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Air and Ash, by Alex Lidell

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

There is quite a lot going on here, so please hold on while I try to summarize. The world in which this takes place has two main groups, engaged in a decade-long war: the neo-Communist People’s Republic of Tirik and the Lyron League, an alliance of six kingdoms. The smallest of these is Ashing, a seafaring country, where both men and women go to see. The latter includes Princess Greysik, an officer on one of the Ashing navy’s ships, but after one mission goes wrong, she is returned to the palace, and scheduled to become part of a marriage arranged for diplomatic reasons. Rather than suffer that, she runs away, taking the identity of Nile Ash and becoming a sailor on a Lyron League ship. But without the privileges her rank and position previously afforded her, she’s about to discover how harsh her new, entry-level position life will be.

But, wait! There’s more! For a small fraction of the population are “Gifted” – they have an affinity for, attract and with practice can manipulate, one of the five elements: air, water, metal, stone or fire. But the ability has potentially lethal side-effects, e.g. stone caller’s muscles dissolve; water caller’s blood refuses to clot. This matters because Greysik’s twin brother, Clay, is a metal caller. She has vowed to find a cure, rumoured to be found in the Diante Empire, a reclusive and largely sealed-off third faction in this world. However, Greysik is showing increasing signs of being an air caller herself. While that may potentially be very useful on the sailing ship she now inhabits, that will only be the case, if she can manage to control it before it kills her.

Phew. You’ll understand why the early stages felt a bit like I was cramming for an exam. Meanwhile, the end of volume one topples into over-ripe romance, which is no less unwelcome for having been foreshadowed since almost the very beginning. Fortunately, in between these  times, there’s a lot of good to be found here. Lidell does a particularly good job of capturing the sense of being at sea. Well, not that I have much watery experience; it just feels authentic, to the point where it seemed I could almost smell the salt in the air. Indeed, the whole royalty angle seems almost slightly superfluous, at least in this first volume; the heroine could just have been an ordinary girl with her “gift”.

There is also a nice sense of progression, with the relationship between the characters deepening, and an increasing sense of foreboding, as a Tirik prisoner provides ominous, if non-specific, predictions of doom. These do indeed come to pass over the final chapters, in spectacular fashion – though not in the way that Greysik expects. I am just hoping the late surge of romance doesn’t prove to become a major focus as we go on. This has done a good job of setting the stage, though we’ll see whether I get to circle around back to further volumes before my Kindle Unlimited subscription expires.

Author: Alex Lidell
Publisher: Danger Bearing Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the TIDES series.

Abigail (2019)

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★★½
“In Soviet Russia, sorcerers stone you…”

There’s a battle in the middle of this, where the rebels and the authorities engage in a street-fight, and its absolutely beautiful to watch. Their weapons leave black smoke-trails criss-crossing, and the camera swoops and dives through the mayhem in truly lyrical fashion. Sadly, it’s over too soon, and when the characters open their mouths, it’s all ruined, thanks to clichéd lines like, “We can only win if we believe in what we’re fighting for.”

This Russian movie’s setting is dark steampunk, a walled city living in perpetual fear of an lethal, incurable disease. Inspectors monitor the population and at the first symptoms, the infected are spirited away and humanely euthanized. Ten years ago, the father of Abigail Foster (Dalakishvili) was one such victim. But she stumbles across evidence he may still be alive, which brings her into contact with the resistance and, eventually, the truth about the disease. She wants to find out what happened to her father. However, they, under leader and romantic interest Bale (Bochkov) are only interested in pushing forward with their previously scheduled rebellion.

The story is particularly poor, feeling like a hodgepodge of elements from a slew of YA fiction, most obviously Mortal Engines and Harry Potter. It feels very rushed, too, with Abigail going from outsider to at the core of the rebellion in about five minutes. I suspect a TV series might have been a better way to go, giving the ideas here – of which, admittedly, there are no shortage – room to breathe and be explored. Though, in general, the whole “chosen one” trope, in which the central character discovers their hidden gift, and it then blossoms to world-changing effect, is little more than a cinematic dead horse these days.

Not helping matters is the puzzling decision by the makers apparently to shoot in English, yet still post-sync most of the dialogue. This gives all the problems of a dubbed film, with no apparent benefit. It’s no surprise that the only non-synced actor, Eddie Marsan as Abigail’s father, easily comes off best among the performances. Yet even he pales beside the quite wonderful visuals, running from the first frame to the last. These are certainly comparable with the best Hollywood can produce, both in imagination and execution. Throw this on in the background when you’ve something else to do, and it’s near-perfect.

