Author: Werner Lind

Real Dangerous Girl, by K. W. Jeter

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

kimoh“I didn’t start out killing people,” the petite, under-21 Korean-American narrator of this first book in the author’s Kim Oh series observes matter-of-factly in the opening sentence. “I had to get to that point. Kind of a work ethic thing. But once I decided to do it –it worked out. I mean –not for them. The people who got killed. I mean for me.” This isn’t the voice of an egoistic sociopath, though. Kim has a conscience and sound moral instincts; she doesn’t pick up the gun readily, and when she does, the danger she poses isn’t to the innocent. (But the guilty had better watch out!)

When I read a glowing review of this novel by one of my Goodreads friends (who went on to glowingly review the subsequent books), it put the series on my radar; so when I saw that the first book was available for free on Kindle, as a hook for the series (it now costs 99 cents), I seized the opportunity to preview it in that format. Jeter is a very successful author with substantial Big Publishing credentials (he chose to go the self-publishing route with this series, and according to his website is excited enough about it that he’s no longer working on anything else). This was my first experience with his work, but I found his craftsmanship and professionalism very evident. It says something about the compulsive readability of this tale that I read the entire novel in two days, which I think is something of a record for me.

Kim’s world is, as a blurb puts it, “dark and gritty.” Orphaned young, she and Donnie, her wheelchair-bound and ailing younger brother, were shunted around through foster care most of their lives. Not yet 21, she’s put herself through junior college early by taking advanced placement classes, and taken advantage of bookkeeping skills picked up from a foster mom to get the only kind of job that offered, in order to be able to make a home for Donnie with her. But what offered was a low-paying job as accountant for what she’s come to realize is a really “dodgy” enterprise, run by a mobster who uses her, among other things, to write checks to pay a guy she suspects is his contract hit man. Pragmatic and a survivor, she’s able to tolerate that, though she doesn’t like it. She clings to the promise her boss made that when he takes the company legit (or at least gives it a more convincing “legit” facade), she’ll be CFO, with better pay and a better life for her little family unit. Instead, she’s shafted and thrown out in the alley like garbage, while a Harvard grad gets the big job. Hit man Cole is similarly downsized, except that his severance leaves him permanently crippled.

These two don’t immediately join forces, and when they do, she’s not motivated solely by wanting revenge (although Cole is). Jeter’s plotting is a lot more nuanced and developed than that. (Firing her didn’t exhaust Mr. McIntyre’s malice; if he survives, she and Donnie might not.) Kim’s a fascinating, three-dimensional character who develops in front of our eyes here, as she moves from what she calls her “Little Nerd Accountant Girl” persona to something else. We can see that she’s attracted to the feeling of empowerment that can come from learning to stand up for herself, and from handling a gun. Some of the same appeal of “primitivism” that readers find in Burroughs and Robert E. Howard is present here, with a protagonist who’s challenged to make her way in a world where the outward conventions of civilization no longer apply. And she gives voice to the anomie of vast numbers of contemporary Americans in her generation, growing up bereft of community and moral/spiritual guidance. (Not identifying with her Korean heritage, at one point she calls herself Feral-American, like the rest of the population. “Nobody tells us what we should do, what we should even freakin’ be…. I gotta try and figure out everything on my own, just like everybody else has to.”) But her instincts are sound, and she remains an essentially decent and likeable person.

The narration here is in first-person present tense, with creative modification where necessary. Jeter’s free-flowing prose never detracts from the story. He delivers violent but never gratuitous action here. with a high body count, but no stress on gore and no “pornography of violence.” (Most of the bodies aren’t dropped by Kim, given her relatively low kick-butt quotient above; but she’s just getting her start in action heroine-hood here. That quotient is apt to rise in the succeeding books.) His emphasis, though (and what makes the book as good as it is) is character development. Kim herself, of course, takes center stage, but all of the supporting characters are vividly drawn, too (though except for Donnie they’re unlikeable; and we can see that Cole’s a much darker personality than Kim is –and that he’s manipulating her for purposes of his own.)

The plot is finely crafted, building perfectly to a powerful denouement and conclusion (which makes it clear that the saga is just beginning). We aren’t told the location, except that it’s a city that has cold weather in winter; sense of place isn’t strong, but that adds to the milieu of rootlessness and atomization. In its way, this is a kind of coming-of-age story. Darkness abounds, but it’s not without light, and a sense of hope even when things are darkest. There’s no explicit sex and very little reference to sex at all, and no obscene speech –indeed, very little bad language at all, and what there is isn’t very rough for the most part. (Jeter uses it sparingly, for realism, but he demonstrates restraint and taste in how he does it.) One plot element, IMO, doesn’t stand examination too well; and real-life child welfare agencies wouldn’t, as here, put kids in foster care in different states (because they’re state-specific). But those were relatively minor quibbles. This is a great start to what promises to be an outstanding series!

Author: K. W. Jeter
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, at this time only as an e-book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads

The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon

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

the deedThis is an omnibus volume containing an entire trilogy of novels: Sheepfarmers Daughter (1988), Divided Allegiance (1988), and Oath of Gold (1989). Together, they tell the story of Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, a young woman in a fantasy world who, as a tall, strapping farm girl of eighteen years, runs away from home to escape an unwanted forced marriage, and joins a company of mercenary soldiers.

Moon’s literary vision here has both strengths and weaknesses (which are sometimes the converse of each other). Her world-building is very detailed; it brooks comparison with Tolkien’s or, at least, Paolini’s on that score. (I appreciate a fictional world where women can occupy positions of power, and can train and serve as soldiers in full equality with men.) She also brings a high level of realism to the fantasy genre; as a Marine veteran, she knows a great deal about what the experience of initiation and training into a military unit is like. Indeed, other than the fact that Paks trains with a sword rather than a rifle, her life as a recruit is probably much like that of real-life modern “grunts” going through boot camp; and Moon recounts it in great detail.

The realistic note continues through the trilogy. Though magic operates in this world, and magical species like elves, dwarves and orcs exist, this element doesn’t appear much in the first book. (It will come much more to the fore in the later ones.) Realistically as well, Moon is willing to suddenly kill off characters, including characters you’ll have come to like and care about — exactly the way that real-life humans may die suddenly in combat situations, whether everybody likes and cares about them or not. Characterizations here are, not surprisingly, very realistic and vivid, and this is true of many secondary and minor characters too.

Some fantasy fans may want a higher level of magical content in their reads than the first book offers, and find it too much on the “mundane” side, though I don’t have a problem with this myself. Some readers won’t be happy to have characters they like, and expect to play more prominent roles, killed off. A bigger problem, though, is pacing. Usually, I have a pretty high tolerance for a slow narrative pace. Even so, I found this one glacially slow. Moon takes us through every aspect of “boot camp” life, every stage of every journey, every part of a siege, etc. You learn a lot about the world and the characters this way, but some scenes don’t add anything along that line. There are exciting, action-filled scenes, too; but many readers would find this narrative draggy in quite a few places. But the pace picks up somewhat in the later books (or perhaps we just get more used to it). And while characters who model responsible sexual behavior are refreshing, Paks’ total disinterest in sex seems at odds with the author’s usual realism. However, that trait will fit in with the future the author has in mind for her heroine.

Paks’ character grows considerably over the course of the trilogy. At the beginning, she’s a good-natured but simple young girl, who’s likeable enough as a person, and who does have a moral code; but she doesn’t think about the ethics of taking human life on the battlefield in wars over things like trade or border disputes, where her company happens to be on whichever side hired them first. To her, that’s just what mercenary soldiers do; it’s simply a morally neutral job that she likes and is pretty good at –though, to her credit, it’s important to her that she’s part of an “honorable company” that doesn’t murder noncombatants or rob innocent peasants.

sheepfarmerBut the first book ends with a crisis of genuine moral decision, in the tradition of serious fiction that aspires to do more than just entertain; and our heroine’s ethical sensibilities are in for real growth and development in the succeeding books. And this comes about as believable personal maturation of who she’s always essentially been, not as an artificial change tacked on by the author. This is one of the great strengths of the trilogy. (For fans who don’t like the military-centric type of fantasy, Paks is taken out of the mercenary company context fairly soon in the second book.)

While the first novel introduces us to the seemingly polytheistic religions and cults of Moon’s fantasy world, the later volumes take us behind the scenes to see more of a unifying pattern in apparent diversity. The human cultures of Pak’s world recognize a righteous Creator, the High Lord; and it’s explicitly suggested that the elven and dwarven concepts of the Creator are the same God, just with a different name and different stressed aspects. Other, lesser “gods” are spiritual entities that either serve the Creator, or in the case of the evil ones (and some are radically evil) oppose him, much like Satan opposes God; while human saints like Gird and Falk are separately venerated by distinct groups of followers, but each are recognized as servants of the common High Lord. In other words, religion in that world is much more monotheistic in essence than it initially appears; and it’s a strongly moral monotheism. (And as in our world, believers have to struggle with challenges to faith and problems of theodicy.) These religious themes play a key part in the last two novels.

There’s plenty of sword-fighting and other action here, quests and intrigue, magical perils, hidden identity, and a plot that’s suspenseful right up almost to the last page. But it’s also a work of rare psychological and spiritual depth, with the kind of serious dimension that marks it as truly great fiction, fiction of lasting literary significance, not just entertainment value. It’s also fiction that will break your heart in places, because there are points where Paks practically goes through hell –and some scenes here are not for the squeamish. But light is only recognizable against darkness; and out of great darkness here comes great light. One of the most powerful scenes in English-language literature that I’ve ever read in a lifetime of reading occurs here (you’ll know it when you read it). It’s a real shame that this trilogy isn’t more widely known by fantasy fans; but more than that, it’s a shame that it’s not recognized as one of the crown jewels of the American literary canon from the late 20th century. I’d like to hope that someday it will be!

Author: Elizabeth Moon
Publisher: Baen Books. Available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Skinwalker, by Faith Hunter

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

skinwalkerSupernatural fiction is a favorite genre of mine, and I have a soft spot for strong heroines who can kick some butt when necessary; so naturally, I thought a book that appealed to both interests might be rewarding. But that didn’t begin to prepare me for how much I liked this one! In this opening volume of the Jane Yellowrock series, featuring a Cherokee Indian shape-shifter who makes her living hunting down and killing rogue vampires that prey on humans, Faith Hunter has created one of the most original and vividly-realized fictional protagonists to come down the pike in a long time, and established herself in my eyes as one of the genre’s outstanding contemporary voices.

The book trade classifies this as “urban fantasy.” Our setting is New Orleans, brought to life masterfully by Louisiana native Hunter, in one of the best evocations of place I’ve come across in fiction; but this isn’t quite the New Orleans we know. Here we’re in an alternate world similar to our own in most ways –but one in which the world has been aware of the existence of vampires (and witches –Hunter’s take on these is interesting) since 1962. “Civilized” (non-predatory) vampire clans, often with considerable wealth built up over the centuries, and their voluntary blood-servants and blood-slaves are a part of the urban ethnic mix. But shapeshifters aren’t generally known to exist, and that aspect of Jane’s life is one she keeps carefully under wraps.

Jane’s a supremely well-drawn, round character, with a personality and interior life that’s believable (and that’s some achievement, when you consider some of her characteristics!). She can shift into the form of any animal for which she has DNA handy, usually in the form of teeth or bones, etc. (Hunter handles the problem of differences in body mass in a really creative way!) Usually, though, she takes the form of the panther who’s bonded with her in an unusual way, even for shapeshifters, and which she doesn’t fully understand. There’s a lot about herself she doesn’t know (though some of those mysteries will be revealed in the course of this book); she remembers nothing before she stumbled out of the Appalachian wilderness some 18 years ago, at an age the authorities guessed to be about twelve, an apparently feral child.

For the next six years, she was raised in a Christian orphanage; and while she’s no plaster saint, she’s a practicing Christian. Her Christianity is of a low-key, not judging nor preachy sort, and not inconsistent with an openness to Cherokee spirituality. It also doesn’t come with the view held by some believers that women should be pacifistic doormats.  This woman’s trained in martial arts, knowledgeable about guns, packs a Benelli shotgun (as well as assorted stakes and knives) that sprays silver shot, rides a Harley, and doesn’t take garbage from anybody, human or vampire. She’s also a caring person with a tender heart, whom I’d be proud to have for a friend. (And she’s the kind of friend who comes through when the chips are down).

Jane isn’t the only round, lifelike character here; those qualities apply to the whole supporting cast (two-legged and four-legged; Beast is a masterpiece!). The plot is perfectly paced and constructed, IMO, with plenty of mystery to keep you guessing, not just the central mystery –who (and maybe what) is the rogue?– but the enigma of Jane’s buried memories, and the increasingly intriguing secrets of the vampires. Hunter’s treatment of the Undead is pretty traditional in most respects, and unlike many modern authors of vampire fiction, she doesn’t ignore or reject the idea that vampires fear Christian symbols (indeed, they’re burned by the touch of the cross), but not those of other faiths –why, Jane wants to know?

The author is a wonderfully descriptive prose stylist, one of the few writers (the late Ray Bradbury was another) who enables you to fully experience her world with all your senses: not just sight and hearing, but smell, taste and tactile sensations as well. And she does personal interactions wonderfully well, with insight, sympathy, and often real emotional power. Of course, since this is action-oriented fiction, you can expect some violence, and some of it’s gory; what the rogue does to victims isn’t pretty, and elementary school kids aren’t the intended audience for the book. But this won’t bother most tough-minded adults.

This is one series that I’m going to be following, and hoping to read in its entirety!

Note: There’s no explicit sex here, and very little implied sex, despite the fact that some of the minor characters are prostitutes. (Jane doesn’t engage in any sex.) Hunter is also relatively sparing in her use of bad language, though that doesn’t mean there’s none.

Publisher: Roc, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Operation Angelica, by Juliene Lloyd

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

operation angelicaFull disclosure at the outset: I accepted the author’s offer of a free copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review. Author Lloyd dedicates this debut novel, appropriately, “to all the invisible heroes in the world who risk their own lives to save others.”

It’s the opener for a projected series, the Vormund/Ames Files, dealing with a secretive consulting firm that caters to governments and businesses with needs in the security and counter-terrorism area. What they provide is usually advice and analysis –but there are times when they go beyond that. While they’re not amoral mercenaries simply out for a buck –they choose to be on the side of good, not evil– they may operate on the edge of the law, and in operations where their employers sometimes might want some “plausible deniability.” The author’s own comment (in a personal message to this reviewer) sums her work up best: “There are serious themes, but framed in terms of good, evil, and hope. I consider my characters to be imperfect people trying their best in an imperfect world.”

Though published this year, the book is set in 2008. A few months before it opens, a small party of innocent and idealistic American botanists ventured into the jungles of Honduras, researching medicinal plants. Unfortunately, they blundered into the territory used by drug lord Hector Vega, and while trying to flee from a fire fight between his minions and a rival gang, they were all brutally gunned down. Both the U.S. and Honduran governments know, from eyewitness testimony, that Vega was responsible; but his political connections and back-scratching arrangements give him blank-check immunity. He’s not as home free as he imagines, however, because the grief-stricken fiancee of one of the murdered men is a soft-spoken young woman from Georgia named Elizabeth Ashton. Liz is a decent, ethically-oriented person who cares about others and about doing the right thing. She’s also a professional sniper for the FBI, with the rank of Special Agent, and probably as deadly a markswoman with a rifle as it’s humanly possible to be.

The plot here has two focal points of action (and this doesn’t disclose anything that’s not already outlined in the cover copy): the Vega problem in the early chapters, and the main plot strand, code-named “Operation Angelica.” Law enforcement runs in Liz’s family (her father is a county sheriff, and her brother a state trooper); respect for legal due process and commitment to basic justice are both important principles for her. When they’re in irreconcilable conflict, and she has to decide which one trumps the other, she doesn’t take it lightly. Personally, I don’t have any problem with her decision (I’m much less hard on her on that score than she is on herself!). But it’s one that, eventually, brings her to the notice of the Vormund/Ames management –who are impressed rather than scandalized. That leads to a job offer (and given the series title, it’s no surprise that she accepts!).

The company’s current big project in hand is a rescue mission for a group of hostages –especially a critically ill journalist with both Columbian and French citizenship– held by a drug-trafficking Marxist guerrilla rebel group in the South American jungle. We also have a sub-plot involving a high-ranking CIA official with a gambling-debts problem and a lot fewer ethical scruples than he needs to have.

Lloyd’s prose style is accomplished and assured, which is to say that she handles diction, syntax, and vocabulary very well (a refreshing experience nowadays!). In 253 pages, I only found four typos, which indicates pretty good proofreading. She also appears to have genuine technical knowledge of firearms (although modern pistols don’t have to be “cocked,” as one is here; but many writers make that minor mistake) and of the training, procedures and equipment involved in SWAT-style ops; I don’t have personal experience in that area, but the writing has a solidly realistic feel to me. Not only Liz, but all of the major characters here are clearly delineated and lifelike.

Character and relationship development occupies more of the book than action, as does planning, intelligence gathering and set-up –that’s also realistic for this type of thing, where the time involved in actual gun-blazing action, if you’ve planned well, is actually relatively brief. That said, there’s a good deal of taut tension that mounts steadily before the shooting starts, and there’s a high body count when it’s finished. (Also, GWG fans will appreciate the fact that this novel gives us at least two major female characters who can handle a gun capably, not just one; CIA agent Katherine Williams is certainly one formidable lady!)

