Tag: novel

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

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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:

Eye of the Colossus, by Nicole Grotepas

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

This probably picked up half a star in the final couple of chapters, because up until the end, the plot seemed to have some huge deficiencies. While most of these were certainly addressed by the final resolution, it still left a rather questionable taste in my literary mouth [if you see what I mean!]. The heroine is Holly Drake, who has been unjustly sent to prison after killing her abusive husband. Unfortunately, he was a police officer, and some of his dubious colleagues helped ensure Holly went to jail for it. On release, her previous career as a teacher is no longer an option, and she’s largely thrown on to the charity of her sister, Meg, also a cop.

It’s Meg who gives Holly a lead to potential employment, albeit of a shady nature. But Holly has few options, and has to accept the job, which involves retrieving a necklace which has been stolen from its rightful owner, before it can be whisked away. To complete the task, she needs to put together a team with the various skills necessary, and also acquire a piece of tech called the Skelty Key, which is needed to defuse the security around their target. For someone with no background in the underworld, all of this poses a significant challenge, even discounting entirely the actual job itself. [Why she was hired at all is one of the eventually explained plot deficiencies]

This is nominally science-fiction, taking place in a six-moon system around Ixion, a gas giant. There are several different races, in addition to expat Earthlings like Holly, and the relationship between them is occasionally fractious. However, I never got any particular sense of “alienness”: you could rewrite this to be on Earth with almost no SF elements. There’s also not much in the way of an antagonist here. Early on, the “Shadow Coalition” appear to be trying to stop Holly from carrying out her mission; this aspect seems to peter out, as if the opposition got bored and drifted away. This combination perhaps turns it into more of a “crime procedural” than SF; that’s less criticism than an observation.

What is my main criticism is its sluggish pacing. You’re more than 90% of the way through before you get to the heist which is the book’s focus, and it’s a bit of a drag to reach that point. While self-contained enough overall, it’s clearly a set-up for future volumes, and I must confess, these are somewhat intriguing. There’s some stuff which happens to Holly late on, toughening up her character from the rather whiny one she has been to that point, and we also discover the harrowing circumstances leading to her incarceration. I just can’t help feeling we could have got to the same place considerably more economically, in about one-third of the page-count, and we would all have been considerably better off.

Author: Nicole Grotepas
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Drake Job series.

Into the Dark, by J.A. Sutherland

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

Alexis Carew is a third-generation settler on the planet Dalthus, and the ward of her grandfather, her parents having been killed in an accident. But her future is murky, for Dalthusian law prohibits women from inheriting property, such as her family’s estates. With the alternative being a marriage Alexis really doesn’t want, the 15-year-old girl instead signs up to become a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Navy (or, at least, the space version thereof), on the interstellar sloop Merlin. However, this is largely just exchanging one set of problems for another, whether winning the respect of her colleagues, fending off the too admiring ones, or adapting to the harsh life of outer space – and, stranger still, the “darkspace” which facilitates interstellar travel. And then there are the pirates…

This isn’t the first SF/sailing combination to feature a female protagonist, apparently being quite similar to David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. The first volume of that is still sitting in my “to read” list, so while I can’t directly compare them, Werner has you covered for a review of Weber’s book. They definitely seem to have a mutual inspiration in C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series, with a futuristic spin. Here, I’m not certain quite how well it works: some of the sailing elements definitely seem forced, even with the hand-waving nature of “darkspace”. For it basically behaves in whatever way is necessary for the plot to be jammed into Sutherland’s nautical peghole.

That’s probably the main weakness: it’s one especially apparent in the early going, when Alexis first goes into space, until my brain seemed to get used to it. On the plus side, she does make for an admirable heroine, one who uses her wits more than her fists. As such, the action quotient is fairly low; there’s a steep learning curve here, for both Alexis and the reader, as we all learn the mechanics of how things work in this strange universe. When that is finally out of the way, the energy ramps up: in particular, when a ship captured by the Merlin, is being taken back to port with Alexis at the helm, when the captured crew mutiny and retake the vessel.

This sequence likely the action highlight of this first volume, the rest being mostly long-distance space battles. Though with war breaking out right at the end, it’s likely things escalate further in subsequent volumes. Although the supporting characters are nicely drawn, I could perhaps have done with more of an antagonist.  The nearest this book has to offer never meets Alexis directly – his son being the closest she comes. Again, I suspect this angle may be further developed down the road. There’s enough promise shown here to keep the door open to continuing the series. But I should probably read On Basilisk Station first, as I suspect one series of pseudo-aquatic sci-fi is probably enough!

Author: J.A. Sutherland
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Alexis Carew series.

Lachmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: The Jeanne D’Arc of India by Michael White

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

“Fear not,” she retorted with animation, “that I will suffer the indignity of capture at their hands. My dead body they may find, but the spirit of the Rani of Jhansi will have carried more than one of them to an accounting before the great tribunal of justice.”

“With the exception of a white turban, she was attired in a blood-red uniform from head to foot.”

I’m surprised how sympathetic a portrayal this novel has of Queen Lachmi Bai (as it’s spelled here), considering when it was published. For this came out in 1901, a point at which India was still firmly under British rule – heck, Queen Victoria was on the throne as the year began. Yet Lachmi Bai is very much the heroine, portrayed respectfully, to an almost idealized degree. For instance, it begins with the rebel massacre of British troops and their families at Jhansi. Yet this is depicted as being in explicit defiance of her command to secure them as prisoners.

It’s a mix of historical fact and pure speculation, the latter being particularly evident in a fairly platonic love triangle between the Queen, and two of her (entirely fictitious, I suspect) lieutenants, the Hindu Prasad Singh and the Muslim Ahmad Khan. The latter is the villain of the piece. His blood-lust is responsible for the massacre, and he is depicted in phrases such as “the expression of his mouth and chin denoted cruelty and treachery—the latter, perhaps, an accomplishment rather than a failing to the Oriental mind.” [While there is an argument to be made here for Islamophobia in his depiction, given the highly positive way Lachmi Bai and Prasad are portrayed, accusations of general “racism” seem lazy]

However, even he spends much of the middle portion working faithfully in support of the queen’s mission to free her country from the British. Speaking of whom, there is one scene early in the book told from the point of view of the Empire. But thereafter, they are largely referred to as “the Foreigners,” again demonstrating the Indo-centric viewpoint of the novel. While they ultimately prevail, this is not reported with any sense of triumph. Indeed, White is remarkably prophetic, Lachmi Bai saying, almost with her final breath: “Not forever shall their horsemen ride triumphantly through the land. A day will come when their law shall be no longer obeyed, and our temples and palaces rise anew from their ruins.” 46 years later, India did indeed become an independent country.

“But even if defeat is again the will of God, if die we must; is it not better to perish as warriors should, in a feat of arms upon which the eyes of our enemies will gaze with marvel, than as wild beasts hunted through the jungle?”

“Her horse leaped forward, straight for Sindhia’s guns.”

The story told here bypasses her entire life and marriage, joining proceedings after she has already become a widow. In the early stages, Lachmi Bai also takes a back seat, with the storyline revolving around Ahmad and Prasad’s rivalry. The former manipulates the latter into believing the Queen is having an affair with young officer Dost Ali, and also the Queen into believing Prasad is plotting against her. This leads to his exile for the middle of the book, until returning after the fall of Jhansi, as the Queen is making her escape from the city. Though I must say, Ahmad’s eventual fate is rather underwhelming, in a “Cersei Lannister” kind of way. Without getting too spoilery, hopes he would meet the point of Lachmi Bai’s sword proved unfulfilled.

The latter half focuses more on the Queen, as fate deals her cards both good and bad. It’s made clear the military reverses suffered are not her fault, or in any way reflect her bravery. Her commanders are to blame, along with a tendency for her forces to break under pressure. Yet, as the quote above says, she would rather have a glorious death than a subservient life. The comparisons to Jeanne D’Arc are understandable, and made explicit: “A second Jeanne D’Arc, as valiant in battle, more subtle in council than the Maid of Orleans, moved by the same passionate love for her country, had cast in their teeth a wager of defiance, to stand until either they were driven from her state, or she had perished.”

Of course, we know how the story ends, and White gives Lachmi Bai the heroic send-off she deserves: “She drew the folds of a shawl over her face to hide her death agony, and again lay down. The blackness of night grew deeper, the silence more intense. Presently, strange, warrior forms seemed to appear from the unknown and filled the Rani’s tent. One supremely beautiful figure, in dazzling raiment, came forth to enfold the dying woman in her arms.” It’s surprisingly touching, and a decent end to a story which has survived the passage of almost 120 years better than I expected

Author: Michael White
Publisher: J. F. Taylor & Company, available as an e-book for free from Project Gutenberg.

Blades of Magic by Terah Edun

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

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Fairchild and her family have become persona non grata after her father’s execution by the Algardis Empire. He was a renowned fighter and commander, so his alleged desertion makes no sense to Sarah. Regardless, his wife and daughter are now pariahs to the local community. Even with Sarah’s unparalleled fighting skills, both natural and magical, her employment opportunities are limited, to say the least.

Which is how she ends up acting as the guard at a warehouse full of shady artifacts, owned by the even shadier Cormar. There, she meets the scholarly Ezekiel Crane, who helps Sarah as she begins to search for the truth about her father’s fate – facts which someone is keen to cover-up, at savage cost to our heroine. Finding out what happened requires her to join the Mercenaries’ Guild, and head with them into the teeth of a ferocious battle being waged by Algardis against a rebel group, led by eight high-powered mages.

I suspect the problems here are mostly related to reading this as a one-off. For example, the entire first half of the book, with Sarah working for Cormar, serves absolutely no purpose except to introduce her to Ezekiel. Now, I’m thinking it’s quite likely there is a payoff further into the series, with the artifacts he collects eventually proving to be useful in the battle against the mages. But for the purpose of this book, it’s a complete dead-end. If a story is going to be crippled in this way by dividing it into four parts, maybe it shouldn’t be divided into four parts? It certainly does nothing to encourage me to pick up the three subsequent volumes.

When Sarah enlists, in order to find the man she believes holds the key to her father’s death, it does improve. There’s a nice dynamic at play between her abilities, which are almost at the superhero level, and her need to remain below the radar. I was impressed by the final battle, though it’s less a battle, than a rout, with the enemy wizards using the magical equivalent of drone strikes against the mercenaries. And I also liked the “sun mage” Sarah encounters: she is basically the occult equivalent of a nuclear weapon, and may be even more bad-ass.

At the end though, I was left unsatisfied. I appreciate it’s a difficult balancing act, when you offer a cheap introduction to a series, because you need to lure people in to buy the next part. Although not alone in this, Edun doesn’t apparently realize that the best way to accomplish this is simply to give the reader the best book you can. Baiting them with set-ups left unrealized and a story that just ends, rather than coming to a natural finish, is more likely to lead to a sense of unfulfilled dissatisfaction. And that’s no way to get anyone to fork over more money.

Author: Terah Edun
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Crown Service series.

No Safe Haven, by Kyla Stone

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

I’ve read enough action heroine novels now to be more than familiar with the tropes of the genre. For example, I can do without ever reading another novel which puts fantasy creatures like elves and magic into a modern-day setting. The zombie apocalypse is another scenario which has been done to death. I mean, we even abandoned The Walking Dead, and watching that was pretty much muscle memory. However, this novel proves there’s still life in the genre, offering some interesting twists on it.

Though, admittedly, it’s not strictly a zombie scenario. More a 28 Days Later one, with a highly-infectious global pandemic, transmitted by bites, etc. which cause the victims to become extremely aggressive. On the fringes of this is Raven Nakamura, a young girl who is rather disaffected with her current life. She lives in the middle of nowhere, helping her taciturn father run the Haven Wildlife Refuge, a private zoo in Northern Georgia. Mom has already bailed, and Raven is on the verge of doing the same.

Then terrorists release the Hydra virus, and when her father becomes among the infected. Raven is suddenly thrown onto her own resources. On the plus side, she had always been taught survival skills, so is in better shape than most people to survive the collapse of the food distribution network. On the other hand, most people don’t have to deal with a group of bikers, who descend on the Haven Wildlife Refuge. If they’d just looted the place and left, that might not have been too bad. But when they start shooting the animals, Raven have had enough. And so have the animals.

For, to mis-quote Chekhov, “If in the first act you have large, genetically engineered wolves and an irritable tiger, then in a following one they should be let loose.” Such is the case here: right from the moment Vlad the tiger arrives, you just know someone is going to end up becoming a gratifying buffet. The animals probably do more of the actual violence than Raven, which is why the kick-butt quotient is relatively low. However, this is made up for in its impact, particularly the emotional toll it taken on our heroine, who really just wants the bikers to leave her alone.

While set in the same universe as the author’s Lost Sanctuary series, it seems to operate as a standalone entity. I must admit, this was a story that crept up on me. I’m usually quite strict about how much I read in a sitting, but confess that this was one where “Just one more chapter” happened on a number of occasions. Seeing the entirety of Lost Sanctuary on sale for 99 cents, the day I write this review, became a no-brainer purchase, regardless of whether or not it qualifies for the site. Now, I just have to find the time to read it!

Author: Kyla Stone
Publisher: Paper Moon Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
A side story in the 5-volume Lost Sanctuary series.

The Zemlya Conspiracy by Cameron O’Neill

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

Zemlya is a gigantic closed city, in the middle of the Arctic tundra, its ten million inhabitants entirely cut off from the outside world. Indeed, there may not be an outside world: no-one knows, for the authorities hunt down and terminate anyone who tries to leave. One of their hunters is Kate Thorsten, an E-type agent, who has been brought up, and biomechanically enhanced, to be a ruthless tool of the state. She’s recalled from the tundra to go undercover in one of the Zemlya’s slums, her mission to take out a rebel base. However, an encounter with a young girl triggers a series of events which cause Kate to question everything she has been told. But are her new-found doubts genuine, or is she still being manipulated to serve the agenda of others, such as her department’s director, Matthew Wingett?

It’s an interesting combination of elements which are familiar from elsewhere: the undercover agent who might also be a double-agent from Total Recall, for example, or the artificially-limited life-span of Logan’s Run. Though the latter aspect – which you’d think would be kind of important – is treated much more as an afterthought than a major plot-point. As depicted, the overall scenario perhaps also poses more questions than answers. There’s an explanation offered for why Zemlya is the way it is. It kinda makes sense, yet with regard to how the city functions, I have some fairly major questions regarding resources. As well as, how was all knowledge of the way things used to be, so effectively repressed and isolation enforced – especially in a technologically-advanced culture. This was a significant impediment to my enjoyment, as I kept finding myself going, “But what about…?”

On the plus side, Kate makes for an interesting heroine. Perhaps keyed by that limited life-span (“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long”), she’s very driven, though her hypernatural abilities does make most combat a foregone conclusion. There are probably only two battles where there’s any sense of threat: one in the middle, against another E-type; and then, the climax, after Kate has finally made her decision and committed to a radical course of action. I also liked the lack of romance – she’s highly work-oriented – and the way the motives for everyone, even those you could class as villains, make sense. You may not agree with their actions, yet you can see the logic which led to those choices being seen as appropriate.

It ends in a decent way too, tying up the loose ends while opening the door to future exploration. I genuinely don’t know where the story will go from the point at which it ends here, and am curious to find out. The sequel was on sale for 99 cents recently, and only my large virtual stack of “to read” stopped me from picking it up.

Author: Cameron O’Neill
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Zemlya Chronicles.