Tag: novel

Wildflower Bride, by Mary Connealy

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

Barb and I discovered evangelical Christian author Mary Connealy through her Sophie’s Daughters trilogy, partially set in Montana in the years from 1878 to 1884. Several characters who figure in her earlier Montana Marriages trilogy, of which this novel is the third, also play important roles in the later one. So we were interested in their back stories; and when I found this book in a thrift store, it was a natural purchase! (We’ve also just started reading the second installment; long story!) This means we’re reading the trilogy in reverse order; so we started with much more knowledge of the characters’ future than the original readers would have (the read was more like a visit with old friends). However, I’ll avoid spoilers in this review. (Obviously, though, it might contain “spoilers” for the earlier Montana Marriages novels.)

This tale opens in late spring/early summer, 1877, as young Wade Sawyer is awakened by gunfire as he’s sleeping in his small cabin high in the Montana Rockies. The shots come from the nearby small Indian village, which is being massacred by four masked whites. Arriving too late to prevent the deaths of most of the inhabitants, Wade manages to wound one of the fleeing murderers, and finds Glowing Sun, a young woman raised for the past dozen years by the Salish (called Flathead by the whites), ever since they found her alone at about the age of eight after disease killed her white family, still alive. (One of the killers had tried to abduct her, but she slashed his face with her knife and escaped.) Her white name, as she recalls, is Abby, and she and Wade have met previously (as recounted, apparently, earlier in the trilogy), last fall –and were in fact attracted to each other; but she had an Indian fiance at the time, through an arranged engagement. He’s now dead; and when she’s cast out by a surviving matriarch who never liked her (and who blames her for attracting the massacre, assuming that the attackers’ motive was rape), she’s left alone in the world again. Soon after, Wade’s summoned to the bedside of his estranged rancher father, injured and maybe dying; and since he won’t desert Abby, and she believes responding to the summons is his duty, she comes along with him.

Like all Connealy novels, this is a clean “romance” (in the modern-day book trade sense); but it has more going for it than romance (otherwise, I wouldn’t have read and liked it!). For one thing, it’s a perceptive exploration of cross-cultural romance, of the specific clashing cultures of whites and Indians in the late 19th-century West, and an ethically-aware indictment of the former’s treatment of the latter. (Abby doesn’t have much use for the attitudes and practices of a white culture she’s mostly long abandoned, though she hasn’t forgotten the language, and a lot of her criticisms strike home.) It’s also a hard look at the dynamics of a dysfunctional, abusive family –because Wade’s estranged from his dad for good reason!– at co-dependency and how insidious it can be, and what does (or doesn’t) contribute to familial healing. There’s also a decided helping of Western-style mystery, because there’s intrigue afoot on the Sawyer ranch. Who’s behind the outbreak of cattle rustling in the area? And who were the attackers of Abby’s village, and what was their real motive?

Connealy’s a Christian author, whose world-view influences her writing. Christian characters are common in her novels (Red Dawson, a supporting character here, is a lay preacher as well as a rancher). Wade has a sincere Christian faith, as does Abby, fostered in her case by the missionary activity of real-life Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873) and his colleagues, who really did have considerable success in their work among the Salish, and whose treatment here is very positive. (The author’s approach to Christian faith is –commendably, IMO– nondenominational, though sectarian rivalries and animosities weren’t nonexistent in the real 19th-century West.) It’s seen here as a genuine source of moral reformation, courage in adversity, and guidance and help in daily life; but though it’s referred to more here than in the later trilogy, I wouldn’t describe this one as “preachy.”

