Tag: novel

Women’s Justice, by Chrissy Wissler

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

In the 1880’s, the town of Butte, Montana is a mining boom-town – instead of gold, it’s mostly copper which fuels its economy. The wealth comes at a cost, as the huge amounts of acrid smoke belched from the smelters and plants turns day into night, along with creating perpetually “noxious, disgusting air.” Off the train and into this smog steps Cat, a woman with no shortage of a past. A former prostitute, but also a ranch-hand, her preferred outfit of blue jeans and six-shooter is most atypical for a woman of the times. Almost immediately, she is drawn into the mysterious and suspicious death on the street of another “fallen woman,” Norma. The apparent cover-up goes right up to “Copper Kings” such as Marcus Daly (a real tycoon from that time and place), and it quickly becomes clear that whoever was behind Norma’s demise, is none to happy to find Cat looking into the matter. To find the truth, she’s going to have to navigate her way through both ends of Butte society.

What stands out for me is Wissler’s incredibly verbose style, in which a whack on the shoulder with a plank merits several pages of descriptive prose. There’s one sequence, where Cat returns to the boarding-house where she’s staying, and discovers an unexpected dinner party in progress, when it feels like chapters elapse between the front-door and dining-room. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s not like she’s Alexandre Dumas, getting paid by the word. Indeed, it’s often interesting to get a deep dive into Cat’s thoughts and motivations, since she has a past that influences much of her behaviour; not least, a hinted-at violent incident involving her sister, Alice and her abusive husband. But there were times when I would have been happier for the plot to move forward at less of a glacial pace.

There’s no denying the author’s talents at generating the nightmarish world, with its poisonous air, and yawning gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Those like Norma can be pitched from the former category into the latter in a moment – and return is almost impossible. Instead, you can end up in the tunnels below the city streets, a virtual living hell for the lowest of the low. Cat’s history gives her an ability to empathize with the lower classes, while still capable of interacting with their “betters”, though there are times when her abilities seem to come close to telepathy, in terms of reading people. She could probably make a great living as a poker player. And despite the pistol on her hip, the action is limited – she never gets to draw it at all. Even the final face-off with Norma’s killer in those tunnels, entered from one of Butte’s grandest brothels, sees her largely defer to others in the name of justice.

There are some typos and missing words in the text, and I wonder if the word “bum” – as in rear – would genuinely have been used repeatedly by an 1880’s cowgirl. It seems rather too British: surely “ass” or “butt” (not to be confused with Butte!) would have been more likely? But despite flaws, this does remains an evocative depiction of a time and place which feels different from the usual Western fare. And it’s all the better for that.

Author: Chrissy Wissler
Publisher: Blue Cedar Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 2 in the Cowboy Cat series.

The Vampire Sword, by T. L. Cerepaka

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

This series opener got a favorable review from one of the ladies in a Goodreads group I belong to. Since I’m interested in the vampire mythos, and especially intrigued by fiction that approaches it from a Christian standpoint, her review got my attention, though I hadn’t previously heard of either the author or the series. So, when I discovered that I could download the e-book for free, I opted to give it a try.

This is basically urban fantasy, and is clearly influenced both by the Twilight Saga and the Harry Potter series (though Meyer and Rowling are each significantly more accomplished writers than Cerepaka is). What makes it somewhat distinctive in that 24-year-old Tara is a Baptist pastor’s daughter and a Christian believer herself (she made a Christian commitment at the age of 13), who takes her faith seriously, has taught Sunday school, and is singing for her dad’s congregation in a church service when the book opens. But this Sunday proves to be atypical, when an actual vampire crashes through a sanctuary window (on the second frame of the e-book) and bites her in the neck. As in the Twilight books, those who survive a vampire bite normally become vampires themselves. But as the previously clueless Tara learns, she and her dad are Sorcerers, genetically gifted with magic powers most humans (the Powerless –think, “Muggles”) don’t have.

Vampires generally don’t bite their Sorcerer enemies; they just try to kill them. But a rare bitten Sorcerer becomes a half-vampire, with some vampire traits (including a blood thirst –though vampires don’t have to indulge that with human blood, despite the strong temptation) combined with ability to use magic, though just as in the Potter books, that takes training. Unfortunately for Tara, that not only poses theological conundrums for a good Baptist young lady; half-vampires are considered by both the Vampire Council and the Sorcerer’s Parliament as unnatural abominations that need to be killed on sight. And then there’s the added wrinkle that, as Council agent Lucius soon reveals, Tara’s assailant was working for a rogue Vampire Lord who has his own agenda –and it’s an agenda the rest of the world won’t like.

If that sounds like an interesting premise with good possibilities, it is (provided you like that sort of thing –which I do!). The execution, though, isn’t nearly good enough to fully realize the potential of the idea. Throughout my reading of the book, I found myself thinking of ways in which the literary craftsmanship could be improved; obviously, that’s never a good sign! Cerepaka’s prose is minimalist (and often awkward), telling the story straightforwardly enough, but with little description or texture to enflesh the characters and situations. Since Tara is the first-person narrator, we get inside her head; but even so, neither she or the other major characters are very well-developed; we’re never even told, for instance, what she does for a living, though she has a job.

As that would imply, the novel is much more plot-driven than character-driven, and the characters tend to be mostly two-dimensional. No sense of place is evoked; our setting is Texas, where the author lives, but we only learn that in Chapter 20 of a 29-chapter book. (Until then, the references to Greensboro and South Side had me picturing a setting in North Carolina and south-central Virginia!) In a couple of places, facts are stated in the narration and then contradicted a couple of pages later. Although romance actually isn’t a significant element here – it probably is in subsequent books – what there is of it is an unconvincing, one-sided insta-love.

So, why three stars? There are a few pluses here. This is a very fast-paced book, beginning with a bang and moving along quickly through a short time-frame: just about two days for the main story), and though the prose is undistinguished, it flows relatively easily, even despite Tara’s tendency to repeat things in places or over-explain. That makes it a quick read, and I was engaged enough with the story throughout to be anxious to keep clicking to the next frame. Once I started reading it, I finished it in four days, and for me that’s pretty good time for reading an e-book! Cerepaka does display some originality in the treatment of his vampires, and in creating story elements like the Shadow Way and the Strangers, and of course the Vampire Sword itself. Though historically it couldn’t have been forged “ten thousand years ago” –metallurgy didn’t exist then, unless we imagine Robert E. Howard’s lost Hyborean Age! I appreciated the fact that Lucius is a “Pure”, a vampire who eschews human blood, and is disposed to help rather than hurt humans; and Tara’s sincere spiritual struggle with the question of whether, as a half-vampire, she still has a soul and a relationship with God, or is beyond His grace, gave the tale a certain degree of depth.

A word about Tara’s character is worthwhile, since it’s the most developed one here, and obviously the most central. Despite the deficiencies in the portrayal, she does come across as basically likable. Yes, she’s overly concerned with the fact that Lucius is handsome, sometimes to the point of making my eyes roll. But she’s a single woman in her 20s, not a plaster statue on a pedestal. The same can be said of the fact that her Christian faith doesn’t mean she never says a swear word, nor that she’s a paragon of devotional practice. She is who she is; but the person she is has a kind heart, a caring disposition towards others, and a core of guts and resolve when the chips are down. While she’s definitely in a distress situation here, she’s far from helpless; and though she’s not into violence, she’s game to do what has to be done –a fact we learn when she takes out the vampire who bit her with a head shot from a pistol her dad dropped (the bullets were silver). Another thing that helps credibility here (and also adds some depth) is that her greatest challenges in combat situations don’t hinge on her physical fighting ability (which is largely untrained at this point!) but rather on the strength and purity of her moral will.

All in all, I liked this well enough as an entertaining read.  I wouldn’t spend much money to buy it, or the two later books – but I might pick up a used copy of the sequel if I found one at a flea market or a yard sale. :-)

Author: T. L. Cerepaka
Publisher: Self-published; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
Book 1 of 3 in the Vampire Sorceress series.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Fatal Destiny, by David DeLee

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

Grace deHaviland is a former cop, fired from the force in Columbus, Ohio under circumstances which remain murky. To continue in the justice field, she turns to bail enforcement, bringing in perps who have gone on the lam in exchange for a percentage of their bond. They don’t necessarily want to come in, as we find out right at the start; her first target causes Grace almost to become a victim herself, save for the grace of her stun-gun. Following this, she gets to take on what should, in theory, be a nice, simple case: locating white-collar criminal Barry Keegan. He was the accountant for a pharmaceutical firm engaged in shady financial practices, and has skipped bail shortly before the trial involving him and the company’s head honchos.

Except, of course, it’s never as easy as that. Almost before deHaviland can begin, one of Keegan’s co-defendants turns up with a bullet in his head, and her target has also very badly beaten up Grace’s best friend, who is still on the local force. It has now become personal as a result, and making matters worse, she isn’t the only one with a deep interest in locating Keegan. He, meanwhile, wants to spirit his wife and child out of town, because there are secrets in his past beyond some dodgy book-keeping for a drug company, potentially a threat to him, his family and even our heroine, if she gets too close to the truth. And her former colleagues in law enforcement are none too happy with what they perceive as her interference in their case.

deHavilland has so much baggage, she would probably need a moving van to go get coffee in the morning. As well as her time with the police, her mother was raped and killed by her boyfriend, and she has massive trust issues as a result. The cop in charge of the case is also a former lover of Grace’s. And yet, she’s so incredibly rich she has multiple tricked-out cars, and operates out of a massive, sprawling factory which would put Wayne Industries to shame. It even has an “Olympic-sized swimming pool”. On the second floor. I was distracted for quite a bit by figuring out how that worked, considering such a pool contains over 2,750 tons of water. It’s all just too much. And that’s not even mentioning her mixed Hispanic-Irish heritage, or her gratuitous pet monkey called Trouble.

The action is fairly sparse, especially in the first half. After you get past the initial introduction, she’s mostly going from place to place talking to people, to the extent this feels more like a novelization of a Lifetime original movie than anything adequately kick-ass. Things do perk up a bit on the second half, with a gun-battle at Keegan’s house, and a well-written climax at an abandoned shopping mall, which was very easy to visualize. It’s still the very definition of “too little, too late,” and this is not a heroine with whom I’m very interested in spending any more time.

Author: David DeLee
Publisher: Dark Road Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Grace deHaviland Bounty Hunter series.

Stiletto, by Caddy Rowland

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

Revenge, as the saying goes, is a dish best served cold. Or, from another saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Illustrating both are the story told here. Jasmine Albertson had already gone through the lows and highs of life, before meeting and getting married to Stu. But when Stu’s business partner John Mickelson makes him take the fall for John’s embezzlement, leading to Stu’s suicide, Jasmine vanishes off the grid in Los Angeles. She moves to New York and sets her sights on a long-term plan to make John pay. And not financially: as she tells her gay best friend Tory, “I want him to know he fucked with the wrong people when he fucked over Stu and then me. I want him to suffer. And then I want to send him to hell.”

To this end, she creates an alter ego who will be able to ensnare the notoriously lecherous Mickelson. That’s Grace Huntington, a woman who cares not one whit for John’s (ill-gotten) gains or power, is all the more desirable as a result, and makes him willing to give her complete control. Three years after departing, “Grace” returns to LA, slowly reeling her prey in, and bringing him inexorably towards a bloody rendezvous in a 20th-floor hotel room. The weapon of choice? The high-heels shown on the cover, dating from her time as an exotic dancer; for one of them conceals a switchblade.

This isn’t suspenseful, except in the sense that you’re not certain what will happen in that hotel room. Right from the start, before we flash back to the events which led to Stu’s death, we know Jazz is planning to kill John. As a result, you’re left wondering less what will happen, than how it will unfold, and is almost Shakespearean in the inevitability of it all. Though on the other hand, it’s an unrepentantly shallow potboiler, with more than its share of foul language and a sprinkling of graphic sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. However, the fact you know the destination doesn’t hurt too much, since it gives Rowland time to bring you along with Jazz on her journey towards murder.

Make no mistake, this is more or less revenge porn, with the heroine going up against a truly repulsive man in the shape of Mickelson, who has close to no redeeming features. It’s certainly simplistic, with no much in the way of setbacks for Jazz, or problems to overcome, and Tory serves no real purpose, except as a sounding-board for her emotions. As a one-off, I still must admit to being (somewhat guiltily) entertained, even if this isn’t exactly literary haute cuisine. I’m not certain how this can be spun into a multi-book series, though I suspect it’s as much about the shoes as anything – and that’s actually quite an interesting idea. High-heels of death, anyone?

Author: Caddy Rowland
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Avengement series.

Angelbound, by Christina Bauer

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

It’s nice to be reminded of why I’m generally averse to romance in my reading – particularly poorly written and unconvincing romance, like we get here. An interesting scenario with potential gets bogged down in gooey mush during the second half: let’s just say, there are phrases such as “my tummy goes all tingly again.” Yes: again…  If I wasn’t already committed by that stage, being more than half-way through a 500+ page book, that sentence might well have led to this ending up as a Did Not Finish. Instead, I figured I’d at least get a review out of it. You’re welcome.

As noted, the setting isn’t the problem. It takes place in Purgatory, which in this rendition is basically a clearing house for souls with no particular destination. Will that be heaven or hell? One of the ways this can be decided is trial by combat, and on the opposition team responsible for dispatching them in the arena there is Myla Lewis, a quasi-demon 18-year-old, whose combat skills belie her years. It’s supposed to be a neutral location, but is increasingly coming under the thumb of Armageddon, the King of Hell, whose forces staged a velvet glove occupation around the time Myla was born. And speaking of which, who was her father anyway?

It’s populated by a whole host of supernatural tribes. Deoms, quasi-demons, angels, ghouls and the thrax, who are demon hunters, as well as a whole host of cross-breeds between them. This makes for a murky diplomatic situation, in which the various groups struggle – both overtly and covertly – for power. Myla really just wants to kick ass in the arena, but life and the deteriorating political situation have other plans. Not least in the well-muscled shape of Lincoln, a thrax prince. Which, of course, makes things tricky given Myla’s partly demonic ancestry. 

And that’s where the whole thing falls apart. We go from mutual disgust to tingly tummies, on both sides, without apparently passing through any of the intervening stages, and is not in the least bit convincing. Meanwhile, Myla is being drip-fed information about her heritage and past events through angel-controlled dreams, even though it seems everyone – not least her mother – knows exactly who her father was, for example. It’s contrived purely for the sake of drama, and isn’t exactly subtle about it. Equally inevitably, we end up discovering that Myla isn’t just a normal teenage girl – or normal teenage part-demon, anyway. It’s likely no spoiler to reveal that her flowering abilities end up with her going toe-to-toe with Armageddon.

Bauer does have a decent handle on the action, and the moments where she gets to let rip in that direction are effective. Some imagery will stick in my mind, such as the torture Armageddon inflicts on Myla’s father just before their final face-off. But this doesn’t come anywhere close to balancing the cringeworthy romance, and I’ve absolutely no interest in going further. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think my tummy is going a bit tingly too. Just not for the same reasons as Myla’s…

Author: Christina Bauer
Publisher: Monster House Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 8 in the Angelbound Origins series.

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

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

“Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”

There can’t be many fantasy novels based on the events of World War II. But here we are, and Kuang has done an amazing job of taking historical events and weaving them into a saga of gods, magical powers and monsters, that works very well, even if you have no clue about the background.

At the beginning, Rin is a young orphan girl in a remote village in the South of the empire. Abused ceaselessly by her foster parents, they’re about to sell her into marriage. Her only hope of escape is to pass the exam which grants admission to the military academy of Sinegard. Even though she succeeds, she remains an outcast there, except to the equally derided Master Jiang, professor of lore. He helps her tap into powers largely forgotten by the Empire, but warns that if she doesn’t control them, they will control her. Her studies are brought to a sudden end when the Federation invades, laying siege to Sinegard. With the city about to fall, desperate measures have to be taken. But some doors, once opened, are an awful lot harder to close.

“This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward.”

The above quote is a good depiction of the dilemma at the core of the book. Is it permissible to do evil deeds to stop evil deeds? But that’s just part of the moral quagmire in which Rin finds herself, where a desire to protect her country merges with a quest for vengeance – both personal, and for previous genocide. There’s no denying the abilities into which she can tap are increasingly powerful, bordering on the divine. But she’s no “Mary Sue”: the cost mounts alongside them, to the point where her humanity is in danger of being entirely scorched away when she uses them.

And even if it doesn’t, the drugs necessary – both to reach the Pantheon where the gods reside, and to numb the pain of life following her awakening – won’t necessarily help Rin retain her sanity. There’s a gigantic stone prison, inside which are entombed, in a state of living hell, the thousands of previous shamans, who were driven completely insane by what they unleashed inside themselves, and had to be contained or they could destroy the world. The dangers here are very real, and only escalate the further Rin develops.

“I will die on my feet,” she said. “I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro’s operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward.”

Kuang has constructed a great heroine in Rin. From the very beginning, she is driven to escape a situation many would accept as hopeless, and demonstrates enormous resilience, and an utter commitment to do whatever she feels is necessary. She succeeds, not through some innate ability (hello, Harry Potter), but by working her butt off. Yet it’s that same willingness which ends up taking her, both physically and mentally, to some appalling places and experiences. The descriptions of Federation atrocities are all, apparently, backed by historical fact, matching what the Japanese did during the occupation of China in the thirties and forties. Most notably, the sacking of one city is based on the Rape of Nanking, and even a hardened soul like myself had his stomach flip on occasion. Kuang doesn’t pull her punches. There also seems to be a scientist based on the infamous Unit 731, who carried out human “experiments” on the locals.

But it’s all severe unpleasantess which is very necessary to the plot. Because it’s the only way through which Rin can justify her own reactions, and the extreme measures which she unleashes, along with the rest of the Cike [the Imperial shaman troop to which she is conscripted, and who are used to take on the Federation by unconventional means] There’s certainly no shortage of awesome-if-horrific set pieces, such as the Cike’s luring in and destruction of an enemy fleet. I’d love to see Peter Jackson or Guillermo Del Toro take on a cinematic adaptation, though the entire $200 million budget would probably end up going on digital flames…

“She was no victim of destiny. She was the last Speerly, commander of the Cike, and a shaman who called the gods to do her bidding. And she would call the gods to do such terrible things.”

The general tone is one of increasing darkness, and by the end, I was as much scared of Rin as in awe of her or concerned for her fate. About the only weakness I can think of, is that she’s rather distant and unlikable. Not exactly fun to be around, shall we say, and given some of her later acts, the term “heroine” seems dubious at best. But she’s going to need to be an ultimate, supernatural bad-ass in future volumes – not least to deal with a potentially equally-lethal shaman, who escaped from the stone prison, partly through Rin’s actions. There’s also the little matter of the Empress, who may not be the honourable subject of veneration she initially appeared to be.

It all sets up very nicely, without needing to create an artificial cliff-hander. As time permits, I definitely look forward to reading the next installment, The Dragon Republic.