For the most part, the plotting here is linear and straightforward, without a lot of convolution, and this is a quick read. I withheld the fifth star in my rating because of several logical missteps in the CIA-official subplot; but that didn’t stop me from really liking the book, and I definitely intend to follow the series!

Note: Liz and other characters use a certain amount of bad language, of the d/h/s/a-word sort, at times, but no obscenity or religious profanity. Their speaking style is well within the bounds of realism for these types of characters and situations. One of the flashbacks has Liz recalling a conversation she and her fiance had when they were lying together in bed, and it’s clear that another couple make love at one point; but there’s no explicit sex, and Lloyd doesn’t portray any of these four people as promiscuous types.

Author: Juliene Lloyd
Publisher: Dark Sword Press. Available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

[A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads]

Iron Bloom, by Billy Wong

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

ironbloomThis first book in Wong’s Legend of the Iron Flower series is one I got for my Kindle app at a time when it was being given away free. I only read books that way to see whether I consider them worth buying a copy –and in this case, the print edition is now on my book shelf. As a first novel, it’s not unflawed, but I liked it well enough to support the author by buying a copy, and plan to continue reading the series.

The Legend of the Iron Flower takes place in a medieval-style fantasy world; it’s sword-and-sorcery pulp, with much more emphasis on swords than sorcery. Our heroine, Rose Agen, is a teenage girl here (the succeeding novels and short e-stories follow her career into the ensuing years, when she’s older.) Rose was born to a snow-bound mother in the midst of the coldest winter in memory, with the firewood gone, and survived. She grew to be a tall, big-boned girl with a matching physique, and an iron constitution; people call her “god-touched” or a “freak” (sometimes in the same breath). Among the youth in her village, she’s the best wrestler, and like the others has fenced some with wooden swords, just for the fun of it. But her life takes a different turn when she kills her first man (in self-defense) at the age of 15; and over the next couple of years, a LOT of men follow him to the grave.

A genuinely ethical person who cares about others, Rose takes up the sword only to protect innocents; she sees her ability as carrying with it a duty. She kills only the aggressively wicked, and prefers nonviolent approaches when that’s possible, but the burden of taking many lives (not all of whom, as she recognizes, are as evil as others, and some of whom may have people who love them) still weighs heavily, and believably, on her. Sometimes she sees herself as a “monster,” and she can agonize over whether she’s too quick to resort to the sword. These conflicts are intensified when she meets up with a sect of philosophically-based based pacifists, and she and their young leader, Ethan, fall for each other. (Teenage love here leads to teenage sex; but Wong only refers to this directly in one place, and handles it very tastefully; there’s no explicit sex.) I didn’t see the romantic complication as cheapening the philosophical debate; rather, I saw it as intensifying the stakes in the issue, and adding to its emotional force.

The internal and external debates here are simple but serious, and not superficial because they’re simple. Like Rose (and Wong), I come down on the side of believing that defensive violence is sometimes necessary; but don’t revel in the necessity; and I think the kind of discussion that takes place here is worth having and thinking about. (Contrary to what those who see fantasy literature as “escapist” imagine, Rose’s fantasy world isn’t the only place where brigandage, war and tyranny occur; they seem to be pretty widespread, and to present exactly the same issues, here as well!) Rose isn’t an unflawed plaster saint who never makes bad choices; besides teenage sex, she engages in some teenage drinking, and abuses alcohol on a couple of occasions as an opiate for her stress and conflict. But even if I didn’t approve of some of her choices, I always understood and liked her. She’s a believable teen, considering that her culture seems to be one that doesn’t coddle adolescence, and expects kids to grow up quickly; her age shows in her wanderlust and thirst for adventure, and in her relationship with her parents (loving, but not without conflicts). But she’s mature in many of the ways that count.

Rose is a round and dynamic, well developed character. Some of the secondary characters, like Ethan and mercenary warrior Angela (we actually get two fighting ladies here for the price of one!) are also relatively well-drawn. Wong writes action scenes well, and he delivers plenty of them here. But even with the staggering body count and level of physical mayhem here (fighters can get beheaded, gutted, lose limbs, etc.) he doesn’t wallow into unnecessarily graphic descriptions of gore; there’s no feeling of a “pornography of violence” to the book. The plot has a variety of situations, and threw me some surprises at times. He puts Rose into thought-provoking situations (one in particular stands out) where the question of what response is right or wrong doesn’t have easy answers. And he deserves credit for giving us a brawny, battle-scarred heroine whose looks don’t conform to the Victoria’s Secret party-line model of female beauty. (That doesn’t mean she isn’t beautiful, outside as well as inside; it just means that a thin, slight build, an unmarked face and an undamaged bust aren’t essential aspects of beauty.)

As fantasy worlds go, Wong’s is on the low-magic end of the spectrum. Great sorcerers practiced it in the past, and have left some enchanted artifacts and spells around, but the knowledge of magic is for the most part lost; and creatures like ogres exist, but we don’t see much of them. Personally, I don’t see this as a flaw. The author’s world-building, though, is definitely weak. We know that Kayland is a large, patched-together kingdom forged from many formerly independent entities, that its technology is basically medieval, and that its religion is vaguely polytheistic, with an afterlife where rewards or punishment depends on behavior. But that’s really about all. There isn’t much sense of the culture, or of cultural differences, and both all Kaylanders and the foreign Vlin barbarians apparently speak the same language.

Wong’s writing style is barebones and minimalistic, lacking in texture and polish. He sometimes falls into the trap of telling rather than showing, and at times fails to provide information we’d like, and which would enhance the story. (For instance, we’re not even told Rose’s age, or given a physical description of her, until well after she’s introduced; and I’d have liked a lot more description of Millie’s underground cave.) Dialogue often sounds like it’s written to serve the plot, not to reflect the way these characters would actually speak in the situation. (And while the author avoids obvious Americanisms in the character’s speech, it is a bit odd in this type of fantasy world that everyone has first names, like Eddie or Millie, that could have been taken from any modern American list of baby names!) It’s not true, IMO, as some reviewers have complained, that Wong’s plotting is aimless; although it’s somewhat episodic, it does have a structure of story arc and resolution. But it can seem aimless because it appears to be occurring in a time vacuum; we learn that Rose has turned 16 at one point, but there are very few indications of how much time passes in different parts of the tale, and no notices of seasonal changes, so there’s very little to peg an internal chronology on.

For me, perhaps the most serious weakness is that Rose is TOO incredibly resilient and hard to kill. Action heroes and heroines, of course, tend to be super-tough and larger than life; but nonetheless, we do have the feeling that Conan or Jirel of Joiry are mortal. True, Rose can be hurt seriously, bleed copiously, feel pain galore, and be laid low for a time by wounds. But on at least four occasions, she survives wounds that she and everyone else thinks are mortal, and realistically would be; and she can keep fighting long after any normal human, no matter how tough, would be unconscious. (That’s true of some other characters, too.) That makes for spectacular fight scenes, it doesn’t make for realism. It also reduces the stakes in her battles, and makes her harder for me to relate to (just as I don’t personally relate as well to superhero characters as I do to normally-abled humans).

In the same vein, I would really question whether any human being could sustain a 30-foot drop onto solid rock without serious injury. And on one occasion when Rose comes up against a magically-empowered adversary, the magic just wimps out at a crucial point to allow her overcome it, which I thought was a cheap way out on the author’s part. So while I did like the book, these drawbacks kept me from rating it more highly overall than I did. As noted above, this is the author’s first novel, and he’s a relatively young writer. His stylistic skills are likely to improve with practice; and they show to better advantage in short fiction. I’ve read several yarns in his Tales of the Gothic Warrior story cycle (set in the present, and featuring Freya Blackstar) and liked all but one; I can also recommend the stand-alone e-story “Last Minute Replacement,” and one of Side Stories of the Iron Flower, “Bad Milk,” to action heroine fans. (The latter is the only one of Rose’s other adventures that I’ve read so far, but these two won’t be the last!)

Note: Bad language in this novel is relatively infrequent, and strictly of the d-word or h-word sort.

Author: Billy Wong
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Coral Hare: Atomic Agent by Clive Lee

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Coral Hare, Atomic Agent, by Clive Lee

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

coral hareFull disclosure at the outset: the author, who’s a member of my Action Heroine Fans group on Goodreads, gifted me with a no-strings-attached free copy of this novel.

Most people who’ve read much at all about World War II are aware that Germany, as well as the U.S., had an active atom bomb development program. The information that Japan did too was only recently declassified. First novelist Lee draws on this new historical data to produce a riveting espionage-action thriller –and the adjective “high-octane,” for once, isn’t just hype!

After a blood-drenched prologue set in Tokyo in 1937, our story focuses on Mina Sakamoto, a Nisei (American-born offspring of Japanese immigrants to the U.S.), born and raised in Honolulu, who’s recently turned 14 at the time of Pearl Harbor. Largely Americanized and seeing herself as American, she’s the daughter of a medical doctor, who’s unofficially trained her to function as a practical nurse. She’s also good at languages (the Hawaii of that day was quite an ethnic melting-pot) and a bit of a tomboy, good at roller skating and rabbit hunting with a slingshot. This background is going to come in handy, because the events of Dec. 7, 1941 will propel her into becoming, before she’s 15, a full-fledged field agent of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the World War II-era forerunner of. the CIA. (“Coral Hare” is her coded radio call sign.) Out of 64 chapters, the last 50 focus on the spring and summer of 1945, when the now-17-year-old goes up against Japan’s A-bomb program.

The story arc is constructed well; the time devoted to Mina’s grueling OSS training provides the necessary believability for her transformation into a kick-butt warrior, and the intervening years between this and her climactic 1945 missions are handled very adeptly. Lee shows us some personal growth on Mina’s part, and her relationship with her mentor is nicely depicted. But I’d say that 80-90% of the book consists of either fighting action, in which absolutely no punches are pulled by the combatants or the author, or of horrific descriptions of the effects of bomb blasts, both conventional and atomic, on human beings. The mayhem is very graphic, gory and grisly; despite the teen protagonist, this is definitely not YA fiction (though some teens would like it). A lot of serious research to insure historical accuracy obviously went into this, and that’s a significant strong point of the novel; but Lee avoids the trap of shoe-horning all of his information into the tale via info-dumps. (He does use footnotes, which the reader can skip over or read. I found some of these quite educational; I wasn’t much interested in the military hardware specs, but serious World War II buffs might be.)

His prose style is clear and readable, with language and diction mostly handled capably, despite a few typos. (There are a few cases of incorrect sentence construction or misused words –a person can’t lie “prone on her back,” since “prone” means face-down, and Lee tends to confuse “flanking” with approaching from behind– and rare details that don’t ring true, such as Mina’s not being done with eating one hamburger when she’s been in a diner for two hours; but these aren’t big deals.) Several fascinating historical appendices make it clear how much real-life history (a LOT!) was incorporated into the narrative, as well as providing information on real-life Allied female spies in the war, and an honor roll of real Japanese-Americans who served in the OSS. Lee’s respect for the courage and sacrifice of the “Greatest Generation,” to whom the book is dedicated, is clearly evident, and commendable.

Even with a doctored birth certificate and some string-pulling, Mina’s age poses some credibility problems (the biggest one, which Lee mostly finesses, being parental consent for her going off in the first place). Despite this, Mina’s an unforgettable character, with an industrial-strength level of indomitable spirit and courage, and fighting prowess that’s second to none. Allowing for their differences in setting and weaponry, she actually has some similarities to Billy Wong’s epic-fantasy swordswoman protagonist Rose Agen in Iron Bloom: they’re both teens who’ve had to grow up quickly (but who yet retain some traces of the teen), both super-lethal fighters with massive kill counts, and both possessed of endurance and recuperative powers that amaze observers. But while Lee is by far the better stylist of the two, Wong has created a character who’s the more morally introspective. Rose is bothered by killing, even though she does a lot of it, and does so only to protect innocents from harm. Protection of the innocent plays into Mina’s motives, but she’s more driven by revenge, and if killing bothers her, she doesn’t show it; at times, she rather appears to enjoy inflicting mayhem. That makes her harder to like unreservedly –though I still did like her, and root for her.

Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsFor me, the main weakness of the novel was a sense of missed opportunity for moral reflection. True, Mina’s trying to stop WMD’s from being built and deployed, which is certainly a commendable goal. She also doesn’t harm any civilians herself. But she knows about the Manhattan Project, which is a mirror image of the Japanese effort, and is present for the firebombing of Tokyo (shown left, and in which more civilians died than in both atom bomb attacks combined). We’re not told what, if anything, she thinks about any of this; the silence can suggest that she pretty much endorses an “us against them” ethic in which whatever “our side” does is okay, because OUR cause is just. For the time and place, of course, that attitude is realistic (for both sides), and Mina at least doesn’t have the racism that fueled a lot of that attitude.

But I missed the kind of grappling with the ethical issues that could have raised this into a five-point rating instead of four. (True, the graphic descriptions of human suffering from both atom and conventional bombs might inspire some of that grappling in some readers.) I’d also argue that by the summer of 1945, the Japanese could not have won the war even if they’d produced an operational A-bomb; and despite Lee’s historical research, I doubt that the OSS ever used torture to interrogate prisoners. (We know that the Axis powers did, and probably the Soviets, too –they used it to extract “confessions” in the Stalinist purge trials a few years earlier– but besides the ethical issues, I think U.S. intelligence realized how unreliable it is as a source of honest information.)

For all that, this book does what it does very well; it’s an unabashedly pulpy, edge-of-the-seat thrill ride through hell and back, with a take-no-prisoners heroine who’s in a new mortal jeopardy every time you turn around. (And remember, this isn’t a series book; there’s no guarantee that our gal’s going to make it home!) If you’re an “action junkie,” you’ll get your fix here, and then some. This would have real possibilities for a movie adaptation (which would definitely be R-rated for violence), and if one is ever made, it’s going on my to-watch list!

Note: There is a notable amount of bad language here, mostly of the d, h, and s-word type, but also some profanity, and eight uses of the f-word. (That’s arguably realistic for the speech of U.S. soldiers; less so for the speech of Japanese-language speakers, before the U.S. Occupation.) However, there’s no sex (except for a rape scene, which isn’t graphically described). It’s noted in passing that Mina wants to marry and have kids someday; but right now, she has other priorities besides boys. (Like staying alive!)

Author: Clive Lee
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
Official website

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Werner Lind joins the GirlsWithGuns.org team

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We’re delighted to announce Werner Lind is joining the site as a contributor, with a special responsibility for covering fictional action heroines. His first review is already up, and here he is to tell us a bit about himself and his background.

Hi, fellow action heroine fans! My name is Werner Lind, and Jim recently invited me to contribute some book reviews, from time to time, to this site. I’m a librarian (great job for a book lover!), and an avid reader ever since I was six. While I read in quite a few genres, I have a special fondness for strong, brave kick-butt heroines, who fight for justice and the underdog. (And I can get interested in the occasional action-style villainess, too, especially if her character is somewhat nuanced. Of course, just because a lady happens to be on the wrong side of the law doesn’t always mean she’s a villainess, either.) Over on the reading-oriented social network Goodreads, I’m the founding moderator of the Action Heroine Fans group and current moderator of the Girls and Guns group. You can access my Goodreads author page. (The heroine of my vampire novel Lifeblood isn’t exactly an action heroine in the mold of some of those represented on this site –but she does have vampire strength, and she can handle herself very well in a fight!) I also review books on Goodreads, but the ones here will be second (and so more polished) drafts of those.

Jim suggested that I tell you a bit about myself. My wife is the kind of lady in real life that I admire in books; she grew up handling guns for hunting, and bagged her first deer at the age of 11. We have three grown-up daughters (the oldest has a green belt in karate), and four grandkids who keep us busy. Like a lot of guys my age, I grew up having a crush on Emma Peel of The Avengers and the ladies of Charlie’s Angels; and of course, what moviegoer in the 70s wasn’t a fan of Princess Leia in Star Wars? Some of my other favorite action heroine films are both of the Tomb Raider movies, Red Sonja, Bad Girls, and Bandidas. (As for my favorite action heroine books –well, you’ll see those from my reviews.) If you’d like to talk about fighting females in fiction, drama, and real life, join Jim and the rest of us over on the Girls and Guns Forum (“putting the ‘bullet’ in bulletin board”  ); we’d love to hear from you!

A quick word about my rating scales! For overall ratings, I use the same scale that Goodreads does. One star would mean I didn’t like a book, and two that it was just “okay.” Three stars means I liked it and four stars that I really liked it, while five stars says that it’s “amazing.” The “kick-butt quotient” for heroines here is my own scale, as follows:

  • One star –Heroine can fight (or maybe meet other physical challenges), but doesn’t kill.
  • Two stars –Heroine uses lethal force sparingly, and may be conflicted about it.
  • Three stars –Heroine uses lethal force occasionally when needed, and takes the necessity in stride.
  • Four stars – Heroine kills quite a few people (or she’s a villainess who doesn’t mind killing good guys and innocents).
  • Five stars –Heroine counts her kills in the dozens (or more), and can basically wipe out small armies.