Tag: h

Hockey Night

  By

★★★
“Cool as ice.”

At one point, the teenage heroine in this sports flick is asked, “What do you want to play hockey for?” In a modern film, I suspect you might get a long speech about female empowerment, proving that girls can do anything boys can, and so on. But here, her response is three words: “I like it.” It’s a plain and simple response which illustrates the approach taken by this plain and simple TV movie. That plain simplicity is both its biggest strength and its greatest weakness, for there are certainly no boundaries being broken or preconceptions challenged here. It’s exactly what you would expect from the genre and the story.

The Yarrow family have moved from the big city to the small, rural Canadian town of Parry Sound, described by local girl Evelyn as “the armpit of North America.” When daughter Cathy (Follows) asks Evelyn, “What do you do for fun?”, the reply is, “They haven’t invented it yet.” But they do have hockey…  And Cathy had been the goal-tender for the local girls’ team back in Toronto. Since there’s no equivalent in the small town, she tries out for, and wins, a spot on the local boys’ team, under coach Willy Leipert (Moranis). But this co-ed approach meets with opposition, in particular from the team’s sponsor, who threatens to pull his support if Cathy is allowed to play.

Yeah, from the above you can probably pencil out, with about 95 percent accuracy, how things will unfold, leading up to the finale of the big game between Parry Sound and local rivals, North Bay. Will Cathy fall for the team’s star player, Spear Kozak (Bisson)? Will there be moderate, but non-threatening, family strife as her mother fails to understand? Will curmudgeonly and chauvinist commentator, Bum Johnston (Chaykin) be won over to support her? Will there be montages along the way? I offer no prizes for anyone correctly guessing the answers to all of the above questions.

Yet there’s a simple and honest warmth here that works. Parry Sound is the birthplace of Bobby Orr, who is to hockey what Pele is to football, and the affection for the game is clear. There isn’t much conflict, to be sure – nobody ever tells Cathy directly that she poses a problem. Yet this feels in keeping with the polite and non-confrontational nature of the society depicted here (it would be a sweeping generalization to claim it of Canada as a whole. And yet, not necessarily inaccurate). Sure, her team-mates are sometimes jerks: they are, however, teenage boys, so it goes with the territory, especially with regard to teenage girls.

The two young leads are both very likeable, and it’s easy to see why they went on to greater things. Follows, in particular delivers a quiet, understated performance which is likely far more effective than a brazenly defiant one. Moranis and Chaykin provide good support, and deliver the kind of colourful  characters found in any small town. The plot may be hackneyed and obvious, yet as forty-year-old TV movies go, this is likely better than you would expect.

Dir: Paul Shapiro
Star: Megan Follows, Yannick Bisson, Rick Moranis, Maury Chaykin

Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance

  By

★★★
“To she, or not to she…”

Asta Nielsen was not the first woman to play the part of Hamlet, even on film. As we’ve mentioned before, a short reel of Sarah Bernhardt performing the role was made as early as 1900. But this silent Danish movie, celebrating its centenary at the time of posting, is the first full-length feature to gender switch the role. It was inspired by Edward P. Vining’s book The Mystery of Hamlet, published in 1881, which suggested that the character made a lot more sense if you considered Hamlet to be a woman. An interesting idea, to be sure, and obviously changes significantly the relationship between Hamlet and both best friend Horatio, and Ophelia.

Of necessity, there are therefore some changes to the story. It begins with a prelude in which Hamlet’s father is away at war when his wife Gertrude gives birth. Fearing for her husband’s life, and wanting to secure the throne’s succession, she announces the girl child as a boy [a similar plotline was used in the Indian fllm, Rudhramadevi]. On her husband’s return, they vow to keep up the pretense. We also see more of Hamlet’s youth, attending the University of Wittenberg and forming her relationship with Horatio (Stieda), before being called back to Denmark. That happens when the king is murdered by her uncle, Claudius (von Winterstein), who has quickly married her mother, Queen Gertrude (Brandt). The supernatural element of the ghost of Hamlet’s father is also removed, in favour of Hamlet discovering Claudius’s knife in suspicious circumstances.

Thereafter, however, it follows familiar lines, with Hamlet faking madness in order to be able to investigate freely, and not be considered a threat. It’s probably this version’s weakest section, since it doesn’t seem she does much actual investigating, and watching someone pretend to be insane is kinda dull, especially in a silent version, with the inevitable tendency towards the over- side of acting. There’s also an absence of the Bard’s classic dialogue, for obvious reasons: no “To be, or not to be” in this version. When Hamlet stages a play re-enacting the death of her father, things perk up and head towards the rousing if tragic finale [spoiler: just about everyone dies].

This is not quite the oldest film reviewed here, Joan the Woman preceding its 1921 release by five years. Hamlet isn’t as successful, replacing the rousing battle scenes of Joan with some fairly stagey sequences of emoting by Nielsen, which at times did struggle to hold my interest. That said, Nielsen is actually very good in the role, and some scenes have power, such as her intense slithering across the floor to watch Claudius’s reaction to the play. I’ve queued up some of her other performances for later perusal. There’s something endearingly Goth about the production here, with her Hamlet being all dressed in black, with floppy hair and eye make-up. At times it almost looks like a promo video for The Cure. But other elements, such as Ophelia’s funeral, are highly Expressionist, with the film using bold tints to indicate location.

If what has been written above has piqued your interest, the whole thing is available on YouTube. While probably not something I’ll re-visit, I can’t say I felt like my two hours were wasted. It’s certainly an interesting take on a character which continues to fascinate and provoke debate, over 400 years after the play was first published.

Dir: Svend Gade and Heinz Schall.
Star: Asta Nielsen, Eduard von Winterstein, Mathilde Brandt, Heinz Stieda

High Kick Angels

  By

★★★★
“Die Hard in a school.”

This was a rather pleasant surprise. I was expecting a pretty naff entity, more interested in titillation than anything else. I actually got a thoroughly entertaining 90 minutes, with considerably better martial arts than I predicted. Sure, the story – as the tag-line above suggests – is hardly original, and the performances are… well, let’s say variable, and leave it at that. Yet this overcomes its limitations with heart and energy. It takes place in a recently abandoned school where a film club have gained permission to make a movie starring Sakura (Miyahara) and Maki (Aono). Shooting of their zombie epic is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a gang of miscreants, led by J-Rose (Morishita). They’re looking for five USB drives hidden in the school, that combine to give access to money embezzled by a previous school head. They lock down the establishment, and won’t let five schoolgirls get in the way.

First off, it helps that at least three of them are genuine martial artists, with a solid background in karate. They’re not pin-up models given a bit of training, and the benefits are obvious. The director has a good handle on making the most of their talents, too. For example, Aono is tall and leggy, so her style involves copious amounts of kicks – including some which appear to border on the physically impossible. Miyahara may be the most well-rounded in terms of all skills including weapons, however. It’s just a shame the bad guys only have one person capable of going up against them in single combat. I was hoping J-Rose would prove a worthy opponent, yet that never happens. Her daughter, a vaguely Gogo Yubari knock-off, is set up as a bad ass; the skills just aren’t there. Instead, let’s praise the slew of faceless minions, who likely endure multiple beatings from the heroines, in a variety of hoodies, caps and masks to disguise their repeat appearances.

Speaking of the villains… what is up with their eyes? Of the three top baddies, two have bizarre make-up on just one eye, while J-Rose is sprouting the most extreme eyelash extensions I’ve ever seen. They’re bright blue. Yet despite my concerns – not least the Amazon Prime poster above – this is refreshingly non-exploitative. Yes, there are certainly panty flashes, yet these feel almost inevitable given the heroines’ costumes and their actions, and certainly don’t appear to be contrived in the service of fan service, as it were.  It’s a shame the film-within-the-film is all but forgotten by the end, save for Sakura’s efforts to channel her inner movie star. I was hoping this might end up being a karate version of the glorious One Cut of the Dead, blending reality and cinematic fantasy. Sadly, that’s not the case. Yet there’s still plenty here to appreciate and enjoy. The makers have made the most what they have, to the point where I was so busy being entertained, I even stopped noticing the limited resources to hand. Can’t ask for more than that.

Dir: Kazuhiro Yokoyama
Star: Kanon Miyahara, Kaede Aono, Chisato Morishita, Mayu Kawamoto

Hellfire

  By

★
“Hell would, on the whole, be preferable.”

Ir’s not often that I feel my life has become a tiny bit worse for having seen a film, but Hellfire may just about qualify. It’s such a mean-spirited and unpleasant experience, weighed down further by technical ineptitude and actresses who can’t act. Any potential in the somewhat interesting idea – which makes for a good synopsis, at least – is entirely wasted. Someone is killing young women, apparently in an attempt to protect Father McKenzie, a priest under investigation for alleged sexual abuses of pupils at a Catholic school. Chucky (Mercedes) rounds up two of the girls from her class, tattooist Athena (Peach) and stripper Lilly (Divine). After surviving some attacks from a man in glasses (Hoffman), and a betrayal from a former teacher, they decide to go on the offense and track down the pedopriest.

The first fifteen minutes kinda live up to that, albeit in an obviously cheap way – and Lilly is the worst stripper ever, failing to remove even a single item of clothing. I think the point at which this jumped the shark was the extended scene of the trio smoking weed and dropping acid. Watching other people take drugs is among the worst cinematic sins. Would anyone pay to watch me sink a six-pack of beer? Exactly. It is, admittedly, a drug trip necessary to the plot, since it allows the women to recall their abuse at the hands (literally) of McKenzie. But, especially in a film which runs barely 70 minutes including credits, it’s a waste of time. Things only go downhill from there, with the movie basically killing time as they develop their Catholic schoolgirl vigilante personas. Which isn’t anything like as interesting as it should be, attention being diverted by faux pas like the claim the previous victim’s deaths were made to look like natural causes. Oh, so the woman we see in the opening scene, getting hung from a rope in her shower, tripped on the soap or something?

Then there’s the final attack on their former school, where they face the man in glasses, in what may be the worst fight scene in cinematic history, despite the director’s efforts to jazz things up by throwing bad digital FX and screechy sound on top of it. The three then take their revenge on Father McKenzie, and I guess I have to thank the film for introducing me to a genuinely new experience: feeling sorry for a pedophile. Because the former victims’ behaviour is so vile, and carried out with such an abundance of glee, as to make me lose all sympathy for them. It doesn’t help that, of the lead actresses, only Peach knows how to deliver a line with anything inhabiting the same continental landmass as authenticity. The brief running time turns out to be a merciful release, as I don’t think I could have stood a full 90 minutes of this. Let us never speak of it again.

Dir: Moses
Star: Mercedes the Muse, Knotty Peach, Irie Divine, Shawn Hoffman

Hollow in the Land

  By

★★★
“Hollow, I must be going…”

This feels like a Canadian version of Winter’s Bone; not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with this, it just results in a slight sense of deja vu. The Miller siblings are already pariahs in their small town. Their mother walked out on them, and father went to jail for a car accident which killed the son of the local sheriff. Brandon has become a teenage delinquent, whom his sister Alison (Agron) is trying to keep from going off the rails entirely. And she’s a lesbian, so isn’t exactly popular either. After the father of Brandon’s girlfriend turns up dead, he vanishes, becoming suspect #1. Alison can’t believe he’s that bad, so goes looking for him. In the process, helped by a sympathetic deputy (Ashmore), she begins to uncover a lot of unpleasant secrets – things the town would much prefer stayed buried.

For the majority of this, it likely fell short of qualifying for the site. Alison has an undeniable persistence, certainly, and her unwavering loyalty to her brother is also laudable. However, the closer she gets to the truth, the greater the importance of physical action becomes. The likely turning point comes when she is out in the woods, and comes across the body of someone who has been shot. The shooter is still nearby, and has Alison in his sights. Thereafter, following an amusing encounter with a pair of female marijuana growers, it becomes clear that talk is no longer getting it done, and it’s time for her to take action. Anyone who says, “Violence isn’t a solution” won’t be happy with the results. But that’s why the film is getting reviewed here!

It’s a very good performance from Agron, who takes a spiky character and makes her easy to like and root for. Alison is someone to whom life has not dealt an easy hand, yet she still persists in trying to do the right thing, in particular towards Brandon. It would certainly be easier, and perhaps even justifiable, for her just to throw up her hands and walk away, leaving him to the consequences of his actions. That unrelenting sense of family is the reason I applied the “mother” tag to this one, even though she’s his sister.

My main issues are likely to do with the plot, which seems to have a number of weaknesses. The biggest one is the identity of the actual murderer. Their motivation fell some way short of feeling compelling, and as a result, their actions seemed more contrived, than flowing naturally out of their situation. There’s also a certain repetitive approach, especially in the front two-thirds, up until the woods incident mentioned above. Seeing Alison approach other residents, and get told to go away, in less polite terms, does get a bit old. And, for Canada, there seem to be a lot of guns around… However, Agron’s performance is enough to hold together this slice of small-town noir, and makes it worth sticking around for the (likely inevitable) bloody finale.

Dir: Scooter Corkle
Star: Dianna Agron, Shawn Ashmore, Rachelle Lefevre, Michael Rogers

The Huntress: Rune of the Dead

  By

★★
“Can’t see the wood for the trees. SO. Many. Trees…”

In 9th-century Scandinavia, teenage girl Runa (Stefansdotter) lives deep in the woods, with her mother, Magnhild (Idah), blind grandfather Ragnvald (Beck) and younger sister Bothild (Lyngbrant). Father Joar is notable by his absence, having gone off on a Viking raid to seek fortune for the family, and is now well overdue. However, he did at least train Runa to be a markswoman with the bow. Problems start when she finds a wounded warrior, Torulf, lying in the forest, and brings him back to their cabin, much against Magnhild’s wishes.

Torulf turns out to be a colleague of Joar’s, who tells a tale of the raiders looting a burial site – only to find vengeance coming out of the grave after them. He and Joar are the only two survivors. And when Joar returns shortly afterward, his arrival puts the whole group in peril, because of what’s inexorably following him. It’s only really at this point – two-thirds of the way in – that the film remotely begins to entertain. Up until this point, there has been a lot of sitting around the woods, and the director appears never to have heard of the maxim “Show, don’t tell.” Witness Torulf’s lengthy and frankly, boring, description of the situation, which would fit better into a Nordic saga recital than any cinematic retelling.

If the makers had gone for a siege type of film from the beginning, with the family barricaded in their cabin, and trying to fend off an unstoppable horde of barrow wights, this might have worked. It’s what I was expecting going in, and what I was waiting to see. And waiting. And waiting, while slow-moving coming of age family drama unfolded instead. I actually liked Stefansdotter in the lead role. Indeed, most of the performances are solid enough, and the same goes for the technical aspects. There was clearly some effort put in – the score, for example, is nicely done – and the forest provides a lushly appropriate backdrop against which any number of entertaining things might have unfolded. In a different, more interesting movie, anyway.

We finally do get the hand-to-hand (and hand-to-bow) battles for which we have been waiting. But only after a point by which the end credits would already be rolling on better-paced features. Even there, it is a bit on the dark side – though after my issues with Immortal Wars, the bar of what qualifies as “a bit on the dark side” has been raised considerably. This is nowhere near as bad, and you still can tell what’s going on, with a bit of peering. There’s a rough energy here which works, although the main impact is to make you wonder where the hell it has been for the rest of the movie. The makers should have sat down to watch the not-dissimilar Flukt, and built on what worked there, such as its steady flow of tension, instead of offering us 90 minutes of meandering around the woods.

Dir: Rasmus Tirzitis
Star: Moa Enqvist Stefansdotter, Yohanna Idha, Viva Östervall Lyngbrant, Ralf Beck

Hellcat’s Revenge II: Deadman’s Hand

  By

★★★
“Hello Catty!”

We reviewed Hellcat’s Revenge last year, and I’m pleased to report this is a small but palpable improvement from Kabasinski. Most of the players from its predecessor return, notably biker queen Cat (Neeld), who quickly finds herself framed and locked up in prison. There’s a target on Cat’s back, courtesy of rival gang leader, Rosie (Hamblin), who has formed an unholy alliance with the warden, and slips easily in and out of jail to manage her business, through a basement tunnel. She has driven both Cat’s gang, the Hellcats, and that of her lover, Snake (Kabasinski) off the streets, with the latter supposedly killed. That’s not the case – cue “I thought you were dead” comments to Snake, which I feel have to be an Escape From New York homage – and we soon learn, down is not out. For the tunnel out of jail goes both ways, and can also be Cat’s escape route, allowing her and Snake to take on Rosie and her crew.

It’s nice this largely addressed the issues I had with the first one. For instance, the lack of motorcycles isn’t a problem here, since this time round, it’s more a women-in-prison film – not many bikes in the slammer. And when pursuing the WiP path, it’s a good slice of fun, even if not much more than the usual tropes from the genre e.g. evil warden, sadistic guards, laundry-room brawls, etc. I particularly liked the turn of Dutch (who was in part one, playing a different character) as long-term inmate Vegas. Also: approaching seventy, if the IMDb is to be believed, and still doing a shower scene? Mad props. Hamblin, too, simply looks like a scary prison inmate, all piercings and face tattoos. In a film like this, that’s half the battle, and there’s no shortage of the requisite attitude and jailbird posturing to be found across the female characters.

The film is less impressive on the outside, not least because in the middle, Cat ends up becoming a supporting character in her own film, with Snake taking over. This isn’t as much fun, coming off as more like a low-rent episode of a Sons of Anarchy wannabe [and I speak as a fan of that show], with Snake carving a lone furrow there. I couldn’t help wishing they’d just stuck within the closed confines of those prison walls, where things appeared to be moving along quite nicely, thank you for asking. Things do perk up again once Cat is busted out of jail, and we get the expected face-off between Cat, Snake and their allies against Rosie and her minions. As in the first film, the limited resources do limit the scope of the action, though there’s a “bullet through the head” effect which was a good effort. It’s all slightly more polished this time, and that progression is what you want to see from any low-budget film-maker. Here’s to the next film being Cat III… :)

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Lisa Neeld, Donna Hamblin, Deborah Dutch, Len Kabasinski

Hooker With a Hacksaw

  By

★★
“Great title. Film? Not so much.”

There are times when I feel I need a ★¾ rating. Two stars here would suggest a degree of genuine competence, which this undeniably lacks. But on the other hand, ★½ suggests something which is largely unmemorable, and that isn’t the case either. You won’t forget this. In particular, you won’t forget the scene where the heroine yanks some (suspiciously sausagey) intestines out of a victim, rubs them over her face and then – there’s no other way to describe this – masturbates the intestines. That’s three words I never thought I would write in a row. On that basis (and that basis alone), I’ll err on the side of generous.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. S’funny, you wait ages for a movie about a phone-sex operator turned vigilante, and then two show up in a week. For after Barracuda, we get this  – despite the title, that’s the true day-job of Kirsten (Meltedhair, and I’m gonna go out on a limb here, presuming that’s a pseudonym). The problems do start when she agrees to meet one of her customers, which eventually brings her into contact with Raymond (Crowe) and his gang of ludicrously incompetent snuff-movie producers. After escaping from them, she tools up with the titular bit of hardware and vows to take revenge – especially after they kidnap her BFF, Ali (Herkert). As well as on any other abusers of women across whom she stumbles.

Farmer has been making cheap video flicks for over thirty years now, but on the evidence of this, he doesn’t seem to have learned much. Vast swathes of it are empty and meaningless padding, e.g. Kirsten goes to a “drive-in”. This sequence apparently exists purely so Farmer can insert footage of scream queen Linnea Quigley, going by her age, taken from a long-ago Donald Farmer movie. And it’s pretty clear Kirsten was just parked by the side of the road, not in an actual drive-in. So why bother, even if it does provide the only actual nudity here. For despite her supposed occupation, Ms. Meltedhair is clearly a serious actress, unwilling to pop her top for a cheap exploitation flick like this. I’ll leave the application of the appropriate amount of sarcasm to you.

Though, actually, she’s probably the best thing about this, not that it’s saying particular much. Kirsten has a likeable personality, once you get past a prickly exterior. And, in contrast to the heroine in Barracuda, she is justified in her vengeful actions, even if Raymond is never more than a caricature. When present, the gore is copious, yet also so amateurish to be much more amusing than horrific, and to the film’s credit, I think that this aspect is intentional. However, there’s far too much dead weight in the scenes between, for this to come close to passing muster. Any potential in the idea is all but entirely squandered, and even at a terse 70 minutes, this outstays its welcome. Hobo With a Shotgun, it most definitely is not.

Dir: Donald Farmer + Caroline Kopko
Star: Kasper Meltedhair, Jason Crowe, Colleen Herkert, Steve Guynn

The Hunt

  By

★★★★
“Don’t believe the political hype.”

This was a genuine and pleasant surprise. The original release was pushed back due to some severe controversy: not many films get Tweeted about by the President of the United States, who stated this was “made in order to inflame and cause chaos.” Needless to say, the studio ended up riding that publicity when the movie eventually came out. The current pandemic ended up trumping that (pun intended), so the film hit the home markets, just a week after its theatrical release. To my surprise, it’s considerably more nuanced than the “Red State vs. Blue State” concept I expected. And Gilpin has clearly put her GLOW training to good use, becoming quite the thirty-something bad-ass here.

It is, at its heart, another variant on The Most Dangerous Game, with a dozen people being kidnapped from their everyday lives, and taken somewhere that looks much like Arkansas, to be hunted by the rich for sport. The film is very good in the earlier stages at disconcerting the viewer by shifting their focus: you’ll settle in with one character, only for them to be wiped out in brutal fashion. Gilpin’s character, Crystal Creasey, isn’t even seen until more than 25 minutes in. But she makes up for her late arrival in no uncertain style, quickly establishing that the people behind the hunt, led by Athena (Swank), might have made a mistake by selecting Crystal as their entertainment.

What I found interesting is how even-handed this is. Yes, it’s about the elite hunting common people, and on its surface, i.e. the trailer, could be seen as Democrats hunting Republicans. But they’re hardly depicted as heroic, and indeed, it turns out, there’s considerably more to this. The whole thing started as an off-colour joke by Athena that got out, causing the wrath of #CancelCulture, as propagated through social media and conspiracy circles. She then decided, if we’re going to be blamed for something we didn’t do – why not do it anyway, and targets those who were her harshest critics on social media? Neither side gets out unscathed: not the liberals with their virtue signalling and hypocrisy, nor the conservatives with their paranoia and self-deceit. Yes, it is certainly guilty of picking at the raw scab which is the divided state of the nation (something for which the media, in general, must take much of the blame).

But the horror movie as social commentary is something that has been around for at least fifty years, since Night of the Living Dead.  As I’ve previously made clear, I’m fine with that, providing the film works regardless. And you could safely ignore all the satirical aspects, and you’d still have something among the upper tier of movies inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. It all builds to a kitchen battle between Crystal and Athena, that for sheer savagery, is one of the best woman-on-woman brawls I’ve seen since Kill Bill, Volume 2. Providing you are not too blinkered in your political views, the payoff here should be worth putting them to one side for ninety minutes.

Dir: Craig Zobel
Star: Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Amy Madigan, Emma Roberts

Hunter, Warrior, Commander by Andrew Maclure

  By

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

This may be a first, in that the heroine here is non-human – contrary to what you (and, indeed, I!) might expect from the cover. I think I may have covered various crypto-humans before, such as vampires or elves. But this is likely the first entirely alien species. I began to suspect on page 1, when I read that Sah Lee “sank her pin-sharp teeth through the thick fur of the calf’s throat, and tasted the sweet metallic tang of its young blood.” This is clearly not your average twelve-year-old. And so it proves. The story really kicks under way two years later, when Sah Lee leaves her rural village on the planet of Aarn to attend school in the city of Aa Ellet.

She is out of town on a class trip, when demons descend from the sky, causing massive death and destruction. Of course, they’re actually an alien tribe known as “outcasts”, who specialize in this kind of thing. But Sah Lee being a pre-first contact civilization, demons it is. Eventually, the rest of the galaxy, led by the super-advanced group known as “the People”, come to the rescue, but by that point, the planet is uninhabitable and most of the Aarnth dead. Sah Lee is taken aboard a ship, and vows to take revenge on the outcasts by any means necessary, which involves joining one of the galactic armies. But there will be a period of sharp adjustment from the pastoral life she had on Aarn, to being an interstellar soldier. Not drinking out of the toilet will be a start.

It’s not quite clear what Sah Lee is. Mammalian, to be sure – and that’s significant, since one of the features of the universe depicted here is that it is peopled not just by mammals, but reptilians, avians and even insectoid species, generally (but not universally) getting along. Thank heavens for universal translators. Anyway, something cat-like is probably my best guess, though quite how… furry she is, is never established. It doesn’t matter much though: her story is what’s important. And this is at its best in the relatively early stages: seeing an alien invasion from the side of the natives, then following Sah Lee as she has to adjust to a radically new and unimaginably different life. It makes me wonder what first contact will be like for Earth, when it finally happens. Potentially not good.

It’s rather less effective one she settles in, becoming fairly standard space opera. Through a special relationship with the People, Sah Lee has a cutting-edge AI and tech which does make her a bit super-powered. She breezes through every situation, even getting harshly disciplined after breaking military protocol (albeit for good reason). I’m also very unsure of the timeframe here. By the end, she’s basically in charge of her own army, and I’m guessing she is no longer a teenager. Not least because the galaxy as a whole has more or less conquered disease, meaning that violent death is about the only thing preventing near-immortality, with one character being over 172,000 years old. But again, it’s just not clear.

It is, at least, a self-contained story, rather than being volume one of a saga. The book reaches its end at an appropriate and generally satisfying point, which could go on, yet doesn’t have to. I’d have been very interested at the half-way point, when this was offering a different and original perspective on a super-advanced society – looking at it from the bottom up. Now Sah Lee is no longer in that position, she has become considerably less appealing.

Author: Andrew Maclure
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, as an e-book only.