Dalakishvili is…okay as the heroine. She initially seems very resourceful and courageous, yet these traits seem to get submerged after she joins up with the resistance, with Bale doing more of the actual battling than I wanted to see. We do get resolution as to the question of her father, and I have to say, it was probably the film’s most effective moment emotionally, with some genuine poignancy. Coming as it does, with about five minutes left, it was the very definition of too little, too late, and this can only be filed in the box marked “Meaningless eye-candy.”

Dir: Aleksandr Boguslavsky
Star: Tinatin Dalakishvili, Gleb Bochkov, Rinal Mukhametov, Artyom Tkachenko,

Agent Elite

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★★½
“Aus-tomatic weapon.”

When she was very young, the parents of Alex (Karpati) were killed by Lester Casey (Richards), on the orders of the shadowy organization for whom both he and her father worked. She was adopted by them, and brought up, trained in a variety of lethal arts, to become a perfect weapon. However, her mentor, Montgomery Lomax (Grillini), also instilled in her an unwelcome sense of right and wrong, and when he dies, she goes on the run from the organization. After defeating the agents sent to take her out, they use that moral compass to entrap Alex, and bring her back under their control. Brainwashing ensues. Whether it will stick, and the consequences if it doesn’t, are to be determined.

Initially, this isn’t bad. You have to accept the conceit that, having spent so long creating Alex as an operative, a clandestine group would simply write her off on the basis that, and I quote, “Retrieval and debriefing are time consuming.” Oh, like the seventeen years you spend training her weren’t? Similarly, despite knowing what she’s capable of, they waste further time and resources, sending operatives after her, one by one. Still, we’ll take it, since Karpati clearly knows her way around a punch, even if appreciation of her skills is hampered, rather than enhanced, by the over-active camerawork. I’d also have preferred actual blood and head-shots over the dubious, if enthusiastic, CGI we get here.

However, it keeps moving and there’s no shortage of action, so is entertaining enough. I’d not have minded seeing what else Karpati can do, but looks like she hasn’t appeared in any released feature-films over the eight years since this was completed. Seems a bit of a pity. Unfortunately, things get rather derailed after her capture, re-programming and subsequent release. This requires Karpati to act, and it almost feels as if her heart isn’t in it. She is, however, miles better in the drama department than Dane (Matheson), the guy she bumps into at the laundromat, and with whom she begins a relationship. His performance is so bad, it’s positively a distraction during ever scene in which he appears.

The plot somehow ends up with Alex being captured by some Islamic fundamentalists, albeit only temporarily and to their ultimate demise.  Though this comes about so quickly, it feels as if there was a missing reel in the picture. One minute, she’s having a chat with herself in the mirror (a scene which is actually quite nifty, in a Gollum kinda way), about the best way to dispose of someone. The next we see of her, she’s dangling like a piñata in a warehouse, supposedly in the Pakistani province of Waziristan. Wait, what? Naturally, it all ends with her facing off against Casey, after she discovers what he did to her parents. Another problem is, this finale is both obvious and its execution provides no sense of escalation, action-wise. The first half sets relatively high expectations on this front, that the second half all but abandons, and certainly doesn’t match.

Dir: James Richards
Star: Naomi Karpati, James Richards, Mirko Grillini, Chris Matheson
a.k.a. Agent Provocateur

Assassin’s Target

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★★
“Tolerable only in small doses.”

There’s an interesting tweak to the situation here. While it is the usual “hitwoman agrees to go on one last mission” plotline, Rosa (Gala) is an assassin who has adopted poison as her weapon of choice. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen this, and it’s interesting because women are, in reality, considerably more likely to kill in that way [Per the Washington Post, “Women are seven times as likely as men to choose poison as their murder weapon”] Her choice dates back to Rosa’s childhood, when she killed her abusive father and complicit mother with belladonna berries from their own garden, and has gone on to choose this as a career, working for… Well, it’s a bit vague. Some kind of British intelligence group, I think, with her boss being Henry Crowford  (Giblin).

Rosa’s latest mission takes her to Barcelona, where someone recently hijacked all the TV channels, to broadcast a message of peace and love. Needless to say, the authorities aren’t having that, so send Rosa – who is keen to retire – to track down and eliminate this threat to the established order. Helping her is Will Gray (Vinnicombe), a former army intelligence officer turned fixer. But as Rosa tries to get closer to the pirate of the high frequencies, things get considerably murkier, as it appears that he is another spook, supposedly killed in action. Meanwhile, Crowford’s boss (Charles) is getting increasingly antsy about her lack of progress, and sends another operative after her, to tie up the loose end she increasingly appears to represent.

Retitled from The Vibe, for entirely understandable commercial reasons, this is also known as – and you’ll be forgiven a derisive snort at this – Impossible Mission. But I’m going by the title under which I saw the movie on Amazon Prime. It starts promisingly enough, and does a good job of capturing the complex and paranoid worlds of both intelligence activities and conspiracy theorists, in which no-one can be trusted. However, it has no clue what to do with its concepts, and gets increasingly bogged down in far too much chit-chat. Not helping matters here, is the number of people, led by Gala, who are clearly not speaking their mother tongue, e.g. pronouncing “arsenic” as “ar-SEN-ic”.

Rosa does very little in the way of spycraft, and doesn’t put her toxic talents to any use in pursuit of her target. Certainly, the cover is entirely inaccurate, since I don’t recall her even picking up a gun. By the end, writer-director Gambino has painted himself into such a corner, there’s apparently no way to escape, and the film simply ends, without any of the major topics, least of all Rosa’s status, achieving resolution. I did keep watching, though must confess this was partly due to the over-enthusiastic closed captioning (which I turned on, since I was treadmilling at the time, and hence wheezing loudly). It describes the soundtrack in terms including “vexed music”, “maleficent music” and, my personal favourite, “dreadful music”. That this was the most consistent source of entertainment throughout, tells you everything you need to know.

Dir: Gilles Gambino
Star: Jimena Gala, Ben Vinnicombe, James Giblin, Leslie Charles
a.k.a. The Vibe

Appleseed Alpha

  By

★★★½
“Before the war”

Though the most recent story told in the Appleseed universe, at the time of writing, this was the first to take place. It’s set before Deunan (Christian) and Briareos (Matranga) arrived in Olympus, back when they were still struggling to survive in the harsh world of the 22nd century, created by World War III. They are a pair of former soldiers, operating in New York, doing jobs of questionable legality for boss of the Big Apple’s underworld, Two Horns (Calvert). Their latest mission is to clear an area of automated drones, which now attack anyone who enter. While doing so, they rescue Iris (Palencia) and Olson, who are being pursued by Talos. He’s a cyborg, who needs Iris in particular to access and control a land battleship, which he’ll use to destroy New York, because… Uh, I’m sure he has his reasons. They’re just not very clearly explained in this installment.

That’s one of the few mis-steps in this, even if it does kinda rewrite established franchise history about how Deunan and Briareos got to Olympus. It’s a wonderful glimpse into a blasted world, with New York eerily short on people, and far from the bustling metropolis it was, pre-war. Oddly, the subway still seems to function, as we see in the opening scene, when D+B are attempting to complete one of Two Horns’s jobs, delivering a vaccine to him. Let’s just say, this particular subway line may be experiencing delays for a bit. I actually watched this back-to-back with the original 1998 film, and there’s a drastic contrast in style, with the CGI here slick and generally showing impressive detail. There are some jarring exceptions; a car flipping over looks like no effort went into it at all. But the finale involving the land battleship is undeniably spectacular, and may be good enough to make you forget the earlier glitches. Always good to finish on a high, and this certainly does.

Its plot is not dissimilar to the original 1988 version, with a young girl the key to a terrorist acquiring a weapon of mass destruction. The main difference is that D+B are operating as independent contractors, rather than state-sponsored security. This probably makes their actions more heroic; they could simply have walked away from Iris and Olson, as not their problem. But perhaps the most interesting character arc belongs to Two Horns, who goes from employer to enemy, before eventually riding to the rescue after discovering, first-hand, how much of a bastard Talos and his sidekick, Nyx, can be. I must admit though, to finding Deunan’s costume a tad distracting, since it appears to be designed largely to draw attention to her beautifully detailed, CGI cleavage. While I’m not typically going to complain about that kind of thing, the rest of the film is rather too classy for this to be needed.

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice): Luci Christian, David Matranga, Wendel Calvert, Brina Palencia
[While it seems odd, I believe the English language version is actually the original,  with the Japanese being the “dub” in this case]

Appleseed XIII: Tartaros and Ouranos

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★½
“A Herculean labour to get through”

These two features, Tartaros and Ouranos, are an edited-down version of the Appleseed XIII series. This consisted of 13 episodes, each 22 minutes long, with their release beginning in June 2011 and running through the following January. Obviously, if you do the math, you can see that some fairly harsh scissoring was needed to get that down to a pair of 85-minute films. It also loses the obviously episodic nature, with some of the parts intended to be stand-alone. But, if I’m blunt, I think the problems here are considerably more intrinsic. By the end, I was glad I had decided to go with this version; the prospect of sitting through the longer version had little or no appeal at all.

The most obvious problem was the animation style, which managed to combine the worst features of both CGI and traditional animation. The end result is something which looks flat-out ugly, and thus a far cry from creator Masamune Shirow’s original art. For what I can only presume was good reason, the producers decided to have 13 different animation studios handle things, each doing one episode. While they were all clearly working from the same source material, it’s obvious that they were not all equally competent. Especially when compiled together, the decent bits simply make the bad look all the worse; it would probably have been better had it all been bad. As the original 1998 OAV showed, your eyes can get use to limited animation eventually – providing it isn’t frequently been shown anything else.

The other issue is a story which felt, at best, like another warmed-over rehash of previous elements. Oh, look: pro-human terrorists are threatening the peace of Olympus. Yes, again. It also drops in weird elements which made no sense. Did you know Deunan’s mother was African, and was killed while walking across a street reserved for white people? Briareos is also African. I’m not quite sure what woke point writer Junichi Fujisaku was seeking to make with this, also a sharp deviation from Shirow’s material. But it’s so badly-handed as to actively subtract from proceedings, and has aged very poorly over the decade since. A lot of the content is “inspired by” Greek mythology, in particular the 12 Labours of Hercules, to the point it feels on occasion like a SF episode of The Legendary Journeys.

The overall story arc mostly concerns Olympus’s “Ark Project”, which is intended to secure a future for humanity, but is being opposed by the Human Liberation Front, and in particular Deia Chades. There’s also a clash between Olympus and another city-state, Poseidon, which confused the heck out of me, as in the previous version, Poseidon appeared to be a multinational conglomerate. Whatevs. To be honest, it would have been a bit of an improvement if I could have brought myself to care about this, or anything else presented here. Instead, I found myself largely uninterested in the watered-down version of Deunan which we got here – someone who seemed more concerned about getting in touch with her feelings than with kicking ass.

Dir: Takayuki Hamana
Star (voice): Maaya Sakamoto, Kōichi Yamadera, Mikako Takahashi, Hiro Shimono

Appleseed Ex Machina

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★★★½
“The Deunan wears Prada.”

I think this is probably my favourite of the various incarnations of Appleseed. It may not be the best characterization, the best animation, or the best plot. But I think in overall terms, the combination is the most successful. In all the others, you can typically point to one of those three areas as being at least somewhat deficient. Here, if none are outstanding, they’re all solid and competent. It may help that legendary Hong Kong director John Woo was one of the producers. If you didn’t know that, you could probably tell from the early scene in which Briareos crashes through a church’s stained-glass window, a gun blazing in each hand. “All that needs is some white doves in slow-mo,” I thought. And, lo, later on, the birds in question do appear – and are even necessary to the plot, which is probably more than Woo managed!

The story here begins with the latest in a series of terrorist attacks, carried out by cyborgs. It turns out they are not acting of their own free will, but are being “puppet mastered” into their actions. Worse, the human residents of Olympus now appear to be joining in, baffling Deunan (Kobayashio) and her colleagues in ESWAT. Viewers, however, will likely be quicker to figure out the cause there, given the rather obvious mentions of a hot new piece of wearable technology called Connexus, which simply everyone who is anyone is now sporting. Meanwhile, a new kind of soldier biodroid is being developed, basied on Briareos (Yamadera), designed to possess the talents of humans or cyborgs, but without the negative traits. After Briareos is injured, Deunan is partnered up with one, Tereus (Kishi). This freaks her out, because he looks just like Briareos, before his cybernetic upgrades. Meanwhile, Olympus leader Athena (Takashima) seeks to leverage the terrorist attacks to gain support for her plan to create a worldwide security network.

There’s a lot going here, yet the script manages to keep the elements clear and moving forward without confusion. There’s a sweet spot in SF between the simplistic and the over-complex, and this hit it better than most. The animation is a tad short, however. Weirdly, what stood out as defective was the hair, which didn’t move in the way it should. Either that, or I guess, after the apocalypse, hair lacquer is not in short supply. In general though, the technical aspects were competent enough and occasionally better than that. Perhaps due to Woo’s involvement, it feels a perfect candidate for a live-action adaptation, though the budget would need to be well into nine figures. I’d go with Ruby Rose as Deunan and Dave Bautista as Briareos. Change my mind. :)  Oh, and the tagline? Yeah, some of Deunan’s outfits in the film were indeed designed by Miuccia Prada. She has been running the family’s clothing company since 1978, and was a fan of the previous film. A very well-dressed action heroine indeed…

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice):  Ai Kobayashi, Kōichi Yamadera, Gara Takashima, Yūji Kishi

Appleseed (2004)

  By

★★½
“Weak at its core.”

This is obviously technically superior to its 1988 predecessor, with CGI done in a way that the people, in particular, look like cel animation. I suspect that being a theatrical release, rather than a original video animation, gave it a significantly larger budget, and it hits the ground running. The opening sequence is a bravura use of all the tricks in the CGI locker: swoops, zooms and majestic camera movements round a half-destroyed cityscape. Deunan (Kobayashi) fends off a host of enemies, but ends up being knocked unconscious, and taken to the utopian city of Olympus. There, she’s reunited with Briareos (Kosugi), and becomes part of the ESWAT team. But not everything is idyllic in Olympus, which is populated about equally by humans and vat-grown biodroids, who administer the city and keep humanity’s emotions and violent tendencies in check.

In particular, there are tensions between the administration of biodroid Athena Areios (Koyama), and the army under General Uranus. The latter are fiercely opposed to biodroids, and a faction take action, destroying the facilities which extend biodroid lifespans. They want to realise the “doomsday device” which will wipe out all biodroids. But a group in the administration want to activate biodroid reproductive abilities – this is the “Appleseed” of the franchise title. They need Deunan’s help in this; her mother created the biodroids and her DNA is in them. But the question of who actually has humanity’s best interests at heart, is considerably more murky than it initially appears.

There’s a lot of plot going on here, as the above would appear to make apparent [tip: the more often a society describes itself as “utopian”, the less likely it is to be so]. The problem for me was, it seemed as if the makers all but forgot about the characters. For all the technical wizardry on view, the 1988 film achieved a significantly higher degree of emotional resonance. I don’t think it’s a particular result of the voice acting. I suspect it’s just that the creators constructed this world, and all these groups operating within it, leaving little time in the script to develop Deunan as a character. She feels less like a person than a walking collection of plot elements. There’s also very little depth to the relationship between her and Briareos, which is among the most enjoyable elements in other versions. 

Unfortunately for the sake of my headline, I can’t honestly describe this as “rotten.” But it definitely did not manage to sustain my interest consitently. Since I was watching it in Japanese, I did have to pay a certain amount of attention, since I couldn’t just listen to it. This was particularly during the gobbets of exposition provided by the Council of Elders, a group of old men who debate with supercomputer Gaia about how to run Olympus. However, it was definitely at the bare minimum level for a significant chunk of the running time. After the spectacular opening, it felt like it was largely downhill for the rest of the way, with the usual superweapon finale only somewhat able to rescue things.

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice): Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi, Yuki Matsuoka, Mami Koyama

Appleseed (1988)

  By

★★★
“Apples to oranges”

This feels like one of the first anime releases to get an official release in the West, and to be honest, the animation in particular is showing its age. It couldn’t be much more eighties, if the heroine had big hair and wore legwarmers while listening to her Sony Walkman. That said, when you get used to the relatively simple style, it’s decent enough. We are introduced to the post-WW3 world and in particular, the city of Olympus, which was designed to be a utopian environment for survivors. However, like all utopias, it failed to take into account human nature. In particular, some are very concerned by the prevalence of biodroids. These artificial creations were intended to be humanity’s servants, yet for their opponents, feel increasingly more like our masters.

In that camp is terrorist A.J. Sebastian, who is working with a disgruntled Olympus police officer, Charon Mautholos (Furukawa) to bring about the collapse of Olympus and its all-powerful computer, Gaia. Against them stand the Olympus anti-terrorist forces, in particular Deunan Knute (Katsuki) and Briareos Hecatonchires (Sakaguchi). They are refugees from the blasted hellscape which forms much of the world, who were taken in to Olympus, and became part of its police force. Already bearing a grudge against Sebastian for his killing of a colleague during a hostage situation, they are not unhappy to be tasked with his extra-judicial killing by Olympus’s leader, the bioroid Athena Areios (Sawada). But with the help of Charon, Sebastian is one step ahead of the authorities.

As shown in the video below (you’re welcome!), the original release of the anime did have its fair share of bumpy moments. Several signs clearly refer to the city as “Olumpus”, which doesn’t quite sounds like the home of the gods! Similarly Charon is referred to as “Karen” in the subtitles, which has a rather different set of associations in 2021, never mind the gender confusion it caused. Finally, Briareos is called Buliaros: I guess they were still settling down in terms of his Western name. It’s also surprisingly low-key in terms of action. Once you get past the hostage rescue mentioned above, it’s really Sebastian and Charon that are responsible for much more of the mayhem than Deunan and Briareos.

I did like the characters here though. It’s clear the heroine and hero have an easy-going relationship, trusting each other implicitly. Yet the script still finds the time to give Charon a back-story which makes his action understandable in the circumstances. Sebastian, not so much, however; he’s just a villain. The world-building is generally solid, though I would like to have learned more about life outside Olympus, to provide some contrast. The soundtrack – something I remember as a highlight of many films and series of the time – is utterly forgettable. It’s no Bubblegum Crisis, that’s for sure, and is even further below Ghost in the Shell. Overall though, allowing for its age, it did keep me entertained; truth be told, considerably more  than I feared it might.

Dir: Kazuyoshi Katayama
Star: Masako Katsuki, Yoshisada Sakaguchi, Toshiko Sawada, Toshio Furukawa

Aesop by Michele Packard

  By

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

Matti Baker has always been… unusual. She was adopted as a child, and subsequently discovered her mother was an FBI special agent who died while giving birth to Matti on a mission. She breezed through high school, and after graduation, began training to become a contractor for a private agency, carrying out “special” tasks, under the (rather vague, and entirely deniable) auspices of the US government. On successful completion of the four-year course, Matti begins missions, such as neutralizing terrorists. She also meets Tom, who becomes her husband and they have three kids – triplets born on September 11, 2001. But, in 2015, the tables are turned, and Matti becomes the target for some highly-motivated and thoroughly unpleasant enemies, who are seeking vials in her possession, and won’t take “No” for an answer.

This is definitely a slog. The vials, for example, are mentioned early on, as having been passed down to Matti by her mother. Yet they are then entirely forgotten for a good twenty-five years. Then, two-thirds of the way into the book, she’s captured and immediately interrogated about their whereabouts. I had, literally, completely forgotten about them by that point, since they were barely mentioned. “We can get to the vials in a sec,” it says on page six. Doesn’t happen. We never do discover what they’re supposed to contain, what their importance is, or why an FBI special agent thought it would be a good idea to bequeath them to her ten-year-old daughter. Given their position at the heart of much of the plot, this seems unforgivable.

The style is equally clunky. It relies heavily on a long series of pop-culture references to music, movies and TV shows. In the course of less than half a page, we get all of the following:

  • I swear I felt like he was thinking about that Nine Inch Nails Closer song as he stared at me.
  • I felt like Olivia Pope in Scandal.
  • Just like in The Italian Job, we had orchestrated every little detail.

These get shoehorned in there, because… Actually, I’m not sure why: we’re not talking obscurist entities that will prove the author’s street-cred. I speak here, as someone who likes Nine Inch Nails. Other sections obsess over interior decor in a way that feels more like house porn. Then again, everything in Matti’s life, for her husband and children through to her pair of impeccably-trained attack dogs, are utterly perfect in every aspect. Why should her living quarters be any different?

The characterizations here, in particular the heroine, all really come over as little more than wish-fulfillment, with a leading lady who appears to possess no weaknesses, flaws or faults – in other words, anything which might make her interesting. The term “Mary Sue” gets bandied about quite a lot with regard to action heroines; probably a little too frequently. However, this may be one of the cases where it deserves to be applied.

Author: Michele Packard
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Aesop series.