Tag: f

Ferromancer, by Becca Andre

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

Bridget ‘Briar’ Rose is a rarity: a woman who runs a canal boat, transporting cargo along the waterways which form the Ohio & Erie canal network. However, her livelihood is under threat. The increasing growth of the railway as an alternative method of transportation is increasingly a rival for the jobs she takes, and her cousin, Andrew, is looking to see her barge out from under Briar, so he can invest in the railways instead. However, she suspects he is working with an outlaw: a ferromancer, one of the mages who revolutionized industry in Europe, but who had supposedly been wiped out two decades ago due to the threat they posed. 

If she can prove that, it will discredit Andrew, and allow Briar to keep plying her trade. She steals the plans from Andrew’s house, and kidnaps his apparent business partner, Grayson, after he finds her and demands the return of the plans. Doing so creates a whole new set of issues, bringing Briar and her crew into contact with some very dangerous people. In particular, Mr. Solon, a ferromancer whose can use the darker magical arts to turn people into soulless automatons under his control. I think the world building here is likely the strongest suit. Though it’s lightly drawn – I’m really curious about what must have been a war between the mages and The Scourge, the organization set up to destroy them. 

The sense of period is also nicely done. For some reason, I kept forgetting it was taking place in America, maybe because I associate canals more with England. But it’s another aspect of the world which I enjoyed, a slightly alternate history where a brief dalliance with magic was ruthlessly crushed. On the other hand, I was rather confused by the motives of a number of characters. Both Grayson’s and Solon’s motivations are murky at the best of times. The former’s fondness for dribbling out both significant and relevant information, which might have helped, annoyed me – considerably more than it did Briar, who just seems to (metaphorically) roll her eyes briefly and keep on hanging out with him. 

Given the era, it’s not surprising that most of the physical action is left to the men-folk. However, Briar does get involved in a brawl with another “canal chick”, for want of a better time. She’s also not averse to a great leveller in the battle between the sexes, which is a kick to the groin! The further we go on, the clearer it becomes that ferromancers are very different to normal people – to a degree where they may not even technically be human. Andre does leave a lot of things open at the conclusion of this, although at least has the courtesy to avoid a direct cliffhanger. Was there enough to get me to buy into further volumes? Likely not immediately, though it’s not entirely off the table. 

Author: Becca Andre
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Iron Souls series.

The Forbidden City

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★★★½
“Spaghetti Eastern.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Italian kung-fu movie before. To be fair, the bulk of the lifting in that department is done by Chinese actress Yaxi Liu, who was a stunt double in the live-action Mulan. She plays Xiao Mei – yes, this leads to amusing confusion about Xiao and “Ciao!” – who comes to Rome in search of her vanished sister, Yun. The triad folk who brought her from China expect Mei to work as a prostitute, and soon discover that will not be happening, in impressively violent fashion. She flees, and finds an unexpected ally in Marcello (Borello), whose restaurant owning father knew Yun, and who has similarly vanished. 

Meanwhile, behind the scenes is growing antagonism between Wang (Shanshan), who runs the local triad group, and Annibale (Giallini), in charge of the traditional organized crime in the area. Mei’s actions, attacking members of both gangs, are not helping, and things only escalate further when she and Marcello discover what happened to their missing relatives. You can probably work out the rest for yourself, providing the count of kung-fu movies seen previously is greater than about three. Just be prepared for it to take its time getting there. This runs a hundred and thirty-nine minutes, and I found that the main problem. While the basic story is solid, there’s a bunch of stuff on the edges that could be discarded, such as Wang’s rapper son. 

There are really only four genuine action scenes in this, and given the duration, that spreads them perilously thin. However, all four are really good, to the point you will certainly wish it had more. There’s Mei’s escape from migrant processing (which has a lovely sequence of kitchen-fu); a battle against two of Annibale’s minions; her frontal assault on the restaurant which serves as a front for Wang’s activities; and, finally, her one-on-one fight with Wang himself. The last named felt like it should have been the climax: instead, it takes place when there is still thirty minutes left on the clock, leaving a long, slow march to the end-credits. I’ve not seen such an over-extended ending to a movie since Return of the King. 

That said, I never particularly felt the film was boring: there’s stuff here’s which is superfluous, yet is still adequately interesting. This counts as a well-done gender reversal: typically it would be the male who shows up, looking for his sister, and is helped by a waitress. It helps that both Liu and Borello are left to act in their native tongues, communicating largely through Google Translate (!). This avoid the awkward “acting in a second language” which would otherwise have been necessary. I also enjoyed the backdrop of the Eternal City, filmed in a way which emphasizes its grandeur and history. I didn’t feel like my time – and it used up a lot of it – was wasted. Had Mainetti found reason to throw in a few more fights, this could have been a classic, rather than a well-rounded throwaway. 

Dir: Gabriele Mainetti
Star: Enrico Borello, Yaxi Liu, Marco Giallini, Chunyu Shanshan
a.k.a. Kung Fu in Rome

Female Special Police Officer

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★★★
“Die Hard in… um, a building?”

Really, this is so shameless in its appropriation as to be almost adorable. Cop Sheng Nan (Mu) is visiting her other half at a swanky function, when the event is attacked by thieves. Fortunately, when they take over the main room where everyone else is, she’s in the bathroom, and so is able to escape captivity. She is then forced to sneak around, using a combination of stealth and her cop skills to take on the criminals, who have to wait around for a time-locked safe to open. Does any of this sound familiar? If not, perhaps the scene where she drops a dead robber on a car to alert the authorities? Or where she leaps off the roof to avoid an explosion?

Be cautious if looking this up, because there’s another film, made the following year, with an almost identical title – it drops the final R off the title. This makes it seem as if they sit around filing memos and doing light paperwork, but given they’re called the Thunderbolt Women’s Commando Unit, I suspect they do not. There, the enemy is a drug cartel; here, it’s thieves. That all said, I have to deduct points for incredibly lazy script-writing in this. Even before we get to the wholesale lifting of elements from Die Hard, we get another trope so old it can be found carved onto the Pyramids. A hostage rescue, which is actually just a training mission? Never seen that before… [/sarcasm]

However, if the writer needs to be taken to a re-education camp, the execution is surprisingly good, to the point that I enjoyed this more than Cleaner, the considerably larger-budgeted Die Hard knock-off. It’s certainly less pretentious, and has no particular aspirations, beyond an attractive heroine kicking moderate ass. This lack of ambition is laudable, and running only seventy-eight minutes means it has no time for diversions, subplots or social commentary. Not when it has to copy the scene where a frontal assault by police gets explosively repelled (albeit less lethally, perhaps in deference to local cultural mores about killing cops). I may have yelled “The quarterback is toast!” at my television screen.

To be fair, it does become more of its own animal in the second half. The power is cut briefly, allowing two of Sheng Nan’s colleagues in to join her in the building. On the criminal side, things don’t unfold exactly as expected either. Not that anyone here exactly Alan Rickman, and this is probably the area where there’s the biggest gulf separating it from Die Hard. I will say, the finish is also weak sauce, with things just petering out, rather than ending in a satisfactory bang. At least the chief villain didn’t due in a long plummet, with a surprised look on their face. Not a patch on the inspiration, obviously. Yet I’ve seen equally shameless copies which were far less entertaining. 

Dir: Chang Chen
Star: Mu Qi Miya, Cheng Qi Meng, Wei Zi Qian, Mayela Magru 

Fight to Live

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★★★½
“One tough mother.”

Bec ‘Rowdy’ Rawlings is an Australian mixed martial-artist, who fought in the UFC for a bit, and then became the first woman to win a bare-knuckle boxing world title. This documentary covers her life, from growing up as a teenage tearaway, through motherhood transforming her character, her discovery of mixed martial-arts, a disastrous and highly toxic first marriage, and escaping that to become eventually the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship federation’s Women’s Featherweight World Champion. Phew. That’s quite a lot to get through in less than eighty minutes. The film does a decent job of covering its bases, through interviews with Bec, and her family and friends, plus no shortage of archive footage of Rawlings, both in and out of the ring.

Everyone in it, but Bec in particular, comes over as down-to-earth: it might be an Aussie thing. Certainly, she makes for an interesting contrast to the more… outspoken American and male MMA fighters, like Conor McGregor. Rawlings seems almost humble, speaking of the respect she has for anyone tough enough to get in the ring. Admittedly, this is likely in contrast to her early years when she was very much on the path to delinquency. Particularly awkward, since her sister was a police officer, who remembers getting a radio call describing a suspect, and knowing immediately that it was her sibling. But parenthood flicked a switch, and Bec realized after having her first son Zake, she needed to take responsibility for her actions.

However, life took a darker turn in her relationship with fellow MMA fighter, Dan Hyatt. For three years, he abused her, both physically and mentally. At one point in the documentary, the interviewer asks for specifics of what he did, and… Well, to be honest, it feels unnecessarily invasive, and almost exploitative: I didn’t feel like the details added anything. Eventually, she was able to escape the situation, and it certainly appears to be a case of “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” While the recovery process took a number of years, she can now look back on the horrors of that period in her life, and as Rawlings says, it happened to her, but does not define who she is, an awesome attitude.

To be honest though, I was more interested in the sporting side of the documentary, which follows Bec as she prepares to defend her title belt in Cancun, Mexico, against Cecilia Flores. She won – hey, it’s on her Wikipedia page – although it’s a little odd that this fight took place back in February 2019, but the film basically ends there, with only a couple of captions covering the five years between then and its release. I had, again, to check Wikipedia for more up-to-date information. After spending time fighting for Bellator, she’s now back fighting for the BKFC, winning her last (at time of writing) bout in January 2025. More power to her, both in the ring and as a mother.

Dir: Tom Haramis
Star: Bec Rawlings, Adrian Rodriguez, Mal Van, Jacqui Rawlings

Fairest of Them All

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★★½
“Princesses are doin’ it for themselves.”

There’s a recent trend for horror films based on public domain characters. The most infamous is likely Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, but traditional fairy tales have also been exploited to the same end. This is a sequel of sorts to the same studio’s Cinderella’s Curse (which I have not seen), but basically hurls every princess of legend into the mix. The excuse is Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter (Santer), who in this incarnation is a Joker-like psycho, who has kidnapped Alice (Desmond) and made her his slave, courtesy of his magic. He now wants a bride, and to this end abducts a selection of princesses and others e.g. Tinker Bell, as potential candidates. They will fight to the death. Last one alive becomes Mrs. Hatter.

Likely out of necessity, to differentiate the various princesses, the results play fast and loose with traditional folklore. For example, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, turns out to be a shape-shifter. Or there’s Snow White, who is driven by her cannibalistic impulses. It’s also notable that some of them are enthusiastically on-board with the Hatter’s plan. It therefore takes a while before any cohesion takes place between the kidnap victims, forming the necessary alliance to be able to fight back. This is quite an interesting concept, yet somehow still feels somewhat longer than its brief running-time of seventy-seven minutes. We are here to see regal catfights; instead, there’s rather too much sitting around and talking about things.

It also seems occasionally to veer into near-darkness, leaving it hard to tell exactly what’s happening. But I did like most of the characters, and a lot of the performances are enthusiastic enough to pass muster. Many of those involved seem to be actively “in on the joke”, being aware of the general ridiculous nature of the concept. Santer in particular sets the tone, and everyone else is at their best when they follow suit. The production values were surprisingly decent too, with an interesting, decrepit location, which seems to mirror the broken-down nature of Hatter’s sanity. It feels like there has been some effort put into the costumes, hair and make-up – again, reflecting the personalities of the princesses.

On the other hand, it’s clear none of the actresses have been chosen for their martial arts abilities, despite pronouncements from the director that, “This is a blood bath with epic fight sequences. Gore hounds are in for a treat.” It really is not, the fights are well short of epic, and I do not feel particularly treated either. I was hoping for a fairy-tale version of Raze. Instead, what I got was closer to after hours in the locker-room at Disneyland, following the consumption of one too many margaritas. Sure, it may be adequately entertaining to watch, but it’s probably not going to be the proudest moment of anyone involved. Better than most public-domain knockoffs though. I’m looking at you, The Mouse Trap…

Dir: Kunahan Thampi
Star: Lewis Santer, Alina Desmond, Kelly Rian Sanson, Natasha Tosini

The Final Heist

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★★
“Interesting premise, incredibly bland execution.”

I liked the idea of this. A gang of five thieves, four women and Liev, give up the game after a robbery goes wrong and Liev gets arrested. He doesn’t give up his accomplices, who include his pregnant girlfriend Willa (Banus), and goes to jail. Six years later their daughter falls ill, and desperately needs matching tissue to repair her heart valve. The bad news: it has to be her father, who’s still in prison. Worse news: he’s in a coma, having been beaten up on the orders of the governor. Willa decides to put the band back together, along with an unlicensed surgeon, to break into prison, and extract the necessary tissue to save her daughter. 

That’s not something I’ve seen in a film before. It’s certainly a twist on the usual “women in prison” subgenre, and the scope for a tense thriller, as the reverse heist unfolds, is obvious. Unfortunately, it’s the best part of an hour before we get to the execution, and there’s not enough to retain interest. It doesn’t help that the plot has so many holes through which you could drive an oil tanker. For example, Flynn (Ma) gets a job in the prison library, becoming the gang’s inside woman. She’s gaily snapping cellphone photos inside the jail, when two minutes of Googling confirms exactly what I suspected – that every prison I could find, has an almost zero tolerance policy for mobile devices.

Though in general, this correctional facility has security roughly comparable to your local electronics store, and you will be left with little confidence in just about anyone involved in the penal industry. Not that Willa and her team can really claim the moral high ground here, if you think about it. They are the “good girls” only because the film tells us they are. Given the first thing we see them do is robbing an armoured truck by threatening the driver with an explosive device, I’m not sure that’s truly the case in any court of morality. I’d rather have seen them embrace this ambiguity in some way, rather than dropping in a cliche straight from a Lifetime movie, a desperately ill child. Who can possibly root against Willa now?

Indeed, in tone, a lot of this feels like it could have straight in from a TV movie. Things do pick up somewhat down the stretch, not least with some unexpectedly graphic open-heart surgery, and when Willa is forced to make an unexpectedly difficult choice. However, it likely counts as a minimal spoiler to say that all ends well – at least, for the majority of the cast – with justice served on the bad people. [Robbery, it appears, does not count…] From a technical point of view, it’s reasonably well-assembled: “competent” would be the word, though it’s equally lacking in flair. The highest praise I can give this, is to say that I did not fall asleep. Might have been close in the first hour.

Dir: Ted Campbell
Star: Camila Banus, Jasmine Shanise, Virginia Ma, Shonte Akognon

First Target

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★★★
“Mostly hit, and several misses.”

Well, after taking ten years to get from the third film to the first, the gap between first and second is considerably shorter. I think this probably works the best of the trilogy, not least because there are a few good GWG to be found here, not just Secret Service Agent Alex McGregor. This time, she’s played by Hannah – allegedly, seeing her here got Tarantino to cast her in Kill Bill – rather than Hemingway. The latter supposedly declined due to a combination of scheduling conflicts and script concerns. Frankly, I think this is a bit more solid than the original film. It begins with a nice nod back to First Daughter, opening again with an attack on President Jonathan Hayes (Harrison) – except, this time it’s just a training exercise.

McGregor is now the head of the Secret Service, and is coming down hard on new agent Kelsey Innes, for much the same reason McGregor suffered the same treatment. But more pressing matters are at hand, because the Vice President has a plot to kill his boss and take over. To that end, he has hired international assassin Nina Stahl (Grauer) and her hacker brother, who plan to assassinate Harrison during a ceremony in Seattle, with the help of a mole inside the local Secret Service office. Returning from the first picture is wilderness guide Grant Coleman (Savant), whose attempts to propose to Alex keep getting interrupted, and who is impressively unfazed by the fact his girlfriend now looks radically different from last movie.

The concept here is still a little silly, but at least the threat here is genuine, with Stahl a decent adversary who poses a real threat to McGregor, Innes, etc. She additionally brings a nice line in femme fatale to her line of work, and I was surprised to see a not-exactly subtly incestuous vibe with her brother. It feels like Stahl has wandered in from a different franchise entirely. Again, it is a little disappointing that Grant ends up doing so much, in this case going toe-to-toe with Nina, while Alex is making her way up the mountain towards the assassin. However, the heroine still gets her licks in, and puts the pieces of the puzzle together before anyone else.

Unlike First Daughter, there’s a sense that most of the people involved here are relatively smart; or, at least, behave as if they are. The absence of the annoying teenage Presidential daughter – never seen or heard, but apparently now getting tattoos – feels like a positive development too. It still remains limited by being a TV movie, and the pauses for advert breaks are often painfully obvious (not helped by them not lining up with the Tubi advert breaks). However, I was definitely entertained, and if I had seen this when it came out in TBS at the turn of the millennium, I would likely not have changed the channel. It almost makes me want to re-review First Shot, and see if I was unnecessarily harsh to it. Almost…

Dir: Armand Mastroianni
Star: Daryl Hannah, Doug Savant, Gregory Harrison, Ona Grauer 

First Daughter

  By

★★½
“Secret Service with a smile.”

El Jardinero isn’t the only long-delayed review of a franchise opener. I saw First Shot, the third movie in this series about Secret Service Agent Alex McGregor (Hemingway), back in 2014, and at the time it was the only entry present on Netflix. A decade later, I now get the chance to catch up with the first entry and… it is pretty much what you’d expect. Competent enough for a TV movie, but the limitations of that medium are always going to knee-cap the material. This does begin well enough, with an energetic terrorist attack on a fundraiser for President Jonathan Hayes (Harrison) by members of the American Freedom Fighters – this clearly dates outside the 2001-16 window when domestic terrorism was ignored. 

His life is saved by Alex, but only after she disobeys orders from her boss, which gets her into hot water. Still, a few months later, she is selected to accompany Hayes’s teenage daughter, Jess (Keena), on a wilderness adventure trip. Unfortunately, this drops them right into the Colorado terrain (actually Australia, but who can tell the difference?) where the AFF militia are hiding out. They get the bright idea of kidnapping Jess, so they can exchange her for their leader, captured during the attack mentioned above. Jess is the only agent to survive the initial assault, and so it’s up to her and tour guide Grant Coleman (Savant) to track the terrorists through the forest, and free Jess from their clutches

This is spottily entertaining, and you can probably tell most of the story beats in advance. Jess resents Alex’s presence on the trip, while Alex and Grant get off on the wrong foot – but you just know everyone is going to grow to respect each other by the end of the film. However, it holds together well enough, with decent performances from Hemingway and Savant, who make for a likeable pair. It is front-loaded, with the original attack a nifty piece of bullet-ridden carnage, before the film then goes to sleep on that front. It’s instead busy introducing characters, establishing relationships and making Alex do rock-climbing to prove she’s not a lesbian. Or something like that. My notes are a bit unclear on the point.

It has to be said, despite the presence of WWE’s Diamond Dallas Page among them, the AFF members are very much low-grade terrorists. There’s only three of the left, and I would not say smarts are their strong suit. As threats go, they’re lightweights. It was also a little disappointing how McGregor ends up needing to be rescued in the climax. While it’s an acceptable conclusion, tying up a dangling loose end, it does weaken her as a protagonist. There is some impressive bits of white-water action, and in generally, it feels more like a low-budget theatrical feature than a made for television one: its budget of $5 million certainly feels more than the typical nineties TVM. If my review of the third entry was scathing, I suspect it won’t take another ten years before I review the second.

Dir: Armand Mastroianni
Star: Mariel Hemingway, Doug Savant, Monica Keena, Gregory Harrison

Fighter’s Life

  By

★★½
“Knocked down by the clichés”

If you fed an AI all the sports movies ever made, and then asked it to write a script, what you’d get is likely something close to this. Here’s a challenge: write down ten clichés you find in a film like this, then watch the movie (conveniently embedded below), and see how many show up. I’m willing to bet most of those on your list would be present here. The main saving grace is that the execution is done with a complete lack of self-awareness. It feels as if the writers genuinely had no clue they were treading a path which was more of a groove. Everyone involved in this is so earnest, it just about gets away with it.

Here’s the plot. Let’s count the clichés. Xia Yun (Xia) dreams of a career in MMA (#1). However, she’s stuck working in her family restaurant (#2), run by her father after her mother left them (#3). She gets a chance to enter a prestigious tournament (#4), the prize money for which could clear her father’s debts (#5). However, her trainer comes under pressure for Xia to throw a match (#6). Despite this, she reaches the semi-finals, where she suffers a setback (#7), losing to a Brazilian fighter. It’s subsequently revealed her opponent cheated (#8), giving our heroine the chance to win it all (#9), in front of her mother (#10). Oh, yeah, add a freebie: there might be a life-threatening illness involved at some point as well (#bonus).

The other issue is, there’s a lot of stuff outside the octagon to cram in, especially when the film is only seventy-two minutes long. There’s surprisingly little actual fighting in it: certainly more drama, and possibly even more training sequences, of one form or another. This is a bit of a shame, since Xia Jiao looks more convincing than the actresses in many a Hollywood film. Not least in her quick hands, which suggest she might be a fighter trained to act, rather than an actress trained to fight. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know: if not, then a “well done” to Xia for making it look convincing. Or at least convincing enough to fool my (admittedly, untrained) eyes.

The brief running-time may work in the film’s favour, in that it can hardly be accused of outstaying its welcome. It’s technically solid, and though clearly smaller in scale, doesn’t look cheap. The components are in pace for a decent, quick-paced action film; it’s just that the makers don’t appear particularly interested in delivering one. They seem more interested in the dramatic elements: as noted above, those aspects are absolutely nothing you have not seen, many times before, and the execution does little to elevate them. A hat-tip to Denis for pointing me in the direction of this one: I’m always looking for suggestions, and it certainly wasn’t the worst I’ve seen – even this week. There’s just little here to merit a second viewing.

Dir: Huang Binhao
Star: Xia Jiao, Yu Shan Chuan, Bai Yao, Sarah Chen

The File, by Gary Born

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

Not many novels come with a ringing endorsement from a former director of the CIA, but Gina Haspel calls this “A thoroughly enjoyable, engrossing thriller.” Argue with her, and she’ll send you an exploding cigar, or something. While it certainly isn’t bad, the rating above reflects its likely moderate appeal for readers here. A general audience might be more impressed, especially with regard to the second half, where the heroine becomes more of a passenger. Things begin at the very end of World War II with a flight out of Berlin carrying documents intended to secure the future of the Reich. It doesn’t reach its destination, crashing in the depths of the African jungle.

Almost eighty years later, a botanical expedition stumbles across the downed plane and its cargo. When word seeps out, various very interested parties converge on the Congo, intent on securing the contents by any means necessary. Surviving the initial onslaught is Sara West, daughter of the expedition’s head, who bails with the documents, and the parties in hot pursuit. In the jungle at least, Sara has more experience and proves eminently capable of turning the tables on her pursuers. After escaping the wilderness, she convinces one of the hunters, CIA agent Jeb Fisher, to change sides, and his assistance becomes increasingly valuable as they head through Africa, into Italy, and eventually to Zurich. There, they make a final stand, in the unlikely location of a venerable Swiss bank.

The above should hopefully explain why this feels like a book of two halves. I really enjoyed the first half, with Sara using all her knowledge, built on years of living in the jungle, to stay one step ahead of the opposition – or sneak up from behind on them. She rarely over-powers her enemies, relying more on stealth, wits and turning their own resources against them. It is still a bit of a stretch to imagine a young woman, untrained in combat, taking out a whole slew of Russian special forces. However, Born certainly sells the illusion well enough to work. The problems arise with the arrival of Jeb, not least the ease with which he disobeys orders to take Sara’s side.

Thereafter, he also becomes the main protagonist. While it makes sense that his skills would become more important outside of the jungle, it results in Sara being somewhat (though not entirely) sidelined. There’s also the almost inevitable romantic dalliance, and I feel that having a Jebina instead of Jeb, might have addressed that, and a lot of the problems I felt hampered the second half. It’s still a decent enough read on its own terms, building nicely towards the grandstand finale – although I can’t imagine even Swiss authorities taking so long to get to a hellacious firefight in downtown Zurich! But I feel it does not do Sara the justice she deserves, especially after the impressive heights reached earlier on.

Author: Gary Born
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Standalone novel