Christian ethics, with its basis in the love commands, also raises a serious issue for reflection, when it needs to be lived out in a violent environment, among people some of whom are perfectly willing to kill you, and others, to get things they want. Wade wrestles with this some, as does Abby –in fact, more so, since while Wade wears a gun and can use it, she’s considerably more combat capable than he is. (She’s also a stronger-willed personality than he is, and the more dominant partner in the relationship –okay, that word’s not a spoiler, any reader knows these two are destined for each other!– and Wade’s willing to recognize that there’s nothing wrong with that.) While she’s not into guns (though if she slugs you in the head with one, you won’t get up for awhile), she’s handy with her knife, and it doesn’t leave her person –unless she needs to throw it. Her personality could best be described as hot-tempered and fierce. The conclusion she comes to is that forcibly defending yourself and others IS morally right, but relishing the damage done isn’t; and she’s honest enough to admit that she needs to work on her attitude in that area. So when the chips are down here, the main question may not be, will our hero rescue the damsel in distress? Given their respective skill sets, it might be, will our tough damsel rescue her guy in distress? :-)

Author: Mary Connealy
Publisher: Barbour Publishing; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Gears of a Mad God, by Brent Nichols

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

Early 20th-century pulp-fiction author Howard Philips Lovecraft created a substantial corpus of writing, mainly in the short story format and mostly in the form of horrific science fiction which in many ways reads like classic supernatural fiction. The most enduring body of his work has been the novellas and stories making up what has come to be called his Cthulhu Mythos, based on the premise that the prehistoric Earth was dominated by the Great Old Ones, or Elder Gods, malevolent and repulsive, but very powerful and dangerous, alien beings who were ultimately dethroned by another alien race, and whose hidden remnants want to regain their past dominance. A number of Lovecraft works present the idea that these beings have an evil and often murderous cult of human worshipers, handed down from the dawn of mankind, who seek to further their return to power. Numerous later writers have been inspired by HPL’s example to create their own pastiches and spin-offs of the Mythos. Brent Nichols’ self-published Gears of a Mad God novella series (there are six in all), of which this book –set in Canada in May 1921, mainly on Vancouver Island– is the opener, is one of these spin-offs. One of my Goodreads friends gave this one a favorable review; and since I’m a Lovecraft fan and the novella is free for Kindle and relatively short at 98 pages, I downloaded it.

An important point to note is that, while HPL’s Mythos supplies the premise here, Nichols’ prose style is nothing like the older writer’s “purple prose;” his diction is modern, straightforward and direct, with no stylistic embellishment and a minimum of description. Another is that the focus here is exclusively on the cultists of the Great Old Ones, and the effort to counter them; the sinister objects of their devotion are strictly off-stage. (For all that we see here, the Great Old Ones could just as well be figments of the cultists’ imagination.) Also unlike Lovecraft, even though there are a couple of instances here of characters driven mad by exposure to the cult’s secrets, Nichols eschews existential pessimist sermonizing and “morals of the story,” and doesn’t harp on the idea that unvarnished exposure to reality would actually be enough to drive virtually anybody insane. Of course, our protagonist/viewpoint character here is female, something which is never found in HPL’s own work. So despite the inspiration, the effect of reading this is much different from the works of the original Cthulhu canon. The title also misuses the term “steampunk” (it features a heroine who’s mechanically oriented, but that doesn’t make it steampunk!), and the phrase “Gears of a Mad God” makes no particular sense –some machinery here has gears, but they aren’t owned by any Elder God, mad or sane, and they aren’t focal to the story.

On the positive side, the tale is fast-paced, held my interest, and is frequently exciting and suspenseful; I felt that Nichols handles action scenes well. There is a clearly-drawn moral dimension to the conflict; Colleen makes choices that involve putting protection of others before self-interest, and her moral struggles with lethal force are realistic for a young woman with no combat training or experience. She does pick up fighting skill by use, and her mechanical ability is a nice touch (though clock-making and repair actually isn’t as credible a source of physical strength and knowledge of large-scale mechanical processes as say, auto repair would have been).

The plot is linear, with no particular twists (I actually envisioned one I was sure was coming, and was quite surprised when it didn’t materialize!). On the negative side, the character development is not deep (Colleen is the best-developed character, but she’s still not very fully realized), there’s not a lot of texture, and I wouldn’t say there’s a strong sense of place either in her native Toronto or in Victoria. (I did learn that Vancouver, British Columbia is NOT on Vancouver Island –but Victoria is!) But unlike one reviewer, I didn’t find the U.S. Bureau of Investigation agents and their Canadian liaisons ineffectual; and I didn’t have a problem with squaring the arrival of characters on the island with the ferry schedule –I made the assumption that their appearance in the story was not necessarily always virtually identical to their landing time. (But I did have a quibble with the idea that the U.S. President had contacted the Canadian Prime Minister “last year” –the President in 1920 was Woodrow Wilson, who was then pretty much non-functional due to his physical and nervous breakdown.) IMO, the emphasis on the boyfriend’s “antediluvian attitude” (to quote one review) near the end was necessary to set up a significant choice by the heroine.

Overall, I liked this tale. But even though it’s obviously only the beginning of a larger story arc, and the ending, while not a cliff-hanger as such, is clearly meant to lead into further confrontation with the cult, I’m still not captivated enough by the characters or the story to invest in buying the sequels.

Note: There’s no sexual content (Colleen and her boyfriend, at one point, lay down on a bed with their clothes on and get some needed sleep, but they don’t do anything else), and no bad language beyond a d-word and two h-words.

Author: Brent Nichols
Publisher: Self-published; available through Amazon, both for Kindle (free!) and as a printed book.
Book 1 of 6 in the Gears of a Mad God Book series
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Chinese Woman: The Barbados Conspiracy, by Brian N. Cox

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

Though just called “Brian Cox” on the book, it’s probably wise to begin by distinguishing the author here from his more famous namesakes, both the actor and the “rock-star physicist.” That said, this is a brisk if not particularly memorable spy novel. The main outstanding feature is that the heroine is neither American nor British, but Chinese. Rather odd to be reading this very positive portrayal of Communist state security personnel, during the protests in Hong Kong.

She goes by a couple of different names in the book. As a 12-year-old kid, she’s Zhen Xiaomei, and watches her mother and family get brutally slain by gangsters Wu Xing and Meng Hong, due to an unpaid debt. [If you’ve seen Kill Bill Volume 1, you’ll be aware of how this is going to work out for them…] A quarter century later, she works as an agent for the Ministry of State Security, Second Bureau, when she is given a mission to travel to the United States and bring back a fugitive to stand trial in China. Initially, Xiaomei is reluctant – but her tune changes, when she discovers the fugitive is Wu Xing.

Under the guise of PhD student Li Mei, she begins trying to track Wu down in Seattle, by befriending his girlfriend Han Xia. She also encounters FBI agent Sean McNamara, and begins a relationship with him – initially as a source of information, but it’s never that simple, is it? Complicating matters further is the titular plot, in which a rogue faction of hawks in the Taiwanese and American military, are plotting to launch a nuclear missile at Taiwan, and blame it on China. A jaunt to the Caribbean? Don’t mind if Li Mei does. Though it’s kinda awkward when she bumps into Sean there.

These plots never quite mesh, and it would probably have served each of them better, if they had been handled in their own volume.  There’s also a thread about a serial killer, which doesn’t appear to serve much purpose, and the split of the story between Xiaomei and Sean sometimes makes it feel like the author was uncertain who was really his central character. Cox also tends to go overboard on the descriptive aspects of his characters, beyond what is necessary, and certainly what is interesting. A couple of well-written facets are more effective than a head-to-toe description: we don’t need to identify them in a police line-up.

The main positive is the heroine, who is a strong and effective agent, smart and thoroughly competent in her actions. Her background makes her considerably more interesting than McNamara, and I was left wanting to know more about her further adventures. While not a great work of literature, it is an entertaining one, and I ripped through it quickly. The second volume is free, through a link in #1, in exchange for your email address. At that price, I’m almost tempted to sign up.

Author: Brian N. Cox
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in The Chinese Woman series.

Merciless Charity by Wayne Stinnett

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

To be charitable (pun not intended), this might perhaps have come across better if I were familiar with the “Caribbean Adventure” series by the same author, featuring the exploits of ex-marine Jesse McDermitt. That long-running franchise saw its sixteenth(!) entry published in November, and this volume appears to be the first in a spin-off series from the same universe. This may be why the early going is really tough. Explanations of who people are and their relationships, are notable by their absence, and if it’s tacitly presumed you know them from his other work, that would make sense.

In particular, there’s an early plot thread where our heroine, Charity Styles, help track down kidnappers on their boat. But it’s a while before we discover who was abducted, and the whole thread seems to go absolutely nowhere, with Charity dropping people and then flying off. Only after then do we get to the main story, where she vanishes off the grid, in order to sail a boat from Miami to Mexico, make her way up the side of a volcano, and take out the terrorist cell who have set up a training camp there, preparing for an attack in Texas. None of which makes a great deal of logical sense. Why sail, rather than fly? Hell, take a submarine. And why is the US government pussyfooting around with an ocean-going sniper, when a well-placed Hellfire missile or two would be just as effective, and considerably quicker?

Regardless, this means that more than half the book is taken up with the 1,200 nautical mile sailing trip, including a particularly irrelevant side mission to rescue some Cuban refugees. As ocean-going travelogue, it’s actually not bad, and almost makes me want to buy a yacht. But as action-heroine fiction goes? It’s mild stuff indeed, and until she reaches the terrorist camp, the sole incident of note is an encounter with a would-be mugger. It seems a bit of a waste of a violent background, which saw Charity captured after the helicopter she was piloting was shot down in Afghanistan. She was held by a Taliban group, and brutally violated by them, over an extended period, before escaping, taking revenge and being rescued. That’s an entire hold’s worth of baggage which could potentially be unpacked into her character, yet it never happens.

Things do perk up in the final battle, where we finally see the unleashed savagery of which Charity is capable, living up to the title of the book. The terrorists don’t have a chance, to put it mildly. Though they’re not just up against a lethal sniper, but what can only be described as a volcano ex machina. It’s too little, too late, and I must confess I was glad this was a quick read, coming in at only 224 pages. There’s nothing here to make me want to delve any further into these warm waters.

Author: Wayne Stinnett
Publisher: Down Island Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in Caribbean Thriller Series.

No Shelter, by Robert Swartwood

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

“Meet Holly Lin. Nanny by day, assassin by night.” That was the tagline here, and you’ll understand why it jumped off the Amazon page and onto my Kindle. I was expecting something like Mary Poppins crossed with Atomic Blonde [“A spoonful of C-4 helps the terrorists go down…”], which is a great concept. However, I guess I’m going to have to write that book myself, because this isn’t it. I suppose, technically it is, though may be closer to like “vaguely nannies some times, assassin at others”. It certainly helps in terms of workplace schedule flexibility, that she nannies for her government boss. So it’s apparently fine when she has to abandon her charges and jet off from Washington to Las Vegas to assassinate someone selling a flash drive, on which is… Well, we’ll get back to that.

Holly also had a tendency to go off-mission, riding off into the Nevada desert on her own to rescue a bunch of sex-trafficked women. That’s a decision that comes back to haunt her later on, though it’s extraordinarily convenient how all the bad guys seem to know and work with each other. They must have a villains’ Facebook group or something. The other major issue is the shift in focus. In the second half, the main antagonist becomes someone who was only mentioned in flashback/passing in the first. There’s little or no emotional resonance to the conflict as a result. Though if you can’t guess the identity of the mysterious figure who spares Holly’s life in an alley, you probably need to read more of this genre.

Swartwood has a better handle on the action, with a number of well-written and fast-paced set pieces, and a heroine who has no problem using brutal violence as a tool. However, the underlying logic on both sides is often questionable. The climax occurs after Holly’s charges are kidnapped and ransomed, held in exchange for that pesky flash drive. Yet the way in which she goes about retrieving it, seems more designed for spectacle than good sense – and she needn’t even have bothered, since the villain agrees to meet her without requiring any kind of proof she has it. These kind of missteps bedevil the story. Though I did appreciate the final, savage payoff to the running thread about the elevator in her apartment building being slow or out of order.

There just isn’t enough here to make it stand out from the pack of other assassins-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-a-troubled-past books. If it had played up the “double life” concept – making Holly some kind of bad-ass baby-sitter – this could have been a novel angle. Instead, it hardly gets much of a look-in, and as a final insult [probably a spoiler, but I don’t care] Swartwood can’t even be bothered to tell us what is actually on the flash drive to cause such mayhem and bloodshed. It’s a complete McGuffin. Unfortunately, this author is no Hitchcock.

Author: Robert Swartwood
Publisher: RMS Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Lin series.

Until Morning Comes boxed set, by J.T. Sawyer

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

This omnibus edition contains the first three volumes in Sawyer’s post-apocalyptic story: Until Morning Comes, In Too Deep, and The Way Back. The central character is 31-year-old Secret Service agent Carlie Simmons, who is on secondment to Tucson, Arizona to provide protection for the President’s daughter, Eliza Huntington, who is attending university there. Things take a sudden wrong turn, with the outbreak of a fast-spreading infection, which turns its victims into psychotic flesh-eating ghouls.

Yes, folks: this apocalypse is of the well-known zombie flavour. Carlie’s first task is to secure Miss Huntington, and take her to a secure location. Thereafter, she becomes part of the effort to find a cure, involving a trip first to New Orleans, then to a former Soviet research facility in Cuba – the latter mission going particularly wrong. Meanwhile, Eliza’s life is little better, after Air Force One goes down in a remote part of Idaho.

It’s a genre which has been more or less done to death over the past decade – regardless of whether you mean TV, movies, graphic novels or books. As such, there isn’t much here which is particularly new or interesting. The virus responsible appears to be of Russian origin; yet towards the end, there are hints a faction of the US government was also involved in its manufacture. But it’s mostly a fairly steady killing spree, with heads exploding from the liberal application of firepower, or when the ammo runs out, enthusiastic use of machetes and other sharp implements.

It’s probably Eliza’s arc which is rather more interesting, despite her story being the minor one over the three volumes. Carlie is a bad-ass from the get-go, and there’s not much development from there (to be fair, not much is needed). Eliza, however, has to transform from being the First Daughter into a zombie-killer, willing to survive by any means necessary. The question of what cost this transition has on her humanity is more implied than explicitly discussed, yet Sawyer manages it in a way that it’s considerably less implausible than it sounds. The author’s background as a survival teacher also helps give the more technical aspects additional credibility, and I’m always pleased to see any locally-set entertainment; Arizona is hard done-by there!

Working against these positive aspects, however, is the sheer predictability of it all. Simply depicting a zombie apocalypse isn’t enough, especially not given the extent to which they have dominated the horror landscape over the past fifteen years. The Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004 probably kicked things off, with Season 5 of The Walking Dead in 2014 probably the point at which I reached my personal fill. The first of these books was originally published in October that year. But the five years since have not been kind, and I suspect even at the time, this would have seemed lacking in inventiveness or originality. While good enough at what it does, what it does isn’t quite good enough.

Author: J.T. Sawyer
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, only as an e-book
Book 1-3 of 5 in the Carlie Simmons series.

M in the Demon Realm, Vol. 1-2, by Mark William Hammond

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

I feel a little uncertain about reviewing this, since it’s basically two-thirds of a single novel. Or maybe two connected novellas. Oddly, the three entries get longer as they go, starting at 110 pages, increasing to 160 for the second and finishing off at around 210. I’ve been waiting for the third and final part to show up on special offer for a while, but it hasn’t happened. The first two parts were somewhat intriguing, just not enough to convince me to pay full price. So I finally decided to publish and be damned. Wait and see its cost drop the week after this goes live…

Anyway, the heroine here is Emma Ricci, who begins the first book, M in the Demon Realm, as a fashion student in New York. However, she has a heritage and legacy to live up to, one of which she is only dimly aware, through recurrent disturbing dreams. It comes into sharp focus after demonic warriors attack her and her boyfriend, killing him; only her latent skills allow her to survive. No-one believes her account, except for a small group of Chinese guardians led by Li Bai. Emma – or M as she becomes – learns she is the descendant of a Chinese warrior bloodline. She is now the only thing standing between someone trying to open a portal that will unleash literal hell on earth, which is why she was targetted.

Fortunately, her allies can train her, in particular, to use a ribbon sword which is “liberated” from a local museum. That, and some unexpected assistance from a giant canine, allow M to face the threat and recover the (slightly Lament Configuration-like) artifact used to open the gate. In volume two, M in the Empire of the Dead, she returns it to the Tibetan monastery where it is kept, only for the relic rapidly to be liberated by the bone demon. Baigujing. The action shifts  to Paris and its labyrinthine catacombs, where Baigujing begin preparations for its use. This time, M is going to need to fight her battles, not just on Earth, but in hell itself.

It’s decent enough, from what I can tell: I’ll presume the obviously dangling loose end about M being a twin is going to form a key element of the third volume. The basic premise is probably over-familiar: something something Buffy. However, the Asian influence is nicely done, and while Vol 1 + 2 have similar stories, the different locations provide variety. The depiction of hell is also well-drawn, feeling like a written version of Hieronymus Bosch. My main issue is the characters, which feel under-written. M, in particular, doesn’t seem to be given much depth. What is she thinking? How does she feel about her transition from student and part-time waitress to saviour of the planet? I’d be hard pushed to tell you, to this point. That, and slightly repetitive action scenes, explains which I’m waiting for a discount on part three.

Author: Mark William Hammond
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Books 1-2 of 3 in the M in the Demon Realm series.

Double Play, by Kelley Armstrong

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

Some years ago, my Goodreads friend Mary J.L. gave the original novel of the author’s Nadia Stafford trilogy a favorable review, and that put it on my radar. As a rule, I don’t read novels that are only published in electronic format (it does have a audio version, but I don’t listen to audio books either), but I do read short e-stories; electronic publishing provides a forum for those works which no longer exists in print, what with the demise of general-circulation magazines. This tale, as a novella, occupies a middle ground, but commercially novellas are in much the same boat as short stories –a single one wouldn’t sell very well in print format. So I felt it was fair to treat it the same way, and thought it would be a good way to check out the series for myself.

From reading the descriptions, and some reviews, of the novels in the original trilogy, I figured I would have enough knowledge of the characters and their situation so as not to have a problem understanding this one. That proved to be true. However, a significant caveat is that this continuation does contain spoilers in the romantic-triangle aspect of the novels and some of the denouement of the third novel, Wild Justice, so readers who would be very bothered by that should read the series in order. (And regarding the romantic triangle, probably shouldn’t read either this review or the novella description!)

Ex-cop turned guest lodge owner/manager Nadia (“Dee”) Stafford’s action qualifications aren’t in question; but some might challenge her heroine qualifications since, as the Goodreads description makes clear, her unadvertised side occupation is as a hit woman. But Nadia’s not your average amoral, anything-for-money hired killer; she’s actually a lady with a very lively conscience, a concern for justice and the protection of the innocent, and a strict code of professional ethics to govern her extra-legal line of work. Though I haven’t read much fiction with assassin protagonists, I think they can be interesting characters when they approach their work with a sense of right and wrong and ethical obligation; and Nadia qualifies in that respect. Of course, I don’t endorse her career choice (and she’d actually agree that it’s objectively wrong, even though she’s not planning to quit). But I can still like and respect her, and wish her well; and when she’s willingly putting her life on the line to help someone in trouble, as she is here, I’m not one to deny her a “heroine” accolade.

When our story opens, Nadia and her lover, fellow assassin Jack (who was introduced in the first novel) are in the process of building a house in the woods near her lodge. At the moment, though, Jack’s in his native Ireland on business, and phone communication between the two is precarious because of their security concerns. In the first chapter, she’s approached by an acquaintance from a shadowy vigilante organization she’s had contact with before, who’s looking for Quinn, one of the organization’s operatives –and Nadia’s ex-boyfriend (pre-Jack). He’s dropped out of sight, and it’s clearly not intentional; he’s been kidnapped, by parties and for purposes unknown. In their milieu, just placing a missing persons report and letting the police do their job isn’t a practical option; so Nadia’s soon off to Virginia to help with the search and (hopefully) rescue, and the action takes off. (And don’t forget Jack in Ireland….)

The 17 chapters alternate between Nadia’s first-person narration and third-person narration, but from Jack’s perspective and in his vocabulary. Some readers may find his predilection for the f-word as all-purpose adjective and adverb wince-worthy –he doesn’t say it much, being notoriously laconic, but he thinks it repeatedly. (No other character uses it to that extent, however, and Nadia, while she might occasionally let slip a cuss word or vulgarism, doesn’t use it at all.). A Byzantine plot lies behind the kidnapping, and I deducted a star for ultimately contradictory plotting: a number of details in the previous chapters, given the denouement, don’t really make sense, IMO. (And, recalling the old TV show America’s Dumbest Criminals, the villain here could qualify for star billing on a World’s Dumbest Criminals show, if there were one.)

For all that, though, the story is a page-turner, and the two lead characters are, for contract assassins, genuinely likable. Readers of the trilogy already are familiar with them; but I got to know them here in a way that’s not possible just from book descriptions. We also get glimpses of their psychological baggage –Jack’s going back to Northern Ireland’s bloody Troubles in his teens, and Nadia’s as a past rape victim. (While the two aren’t married, their love for each other is sincere and has a good effect on their lives, and the references to their lovemaking aren’t very explicit.) While I hope the novels in the trilogy are better plotted, I still liked this literary appetizer enough to plan to give the series opener a try!

Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: Traverse Press; available through Amazon, currently only along with the next novella, Perfect Victim – both as e-books and in paperback.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Fear University 1-3

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

I was initially a bit concerned this was going to be a slightly-more horror oriented version of Harry Potter, based largely off the title. I needn’t have been worried. For at least the first two books, this is quite startlingly dark and on the razor’s edge. As for the third… well, we’ll get to it. The setting here is a world where Filipino shapeshifters called aswangs, which feed on the fear of their victims, are migrating across from their home country and through Alaska. Lined up to stop them, by any means necessary, are hunters; it’s a harsh and often brief occupation. To replace those lost in battle, the titular establishment exists on Kodiak Island, to train hunters – mostly members of families who have been in the bloody business for generations.

Into this comes Ollie Andrews, a waitress who kills an aswang, and is recruited (well, abducted is probably closer) into Fear University. Her survival is largely down to an unusual illness/talent: her inability to feel pain. No pain = no fear, and so nothing an aswang can use against her. However, this ability has caused her issues in the past – not least,  her abduction by a father/son pair of psychopaths. Though Ollie escaped, killing the father in the process, she has been pursued by the survivor, Max. This has forced Ollie to change her identity and keep on the move to avoid him tracking her down. FU [I’m not sure if the author chose the name for that acronym!] might offer her somewhere to belong, replacing the family she never had.

Keyword: might. For she has to overcome the prejudices of the other students, due to Ollie not being from one of those historic families. And that’s just the start, as she begins to discover the university’s quest to win the war under its head, Dean Bogrov and his shady scientific experiments. It also turns out there is a third group, operating between the aswangs and the humans, and Ollie’s past comes back into play; she was an orphan who never knew her father, and whose mother abandoned her in a closet. That’s an awful lot to unpack, and for the first two books, Collett does an admirable job. It’s a gritty approach, with Ollie a severely-damaged heroine, who has enough issues for an entire conference.

Those opening two books keep the story going forward. In the first volume, Fear University, she learns to tap into the power her talent gives her; builds a relationship with the similarly-broken young hunter Luke, who is her mentor; discovers aswang saliva can make her feel pain; finds out who her father was; and has to go through a life-or-death test involving both her, and her best friend at FU, Sunny. The second, Killing Season, is a rather drastic change in approach, with Ollie, Luke and others sent north to Barrow for the winter break, when the aswang are most active.  That was the location used for vampire action film 30 Days of Night, and serves the same kind of purpose here. However, it’s almost as much a whodunnit, with the large house which is the hunters’ base apparently home to a killer. Not helping matters: Max shows up in town.

Then there’s the third… I should probably have detected the change in approach, based entirely on the title: Monster Mine. For sadly, the series loses its edge entirely. Rather than turning into Harry Potter, it instead becomes something which combines the whiny angst of the Twilight series, with the Daddy issues from Star Wars. That’s about as appetizing as it sounds, and by the end, this was a chore to slog through. To the point, indeed, that the free novella included in this omnibus edition, was left entirely unread. Collett does, at least, tie things up reasonably well, giving the reader some closure. It’s a pity that the groundwork laid for a memorable anti-heroine over the first two volumes, evaporates so drastically in the third.

Author: Meg Collett
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Books 1-3 of 5 in the Fear University series.

The Leine Basso series, by D.V. Berkom

  By

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

Leine (short for Madeleine) Basso quit her job as a somewhat-sanctioned government assassin, after realizing her boss was using her to carry out off-book, non-sanctioned ops for his personal gain. Oh, and he also tricked her into killing her lover, and b Initially working in private security, she is hired on a reality show, following the murder of a contestant (Book 1: Serial Date) by a serial killer out to make a point. Leine’s daughter is abducted, and it turns out the perpetrator is a shadow from her past, with a grudge.

In the next entry (Book 2: Bad Traffick), she’s the bodyguard to a Johnny Depp-like actor, Miles Fournier. A young girl, trying to escape from human traffickers, seeks Miles’s help, and Leine finds herself involved in taking down the ring. This experience convinces her to join up with former colleague Lou Stokes at SHEN, a private group committed to fighting human trafficking, and this forms the focus of both the third and fourth volumes. In the former (Book 3: The Body Market), a American girl on a weekend in Tijuana is abducted; the latter (Book 4: Cargo) sees an American girl holidaying in Bangkok abducted. While the third is perhaps the best in the series, I could probably have done without what feels very much like a repeat immediately afterward.

Berkom seems perhaps to have felt similarly, for the next volume (Book 5: The Last Deception) marks a sharp turn in direction. While visiting a friend at a Middle East refugee camp, Leine comes into possession of a flash-drive with potentially explosive contents, revealing a plot by a rogue Russian to lure the US into a Middle East war. While there is still an abducted girl who needs to be rescued (the daughter of an arms dealer), it’s more a sub-plot, rather than the main focus of the story. I confess to not yet having read the final two entries (Book 6: Dark Return and Book 7: Absolution), but based on the synopsis they are a little “rescue an abducted girl” and a little “forcing her to revisit a dark and violent past she thought she’d left behind.”

I haven’t mentioned A Killing Truth yet, either. Chronologically, it’s the first, though is more of a novella, coming in at a crisp 156 pages, and takes place at a point when Leine was still a federal employee. @@@@ It was the last one I read, though it doesn’t make too much difference. Berkom is good at referencing past events where relevant in future volumes. But there is not much in each book which requires particular explanation, and you could pick up any one as a standalone entity without real bother. I got editions 1-3 as an omnibus, then tacked on #4 and #5; discovering there is now an omnibus edition for them plus #6 was rather annoying. I wish there was some way I could “trade in” those two and get the omnibus.

That’s a technical issue, not particularly relevant to this review, however. To be honest, when I got the first book, I was expecting more globetrotting assassinations, and less stuff more befitting a PI or homicide detective, which is really what the first two books are more like. Things perk up considerably in #3, with Leine having to handle life south of the border; you’ll probably be crossing Mexico off your list of potential destinations by the time you’re done there. They do seem – consciously or not – to become more exotic and international, as they go on. #4 and #5 take place almost exclusively abroad, to the point that I felt a bit sorry for Leine’s boyfriend, who must barely see her!

That is a bit of an issue, though it’s a double-edged sword. I’m no fan of romantic dalliances in my action, but after Berkom sets them up as being passionately involved in one book, it seem odd for their relationship to be so apparently non-committal in the next. The same applies to Leine’s relationship with her daughter, which goes from estranged to deeply-devoted, and then back to “Leine seems little more than irritated her daughter has been abducted by Middle Eastern traffickers”. The stories work rather better when she’s operating purely on her own; then again, I don’t expect an assassin to be much of a “people person”.

Indeed, there’s part of me which wants to hear more about her earlier escapades, based in particular on some crisply effective excursions into termination with extreme prejudice: “Several yards away, a man smoking a cigarette stood with his back to her, an AK-47 at his side. He appeared to be alone. Without a word, she raised the gun and fired, hitting him twice in the back of the head.” As is though, this feels a bit like the adventures of Sherlock Holmes… after he had retired to take up bee-keeping.

Author: D.V. Berkom
Publisher: Duct Tape Press, available through Amazon, both as paperbacks and e-books as follows: