Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A woman called Beatrix, who has made her living as a killer for a shadowy group, find herself betrayed by them, with her husband killed and daughter kidnapped. Escaping their clutches years later, she vows to take revenge on them, one at a time, working up the chain to find the man who ordered the heinous deeds. Yeah, this sounds just a little like Kill Bill, doesn’t it? Indeed, the cover sports a black and yellow color scheme, clearly designed to evoke the Bride’s jumpsuit – and at no point does the heroine here wield a Samurai sword. It’s all so blatant that I can only presume it was done deliberately, though there are certainly some differences.
Not the least of which is the cancer from which Beatrix Rose is suffering, putting an expiration date on her quest. She also has rather more official sanction, since the group in question was part of British intelligence. Since they’re keen for the group’s former head, Control, to be taken out of play, due to what he knows, she still receives help from them, albeit in a thoroughly deniable way. Much of this book is concerned with the hijacking of a cargo ship by Somali pirates, since one of her targets is working as security on the vessel; they’re subsequently held hostage by Islamic terrorists. This complicates her mission significantly, and the action mostly consists of Beatrix infiltrating Somalia, in order to extract her vengeance under cover of the confusion caused by a SEAL rescue mission.
I liked the heroine, even if the nature of her grievance is kept somewhat obscure (I would presume it is revealed in more detail, either later in the series or in one of the three prequels. Alternatively, it may be revealed in another of the author’s works, the John Milton series). She is motivated by a fierce love for her daughter, with whom she has been re-united and whom she is now training – I suspect this will come into play down the road, too – and there’s absolutely no doubt about her competence. Given her ticking clock, there’s no time for romance here, but it still feels like the story is being stretched out; the pages devoted to the hostages add little or nothing to the story we care about.
To be honest, at $4.49 (or $22.45 for the five-ebook set), it’s not particularly good value, considering it comes in at less than 190 pages, excluding the inevitable preview of volume 2. I only picked it up following an accidental purchase of Kindle Unlimited for six months. If you have that, it is probably worth a read, and if time permits, I may end up going deeper into the series, since further volumes (mostly $4.99 each) are included in my KU subscription. It’s not dull, certainly. However, the majority of people are likely better off watching Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which offers just as much mayhem, for considerably less time and expense.
Author: Mark Dawson
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Beatrix Rose series.