Tag: fantasy

Magic Warriors

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★★★
“Lin-sanity rides once again.”

I am going to be entirely upfront, and state that any factual statements regarding the plot here will be entirely cribbed from other sources. Because, on my own, I have close to no clue as to the details of what was going. I got that some girl dressed as a guy, Little Flying Dragon (Lin, inevitably) was trying to protect Golden Boy (Chan) from a bunch of very strangely dressed weirdos with even more bizarre powers. They want Golden Boy for some nefarious purpose on behalf of an evil sorcerer type, who laughs maniacally. A lot. Everyone involved wears wigs which look like they were bought in bulk from Hair Metal R Us. There’s an acid pit, into which Golden Boy’s father is unceremoniously dropped. His mother is called “Evil Lady” in the subtitles, though she isn’t really. At one point, there’s a song whose lyrics according to the subs go, “Little Flying Dragon, Little Flying Dragon, change all the time, power breads everything.”

You will understand my confusion.

Actually, I’m not going to bother with a more coherent description of the plot elements, because in the final analysis, they don’t particularly matter. It’d be like spending 500 words discussing background to the 1998 Hell in a Cell match, when what actually counts, is Mankind getting thrown off the cage and through a table. Any story here is simply an excuse for the usual combination of high-flying action and low-brow humour. We’ve seen them present in earlier, similar Lin-powered entries such as Magic of Spell, yet it feels like the makers felt the need to one-up themselves here, in both departments. The kung-fu feels more well-assembled and, though still significantly wire-powered, there’s clearly no shortage of skill from the performers. On the other hand, you get a steady stream of jokes about urine, farts and excrement: Golden Boy seems to have got his name from the first of these. If you find someone mistaking pee for tea the peak of comedy, you’re going to love this.

Me, not so much, and again, I find myself unable to figure out the target audience here. For every element which seems squarely targeted at a nine-year-old audience, there’s one which seems heavily inappropriate, such as Evil Lady projectile vomiting blood into a lake. Maybe the Taiwanese pre-teen audience is just considerably more resilient? It’s still not quite my cup of tea (or pee, I guess), with the more childish elements not to my taste. However, I think I did enjoy this one a bit more than Spell, with what felt like better pacing and a particularly rousing finale in the villain’s lair. I’d not be willing to take a test on the plot, what with people changing sides at the drop of a small child. Yet this is one of those cases where you simply need to, in the words of the great philosopher Adele, “Let it go, let it go…”

Dir: Yan-Chien Chuang, Tso Nam Lee
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Chan Yin-Yu, Alexander Lo Rei, Chen Shan

Magic of Spell

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★★½
“Spell-ing B-movie”

The best way to describe this, is perhaps to say that if I was nine years old, I would think it was the greatest movie I had ever seen. And I would likely be right, at the time. With the benefit of [redacted] more years, and several thousand additional movies under my belt… Not so much. Oh, it’s excessive, insanely imaginative and high energy, to be sure. However, it is also slapdash, incoherent and juvenile. Never mind appealing to nine-year-olds, it often feels like it was made by nine-year-olds. This explanation could be the most logical way to explain how the film manages to misspell its own name in the opening credits, calling itself Magic of Stell.

Let me attempt to summarize the more sane elements of the plot, as best I can. An evil wizard (Chen) seeks to reclaim his youth. This involves bathing in childrens’ blood, and eating the Ginseng King, who is played by a little kid dressed up to look like the herbal root in question. Out to stop him is Peach Boy (Lin, doing her usual unconvincing male character shtick), with the help of a bunch of friends, led by… some randomly wandering dude (Ku). Both sides are populated with bizarre characters, sporting even more bizarre abilities. For example, Peach Boy can summon a giant fruit which he can use like bowling-ball, and that occasionally shoots lasers out at her opponents.  Or one of his allies has an arm, which turns into an aggressive chicken on occasion and pecks peoples’ eyes out.

There are moments here which are “I can’t believe I just saw this.” If you saw the Indian film RRR, you’ll know the kind of thing I mean. Except, there is good reason why this has remained an underground item, rather than generating Oscar buzz. For there are also moments in this which appear to have strayed in from your local community theatre pantomime. I mean this in a number of ways: the quality of the performances, the juvenile humour, and the way you have both men playing women and women playing men. Not all of it works, to put it very, very mildly, and I’ve no idea who the target audience might have been.

Matters are likely not helped by the VCD release, which has the Cantonese audio track coming out of one speaker, and the Mandarin out of the other (how they used to do multiple-language media). So you’re listening to two different languages, simultaneously, and they are not in sync either, adding to the overall insanity. I think “exhausted” is the best single word for how the whole endeavour made me feel. It’s the cinematic version of a run-on sentence which lasts for 80 minutes, making copious use of the words “and then…” While I can appreciate the invention on view here, it doesn’t excuse an approach that seems to involve spraying the audience with a fire-hose, and hoping it slakes their thirst.

Dir: Chung-Hsing Chao
Star: Hsiao-Lao Lin, Chen Shan, Pao-Ming Ku, Mei Fang Yu

Nowhere Girl

  By

★★½
“Slow, slow, slow-slow, quick…”

For the first hour, you may be forgiven for wondering if there has been some kind of mistake, because the poster bears almost no resemblance to what happens in the film. Oh, it’s the same actress, to be sure, and she is a schoolgirl. But it appears, rather than the war story promised, you have strayed into a teenage drama. In it, Ai (Seino) is a talented but troubled student, who seems to be suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. The special treatment she receives at school brings her enmity as a result, both from her class-mates and the er homeroom teacher (Kaneko). Though she finds solace in art, including a mysterious major project on which she is working, housed in the school auditorium.

It’s all very subdued. There’s a lot of scenes of people standing around talking. Or, for variety, sitting around talking. The camera is considerably more mobile than the characters, engaging in stately pans and tracking shots around the dialogue, accompanied by classical music that’s positively soporific. Yet, it’s clear there’s something “off” about the whole situation. The school is frequently shaken by earthquakes, and it’s apparent that Ai has a tendency to outbursts of violence, which is bubbling just below the surface. The staff and other students don’t pay attention to the warning signs, and continue to push Ai’s buttons. You’ll understand where I thought this was potentially going to end up, delivering on the image with her going postal on the school.

Not quite.

Trust Oshii to make something which confounds expectations, while still somehow managing to disappoint. See  Avalon or Assault Girls, both films with massive potential, that fall short of realizing it. Here, you have a film which would potentially be a classic, if it started at the hour mark, then built on what follows, for another hour after the credits actually roll. Because what kicks off – at the 67-minute mark if you’re interested in fast-forwarding to that point – is beautifully staged. There’s a spectacular sequence of kung- and gun-fu, whose highlight for me was Ai taking the term “human shield” to a whole new level. Then a revelation to set up a whole new scenario, one that looks very interesting, and… The End.

I do have to mark this down for the film trying to pull off the most clichéd of clichéd twists which, to a significant degree, renders everything previous to that point a waste of everybody’s time. You need to be a supremely confident film-maker to pull it off; while it’s clear Oshii doesn’t lack in confidence, pulling the carpet out from under the viewer really needs to have happened 10-15 minutes in. The longer the conceit is sustained, the more likely the audience’s reaction will be “You’ve got to be kidding me” – and there might well be an epithet dropped in before “kidding”, too. Some day Oshii will deliver on his undeniable talent and imagination. Just not today.

Dir: Mamoru Oshii
Star: Nana Seino, Nobuaki Kaneko, Lily, Hirotaro Honda

The Covert Guardian, by Liane Zane

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

Liane Zane’s Elioud Legacy trilogy, all three books of which I’ve previously reviewed, is supernatural fiction, written by a Roman Catholic author, and premised on the fictional conceit that matings between angelic beings (both fallen and unfallen) and humans have been going on since before the Flood, producing mixed-race offspring who are physically human but have certain heightened physical or even latent supernatural abilities. That trilogy focused on three strong and courageous young women, who when it opened were completely unaware of their angelic genes, and all of whom were both serving in the intelligence services of their various countries, and collaborating with each other on the side in a covert alliance to provide some special protection for the victims of sexual assault and trafficking. The Covert Guardian is the first volume of a projected prequel trilogy, set a few years before the opening of the previously-published one, which will tell the “origin story” of their friendship and alliance. Here, our protagonist is Olivia Markham, the trio’s unofficial ringleader, and we learn how, as a 20-year-old college pre-med student, she unexpectedly came to join the CIA.

Unlike the first trilogy, this one really has no supernatural elements. Readers who’ve read the former will suspect, from certain subtle clues, that a couple of secondary characters here may also be Elioud, and will remember the St. Michael medal (a gift from her sensei) that Olivia wears, which feels strangely warm at times; and she has a sort of instinctive sixth sense for approaching danger that her then-boyfriend rather snidely dismisses as her “spidey sense.” But none of this is obviously paranormal nor impossible to explain naturalistically. I’ve classified the book as straight-out, descriptive action-adventure and espionage fiction, and it will definitely appeal to fans of those genres whether they have any liking for supernatural fiction or not.

The previously-published books mentioned, as a painful experience in Olivia’s past, the murder of her cousin Emily when the two girls were 16; they were close, and the tragedy was a formative factor in shaping Olivia’s deep desire to protect the innocent victims of brutality. In the modern U.S., the wheels of the justice system grind very slowly, so the killer’s trial was delayed until the summer before Olivia was to become a junior at Brown Univ. (She’s New England born and bred, living with her family in a suburban town outside Boston.) When our tale opens, soon after testifying, Olivia’s been talked by her boyfriend into joining him in a vacation on Ibiza, a real-life Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain which is a popular tourist destination, as a supposed opportunity to rest and heal from the re-lived traumatic experience. Even at this stage in her life, she’s strong, physically fit and athletic, smart, brave and quick-thinking; and since Emily’s murder, she’s been taking serious martial arts training. (And then there’s that “spidey sense” I mentioned….)

These qualities will stand her in good stead when, just four pages into the narrative, a squad of Islamist terrorists hit the beach, bent on slaughtering the revelers. Fortunately, a CIA counter-terrorist strike force is nearby; but by the time the action is over, Olivia’s displayed enough mettle to get their attention. (As they’ll soon learn, it also doesn’t hurt that she’s fluent in several languages, and qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in archery while still in high school.) Before the summer is over, she’s training at a CIA-run camp in North Carolina, and she feels that she’s found her true calling. And as luck would have it, an attractive female college student might just fit the mission profile for getting close to a wealthy young playboy type suspected of funding global terrorist activities. But chicanery, corruption, and betrayal of the U.S. aren’t necessarily things that only go on outside of the CIA, and our heroine’s path to joining the Company may not be an easy cake-walk.

Although the books of the Elioud Legacy trilogy are all thick, at just 155 pages, this one is more novella length, and a quick read. Like the former books, though, it moves around geographically, in this case to locations on three different continents; and the author’s knowledge of the physical geography of all of these settings is impressive. She’s a skilled wordsmith, seasoned in the novelist’s craft and able to immerse the reader in the story, and there are some surprises up her sleeve. For readers who want danger, tension, and well-depicted action scenes, this yarn definitely delivers. It’s not characterized by profound ethical dilemmas or deep spiritual, philosophical or political content, being more straightforward in those areas (in the context of the espionage genre, Zane is more in the tradition of Manning Coles or Alistair MacLean than, say, John LeCarre’), but I don’t view this as is any sense a fault, nor will most genre fans. What readers –genre fans or not– do want in fiction, more than action and danger, is the human element, a central character(s) we can like and feel invested in enough to care about the action and danger in the first place. That test is amply met here. Olivia is a winsome, dynamic protagonist whom we get to know and appreciate, and this is a character-driven tale of her growth and maturation in various ways in the crucible of a testing ordeal.

As I’ve said before in reviewing this author’s work, it’s fiction written by a Christian, rather than the kind of commercially “Christian fiction” the book trade markets as such. Olivia’s a basically kind and ethical-minded person, and cares about right and wrong as she understands them; but by her own statement, here she’s still “not really a believer.” Bad language is a hair more prominent here than in the first trilogy, though it’s actually more prominent in the first few pages here than it is in most of the book. College-age Olivia herself is capable, when she’s angry, of thinking or saying some pretty bad words, including obscenity (in a couple of languages). And though there’s no explicit sex, we know that an unmarried sexual encounter takes place at one point. The author makes us completely understand the psychology behind it; it’s a case of allowing the character to be who she realistically is, and possibly to grow through all of her decisions, both the good and the misguided ones, into the person she’s finally becoming. (That’s what good authors do.)

Finally, a worthwhile question might be, does a reader need to have read the Elioud Lagacy books before reading this one? My answer would be no; having read those books will allow you to better appreciate some adumbrations of the future you can see here, but it’s not essential, and no knowledge of them is presupposed here. You could begin with this book as an appetizer for the corpus as a whole.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Romance; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Marilia, the Warlord, by Morgan Cole

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

This is a fairly classic “rise from nowhere” story, yet is well-executed and done in a world which is interesting for its differences. The heroine is – surprise! – Marilia, whom we first meet on the battlefield, about to face an opponent of superior numbers. We then flash back to her childhood, growing up in a Tyracian brothel. Her mother was one of the “painted ladies,” but after she dies, Marilia and her brother Annuweth are on increasingly thin ice. Their effort to run away is unsuccessful, yet does bring them a chance at a new life. While it’s here that Marilia discovers her tactical savvy through board games, it’s not without its downside, the siblings being split up after Marilia enters an arranged marriage in another territory.

Yet that, too, has its pluses, for her new home of Svartennos is a little more liberated in terms of gender equality. This matters, especially after her husband dies and she inherits his responsibilities, which include war. There’s also a somewhat convenient prophecy about their warrior queen Svartana: “That someday, when the island is in peril… the spirit of Svartana will return in the form of another, to lead out people to victory and save the island.” No prizes for guessing, this is something which Marilia can leverage to her advantage, especially when combined with her genuine tactical wits.

There are a number of other threads woven into the plot, such as her relationship with her brother, and their joint passion for revenge on the warrior, Sethyron Andres, who killed their (absentee) father. That he’s known as “The Graver” gives you some idea of what to expect, and awkwardly, he’s now part of the forces on their side for the war. The resolution of this will bring them both back to Tyrace, and the very house where they grew up. This provides one of the rare bits of meaningful action for Marilia. While she is well-practiced with the sword, she discovers there’s a big gap between that and the hellish realities of the battlefield: it’s something Cole does not soft-pedal, to good effect.

I was quite surprised to realize the book is almost five hundred pages long, as it feels considerably shorter: I’d call this a good sign. It does take some time to get going, with the second half definitely moving at a quicker pace, compared to the first, which is more concerned with Marilia’s upbringing. Turns out, she’s gay – not that the book makes anything out of it, and even the heroine doesn’t quite know what she is (I’m guessing the culture doesn’t acknowledge it). It’s just a “Why do I want to spend my time with that woman?” thing. The first volume offers a nicely self-contained story, without many dangling elements, except the ultimate fate of The Graver. I suspect I may well end up finding out what happens there, in due course.

Author: Morgan Cole
Publisher: Self published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Chrysathamere Trilogy series.

White Haired Devil Lady

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★★★★
“Hair today, gone tomorrow.”

I’ve been on a bit of a kick of Chinese Animal Attack Movies of late. These are basically their version of those SyFy Original Movies, and typically involve some giant creature – snakes or sharks are particularly popular – menacing the population. Some are rather good fun. Others… are not. But I discovered that the same Chinese streaming services also do seem to have a small selection of action heroine flicks. Much the same goes there, in terms of quality: it will be a cold day in YouTube hell before I can get through Beauty Detective Mission. But now and again, there’s a minor gem like this, which helps to make up for all the crap I (and Chris) have endured.

This is not to be confused with any of the other “white hair” films. Most obviously, White Hair Devil Lady from 1980, but potentially also The Bride With White Hair or even The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom. Though from what I’ve seen, some share a common origin: this one was adapted from the novel series Baifa Monü Zhuan by Liang Yu Sheng, and he’s also mentioned in relation to other movies. Anyway, what we have here is an evil court official, Eunuch Wei (Chui), who seeks the Red Pill which will give him immortality. Due to his murderous activities and general disregard for the local population, he incurs the enmity of Lian Ni Shang (Zhang W), who will do anything to stop him.

Making matters more complex, Wei orders a martial arts school, the Wudang Sect, to deliver the Red Pill to him – its leader, Zi Yang (Zhang Q) does not realize this is a ploy to get rid of them. The lead member he sends, Zhuo Yi Hang (Shi), also knew Lian when she was a little girl. Cue romance, betrayal, and eventually, Lian being framed for the murder of Zi Yang. Given this runs 74 minutes, including credits, there’s quite a lot going on. On occasion, it does teeter on the edge of over-stuffed, yet I’ve definitely seen far worse in the wu xia genre, of terms of narrative coherence. Once it settles down, it’s fine, even if some elements seem swiped from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon i.e. the couple falling off a cliff embrace, accompanied by an emotional cello.

However, we are here for the action, and this is pretty damn impressive. It is somewhat quickly edited, yet like the plot, stays just this side of coherence, and the cinematography and design are super, especially considering the budget on this likely was not that high. Elements like Lian’s weaponized hair are rendered beautifully, and the CGI feels like it was used more to enhance the proceedings, rather than creating them wholesale. If the whole thing does feel like a throwback to the kind of flying fantasy films Hong Kong was making in the nineties, it’s does with enough care and attention to detail to pass muster. My attention was undeniably sustained throughout, and that’s more than can be said for many a more expensive work. It’s embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Dir: Tianyu Zhou
Star: Zhang Wei Na, Shi Jun Zhe, Norman Chui, Zhang Qi

The Arrival, by Nicole MacDonald

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Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

I’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t recall exactly at what point in reading this, I first came to that conclusion. It may have been the multi-page description of dress fitting. It could have been the lengthy shopping expedition. But it’s safe to say that, if I hadn’t been running behind on book reviews, this would almost certainly have been a Did Not Finish, and consigned to the recycle bin of oblivion. The main problem, if definitely not the only one, is the mismatch between the description and reality. The Amazon page describes it, rather breathlessly, as “An Epic Fantasy Romance Adventure.” Silly me, I expected this to mean about equal amounts of those elements, especially given the cover. A more accurate description would be, “A Romantic Epic Romance Fantasy ROMANCE Romance Adventure ROMANCE, with added ROMANCING”

It’s basically the story of four young women from New Zealand, who find themselves transported from Wellington to the mystical realm of Gar’nyse, after engaging in an occult ritual. Ok, it’s casting a love spell. There, dragons and all manner of other mystical beasts roam the lands. As well, naturally, as hunky young men: barely have they arrived, before they have encountered their soulmates, in the form of four incredibly handsome members of the Griffon Guard. And that’s where the book basically grinds to a halt, plot advancement being replaced by a slew of gazing deep into each other’s eyes moments. Oh, the quartet of interchangeable Barbie dolls, largely distinguishable only by their skills and hair-styles, are essential to the survival of the kingdom, naturally, due to their possessing “Elemental” abilities. After much training under Elena the Sorceress, they’ll go up against… the Wicked Witch of the West, or her blonde equivalent anyway.

For let’s be honest, she doesn’t show up until the very end, gatecrashing a palace ball (did I mention the dress fitting?) in Maleficent style. I had largely given up paying attention by that point, after slogging through two hundred or so pages of this nonsense. /gestures vaguely. Additionally, I found myself irrationally annoyed by the author’s inability to stick to a single point of view. The “I” in a paragraph was not necessarily the same as the “I” in the next one, and though the changes were usually obvious enough, I sometimes had to pause, then try and work out who was now the first person. It is an unnecessary chore made reading feel more like homework. But the main problem is, there simply isn’t enough going on to drive the narrative forward. I’d potentially have been interested to see how the four heroines survived as “strangers in a strange land”. Instead, as soon as the Griffon Guard show up, everything becomes too damn easy for them, and virtually the only challenges faced the rest of the way are ones of the heart. A very, very hard pass.

Author: Nicole MacDonald
Publisher: Little Leo Reads, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Birthright series.

Sinister: Unhallowed, by Christopher P. Young and John Logsdon

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

This seems to come from a subset of a whole slew of Paranormal Police Department series in which Logsdon is involved with various authors, e.g. NYPPD. I don’t believe you need to have read those, although I did feel a bit dumped in at the deep end here. Evangeline is a resident of a demonic realm and member of House Sinister, a group who are all but wiped out in a surprise attack. Key words: “all but”. The job needs to be finished, but before that can happen, Evangeline flees to the human world – Los Angeles in particular – taking over the body of a rich socialite who conveniently just died in a car crash, so is ripe for possession.

Evangeline shouldn’t be there at all, and consequently ends up press-ganged into the local Black Ops wing of the PPD. This basically makes her an assassin to order, of “certain criminal elements,” alongside her partners, the hellwolf Kayson and Q, a vampire. She’s fine with that, being a hellion herself. However, those who tried to take her out in the netherworld, are keen to complete the job. They send their own operatives to Los Angeles, to locate the fugitive final member of House Sinister, and end her life. She won’t go out easily: especially when her precious me-time is broken into by one such killer: “Never interrupt a woman who is about to eat dessert!”

This is a bit of a mixed bag. The overall setting isn’t bad, with a milieu which includes every kind of fantasy creature you can imagine, from pixies through succubi and were-bears to orcs, co-existing both in the human world and on their own turf (for some loose definition of “co-exist”, anyway). Evangeline is a “hellion,” and I’d have welcomed being told a bit more about what that is: “demons mixed with dragon blood,” is about all the explanation you get, and is not particularly helpful. She is a bit – okay, make that very – sex-obsessed, and this is written in a way that it comes across as if she was still an irritating teenager. Mature subject matter, discussed in an immature fashion, if you will. Not really my favourite approach.

However, it does end up gelling better than I expected. After feeling like a moderate slog in the early going, I ploughed through the last quarter in a single sitting. In it, Evangeline and her partners are trying to assassinate crime boss Macy Bale. while simultaneously being hunted by Moloch, the entity tasked with ending House Sinister. It’s almost non-stop action, with a particularly cinematic tone. Although there is not much in terms of a resolution – more a pause than a finish – I found myself curious where the story would go. More things coming to find Evangeline seems a fairly safe bet…

Author: Christopher P. Young and John Logsdon
Publisher: Crimson Myth Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Black Ops Paranormal Police Department series.

The Swordswoman, by Malcolm Archibald

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

I am, probably, biased here. Scottish action heroines are pretty rare, to the point I am hard pushed to think of a single one I’ve covered previously, in the twenty years I’ve been running this domain. [I just made myself feel very old…] So I was likely disposed to feel kindly towards this literary example. But even setting aside patriotic tendencies, I genuinely enjoyed reading this. It takes place, I’m guessing, around the 9th century, when Scotland was still a loosely connected set of tribes, albeit with a king in what’s now Edinburgh, and a rather fragile peace with the Norse neighbours.

That peace is shattered when someone is washed up on the Western Isles island of Dachaigh where 20-year-old Melcorka lives with her mother. It turns out the Norse are invading, and the king must be notified of the threat. Melcorka and the rest of her clan head towards the capital, only to arrive too late: the army of Alba (as Scotland was then called) has been routed and the nobles scattered. However, Melcorka has a destiny to fulfill… And also inherits a large sword, Defender, with a history dating back centuries, whose powers transform her into the titular character. It’s up to her to rally forces, including the ferocious Picts from the North, to take on the invaders, and send them back across the North Sea to Scandinavia.

It’s not quite historical, not quite fantasy: or, rather, this has elements of both. Events occur in real places: fun fact, up until he retired, my father worked in Burghead, the modern site of Pictish capital Am Broch in the book – I grew up less than 20 miles away. I kept found myself going to Wikipedia to look up particular locations, as Melcorka and her allies moved through the country. But there are some elements which are mystical, such Melcorka venturing into Elfhame, the realm of Faery. At least in this volume, those are limited, and the rest feels grounded. Very grounded in some areas, particularly the battle descriptions, which don’t pull punches: “the slide of intestines as blades ripped open bellies and the pink-grey splurge of brains as swords split skulls.”

It’s certainly not all gore though, and Melcorka realizes there’s a gulf between battle as described in the sagas and heroic songs, and the real thing. It’s part of her development as a heroine, which may be this book’s strongest suit. She starts as an innocent, almost naive young woman, takes her lumps and comes out the other side, wiser if not necessarily happier for it. Credit is also due to Archibald for telling a complete, satisfying story without the need for a gratuitous cliff-hanger. That helps leave me much more likely to invest further in the series, as time permits. He has done the country proud, and I look forward to discovering where Melcorka’s destiny will take her.

Author: Malcolm Archibald
Publisher: Next Chapter, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in The Swordswoman series.

The Draka and the Giant, by Liane Zane

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

Liane Zane brings her Elioud Legacy trilogy to a rousing and powerful conclusion in this novel, which was actually my favorite of the three. (Full disclosure at the outset: Liane, who’s a Goodreads friend of mine, generously gifted me with a paperback ARC, because she knew I’d really liked the two earlier books. No promise of a good review was offered or requested; this book amply earned that on its merits.)

This is definitely a series that needs to be read in order. Our story here opens in medias res, and readers who begin here won’t have much knowledge of the premise or the situation –nor, especially, of the characters and their relationships. You really need the context of the first two books to fully appreciate this one. (With that context, though, it becomes a wonderful capstone to the arch the author has crafted!) However, for the benefit of readers who haven’t read either of those books nor my or others’ reviews of them, and who may not have seen the book description either, the titular “Elioud” are human-angel hybrids (matings between the two races having begun before the Flood, and some unions –or rapes of humans by fallen angels– supposedly continuing to occur). Depending on their degree of angelic inheritance, Elioud may have special abilities that most humans do not, and may be quite long-lived (as in, centuries) as well. Those who are aware of what they are may choose, like other humans, to knowingly serve God or Satan (or, also like many humans, to imagine that they can just ignore that whole conflict and be neutrals). But for those on one side or the other, the term “spiritual warfare” may be a lot more literal than it is for most believers.

Near the beginning of the series opener, the three heroines of the trilogy, a close-knit trio of cross-national friends in their early 20s, all of them both working for their respective countries’ intelligence services and involved on the side in a sub rosa vigilante operation of their own against sex traffickers and predators, met three long-lived Elioud warriors, who revealed to the ladies that they also have angel ancestry. Together, the six of them were involved in fighting the nefarious plots, continued across the first two books, of the fallen angel Asmodeus, who’s now set himself up as a cult leader for a sect of brain-washed humans who call themselves bogomili, after a medieval heretical sect (but who are a lot more malevolent and murderous than their earlier, peaceful namesakes). The other aspect of the series plot is that each member of these two trios felt a strong attraction to a member of the other one. It wasn’t hard to predict that each of the three novels would focus on one of these pairs, and that the course of their romance would be an important plot strand. So here, Beta Cerna and Andras Nagy take center stage.

For me, in the previous books, these two characters had always seemed the least interesting and appealing, largely because I didn’t really know them. Indeed, Beta (short for Alzbeta –she’s Czech) is hard to get to know. She’s a “lone wolf” with very few friends, and a brusque manner that can come across as practically feral. And because Andras is big, strong and taciturn, and mostly inclined to obey orders, it’s easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously dismissing him as not very smart or sensitive (though that’s a great mistake!). But here they come into their own; we see them as the complex and special people they truly are. The previous book ended with Beta arousing a sleeping, half groggy Andras for an unexpected sexual encounter in his bed –and then vanishing before morning. When this book opens, none of the other five main characters have seen her for three years (so it’s now 2018). But we soon learn that there’s been more of a reason for her disappearance than her commitment issues. Much is going on, and Asmodeus (and his fellow demon Yeqon. whom we met in the second book) are exponentially ratcheting up their plans, which won’t bode well for humanity if they come to fruition. But the Archangel Michael (directed, of course, by God, though here He operates offstage) has plans too….

Many of the strengths of the preceding books are evident here also. Zane realizes the settings well (events take place in several European countries), and flavors the narrative with glimpses of the various customs, languages, folklore and cuisine of the nationalities represented. Her characters are round, vivid, dynamic, and distinct (every one of the six main characters have their own unique personalities, rather than being clones of the others, but the supporting characters are also clearly drawn). There’s a strong good vs. evil conflict (with a recognition that we wage this conflict in our own hearts, not just with other people), with high stakes and a lot of dramatic tension. Though this isn’t commercial “Christian fiction,” it’s fiction written by a Christian (the author is a practicing Roman Catholic) and the basic message is Christian. (As in much supernatural fiction, the angels vs. demons conflict is a metaphor for the spiritual conflicts of the real world.) My one quibble here is that our heroes and heroines don’t pray much in crisis situations (and they’re up to their eyeballs in the latter, which would do wonders for my prayer life!). But that’s a fairly minor point. It was also actually easier for me to achieve “suspension of disbelief” here than in the first two books, despite the continuing murky points of angelology/demonology, and the ramping up of Elioud powers here (the mating of two Elioud warriors enhances their abilities). Perhaps that’s because by now I’ve gotten more used to my Elioud friends and their fictional world. :-)

Bad language here is minimal. There are some references to lewd and disgusting sexual behavior (Asmodeus and Yeqon hang out in Amsterdam’s red-light district, and their sexual attitudes are what you’d expect from demons), and one instance of premarital, though not casual, sex; but Zane doesn’t emphasize the former any more than she has to, and the latter is explicit only up to a point. (Basically, the romantic content is quite wholesome, and a wedding –I’m not saying whose!– is one of the more moving scenes in the book.) This is definitely the most violent book of the series, though, with two major pitched battles and a body count through the roof, not all of the casualties being bad guys. However, fans of action thrillers won’t mind this, and fans who like their heroines tough will love Beta. (She’s a deadly accurate shot with both a pistol and a long gun, but her favorite weapons are her chain whip and her karambit, a hooked originally Indonesian knife modified as a switchblade, which she finds it soothing to flick open and closed when she’s nervous, the way some people tap their foot. :-) )

While this is, like the others in the trilogy, a thick, substantial novel, at 525 pages it doesn’t feel a bit overly long; I was immersed and interested immediately, and stayed so for every page. It’s also a highly evocative read emotionally, with some beautiful writing and imagery in places (and some very grim images as well). I’d enthusiastically recommend it to fans of supernatural fiction with Christian themes, of action thrillers or action heroines (or heroes), and of paranormal romance.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.