Author: R.F. Kuang
Publisher: Harper Voyager, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Poppy War series.

Danger’s Halo, by Amanda Carlson

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

In the late 22nd-century, Earth is pretty much screwed. The impact of a giant meteor killed a huge number of people, wiped out the everyday infrastructure, and sent the world into perpetual twilight. Thirty years ago, the wealthy upped and left, never to be seen again, abandoning the rest of the survivors to scramble in the ruins of civilization, simply trying to survive. Holly Danger is one of them, a salvager who lives by her wits in the labyrinth of a coastal city’s destruction. Which means dodging the seekers, addicts of the hyper-destructive drug, Plush, as well as the outskirts, those who come in to the city and raid it for supplies.

An encounter with a young kid, Daze, leads Holly into further trouble. He is in possession of a quantum drive belonging to Tandor, an outskirt who has kicked off a plan to take over the entire city. Holly and her allies represent one of the biggest impediments to Tandor’s plan, considering the authorities here are largely notable by their absence. He’ll stop at nothing to make sure they can’t interfere, and having his drive puts her in greater danger. If only she had the necessary gadget, called a ‘pico’, to read the drive…

It’s a really fascinating world, one which comes to life off the page and fully occupies your imagination. Even though the apocalypse has been over for generations by this point, it still determines every aspect of existence. People hang on by their fingernails, living on crappy, mass-produced food blocks and trying to make the best of things, however they can, with whatever they find. Paranoia is a very necessary order of the day: homes, possessions and even travel routes are typically highly booby-trapped, to prevent access by the unauthorized, making every day a potentially lethal one.

Holly, too, is a sharply-drawn and likeable lead character: loyal to a fault, once you have gained her trust, though this is something which can be exploited as a weakness by Tandor. It’s refreshingly romance-free – merely surviving occupies all her energy – though I get the feeling future volumes might drift in that direction. I do have to say, the plot at the core is perhaps a little thin, with the quantum drive more of a MacGuffin. If you want to find out what’s on it, folks, you have to buy the sequels! But at $2.99 for an omnibus containing the first three novels, I’m honestly very tempted. A little more evidence of the heroine’s combat talents might have been welcome, too.

These are relatively minor complaints, and this is the kind of book I’d love to see made into a film. It plays somewhat like a post-apocalyptic take on Tomb Raider, not least given Holly’s fondness for crossing the gaps between buildings on cable swings. Admittedly, simply re-creating the post-meteor cityscape, with its toppled and decapitated skyscrapers, would be far from cheap. Guess I maybe will have to pick up that omnibus.

Author: Amanda Carlson
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 6 in the Holly Danger series.

Queendom of the Seven Lakes, by A B Endacott

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

There is an interesting set-up here: unfortunately, it’s one which truly doesn’t get developed far enough. Elen-Ai is a 21-year-old woman, who has been brought up since birth to be an assassin for hire, part of “The Family.” Her latest commission is a little different: it’s not to kill, but to protect. For she is hired to make sure that Gidyon, the teenage son of Latana, Queen of the Second Country, stays alive. This is a matriarchal society, where power passes down the female side. But Latana has only her son, and is set to upset the traditional apple-cart by proclaiming Gidyon as her heir apparent. This decision will potentially be rejected by some among the seven clans who comprise the queendom, and may make him a target for those who’d rather see him out of the way. Hence, Elen-Ai’s presence, to make sure that doesn’t happen, as he begins a national tour around their estates, seeking support for his position.

I suspect it’s pretty obvious where this will end up going, based on Gidyon’s plan to defuse the clans’ concerns by marrying someone outside of the nobility entirely. I would bet his bride ends up being Elen-Ai, given by the gobbets of unresolved romantic tension which pepper proceedings, together with the wild swings between like and dislike. Given his age though, we’re probably a few volumes away from that. For now, this is more of a travelogue than an action novel. There’s one assassination attempt on Gidyon while they’re on the road, but otherwise, Elen-Ai’s skills are more seen in the stealth department. As well as her abilities with weapons, she can make herself invisible, a useful talent when it comes to obtaining information regarding the conspiracies against Gidyon. However, she’s far from infallible; indeed, her momentary inattention proves to have tragic consequences.

Despite some interesting wrinkles, e.g. the identity of Gidyon’s father is a closely-guarded secret to avoid political repercussions and enforce neutrality, this doesn’t capitalize on the worldview. Indeed, by using a male heir instead, it largely negates much of the role reversal which has gone before. I’m also hard pushed to imagine Latana is the first ever queen who failed to have a daughter. The main issue though, is I really would have liked to know more about Elen-Ai. The very concept of the Family – a tacitly-accepted guild of assassins – merits considerably more exploration. How she reached the point of being commissioned by royalty as a bodyguard, seems considerably more interesting than her traipsing across country as some kind of lethally mobile baby-sitter. This seems like a sad waste of her talents, a bit like reading a Sherlock Holmes book devoted entirely to his post-retirement life as a bee-keeper. While I didn’t feel like I’d wasted the time, there wasn’t enough here to convince me to go further into the series.

Author: A B Endacott
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 6 in the Legends of the Godskissed Continent series.

Hunter, Warrior, Commander by Andrew Maclure

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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.

Satan’s Sword + Elven Blood, by Debra Dunbar

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

The first volume in the Imp series, A Demon Bound, was one of the most entertaining books I’ve read of late. It told the story of Samantha Martin, the human vessel occupied by a demon “who has chosen to spend her life among us mortals, rather than in the underworld… largely because it’s more fun up here.” I was thus stoked to read the next two entries in the series, with Sam’s further adventures. She’d ended the series having been “bound” to an angel, Gregory, and in the subsequent parts, this is now causing issues for both of them. He is getting flak from his colleagues for his association with her, while she is experiencing unfamiliar emotions, such as loyalty and kindness.

It makes sense to cover both of these as one volume, as they combine to represent a significant story arc. The main thread in that is her hell-spawned brother, Dar, has got in the bad graces of upper-tier demon, Haagenti. Unfortunately, that escalates into Haagenti putting out an infernal hit on Sam – as well as those she cares about, in particular her all-too human boyfriend, Wyatt. To deal with that, she ends up taking on a job for an elven lord, locating the offspring of an unfortunate liaison between an elf and a succubus – the latter just happening to be Sam’s foster sister, Leethu.

The main problem, I felt, was Dunbar over-stuffed these books with ideas. If she’d stuck to the basic concept above, and developed it properly, it might have worked a bit better. Instead, there are any number of threads which feel undercooked, to a greater or less degree. For example, the serial killer targetting Sam’s slum tenants, or the teenage boys who managed to summon her, courtesy of a ritual they found on the Internet. The latter feels especially rife with potential, sadly never realized. Or the heavenly bureaucracy in which Sam gets entangled, complete with committee meetings and detailed reports. I’d rather have heard more about these fascinating and amusing ideas, than the detailed discussion concerning the breeding habits of elves we get.

Fortunately, the heroine remains as wonderfully twisted a character as ever. Though I must confess, the angel influence is a little worrying, given what made Sam so deliciously bad was her complete lack of scruples. For when you are all but immortal, you can afford to push other entity’s buttons – such as when she manages to goad another angel into an all-out brawl during one of those committee meetings. There may have been a stale Danish pastry involved. If this sardonic edge becomes dulled due to the angelic influence, it would be a real shame, since it’s one of the main things which makes Sam stand out in the field of literary action-heroines. We’ll see what happens as we go forward in the series.

Author: Debra Dunbar
Publisher: Volumes 1-3 are available as an omnibus from Anessa Books, available through Amazon, as an e-book
Books 1-3 of 10 in the Imp series.