not if the audience in 1970’s Japan was crying out for comedy-horror-yakuza-swordplay films, because that’s what they get here, and the various elements vary too much in quality and fail to mesh together at all. When it concentrates on what it does well – and that’s the relationship between the two female leads – it’s very good. You can easily see why Kaji, making her debut under that name here, would go on to stardom. Given how effectively they play off each other, it’s something of a surprise Tokuda didn’t follow suit, though she did go on to become (briefly) the last of writer Henry Miller’s five wives.

Dir: Teruo Ishii
Star: Meiko Kaji, Hoki Tokuda, Makoto Sako, Hideo Sunazuka

Sword of Order, by S. Mays

  By

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

Book 0 in the series? It seems a little odd, as this obviously leads in to the “first” book – Curse of Souls, published in September 2017 – yet Sword came out just three months later. Reading the synopsis, it seems as if Curse may be focused on a different character: college student Sverre Walker, who encounters Jessica Luvkrafft, warrior for the Order of Mankind. Sword is the story of how Jessica became that warrior.

The Order is a massive, ancient, extremely well-funded and completely covert religious organization which, more less, fights for humanity against things that go bump in the night. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, elementals… They’re all real, and the Order is in the front-line of making sure the threat they pose does not overwhelm the human race. As Jessica’s father Jake puts it, “We are the Sword of God. We were put here to eliminate the evils and abominations that seek to overrun our world.” To do so, the Order uses all the technology they can, much of which is developed in house, and not available even to the military.

Jake is a former field operative who now does R&D at one of the Order’s bases. His wife, Abigail, was killed on a mission, leaving him to take care of their daughter Jessica, who is aged 12 when the book starts, and in training. What’s supposed to be a simple mission ends up in the death of the Order member in charge (he was, to put it mildly, a bit of a dick). Even though Jessica was culpable in the fatality, by order of the Council of Overseers, she is fast-tracked to be his replacement. Getting there will require her overcoming her guilt, undergoing some brutal training, and passing a test where the price of failure is both death and her immortal soul.

That’s just the start, and it does feel a bit of a weakness that the book tries to cram in an entire decade’s worth of action. By the end, as mentioned above, Jessica is old enough to go undercover at college and there are a couple of points where it seems multiple years are skipped over with the wave of a paragraph. It also lacks a proper antagonist, with no-one showing up to fit that role until 70% of the way through. On the positive side, it’s a world with almost infinite potential, and I liked the way religion is incorporated into the book in a non-judgmental way.

It does end at a satisfactory point, with Jessica being given the mission that will form Book 1. If it didn’t appear that she’s a co-star at best in that, I’d be more inclined to read it. Despite the flaws and jerky pacing (as well as a cover that’s rather… different to the techno-warrioress we actually get!), Mays has laid the groundwork for a decent heroine in Jessica, and the prospect of her eventually going up against Countess Bathory is an intriguing one.

Author: S. Mays
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 0 of 2 in the Warrior of Souls series.

Tidelands

  By

★★★
“Attack of the killer cartel mermaids.”

Cal McTeer (Best) has just got out of prison after serving a 12-year sentence for arson leading to murder, a crime she committed as a teenager. Returning to her home town of Orphelin Bay, she finds her brother, Augie (Jakubenko), now working as a conduit for drugs, with the connivance of at least some local cops, and supplied by the mysterious Adrielle Cuthbert (Pataky). She oversees a commune near town called L’Attente with a zero-tolerance policy for dissent, and uses the proceeds of her narco-aquatics to fund a worldwide search for mysterious fragments of pottery. Turns out she is queen of the Tidelanders: the offspring of humanity and legendary sirens who inhabit the ocean. Though Cal doesn’t know it initially, a near-death experience shows that she is of similar stock. Adrielle doesn’t like the competition. And neither does local gangster Gregori Stolin (Koman), who is intent on muscling in on Augie’s business, and cutting out the middleman, to work directly with Adrielle.

It’s part Banshee, part True Blood, and part its own strange creation. It could well have been just a crime drama with familial overtones, an antipodean take on Sons of Anarchy: Cal’s father was lost at sea, and her mother spent what should have been the resulting inheritance on buying the local bar. Yet the makers opted to add fantastical creatures into it, though the sirens themselves are only ever glimpsed in cameo, at least for the first series. It is refreshingly gynocentric: Cal vs. Adrielle is the dynamic at the core, and considerably more interesting than Augie vs. Gregori, with neither woman prepared to give an inch of ground.  There’s no doubt who’s in charge, Adrielle dealing ruthlessly with any challenges to her authority, helped by the seer she keeps chained up in the basement.

It doesn’t end in any meaningful way, and I presume this first Netflix original series to come from Australia will be returning to expand further on the mythology set up in its debut run. For example, I was intrigued by the brief depiction of an apparent anti-siren secret society, run by local women who lost their men (one way or another) to the creatures, and maybe this will be developed further next season.  There’s something of a soap-opera feel to it as well, in that almost everyone is uniformly attractive, and seem to be having copious amount of sex – whether for pleasure or power. The sunny seaside setting also lends itself to plenty of cheesecake for both sexes, whether it’s shirtless beach bods, or Adrielle’s apparent aversion to bras.

Best makes for a solid heroine though, who takes no shit from anyone and, as is clearly demonstrated from her opening scene, is more than capable of taking care of herself – in or out of the water. She and the better-known Pataky are always worth watching in their scenes. While I’m not quite as convinced by anyone else, there was still enough to get us through these eight episodes, and leave us hungry for some more fish tales.

Creators: Stephen M. Irwin and Leigh McGrath
Star: Charlotte Best, Elsa Pataky, Aaron Jakubenko, Jacek Koman

Vengeance of a Snowgirl

  By

★★★½
“Revenge, truly served cold.”

The elevator pitch version of this sounds like a million other kung-fu films: Shen Ping Hong (Li) seeks revenge on the people who killed her parents and left her crippled. But there’s rather more going on beneath the surface, and shades of grey on both sides. One of her targets, Lord Kao Hung, regrets what happened and wants to help Shen regain the use of her legs. But Shen only agrees to let his son Tien-Ying (Yueh) help, in the belief that it will make her mission of vengeance easier. It feels almost like she’s a mad dog, lashing out at anyone who tries to help; keeping the severed heads of her victims in jars is a clue there. Meanwhile, Kao’s associates – and Tien-Ying’s ex-girlfriend (Chiao) – think he’s helping because he wants to get Shen’s jade sword for his own ends, and are intent on getting their revenge in on her first.

Let the record show, Chris wandered in half-way through this, glanced at the screen and said, “Is that Sammo Hung?” Knock me down with a feather if it wasn’t Sammo, in a minor supporting role as a villainous henchmen. This is why I love my wife: her ability to spot martial arts legends in 1971 cameos. Er, well… Not just that. Anyway, this would be massively overshadowed by the release, just two days later, of another Lo Wei film, his first for fledgling studio Golden Harvest. The Big Boss would put both studio and its star, one Bruce Lee, on the map, and Snowgirl would be all but forgotten.

In particular, the way it twists the usual “You killed my _____ and must die!” tropes are what makes this stand out, along with a second half which turns into something resembling a series of video-game side quests. Because the spring where Shen can heal her legs is so frigid, you need a magic pearl to survive near it for more than a few seconds… The pearl is in the belly of a volcano, reaching which requires a suit of flame-resistant armour (looking remarkably like a fireman’s uniform)… This is held in the treasure house of a remote prince, who will only agree to lend it out, if Shen can beat his champion… And there’s not a save point in sight.

The fights are decent, rather than spectacular, and we never get the hoped-for face-off between Shen and the disgruntled ex-girlfriend, who has skills of her own. On the other hand, Li does a good job of working round her character’s disability – though her ability to fly, makes me wonder why she bothers walking anywhere! Lo, who also makes a brief appearance as the heroine’s father, shoots good, long takes which help enhance his lead actress’s talents, and if nothing else, the ending will likely stick in your mind for its unexpectedly downbeat example of altruism and self-sacrifice. It mostly looks very nice, except for a thoroughly unconvincing “volcano”, and all told, it’s a shame this isn’t more well-known.

Dir: Lo Wei
Star: Li Ching, Yueh Hua, Ku Feng, Lisa Chiao

Bubblegum and Broken Fingers

  By

★★½
“Pap fiction.”

Outside of Kill Bill, I’ve never been a fan of Quentin Tarantino. But this film did give me some appreciation for him. Because it’s only when you see Tarantino done badly, that you realize the aspects he does well. It undeniably takes some skills to keep a story-line involving multiple sets of characters in the air, especially when centered on a Macguffin like a suitcase whose contents are never revealed. Jackson tries to do exactly the same thing here, and the result is, frankly, a mess, where you’re left caring little or nothing about any of the participants.

It starts with two low-level henchmen on their way to make a deal outside Las Vegas, swapping a large quantity of cash for the suitcase in question. This ends with the opposite side dead, and the pair on the run. They come across two German pedophile tourists, who have kidnapped Heidi (Daly) along with a mute girl, Tiny (Tyla). However, turns out Tiny isn’t the innocent she appears, and she takes the suitcase, being part of a all-female criminal cabal herself. They’re being pursued by a variety of law enforcement agencies, who have their own agendas. It’s as if the writer (also the director) had only one solution to any story issues: introduce more characters, rather than developing the ones already present.

It’s the script which is the glaring weakness. The performances are fine, Jackson makes good use of locations in and around Las Vegas, and there’s a particularly impressive sequence told without dialogue. Indeed, having a major participant who can’t speak – except through an electronic text-to-voice synthesizer – is navigated well, when it could easily have been a disaster, bringing things to a grinding halt any time she appeared. But the pattern soon becomes obvious. Introduce some characters. Start to develop those characters. Abandon them, leaving them (in some cases, literally) dead at the side of the road. Rinse & repeat for an hour or so, until your audience can no longer be bothered to care about anyone.

You’re presumably intended to keep your eye on the suitcase. Yet we never learn what is in the case, capable of triggering all the carnage and corpses. How annoying. It could be argued that it doesn’t make any difference. Unlike Pulp Fiction though, it feels as if it matters, because this is clearly the focus of everyone’s efforts, rather than a supporting act to the sideshow, as in the Tarantino film. As we seem to have said quite a lot lately, I suspect this is a result of having the director film his own script, leaving him too close to the project to spot its flaws. Jackson has good technical abilities, and it’s certainly possible to imagine a version of the same story, with the pieces re-arranged, some expanded and others excised, where this became a Bitch Slap-esque gem. Instead, it’s a struggle to pay attention, through an ending that has little to offer except more dead bodies.

Dir: Sean Jackson
Star: Camme Tyla, Mandy Williams, Brenna Daly, Jason Nious

Destroyer

  By

★★★
“Bad Madam Lieutenant.”

A fine, almost unrecognizable performance by Kidman succeeds in maintaining interest, despite a script which appears to regard time less like an arrow, and more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. Deeply troubled cop Erin Bell (Kidman) wakes up in her car, apparently badly hungover, looking like ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag. Not far away, her colleagues are poring over a newly-discovered murder scene: a body with a dye-stained hundred-dollar bill on the corpse. And that’s about the last time when I was quite certain of the timeline.

For everything thereafter unfolds in non-sequential order, going all the way back to Bell’s involvement in an undercover operation, two decades earlier. The target was a gang of armed robbers under the leadership of Silas (Kebbell). She and fellow officer Chris (Stan) successfully infiltrate the gang. But when the time comes for the planned heist, they come to a fateful decision, which misfires badly, and has haunted Erin ever since. At least that aspect is fairly clear, mostly due to the rather naff nineties hair-do Erin is wearing. [She’s a bit less credible playing an innocent twenty-something sheriff’s deputy] What’s less apparent – and kinda matters – is that some things apparently depicted as happening after the corpse is found, actually occur before it. Or maybe I was just being dumb?

To be honest, this is the kind of Tarantino-esque film-making which annoys the hell out of me. Because there’s no real purpose to the cut-up approach: it doesn’t add anything to our understanding of Bell’s character. Indeed, you could argue the lack of explanation – for instance, we don’t discover what happened on the heist until deep into the movie – dampens our sympathy for her, such as her struggles to connect with a rebelliously bratty teenage daughter (Pettyjohn). Similarly, we don’t know why she is so obsessed with Silas for much of the film. Also on the negative side is the near-criminal waste of Tatiana Maslany, as Silas’s druggie girlfriend Petra, and it’s perhaps a bit too obvious in its nods to Abel Ferrara/Harvey Keitel powerhouse, Bad Lieutenant, such as both cops’ fondness for baseball.

It’s director Kusama’s third entry on the site, after the well-regarded Girlfight and the not-so well-regarded Aeon Flux movie (though I never felt it deserved to be a box-office disaster) – as well as the entirely awful Jennifer’s Body. Still, you can’t argue she has not made interesting choices of projects, and this is never less than watchable, almost hypnotically so, due to Kidman’s performance. We witness Bell crumbling, yet also not giving a damn about police procedure or “civil rights” – witness her locking Petra in a car trunk! – in her relentless pursuit of Silas. It’s a toss-up, whether or not she’ll fall apart entirely before her mission is accomplished, and it’s this which sustained my interest. The other elements, not so much, yet I can’t consider the time completely wasted. Unlike Erin. :)

Dir: Karyn Kusama
Star: Nicole Kidman, Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Jade Pettyjohn

Tiger Girl

  By

★★★½
“Changing of the stripes”

Maggie (Dragus) just failed the police entry exam in humiliating fashion, and is now taking a course to become a security officer, despite her meek nature. She encounters Tiger (Rumpf), a street punk girl who is everything Maggie is not: brash, confident and perfectly willing to go toe-to-toe with anyone she feels deserves it. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship, with a purloined uniform allowing Tiger to join Maggie in her security work, and in turn engage her increasing fondness for mayhem and violence. Meanwhile, Tiger’s example helps bring Maggie – or ‘Vanilla’, as Tiger calls her in half-mocking endearment – out of her shell. Though Tiger’s drug-dealing friends are less than impressed to find her palling around with a wannabe cop. And as Maggie begins to adopt a more… physical approach to confrontation, it becomes clear that Tiger’s restraint is something Maggie does not possess.

This offers an interesting exercise in societal contrasts, between two young woman, both making their own way in the world, in radically different directions. Maggie would nominally be the approved one, with her plans for a career in law enforcement, while Tiger engages in petty theft and mugging (albeit ‘only those who deserve it’) in order to keep her and her two druggie boyfriends fed, in the attic in which they squat. However, the longer the film goes on, the more you realize it’s Tiger who has the stronger moral compass. Even though she engages in criminal conduct, often for the mere fun of it, she has her own set of rules – with which you may or may not agree – that guide her conduct and keep her out of serious trouble. When Vanilla, revelling in her new found confidence, begins to go beyond those, it sets the stages for a confrontation between the friends.

I must confess, there are times when I thought this was going to end up in a twist where Tiger was a figment of Maggie’s psyche, just like… well, a certain cult movie of the late nineties, shall we say (in case you haven’t seen it!). Nothing quite so psychological shows up, and to be honest, the actual plot is probably the least interesting thing this has to offer. For instance, there’s a subplot where Tiger’s pals end up in debt to “Biggie,” a local drug-dealer, and it’s up to Tiger to get them out of the mess. Despite an interesting twist, when we find out Biggie is actually another woman, the thread just peters out into nothing. Rather more successful is the droll humour, for example, depicting Vanilla’s degenerating relationship with her completely straight-laced security teacher (Feldschau).

It it, however, a film which stands or falls largely on the strength of the central pair of performances, and both actresses are very good in their roles. I just wish we had got the complete version of the full-on fight between the young women and a gallery owner, which the film merely teases.

Dir: Jakob Lass
Star: Ella Rumpf, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Enno Trebs, Orce Feldschau

Avia Vampire Hunter

  By

★
How to finish 2018: one of the all-time worst action heroine flicks.

I usually try to be tolerant when it comes to low-budget cinema and the resulting flaws. There are some things which you just cannot expect when a film is financed on the maker’s credit-card, and I’m willing to overlook rough edges if a movie can hold my interest in other ways. However, there are times when the end product is almost irredeemably bad, with few, if any, merits. This would be one such case. Your script is the main area which should be an area of equal opportunity, regardless of budget. Here, if anything, the flaws at the technical level are magnified by the failings on the page.

Vast chunks simply don’t reach basic coherence, with scenes that come out of nowhere, go nowhere or are entirely unconnected to anything. And what little does makes sense is completely uninteresting. Let me give you an example of the former:

  • Insert shot of the kind of clock you’d find at your grandmother’s
  • 30 seconds of hand-held camera moving towards the heroine as she kneels in a forest
  • 90 seconds of her twirling a sword to no purpose, where my main reaction was “Why are there table napkins stuck to the trees?”
  • 25 second of hand-held camera backing slowly away from the heroine.

The basic story sounds as if it might have some potential. Avia (Valentino) saw her family attacked by vampires, and made it her life’s mission to seek out and destroy them, with the help of police officer Detective Raymond Guy (Jackson). Except it’s executed in such a low-energy and incompetent fashion, from the performances through the woeful audio mix, to the action – the only person who has a slight clue how to fight is Tomahawk, who plays the master vampire. Otherwise, the sole entertainment value to be found is in mocking its inadequacies. I will say, there’s plenty of scope there, from the moment Guy and his partner don’t notice Avia bringing a large samurai sword when she tags along with them on a routine interrogation.

The whole thing about her family? Forgotten entirely after it has been mentioned. The relationship between Avia and Raymond? Thoroughly unconvincing, sinking to “howlingly bad” during their fully-clothed sex scene. The use of music is particularly execrable, being completely inappropriate to what’s happening on screen to the point it appears to have been added at random. This is despite the presence of eighteen names in the opening credits as “music by”, not counting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whose presence here is… well, let’s say it came as a surprise to me, and probably to them as well.

The only moment where I had interest briefly roused, was the suggestion made by Raymond’s partner (who vanishes for the middle two-thirds) that Avia might actually be completely insane, and killing innocent people in the belief they are vampires. Her slaughter of a family supports that theory, and it could have been an interesting direction. Except that the film has already established she has official sanction for her acts, Raymond clearly doesn’t give a damn about the possibility, and the final coda has Avia saying it doesn’t matter either. So why bother? Indeed, “why bother” is an entirely appropriate summary of the whole enterprise. Take my advice, and don’t.

Dir: Leon Hunter
Star: Allison Valentino, Rodney Jackson, Cliff Lee, Antonio Tomahawk

Fighting With My Family

  By

★★★½
“The fall gal.”

This biopic of WWE Women’s Champion Paige, a.k.a. Saraya Knight from the English seaside town of Norwich, gets a lot of things right about professional wrestling. In particular, it strikes a good balance between the various aspects – positive and negative – of the sports entertainment business. Over the past twenty years, Chris and I have been intermittently involved with the independent end of the wrestling scene, like Knight and her family, and this captures the low-rent showbiz aspects beautifully. Yet it doesn’t shortchange the seductive – almost addictive – appeal of performance for a responsive crowd, or the potential escape from a drab life it offers someone like Saraya/Paige.

This was inspired by a documentary of the same name, which covered everything up to her successful tryout with WWE, but not much thereafter. To be honest, that’s probably the most entertaining section, being a thoroughly amusing series of escapades, populated by quirky and amusing characters, inhabiting the low-rent world at the bottom of the wrestling pyramid. Not the least of these are her parents, plaved by Frost and, surprisingly, Lena Headey. It’s… strange seeing Cersei Lannister putting people into a headlock. [Fun fact: I saw Saraya’s Mum wrestle at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, back in the late nineties – even if they mis-spelled her name on the flyer!]

Once she goes over to the United States, it becomes a rather more predictable “fish out of water” story, with the dark, somewhat sullen Paige a radical departure from the other wannabe Divas, who all align more with the three T’s required by WWE at the time: teeth, tan and tits. The highlight in this phase is Vaughn’s performance as acerbic (and fictional) coach Hutch Morgan, who pulls no punches in his quest to winnow out the chaff for the benefit of his employer. For Paige, that transition is about becoming comfortable in her own skin, and repairing the relationship with her brother (Lowden), who also wanted – arguably, even more than Saraya – to reach the WWE, but was not offered a spot. To no-one’s surprise (even if you don’t know the story, this sticks to the well-worn path of the underdog sports film), she does so, and the film ends as she makes her debut, the night after Wrestlemania in New Orleans.

In terms of happy endings, that’s probably for the best. For injury forced Paige’s eventual retirement in April 2018, at the age of just 25, after barely two years of active competition and four in total. Not mentioned by the film, it’s a salutary reminder: a pro wrestler’s career is hard, and can be short. This is certainly a story which has been dramatized for cinematic purposes, probably inevitably. Yet the basic thread is intact – and, more importantly, the spirit of the people who inspired it is honoured. Having it directed by Merchant, previously best known as Ricky Gervais’s sidekick, proves a masterstroke. In his able hands, and helped by a winning performance from Pugh, the hackneyed material proves more than tolerable.

Dir: Stephen Merchant
Star: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn, Nick Frost

The Azrael Initiative, by K. Hanson

  By

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

This feels less like a novel, than a novelization of a screenplay, adapted by a not particularly proficient writer. The text is littered with paragraphs which seem more like stage directions than literature, and is startlingly repetitive. For example, in one section near the beginning of the book, five of seven consecutive paragraphs start with, “As she/Kayla…” It’s not necessarily a bad screenplay, with an idea containing some potential. But it would be in need of several rewrites before any studio exec would sign off on it.

The heroine is the Kayla mentioned, an engineering student at South Dakota State University, who is present when ISIS terrorists attack the campus. She and best friend Olivia, an aspiring nurse, take down the attackers before the intended massacre can be executed, and become media darlings as a result. This turns to tragedy when an apparent revenge bomb kills Kayla’s family. Seeking vengeance, the pair accept an offer from the mysterious Mr. Hightower, to join a secret government program and train as anti-ISIS insurgent. They’re inserted into Al-Raqqah, the capital of the ISIS caliphate in Syria, in order to sabotage and disrupt the group’s operations, causing as much chaos and carnage as possible.

They certainly succeed, and there’s no shortage of incidents, from gun-battles in the streets through to a daring rescue attempt on a capture British airman. These are when Hanson is at his best, although the ineptness of ISIS is questionable – that they are so easily and repeatedly bested by a pair of students after a few months of training is difficult to accept. Indeed, how quickly could someone go from no knowledge of Arabic to being able to pass impeccably as a native? For it’s not as if language was Kayla and Olivia’s only area of education. There’s also the “having to dress as a man” thing, which is unconvincingly glossed over with the wave of a fake beard (the cover is not exactly an accurate depiction of their undercover appearance!). Throw in an apparently inevitable bisexual subplot, and the dubious actions of the story’s antagonist – who literally keeps a journal in his desk, describing every aspect of his evil plan – and you’ve got more problems than solutions.

I did find the unrepentant villainy of ISIS somewhat refreshing: there’s no moral shades of grey here, they are straightforward bad guys, with very few redeeming features, and it’s easy to root for the heroines. Though the book doesn’t address the moral hypocrisy at its core: Olivia and Kayla are basically turned into terrorists themselves. You could take a speech by Hightower – “You will strike from the shadows to damage ISIS using any method at your disposal, whether that is through assassination, humiliation, or intimidation… The obvious goal is to eliminate as many terrorists as possible” – change a couple of words, and have Al-Qaeda rhetoric. But it’s okay, because they’re on our side? Still, this makes few claims to be other than a straightforward tale of action and courage, albeit one probably too simplistic for its own good.

Author: K. Hanson
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Kayla Falk series.