Tag: fantasy

Valhalla Online by Kevin McLaughlin

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

I could have sworn this isn’t the first entry in the LitRPG genre I’d reviewed, but I’m damned if I can find the previous one. So, just to be safe, I’m going to explain what LitRPG is: apologies if this is unnecessary! Basically, it takes the structure of role-playing games (RPGs) – things like character levels, ability scores, etc – and applies them onto a story structure. Obviously, the overlap between RPGs and books has been a long one: Dungeons & Dragons is heavily influenced by the work of Tolkein. But it has been mostly one-way traffic. The LitRPG genre sends things back the other way, producing novels that adopt the practices of the games.

Quite how this is managed, is up to the author. Here, the heroine is Samantha, a military police officer who wakes to find herself part of Valhalla Online. This is a fantasy-based online RPG, which was intended to act as a virtual repository for the personalities of the deceased, granting them eternal life. Which comes as a shock to Sam, because she never signed up for this very expensive process. However, for good reason, the “virtual dead” are extremely limited in their ability to communicate with the outside world. Only those who complete the entire game are allowed to do so. This means Sam will first have to figure out how to rack up a high score, in order to begin finding out how she got here and what’s going on. Her army training might help. But even West Point didn’t prepare her for dealing with magic spells and storming castles.

It’s a quick and light read, one which contains few surprises at all. We don’t learn much about Sam’s life before Valhalla Online, and I’m not even sure we even discover what she looked like in the real world. All we’re told is that in-game, “Her hair seemed to be about the same color. Her skin tone looked familiar to her.” The cover tells you more than the entire novel. It would probably help to be loosely familiar with at least the concept of RPGs, though McLaughlin does a decent job of explaining the game mechanics, without getting bogged down in it.

The main issue is that death literally has no sting here. If Sam suffers a mortal wound, she just gets sent back to a set location. She may lose some of her equipment, and suffer a bit of psychic shock, but that’s about it, despite the author’s efforts to put over some mental trauma. It’s accurate enough as a computer game goes, but shows that what works there doesn’t necessarily transfer to other media. This lacking of a sense of mortality may partly be why Roger Ebert said in 2010 that computer games can never be art. But that aside, this keeps moving forward at a brisk pace, and for obvious reasons, the reader learns about Valhalla alongside Sam, which makes for a smoothly entertaining experience. It’s more or less standard hack and slash, though towards the end, she subverts things nicely by recruiting a pack of enemy kobolds (think: mini-orcs) to her side. Pretty sure that wasn’t in the tutorial…

The ending is little more than a save point, though it does come after a neat bit of loot sniping. Again, the lack of mortality applies as much to Sam’s enemies as to her; there’s little sense of triumph when the villain will simply re-spawn tomorrow. I finished the first volume having been pleasantly entertained, just not much more. I feel I probably don’t need to buy the remaining entries, because I suspect I can largely figure out how things are going to progress in them. There’s just not enough replay value to be found here.

Author: Kevin McLaughlin
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Valhalla Online series.

Touch of Iron, by Timandra Whitecastle

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

Owen and Noraya Smith are twins, in a world where such siblings are looked upon as cursed. Brought up as charcoal burners, they leave their village so Nora can avoid an arranged and unwanted marriage, and have the forture – whether good- or ill- remains to be decided – quickly to encounter the party of Prince Basham. He is scouring the country in search of a magical artifact called the Living Blade, which will grants its wielder great power. Assisting him is the half-wight Telen Diaz, a pilgrim/fighter. Owen joins the party, hoping to become a pilgrim himself; Nora decides to return home, but that option is removed from her as the village has been taken over by bandits. Fortunately, Diaz has followed her and is able to lend assistance when necessary. Nora eventually becomes his student in the fighting arts, and they all head to the temple/brothel of Shinar where the immortal seer Suranna can provide insight to the blade’s location. But the cost of her information is perilously high, since she has plans for both Nora and Diaz.

