Tag: novel

The Fox and the Eagle by David Kantrowitz

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

I don’t typically buy fourth books in a series, but didn’t actually realize that was the case here until after I’d finished it. From what I can gather, this is set in the same universe at its predecessors, but introduces a new set of characters. It certainly works well enough as a stand-alone entity, and poses no problems read on its own.

There are really two action heroines here. Evangeline Adeler is a CIA agent, who is investigating a strange series of abductions, when she becomes its latest victim. Turns out these are carried out by the Kira’To, aliens from a nomadic asteroid called the Eagle, hundreds of light years away. Humans are being taken  in order to provide “a fresh genetic source” for the Eagle’s inhabitants – inbreeding generally being a bad thing. However, Eva is having none of that, escaping an arranged marriage and winning her freedom after prevailing in a trial by combat. The other heroine is Reveki Kitsune, a teenage girl and farmer’s daughter, who ends up the sole survivor after an attack on her uncle’s spaceship, the Fox, by members of a neo-criminal group called the Syndicate.

Due to this, she inherits the Fox, and meets Eva, who becomes part of the ship’s new crew while looking to find a way back to Earth. Their subsequent adventures take them on a raid to acquire a stash of neptunium, discovering the truth about Vecky’s parentage, and linking up with Tomoyasu, a long-time exile from the Eagle who is seeking to return there in order to stage a coup. The Eagle has a Japanese-based culture, for reasons apparently related to previous injections of abductees from there, This means Tomoyasu can take over if he can beat the current leader in a samurai duel.

It’s a decent slice of space opera, though does get rather confusing during the final battle on the Eagle, where Kantrowitz struggles to keep his multiple balls in the air. At one point, it looked like a major character had been disposed of with a single sentence, though I should have realized from this, that it was a red-herring.  Still, he has some occasionally nice turns of phrase. For example, I particularly liked this line: “The pistol made a sound like someone dropped a steel refrigerator full of beer one hundred feet from a helicopter onto a concrete surface.” I was also amused by the way Eva likes to drop Earth culture references, e.g. “Thank you, Doctor House”, which no-one else ever gets.

She’s definitely the most bad-ass of the characters, and I did feel the split focus of the narrative was a bit of a problem. Her story ends up having to share chapters with Vecky’s and Tomoyasu’s, when I’d have preferred to hear more about Eva – as a newcomer to this setting, I’d have been learning about the galaxy at large, along with her. Everything ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger, with the roles reversed: Eva is no longer the only “stranger in a strange land,” and it’s clear that further parts will be arriving. I’m somewhat interested in more, but would welcome a sharper direction on the writing.

Author: David Kantrowitz
Publisher:Kyrie Devonai Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
4 of 4 in the Reckless Faith series.

Chameleon Assassin, by B.R. Kingsolver

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

This takes place in a mildly post-apocalyptic version of Toronto. Climate change and other global issues have helped trigger a sharp increase in mutations among newborn children. Some are positive; others… not so much. The social upheaval also occurring around this time has led to a sharp divide between the haves and the have-nots, with the former able to enjoy considerably more than basic essentials such as clean air and water. The latter struggle to afford these necessities, creating a vicious cycle of deprivation. Libby Nelson rides the razor’s edge between the two worlds. While a mutant herself, she has been blessed with abilities rather than cursed with ailments; she can change her appearance and also disrupt electrical currents.

These two talents have brought her a career as a hired assassin, thief and investigator, working on behalf of various commercial or business interests, as corporations have replaced governments. Her latest commission is working for the local Chamber of Commerce – not quite the charitable group they currently are! – to look into “luvdaze”, a new drug which has recently started to flood the market, both locally and across the continent. They want to find out who is behind its production and distribution. However, the deeper Libby digs, the more dangerous her mission becomes, as she approaches the murky ares where organized crime and corporate malfeasance cross paths, with both groups very intent on playing for keeps, and taking no prisoners.

It all feels rather contrived, right from giving the heroine not one but two positive mutations, as well as a remarkable array of skills, devoted friends and physical beauty. She is even literally kind to orphans, a revelation which you’ll understand may have provoked a derisive snort. There’s heroic, and then there’s positively beatific, y’know. On the other hand, given her ability to look like absolutely anyone, it seems oddly limiting, or shows a lack of imagination, that’s she’s working as a freelance security consultant. Five minutes thought about how to use the skill, and I imagine most people would easily be able to come up with more profitable – or, indeed, more interesting – ideas.

I can’t say this is badly-written. It is, however, remarkably “meh.” There’s no any particular progression or escalation, which would potentially lead to a building sense of excitement. Things happen, but they aren’t described in a particularly exciting way on their own, and nor do they combine in a way which is greater than the sum of their parts. I only finished reading the book a couple of days ago, and it has already all but vanished from my mind. For the purposes of this review, I had to look up basic information like the name of the heroine or the city in which it took place, such was the lack of impact. Like the creature in its title, this book has faded quietly into the background, and will soon be entirely forgotten.

Author: B.R. Kingsolver
Publisher: CreateSpace, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Chameleon Assassin series.

Air and Ash, by Alex Lidell

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

There is quite a lot going on here, so please hold on while I try to summarize. The world in which this takes place has two main groups, engaged in a decade-long war: the neo-Communist People’s Republic of Tirik and the Lyron League, an alliance of six kingdoms. The smallest of these is Ashing, a seafaring country, where both men and women go to see. The latter includes Princess Greysik, an officer on one of the Ashing navy’s ships, but after one mission goes wrong, she is returned to the palace, and scheduled to become part of a marriage arranged for diplomatic reasons. Rather than suffer that, she runs away, taking the identity of Nile Ash and becoming a sailor on a Lyron League ship. But without the privileges her rank and position previously afforded her, she’s about to discover how harsh her new, entry-level position life will be.

But, wait! There’s more! For a small fraction of the population are “Gifted” – they have an affinity for, attract and with practice can manipulate, one of the five elements: air, water, metal, stone or fire. But the ability has potentially lethal side-effects, e.g. stone caller’s muscles dissolve; water caller’s blood refuses to clot. This matters because Greysik’s twin brother, Clay, is a metal caller. She has vowed to find a cure, rumoured to be found in the Diante Empire, a reclusive and largely sealed-off third faction in this world. However, Greysik is showing increasing signs of being an air caller herself. While that may potentially be very useful on the sailing ship she now inhabits, that will only be the case, if she can manage to control it before it kills her.

Phew. You’ll understand why the early stages felt a bit like I was cramming for an exam. Meanwhile, the end of volume one topples into over-ripe romance, which is no less unwelcome for having been foreshadowed since almost the very beginning. Fortunately, in between these  times, there’s a lot of good to be found here. Lidell does a particularly good job of capturing the sense of being at sea. Well, not that I have much watery experience; it just feels authentic, to the point where it seemed I could almost smell the salt in the air. Indeed, the whole royalty angle seems almost slightly superfluous, at least in this first volume; the heroine could just have been an ordinary girl with her “gift”.

There is also a nice sense of progression, with the relationship between the characters deepening, and an increasing sense of foreboding, as a Tirik prisoner provides ominous, if non-specific, predictions of doom. These do indeed come to pass over the final chapters, in spectacular fashion – though not in the way that Greysik expects. I am just hoping the late surge of romance doesn’t prove to become a major focus as we go on. This has done a good job of setting the stage, though we’ll see whether I get to circle around back to further volumes before my Kindle Unlimited subscription expires.

Author: Alex Lidell
Publisher: Danger Bearing Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the TIDES series.

M and the Last Hell Gate, by Mark William Hammond

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

In my review of the first two volumes in the trilogy, I concluded the third would only be read at a discount price. Enter my accidental purchase of Kindle Unlimited, which allowed me to pick it up at no additional cost. And, on balance, I’m fairly glad I did. It was always going to be something of a problem since, as noted previously, parts 1+2 were basically two-thirds of a single entity. Part 3 does a good job of tying things up, with a grandstand climax deep in the Tibetan Alps. There, M and her twin sister Lien, with whom she was recently re-united, have to take on bone goddess Baigujing. The demon queen has opened up a third and final hellgate, which is the Channel Tunnel in comparison to the previous, fun-sized portals to hell which M has had to close up.

It does take a while to get there, admittedly. Distractions on the road to Tibet are provided by increasing attacks from wendigos in the New York subway system; a threat to M’s adopted family; and her off-again, on-again relationship with Gotham detective Antony DeAngelo. All of these manage to provide their share of entertainment, M slicing and dicing, with the unstoppable ribbon sword, through all that get in her way. My main issue was the lack of closure. Sure, the main threat is addressed. But for something that’s supposed to be the final entry in the saga, there was no particular sense of finality. It wasn’t even clear what happened to M, who was described as “dying,” yet seemed to be clinging to life, half way up a Himalaya. The status of Lien, gravely wounded in the battle against Baigujing’s minions, was similarly uncertain, and poor Antony seemed to get forgotten about entirely.

That said, the journey to get there is quite satisfactory. Hammond has a great sense of location, whether he is describing Chinatown, the tunnels beneath New York City or the lofty heights of the Tibetan mountains. He also manages to tie together various disparate mythologies so that they mesh into a single, coherent universe. There’s clearly a hierarchy in hell and, as in the first two volumes, it’s a world which is interesting to visit, though you certainly wouldn’t want to live there. This is written with a dry sense of wit, which helps overcome the suspension of disbelief needed for the scenario to make sense, e.g. that the wholesale slaughter of subway workers would not trigger a mass shutdown of the network.

It’s still a solid page-turner, and I certainly can’t complain about the climax, which is exactly the epic, grand-scale confrontation expected, and to which only the written word can do justice. Well, that or a $200 million budget. I’m happy enough with this one, even if I suspect I’ll have to wait for a hypothetical fourth volume to achieve any kind of resolution.

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

Misfit Lil Rides In + Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope, by Chap O’Keefe

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Misfit Lil Rides In: Literary rating: ★★★, Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆
Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope: Literary rating: ★★★★, Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

The Western is typically among the most macho of genres, and this applies to the world of pulp fiction as much as to movies. There are exceptions: Werner has covered quite a few in the past, such as The Complete Adventures of Senorita Scorpion, and I recently dipped my toe in the genre, with the first book of Chrissy Wissler’s Cowboy Cat series, Women’s Justice. While set in the past, that did have a contemporary feel to it: Cat felt like a 21st-century heroine in an antiquated world. That seems significantly less the case for Miss Lilian Goodnight, despite her nickname of “Misfit Lil”. These two stories feel like a throwback to the golden age of pulp. There is no obvious agenda beyond entertaining the reader, which is almost refreshing. They’re quick, uncomplex, and occasionally slightly disreputable reads. Nothing wrong with these elements, I should stress.

Lil is the daughter of cattle rancher Ben Goodnight, who has resisted all attempts by her father, a widower, to turn her into a proper young lady. In particular, he sent her to a Boston boarding school; rather than uplifting Lillian, she succeeded in corrupting the other pupils, and we sent home in disgrace, earning her nickname. Since then, she has been riding free, helping out on the ranch, with occasional stunts that bring her into conflict with the local authority, such as showing off her pistol marksmanship on the local Main Street. “Once she hammered five four-inch nails halfways into a boardwalk post, then drove each of ’em in with a bullet from twenty paces.” The local sheriff was unimpressed, locking her up overnight, until her long-suffering father bailed her out. But Lil gained another nickname: “Princess o’ Pistoleers”.

Beyond the heroine, the players do overlap, in particular, a co-lead in both books is Jackson Farraday, local scout and guide, who takes on commissions both for the army and for civilians seeking to cross the dangerous territory. She has a crush on him, though acknowledges its futility, with him being twice her age (doing the math based off this and other information, it makes Lil about twenty, and Jackson almost forty), and he similarly has no interest in her for romantic purposes. But he certainly respects her skills and bravery, and they have no hesitation in helping each other out when needed. Which is the case in both of these novels, with Farraday being falsely accused of murder in each.

The first, Misfit Lil Rides In, sees him framed for killing the wife of store owner Axel Boorman. While Axel was actually the killer, in a fit of jealous rage, with the help of the local law, Farraday is blamed, and a posse sent after him. With Lil’s aid, the posse is fended off, though she is arrested, and Jackson believed to have fallen to his doom. He is actually still alive, but ends up captured by the local Apaches, so both are in serious trouble. Even after Jackson escapes, he falls foul of an Army officer with a grudge against him, and ends up behind bars too. Lil needs to free herself, break her friend out, then find some way of proving the truth – not least about Boorman’s scheme to sell guns to the Indians – and convince the authorities to take action.

I think my major surprise was how relatively even it felt like the book was split between Jackson and Lil. While Jackson isn’t a bad character, he is fairly generic as Western heroes go. I was considerably more interested in Lil, and every page that detailed her colleague’s adventures felt like it was wasted, especially as the whole book is under two hundred pages. I almost found myself speed-reading the Faraday heavy sections, to get back to what Lil was doing. Outside of the gun-battle against the posse, that was largely using her brain rather than her pistols. But of particular note here is an author’s afterword, Heroines of the Wilder West, in which O’Keefe discusses some of Lil’s predecessors and inspirations, such as Hurricane Nell and Denver Doll. I sense a rabbit-hole for future exploration, and may have to watch Along Came Jones as well, for its proto-heroine.

However, any issues are well addressed in Misfit Lil Cheats the Hangrope; it seems O’Keefe has grown more comfortable with his characters by this, the most recent entry. While Faraday plays a significant role here, Lil feels more the focus, and the story flows around her in a fluid way. It begins when Lil helps rescue a wagon train of settlers headed west, who make an ill-informed decision to try and cross the mountains as the weather comes down. She gets Jackson a job as co-guide on the train, but the previous sole guide, Luke Reiner, is far from happy about it. When the corpse of a young, female settler turns up drowned in a creek, suspicion falls on Farraday, because Lil isn’t the only woman to find him attractive. It’s up to her to find the necessary proof that will exonerate her friend, before Reiner succeeds in whipping up a lynch mob.

There’s a good sense of escalation here, and it’s a solid page-turner, with each incident providing a natural progression into the next. It works both as a Western and as a whodunnit mystery, with the killer’s identity shrouded in uncertainty. As for the cause of death… Well, that might be one of those “slightly disreputable” elements mentioned earlier, even if there are worse ways to go, it has to be said! Again though, Lil seems to be almost loathe to use her shooting skills. To me, the point of guns is that they are a great equalizer, allowing the weak (or “weaker sex,” to use a slightly pejorative term!) to stand up against the strong. But over both volumes, I’m not sure there was any real demonstration of the sure-shot abilities described early in the first book.

This is a relatively minor complaint, however. These may be stories, rather than Great Literature; yet there’s an absolute lack of apparent pretension to the approach, which I appreciated. If the intention of the author was, as discussed above, simply to provide a good yarn that entertains the reader, I’d say they accomplish that mission. 

Author: Chap O’Keefe
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Books 1 and 7 in the Misfit Lil series.
I was provided copies of both volumes, in exchange for an honest review.

Torn Asunder, by Michael Todd

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

Katie Maddison is just your average chemistry college student, until she gets kidnapped for use by a Satanic cult, intent on summoning a demonic entity. Fortunately, she is saved from a fate worse than death, and is rescued just in time by a group of warriors known as “The Damned”. However, by that point, said demonic entity – going by the name of Pandora – has embedded herself inside Katie. The good news is, it’s less possession than symbiosis, with Pandora largely happy to chill and pass snarky comment. Though her presence acts as a supernatural power-up, enhancing her host’s strength, speed and healing abilities. The fact Katie is not under control of her dark passenger gets her an invite to join the group on their mission “to protect the uninformed from reality.” As their creed goes, “The sheep can sleep at night, because we don’t.”

The glaring issue here is the complete lack of threat the scenario presents. There are plenty of hints that Pandora is a powerful demon – perhaps even one of the “Seventy-Two”, the top echelon of Hell’s denizens. Yet, in this volume, she proves to be an entirely benign presence – or, as mentioned, very helpful to Katie in her new career. There’s certainly nothing which justifies her telling Pandora, “You are seriously one of the evillest people I have ever met.” She’s a bigger threat to others of her own kind, even helping Katie exorcise a lesser demon from one of her colleagues. Now, I suspect she may be playing a long game – this is an eight-volume series, so virtually everything here is going to be a long game. But combine the demon’s inaction and the relative ease with which the Damned take out virtually every other hell-spawn they meet [the only significant injury suffered is closer to suicide by demon], and you’ve got something in desperate need of additional peril. I would settle for simply extra challenge, since Katie breezes through everything with hardly any apparent effort.

Going by the notes at the end, it’s not quite clear how much Todd actually wrote, of what seems a collaborative effort. He says he was the creator and main script-writer, but “I’m not the person who was responsible for turning the script into the longer story.” Still, his name is on the cover, so he gets the blame. Debra Dunbar showed how demonic possession can be handled in an entertaining way, and Todd [perhaps better known under his Michael Anderle name, for the Kurtherian Gambit series] could learn a lot from Dunbar. Both in establishing your Satanic presence, which here comes over as little beyond a slightly more foul-mouthed version of Paris Hilton, and then in creating a credible threat for your protagonist. Instead, it plays a bit like an entry-level tutorial for a video-game, and certainly falls rather short of the “Supernatural Action Adventure Opera” touted in the book’s sub-title.

Author: Michael Todd
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 8 in the Protected by the Damned series.

In Cold Blood, by Mark Dawson

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

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A woman called Beatrix, who has made her living as a killer for a shadowy group, find herself betrayed by them, with her husband killed and daughter kidnapped. Escaping their clutches years later, she vows to take revenge on them, one at a time, working up the chain to find the man who ordered the heinous deeds. Yeah, this sounds just a little like Kill Bill, doesn’t it? Indeed, the cover sports a black and yellow color scheme, clearly designed to evoke the Bride’s jumpsuit – and at no point does the heroine here wield a Samurai sword. It’s all so blatant that I can only presume it was done deliberately, though there are certainly some differences.

Not the least of which is the cancer from which Beatrix Rose is suffering, putting an expiration date on her quest. She also has rather more official sanction, since the group in question was part of British intelligence. Since they’re keen for the group’s former head, Control, to be taken out of play, due to what he knows, she still receives help from them, albeit in a thoroughly deniable way. Much of this book is concerned with the hijacking of a cargo ship by Somali pirates, since one of her targets is working as security on the vessel; they’re subsequently held hostage by Islamic terrorists. This complicates her mission significantly, and the action mostly consists of Beatrix infiltrating Somalia, in order to extract her vengeance under cover of the confusion caused by a SEAL rescue mission.

I liked the heroine, even if the nature of her grievance is kept somewhat obscure (I would presume it is revealed in more detail, either later in the series or in one of the three prequels. Alternatively, it may be revealed in another of the author’s works, the John Milton series). She is motivated by a fierce love for her daughter, with whom she has been re-united and whom she is now training – I suspect this will come into play down the road, too – and there’s absolutely no doubt about her competence. Given her ticking clock, there’s no time for romance here, but it still feels like the story is being stretched out; the pages devoted to the hostages add little or nothing to the story we care about.

To be honest, at $4.49 (or $22.45 for the five-ebook set), it’s not particularly good value, considering it comes in at less than 190 pages, excluding the inevitable preview of volume 2. I only picked it up following an accidental purchase of Kindle Unlimited for six months. If you have that, it is probably worth a read, and if time permits, I may end up going deeper into the series, since further volumes (mostly $4.99 each) are included in my KU subscription. It’s not dull, certainly. However, the majority of people are likely better off watching Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which offers just as much mayhem, for considerably less time and expense.

Author: Mark Dawson
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Beatrix Rose series.

The Dublin Hit, by J.E. Higgins

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

What’s most unusual about this book is its heroine. For many years, Sauwa Catcher operated as a killer for the racist South African government during the apartheid years, hunting down their enemies at home at abroad, and gaining the justifiable nickname ‘Angel of Death’ as a result. Yeah. This is not exactly the kind of person with whom you should expect to sympathize. Indeed, generally someone like this would be the villain of the piece, yet Higgins manages to make it work, far better than you would expect.

This takes place not long after the fall of that regime in the nineties, when South Africa set up a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, to come to terms with the crimes previously committed. Catcher had been operating in the UK, and with her support network gone, accepts a commission from a Northern Irish paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force. In exchange for funding Sauwa’s vanishing off the grid, they want her to assassinate a leading Republic of Ireland police officer, who has been feeding intel to the UVF’s mortal enemies, the IRA. But doing so will bring down not just the wrath of the Irish police, but also the IRA. Additionally, her South African past is trying to catch up with Sauwa, as one of the most notorious tools of the old government, and a team has been sent over to bring her to justice. They’re in for quite a hard task.

So, how do you make the tool of an infamously racist regime sympathetic? Mostly, it’s by carefully crafting her background. Sauwa in not South African, but came from Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe. That country had its similarly racist government replaced with something arguably worse, in the shape of dictator Robert Mugabe, and she saw her family slaughtered in the wholesale violence which followed. Sauwa became a refugee, moved to South Africa, and vowed to do whatever she could to prevent the same thing happening there. That started her down the current career path. It’s a case where you may not agree with the character’s decisions, yet you can see the logic in them. Even the black soldiers hunting her, former “terrorists” themselves, know where she’s coming from, and are similarly haunted by their experiences. One of them says, “I feel more akin to her – another fighter in the trenches.”

It also helps that Sauwa only kills when necessary. Though, of course, her definition of “necessary” is perhaps different to yours and mine! There is only one extended action sequence, a night battle between Sauwa and an IRA unit on a beach. That’s mostly because she is simply better than everyone else in terms of experience and tactics, that while there are other conflicts, they are over pretty quickly. Her behaviour is as much about, for example, being aware of her environment and making sure she is not walking into a trap.  Here, Higgins’s military experience does seem to prove useful, and strikes a nice balance between not enough explanation and over-burdening the reader with unnecessary detail. I’m very much interested in seeing where the story goes from here.

Author: J.E. Higgins
Publisher: Mercenary Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Sauwa Catcher series.

Russia Girl by Kenneth Rosenberg

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

Natalia Nicolaeva in a 19-year-old, living with her parents on a farm in Transnistria, which I imagine most people would be hard-pushed to find on a map. Per Wikipedia, “it is a breakaway de facto state in a narrow strip of land between the river Dniester and the Ukrainian border that is internationally recognized as part of Moldova.” Now you know. She lets her friend, Sonia, convince her into taking up a job offer overseas which – probably inevitably – turns out to be the gateway to them becoming the victims of sex traffickers, imprisoned in a Turkish brothel. Natalia manages to escape, though pays a heavy price, and the man in charge of the gang, Goran Zigic, has not forgotten her either.

When his revenge reaches back across the continent to Transnistria, Natalia has to defend her family. Fortunately, she has an ally in Gregor Multinovic, a shady individual who has taken up residence locally, and about whom any number of whispered rumours circulate. He knows of Zigic, and helps prepare Natalia for what she needs to do, as she takes the fight to her enemy. This is likely a necessary angle, in order to establish an ordinary farm girl as a plausible opponent to the Serbian mafia, and I felt Rosenberg handled this very well, without letting Gregor take over for his heroine. It does still require a bit of suspension of disbelief in some elements, e.g. Zigic not bother to hide or beef up security at his home after Natalia’s first attempt. But it’s no more of a problem than you’ll find in many films.

It does take quite a while to get to that point. The first third is concerned with her initial capture, abuse and eventual escape. It all seems almost scarily plausible; by and large, it likely reflects the sad fate of many Eastern European women every year. The middle portion covers the return to her village, training under her mentor (though this is largely skipped), and subsequent return to Istanbul. Again, however, considering this is intended to be an origin story, that’s fine, and the eventual payoff is solid and acceptable. While the first in a series, it wraps up neatly without a cliffhanger or loose ends, which is always nice.

In terms of its setting, I was reminded a little of how Killing Eve‘s Villanelle came to be, though it’s clear that Natalia does not have anything like the same psychopathic streak. There is something of the same sense of a butterfly emerging from a caterpillar, in Natalia’s transformation through the hand of fate, from someone whose life is the epitome of peace and quiet. By the time we reach the end, it’s clear that has gone forever, and it’s that sweeping character arc, along which the reader travels with her, that is perhaps this book’s most outstanding feature.

Author: Kenneth Rosenberg
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Natalia Nicolaeva Thriller series

Aesop by Michele Packard

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

Matti Baker has always been… unusual. She was adopted as a child, and subsequently discovered her mother was an FBI special agent who died while giving birth to Matti on a mission. She breezed through high school, and after graduation, began training to become a contractor for a private agency, carrying out “special” tasks, under the (rather vague, and entirely deniable) auspices of the US government. On successful completion of the four-year course, Matti begins missions, such as neutralizing terrorists. She also meets Tom, who becomes her husband and they have three kids – triplets born on September 11, 2001. But, in 2015, the tables are turned, and Matti becomes the target for some highly-motivated and thoroughly unpleasant enemies, who are seeking vials in her possession, and won’t take “No” for an answer.

This is definitely a slog. The vials, for example, are mentioned early on, as having been passed down to Matti by her mother. Yet they are then entirely forgotten for a good twenty-five years. Then, two-thirds of the way into the book, she’s captured and immediately interrogated about their whereabouts. I had, literally, completely forgotten about them by that point, since they were barely mentioned. “We can get to the vials in a sec,” it says on page six. Doesn’t happen. We never do discover what they’re supposed to contain, what their importance is, or why an FBI special agent thought it would be a good idea to bequeath them to her ten-year-old daughter. Given their position at the heart of much of the plot, this seems unforgivable.

The style is equally clunky. It relies heavily on a long series of pop-culture references to music, movies and TV shows. In the course of less than half a page, we get all of the following:

  • I swear I felt like he was thinking about that Nine Inch Nails Closer song as he stared at me.
  • I felt like Olivia Pope in Scandal.
  • Just like in The Italian Job, we had orchestrated every little detail.

These get shoehorned in there, because… Actually, I’m not sure why: we’re not talking obscurist entities that will prove the author’s street-cred. I speak here, as someone who likes Nine Inch Nails. Other sections obsess over interior decor in a way that feels more like house porn. Then again, everything in Matti’s life, for her husband and children through to her pair of impeccably-trained attack dogs, are utterly perfect in every aspect. Why should her living quarters be any different?

The characterizations here, in particular the heroine, all really come over as little more than wish-fulfillment, with a leading lady who appears to possess no weaknesses, flaws or faults – in other words, anything which might make her interesting. The term “Mary Sue” gets bandied about quite a lot with regard to action heroines; probably a little too frequently. However, this may be one of the cases where it deserves to be applied.

Author: Michele Packard
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Aesop series.