I believe this is what’s called “grimdark” fantasy fiction, which is basically as it sounds: in its simplest terms, think Game of Thrones rather than Lord of the Rings. I’ve no problem with the resulting “mature” content. Much of it here does seem necessary to the plot, though the concept of a vast, hidden city in the middle of nowhere that’s a gigantic, all-encompassing pleasure palace does pose certain logistical queries. There was also something slightly creepy about teenage Nora increasingly crushing hard on eighty-seven-year old Diaz – even if half-wights, like half-elves, age very well. I have a couple of other nitpicks. An almost entirely untrained Nora is capable of going all ninja and taking out an entire platoon of brigands. And there’s an assault on the city that comes out of nowhere, and whose purpose and participants both seem ill-defined.

With the negatives out of the way, on the positive side, I really liked Nora. She has a very sharp character arc over the course of the novel, but always seems to have been a bit of a bad-ass, even as a charcoal burner. It’s clear there’s a very significant future in front of her, and I sense she and Suranna will end up facing off down the road. I appreciated the way the heroine largely doesn’t care about the Living Blade; such apathy is pleasantly refreshing, though I suspect that opinion is going to change before long. Whitecastle has a good eye for world-building as well, giving the reader enough of an impression, without getting bogged down in too many details. It appears future volumes may concentrate more on Diaz. As I found him about the least interesting of the major characters, that will stop me shelling out for more. Still, as a one-off this made for an entertaining enough read, though I felt the first half, before they arrived at Shinar, was stronger and more interesting.

Author: Timandra Whitecastle
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Living Blade series.

Crossfire, by Andrea Domanski

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

This is less a book than a hodge-podge of elements cobbled together from other sources. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Wonder Woman are the most obvious influences, but you can also throw in some X Men and Greek mythology. Hell, the bad guy even uses the Force choke, as popularized by Mr. D. Vader. What’s missing is mostly originality. Though that’s not all.

Mirissa Colson has always been unusual, blessed with remarkable physical abilities – her “respiratory and vascular systems are extraordinarily efficient.” Even though her mother left their family over a decade ago, she has been lovingly nurtured by her ex-military father, Steve, and trained in martial arts, shooting, and other skills On her eighteenth birthday, a package arrives from her mother and Mirissa discovers her true legacy and destiny. She’s an Amazon, who are the usual bunch of warrior women from history. However, an ancient victory over worshippers of Ares peeved the god. He got the ruler of the underworld, Hades, to create the Kakodaemons as enemies who’d fight the Amazons. They’re basically vampires, and the two sides have been at war ever since. It’s time for Mirissa to join her ancestors in that fight, under the tutelage of her watcher, Giles – sorry: I mean guardian, Greco.

But, wait! There’s more! Specifically, a demigod named Daedric, who has brought all the creatures of darkness together and is preparing to unleash his final solution against humanity. Meanwhile, the “Omega Group” has been formed to rally all those on the side of light. And unfortunately for Daedric, there’s a prophecy: “The Queen of the Amazons has a daughter that is destined to disrupt your plan. Her powers will be great, and if you don’t stop her, she will stop you.” No prizes for guessing who that is, and it’s why Mom vanished, to stop Mirissa from being discovered. Now, everything is coming into place, and it’s up to Mirissa to master her almost endless list of powers (including but not limited to: telekinesis, sensory expansion, the ability to control the elements and, by the end, teleportation) in order to take on Daedric.

Except, she never really does. She’s supposed to have all these talents, yet spends most of the story wrapped in bubble-wrap, being protected from danger. It’s an awkward contradiction to her being the all-powerful child of prophecy, and to be frank, Daedric comes over as more than a bit crap. He’s capable of being held and rendered harmless by a force-field projected by one of the Omega Group’s minions – the same force-field Marissa can tear through like it was tissue paper. The structure is also needlessly confusing. For example, the first seven chapters take place at three different points in time, beginning by bouncing between Marissa’s 19th birthday and a year previously, and then goes back to 12 years previously, when her mother was still around.

The main problem though, is a complete failure to establish Mirissa as a character. I finished the book less than 24 hours ago, and I’m damned if I can remember a single defining aspect of her personality. She feels less like a person, than a piece that gets moved around the board between various plot points. There’s little or nothing here, in story or persona, to make me want to go any further.

Author: Andrea Domanski
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 6 in the Omega Group series.

Alice, by Joseph Delaney

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

I previously reviewed the ninth volume in the Wardstone Chronicles series, I am Grimalkin, and site contributor Dieter was kind enough to send me a copy of this, the 12th installment. It’s obviously a bit odd to be so selective about reading and reviewing a series, but neither Grimalkin nor Alice are the main character, and by all accounts, the other volumes don’t qualify. I probably should read all the others, to be completely fair in my assessment here… But then I look at my pile of unread books, which even though it’s largely virtual, is threatening to declare independence and become its own country. So, file that under “some day”.

Things have moved on a bit since my last encounter. The Fiend – basically, the Devil – is still separated from his head, and the heroes and heroines are seeking for the necessary artifacts that will allow him to be disposed of permanently. In particular, they have two of the three weapons necessary. However, the third, the Dolorous Blade, is not on Earth. To find it, someone will need to descend into the realm of the dead knows as the Dark, journey across its many territories to the Fiend’s domain, where the relic is hidden under his throne. That someone is powerful witch, Alice Deane. But there are a lot of the deceased in the Dark who are very keen to reacquaint themselves with her, because Alice is responsible for them being there…

Despite my intermittent knowledge of the series, I didn’t find that was a problem at all. The book does a good job of bringing the reader up to speed with recent events, and Grimalkin provided sufficient background on the world and situation, that I didn’t feel lost. A fair bit of the book is also told in flashback, to Alice’s time as an apprentice, somewhat unwillingly, to the witch Bony Lizzie, telling the story of how she broke free and discovered her true potential. These are intercut with her progression through the Dark, which is an evocatively unpleasant place, both in decor and inhabitants. Fortunately, she has help there, in the shape of Grimalkin’s apprentice assassin, Thorne, though her loyalties are uncertain.

While an enjoyable and fast-paced read, one issue I had was the lack of any real escalation. When they finally arrive in the throne-room, what they face hardly feels like the final boss it should be. But my main complaint came at the end, when it appears – pending the 13th and final volume – that the entire exercise proved unnecessary. Alice seems to have risked her life and soul for no real purpose. If I’d been her, I would have been more than a bit miffed at getting what’s not much more than a “Thanks, but we’re going in another direction” for her efforts. On that basis, this is probably a book where you should probably enjoy a gruesome and chilling journey, instead of the rather underwhelming final destination.

Author: Joseph Delaney
Publisher: Greenwillow Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
a.k.a. The Last Apprentice: I Am Alice
12 of 13 in the Wardstone Chronicles series.

Warrior Nun

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★★
“Nun-descript.”

There’s probably a decent movie in here. An interesting premise, occupying the nexus where religion and science cross, and some very effective hand-to-hand action sequences, would potentially have made for a decent 90 minutes of fun. The problem is, this actually runs for 10 x forty-minute episodes, and the result is stuffed so full of padding, that it could be used as a sofa. The nuns of the title are members of the Order of the Cruciform Sword, a group which has been fighting demonic entities for centuries. Chief among them is the bearer of the Halo, a divine relic which bestows its owner with great powers, including rapid healing and the ability to phase through solid objects.

When the current bearer of the Halo is killed in battle, it is embedded into another host. This is the corpse of Ava (Silva), a quadriplegic orphan who just happens to be in the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) place at the wrong (or right, again) time. The Halo resurrects Ava and fixes her up, physically; but she’s certainly not mentally or spiritually prepared initially to become a nun and join the sisters of the OCS. However, her wants and needs are secondary to those of the Catholic Church, and there’s also high-tech company ARQ-Tech. Its CEO, Jillian Salvius. has built a trans-dimensional portal, using “divinium”, a mystical substance that can also be used to create weapons and armour for use by the OCS.

The above isn’t the problem. The issue is all the other stuff which gets added to it. For example, after her resurrection, Ava ends up becoming part of some kind of upper-class squatters’ movement, who jet-set around Europe, staying in unoccupied houses. I have no clue what the purpose of this was supposed to be. And, worse, neither does the show. The young, homeless hipsters basically vanish without trace in the second half, as if the writers realized it was a bad idea to begin with. Similarly, there’s an entire episode in which Ava and OCS colleague Shotgun Mary faff around the Spanish countryside for the duration. Really, after episode 1, you could skip the next five, while we go through the whole “reluctant heroine” thing we’ve seen all too often before.

We could have done with much less of all that, and more… Oh, I dunno: fighting demons, maybe? The action aspects generally seem underplayed, until a final mission where Ava and a small team break into the vaults beneath the Vatican, seeking a relic that… Well, let’s just say, doesn’t turn out to be quite what they expected. But until this gets under way, you might as well have it on in the background, and only pay attention when you hear the sound of fighting [here’s an example of the impressive quality I mean there]. And do not expect anything like a tidy ending either, the show instead delivering the most brutally abrupt of cliffhangers. But it probably says a lot that my reaction to it was mostly apathy.

Creator: Simon Barry
Star:  Alba Baptista, Toya Turner, Thekla Reuten, Lorena Andrea

Curiouser and Curiouser by Melanie Karsak

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

If you thought “Alice in Wonderland was okay, but it really needed more air-ships,” then this book is for you. It’s a steampunk take on Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, set in an alternate universe version of Victorian London. Specifically, 1851, when the renowned Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park. Though it doesn’t actually feel particularly “alternate”;  this angle lives mostly in its trappings, such as people using air-ships to get around, or clockwork cats, rather than in elements necessary to the plot. But that’s okay, because at its core, the story is strong enough to stand on its own.

The heroine is Alice Lewis, an orphan who, along with her sister Bess, was rescued from the workhouse and brought up by the Jabberwocky, one of the leaders of London’s underworld. She fell in love with William, another of the Jabberwocky’s employees, but Alice walked away from both the criminal life and William, after being morally unable to handle the actions it required from her. But several years later, she gets dragged back in, and has to re-unite with William on a job to steal the famous (and cursed) diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, which belongs to Queen Victoria, from the Great Exhibition. It’s the only way William can pay off a debt to the occultist known as the “Queen of Hearts,” who intends to use the Koh-i-Noor in a ritual to make her immortal. And that’s far from the creepiest thing about the Queen, since her role-model is Countess Bathory.

Karsak does particularly well with her world-building, to the extent that this feels like an established universe. The timeline bounces back and forth, between the present and the various incidents which brought Alice to where she is. It’s an approach which could easily be disruptive, but I felt this was admirably pulled off, and balanced nicely. I was, however, a bit disappointed that much of the book seems to be directed towards a final-act heist, to which I was quite looking forward. Only, the plot makes a left-turn in the later stages, which renders the heist superfluous. This sends the book onto somewhat thin ice in terms of believability on a couple of aspects, and an alternate method of resolution might have worked better.

All told though, this is a fun insight into a world that is both familiar and strange, with both heroine and villainess being strongly characterized and memorable. You probably need to be at least somewhat aware of the works of Lewis Carroll – otherwise some of the terms might seem more like unpleasant STDs (“I caught a bad dose of Bandersnatch”). But Alice in Wonderland is deeply enough ingrained into the collective unconscious that this isn’t likely a major issue for most potential readers. I look forward to the Guillermo del Toro adaptation in due course. Well, we can dream, can’t we?

Author: Melanie Karsak
Publisher: Clockpunk Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Steampunk Fairy Tales series.

Paradise Hills

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★★★½
“A small-scale beauty.”

And there I was, thinking Maleficent: Mistress of Evil would be the prettiest picture I saw in all of 2020. There’s a new champion, and whoever assembled the look of this one should have been honoured at the Oscars. Shot in Barcelona and the Canary Islands, it beats Maleficent by almost entirely avoiding CGI, in lieu of stunning locations such as the former residence of sculptor Xavier Corberó: “a mazelike estate constructed from cement that features nine connected structures and 300 arches.” That quote comes from a feature in Architecture Digest, which is not something every film gets, shall we say. And it deserves one, for the entirety of this is a 95-minute coffee-table book. Even when the plot stumbles, you can wallow in a remarkable visual style, achieved for the relative pittance of $10 million.

That plot concerns Uma (Roberts), who has just refused the hand in marriage of the young man chosen by her family. She is sent off to the titular establishment, on a remote island, to be “re-educated” into a more pliable form, under the guidance of The Duchess (Jovovich). Uma meets others going through the same treatment for various reasons, but plots to escape, with the help of the one she truly loves. Only for this to be derailed when the true nature of the “re-education” is revealed, explaining why Paradise Hills has a 100% success rate with its patients, despite a very low-key approach, mostly consisting of yoga. Yet, it turns out to be an method which can perhaps be leveraged against those who seek to control Uma.

As a modern-day fairy-tale, it works quite nicely, driven particularly by the visual style which feels like the dream of a mad interior designer. However, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is, and occasionally descends into the painfully obvious, such as The Duchess clipping thorns off roses. ‘Cos the roses represent the young women, being shorn of their individuality and essence, y’see? Yeah, I rolled my eyes a bit at that. You also wonder why they bother with flashy stuff like cranking Uma up to the roof on a carousel pony, in order to show her holograms of her intended. It seems entirely unnecessary, given the… considerably more physical, shall we say, nature of Paradise Hills’ true solution.

But it’s fun to watch Jovovich in a role which doesn’t require her to kick ass – except, perhaps of the psychological kind. For she still exudes menace, even when being extremely polite, or perhaps due to this. Managing to make “You’re just a prickly little pear” into a dire threat is no small feat. While Roberts is decent enough, the rest of the supporting cast of inmates (González, Macdonald and the ever-clunkily named Awkwafina) seem largely redundant. We’re never given much reason to care about their characters, and I found the film achieved greater impact when it stayed focused on Uma. But given the beauty on display, I’m largely prepared to forgive its other flaws.

Dir: Alice Waddington
Star: Emma Roberts, Milla Jovovich, Eiza González, Danielle Macdonald

Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker

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★★★
“A polit-thriller in Fantasy-land”

I have to start off with an important confession: I am not a gamer. I’ve never really been one. I might have played… two computer games in my entire life: “Tomb Raider 2” and “No-one Lives Forever 2”. That very special thing computer gamers experience when in front of the consoles? I’ve never felt it, it never got me. But then, I was born in the mid-70s, and this could be the territory of another generation. So maybe I’m not even qualified to evaluate a movie which was based on a computer game. On the other hand, I’m not reviewing a game here, but a film – and I think I know a fair bit about them! Hopefully, I get the details right.

Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker is based on the fantasy computer game franchise by Canadian computer game label BioWare. The series started in 2009. In 2012 – to probably the surprise of everyone – it received a movie version. Released in the West and co-produced by American anime label Funimation, it tells a separate story that ties in with the second released game “Dragon Age 2” (2011).

The story takes place in a land called Ferelden, where knights secure the freedom and which is governed by a religious organisation known as “the Chantry”. This is similar to a medieval church with, for want of a better description, a female Pope called “the Divine” at the top. Among the knights are the Seekers; they seem to be the superiors of the knights and hold a special place, reporting directly to the Chantry. There are tensions between the knights and blood magicians who seem to follow (as far as I understand this universe!) their own agenda.

When one of the knights, Byron, leaves the castle with a girl that the Seekers had just rescued from mages, his young colleague Cassandra (Kuriyama) gets in his way, demanding an explanation. Byron is her mentor and a father figure to her, but shortly after he gets killed in an attack. Before dying, he is able to tell Cassandra there is intrigue brewing in the Chantry, and that this was the reason he wanted to secure the girl, who obviously has magical abilities (she looks very much like an elf to me).

Regalyan D’Marcall (Tanihara), a mage whom Cassandra finds on the scene, turns out to be an ally of Byron who wanted to help him expose the intrigue. But having previously lost her brother to mages (there was a decapitation incident), Cassandra is suspicious of him. Still, together, the unlikely duo search out who’s behind all of what’s going on, and in the nick of time, also prevent an assassination attempt (with a dragon!) on the Divine at a jubilee celebration.

First off, the story moves quite quickly and never gets boring, coming in at a viewer-friendly runtime of 90 minutes. Personally, I am really happy to see, once in a while, a fantasy movie that sticks to the length I had been used to in the 80s, before all these Lord of the Rings, Hobbit and Harry Potter movies with their 2½-hour running times. The visual style is something the viewer will have to make up their own mind about. You will either like it or you won’t. It’s not total CGI. It looks as if people were acting, then motion-captured into the computer and their image re-worked. It looks similar to the science fiction movie Vexille that the same director had made earlier. For my personal tastes, I didn’t really embrace this style. Also, I thought for much of the time the movie looked too dark with regard to its colour palette.  But then, fantasy seems to be going through a “dark phase” right now, so maybe it’s unfair to count this as a real negative.

The story was smarter than I thought it would be, having ordered the used DVD to a low price, and knowing virtually nothing about the “Dragon Age” universe. To be honest, I still don’t know much about it – but you don’t need to be Albert Einstein to figure out the basics. Interestingly, I believe the character of Cassandra Pentaghast was a side character in the second computer game but was such a well-received badass, the developers decided to make her the main character in the first movie. (Also in 2011, there was another, live-action movie put together from a series of webisodes with the title Dragon Age: Redemption, about an Elvish assassin Tallis, starring Felicia Day. I haven’t seen it, as it’s too difficult/expensive to get here in Germany.)

Some changes in the game character were made to make Cassandra look a bit more feminine, e. g. she gets longer hair here. They also give her a backstory about why she hates mages so much, explaining why she treats the mage Regalyan with strong suspicion. He has to earn her trust: while that underlying subplot doesn’t make the story Shakespeare, it gives the characters enough emotional layers to come across as more than just one-dimensional. That doesn’t lead to a big love story, as would typically have been the cast. but lightens what could otherwise have been a very bare storyline, and leads to a satisfying end. At least he gets a little kiss on the cheek for helping her. Obviously, she is becoming soft, considering how quickly she has been drawing her sword over the entire movie! 😉

There are some surprises along the way, though I wouldn’t call them earth-shattering. There are steady, regularly appearing action sequences, between escape and investigation scenes and a grand finale showing that, while a female knight may not alone be able to prevent an assassination, she can at least deal with a gigantic dragon. But we all need a little help from our friends, right? There are some gory scenes, so this is not for kids, though nothing really shocked me. Admittedly, 8 seasons of Game of Thrones may have desensitized me in regard to the depiction of bloody fantasy violence. If you need them, they’re in here; if you don’t like gore, there aren’t too many to distract you from an otherwise entertaining enough, and comparatively short, fantasy movie.

The end seems to indicate another story will follow. But if that happened, it was probably in the form of another computer game, as the movie didn’t get a sequel. Overall, I think it’s safe to say that the movie can serve as a quick fantasy fix, if there is nothing else for you out there right now. Entertaining enough without being extraordinary, it has some nice developments and the main character is layered enough so that she doesn’t bore you. I give it 3 stars for acceptable, though hardly ground-breaking, solid fantasy entertainment. A fan of the franchise may value it higher or lower; as I’m not in the know about an extended universe that also features several books and comics, I will not presume to decide that for them!

Dir: Fumihiko Sori
Star (voice): Chiaki Kuriyama, Shōsuke Tanihara, Hiroshi Iwasaki, Kaya Matsutani 

The Harlequin and the Drangue, by Liane Zane

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

Goodreads author Liane Zane is a published novelist under her real name, but has adopted this pen name for her new venture into paranormal romance, beginning with this opener for a projected series. She and I are Goodreads friends, so I accepted her offer of a free review copy, with no guarantee of a favorable one. PNR as such isn’t typically my thing (nor is “romance” in general, in the book trade sense); but both supernatural fiction and action adventure are, and I could easily approach this book in those terms. I’m also a sucker for a well-drawn action heroine who kicks butt and takes names –and here we have not just one but three such ladies.

Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, referring to the time before Noah’s flood, states, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days –and also afterward– when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” (6:4). Biblical scholars are not agreed on exactly what the writer meant by this; but one ancient interpretation, articulated for instance in the inter-testamental Book of Enoch {which is not actually by Enoch], held that it refers to matings of rebellious angels and humans, with resulting offspring. Personally, I’m skeptical of that interpretation, but I can accept it as a fictional conceit in a novel; and it’s used as such in a number of modern novels, usually (as here) with the idea that these mixed bloodlines survived to the present day. Zane terms the descendants of these pairings the “Elioud;” her premise is that they may or may not know of their heritage and may have different amounts of angelic genes, but they inherit certain physical/mental powers, to the degree of angelic ancestry they have. Like angels and other humans, they also have free will; those who know their ancestry may ally themselves with God’s cause –or with the Adversary.

This information is the backdrop context for this novel; it’s disclosed more gradually in the book, but IMO it’s not a spoiler, and is actually helpful for the reader to know from the get-go. That understood, our setting is present-day central and eastern Europe, initially Vienna. Protagonist Olivia Markham is a young (I think her age is said to be 24) but very capable CIA agent stationed there, under the cover of graduate study and internship in international business development. But unknown to the Company, she has a side hobby: by night, she sometimes dons a Harlequin mask to take on sexual predators/rapists who use the Internet to line up victims; and she has a couple of female friends (also with backgrounds in covert intelligence) who help her.

Her latest target is a slime-ball who calls himself Asmodeus, the name of a demon in the Book of Tobit from the Apocrypha. What she doesn’t know, however, is that Asmodeus just might be his real name, and that he’s heading up a murderous cult who call themselves bogomili after a medieval Gnostic sect. (The Bogomils were an actual sect which originated in the Balkans, and which I’d read of before in various places, but the medieval Bogomils weren’t into murdering people to “liberate” their souls.) She also doesn’t know that he has another adversary watching him, a wealthy Albanian named Mihail Kastrioti, who has some friends of his own, friends who call him a drangue, which is usually translated as “dragon” in English. A drangue is a being known in actual Albanian folklore, but the concept is really pre-Christian and Zane has reinterpreted it somewhat. The plot takes off from there; and it’ll be quite a ride!

At 517 pages, this is a thick, substantial novel, but it doesn’t feel padded in the least; it flows quickly, with steady development of events, no dull moments, and a lot of action. In between, our heroines and heroes may stop to regroup and compare notes, and Zane may use the interludes to develop characters and impart information; but they’re interesting characters and information which are well worth developing and imparting, and which enhance the story. Characterization here is very adept and three-dimensional, and definitely a strong point. It’s obvious that the author also has done a lot of background research into history, Balkan culture and language (foreign-language phrases are translated for the reader where they need to be) etc.; it shows, but in a good way that masterfully evokes the setting as a seamless part of the narrative, not in the form of info-dumps or displays of erudition. She clearly has a particularly good grasp of the physical geography of Vienna and other cities where events take place. Action scenes are handled realistically and well. There’s a high body count, but no wallowing in gore for its own sake. As a whole, the story is a page-turner with a high tension and suspense factor, especially near the end.

While this is not “Christian fiction” in the commercial sense – it has a small amount of occasional profanity and obscenity, within the bounds of reasonable realism for the characters speaking – it is fiction written by a Christian. We get a picture of angels and demons, and their interaction, here which is morally and theologically consistent with what we’re told in the Bible, not a drastic reinterpretation of it in the manner of some modern writers. We’re solidly in the realm of a serious, high-stakes conflict between clearly defined good and evil, which grounds the novel and gives it substance. There’s no illicit or explicit sexual activity as such, though readers should be warned that there is one scene that could be described as “steamy”. There’s a clear closure to the immediate story arc with no cliffhanger, while the stage is clearly set for the projected sequel, which I want to read!

IMO, Olivia’s vigilante activities are unrealistic for a CIA operative. They’d be far too risky in terms of possible exposure and unwanted publicity: the Harlequin mask would hide her face, but still draw attention, and the consequences of her bosses’ wrath if they found out about it too drastic to risk. It’s also likely that the CIA’s recruiting process would have included psychological profiling which would have red-flagged vigilante tendencies; and there’s also the problem of what to do with offenders if she did catch them –just beat them up? Lethal force isn’t her default option –though she’s not squeamish about using it when she needs to– and she can’t make a citizen’s arrest and turn them in at the police station. The entire plot here unfolds in less than a fortnight, so there’s an insta-love situation with the attendant credibility challenge. If the angels mating with humans before the Flood were said to be disobedient, it renders it dubious to have similar unions going on in post-medieval times, between humans and angels in good standing. And one key aspect of the way a demon-acolyte bond magically works was a bit murky, at least to me. That kept my literary rating from a full five stars this time; but this is nonetheless a very good novel, and highly recommended!

The four-star kick-butt quotient here, for action-heroine action, draws on the activities of all three of our female spies/vigilantes. Olivia contributes her share to the body count I mentioned; but her two friends and sidekicks ably shoulder some serious action as well. My guess is that each of them are very likely to serve as protagonists in their own books in the series, which will make it at least a trilogy!

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

The Old Guard

  By

★★★
“Who wants to live forever?”

While a serviceable entry in the beloved genre of “Charlize Theron kicks ass”, this does have to be classed as disappointing in comparison to the epic awesomeness which were Atomic Blonde or Mad Max: Fury Road. This is considerably more obviously a comic-book adaptation than Blonde, and more restrained than Fury Road, resulting in a film which plays more like X-Men: The Highlander Years. Andromache of Scythia (Theron), for obvious reasons known to her mates as Andy, is a neo-immortal bad-ass who has been roaming the Earth since pre-Christian times. But she’s beginning to wonder what the point of it all is, endlessly doing jobs somewhere between mercenary and humanitarian.

Two things disrupt the playing field. The first is the “birth” of a new neo-immortal, Nile Freeman (Layne), a US marine who survives having her throat slit, and is brought on board the team, despite her severe initial doubts. The other is less pleasant: the Merrick pharmaceutical company is out to find what makes them tick, and will happily trample Andy and her friends’ rights, in the name of “the greater good.” This involves them kidnapping two members of the group for scientific experimentation, and they are intent on completing the set. Needless to say, Andy isn’t having any of that, along with some help from Nile, as well as a Merrick employee and former CIA agent who is now having second thoughts (an underused Chiwetel Ejiofor). However, it turns out Andy is approaching the “neo-” phase of her neo-immortality…

That is a bit of a cheat: they’re basically immortal, except when necessary for the plot or dramatic reasons. It’s a double-standard which also seems to permeate the film more generally, The film wants to deliver the mayhem audiences want to see, while having characters who loudly express being tired of exactly that, borne down by world-weary ennui. It’s a mindless action movie which doesn’t like being a mindless action movie, and I suspect would rather be something else. That may be the only way to explain the contrived shoehorning in of two characters’ sexuality, in a scene of no relevance that couldn’t be more clunkily woke if it tried.

It is better when letting go of the angst, and instead embracing its inner John Wick. Theron proves why she is still the top action heroine working in Hollywood, getting valuable support from Layne. There’s a lovely hand-to-hand battle between the two of them on a transport plane, for example, and Andy busting out of the church which is under attack by Merrick thugs is also a pleasure to watch. As seems almost required, there’s a scene at the end, setting up The Old Guard 2 with the apparent promise of an insane neo-immortal for the big bad there. It’s perhaps telling that it’s a prospect which may be more exciting than the humdrum stock genre plot rolled out here. Not even the best Netflix original action movie of the year (that’d be Extraction), yet entertaining enough, if your copy of Fury Road isn’t to hand.

Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Star: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari