Tag: novel

Parse Galaxy Omnibus, Volume 1 by Kate Sheeran Swed

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

Sloane Tarnish is not exactly your typical bounty-hunter. Indeed, she’s training for a medical degree when her shady uncle, Vin, talks her into helping out with a little job. Craving excitement, she agrees, and finds herself posing as the wife of a Fleet officer, seeking to intercept a data key with potentially very explosive information on it. A year later, Vin’s ship turns up without him on it, and she finds herself the new captain, leading the crew as they try to figure out where Vin has gone, and why he vanished. To fund this search, Sloane takes up the bounty-hunting mantle.

Given this is an eight-volume series (not including the prequel which forms part of this set), it’s no spoiler to say, this does not end with our heroine being re-united with Uncle Vin. But if that does not happen, quite a lot else does. Sloane gets embroiled in a fight for power between the two major forces in her part of the galaxy. There’s the Galactic Fleet, who keep the peace, and the Cosmic Trade Federation, who run commerce. But the Fleet appear to be attempting to consolidate power in their hands, and the data key Vin liberated may contain incriminating evidence to prove that. Or it may not. But a lot of people are very interested in Sloane’s efforts to locate it and her uncle.

Among them are Commander of the Galactic Fleet, Gareth Fortune. He’s the man from whom she took the data key in the prequel, but he becomes rather more sympathetic to her over the following two volumes. Fortune has problems of his own, because he is being set up as the man in charge of the planned galactic coup. To prove his innocence, needs Sloane to find proof of the real perpetrator. On the other hand, there is Federation Coordinator Striker, whose enmity towards Sloane is considerably more persistent. Especially after she rejects his offer of work, then turns around and employs the bounty target she was supposed to be delivering to him.

This appears to be on permanent offer as a Kindle freebie, and you certainly can’t complain about that price. Despite the prequel, it still feels like I was missing some information. For example, Sloane has apparently been outside this galaxy – to our one, for she brought back coffee to hers! However, this should not get in the way of the main plot which, although unresolved, is decent, and ends without excessive cliff-hangers. I liked the occasional moments of dry humour, and the heroine is a likable sort, if perhaps a little more passive than I would have expected. The burgeoning romance between her and Fortune is a little obvious too. It still made for a pleasant enough read, and I could see myself dipping deeper into the series, if my unread pile were not its inevitable self.

Author: Kate Sheeran Swed
Publisher: Spells & Spaceships Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Collects Books 0-2 of 8 in the Parse Galaxy series.

Sheriff Bride: Jo’s Story, by Brooksie Cox

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Literary rating: ★★ Kick-butt quotient: ☆

This is the second in the tetralogy of novellas originally marketed as the Sheriff Bride series, from the small press Lovely Christian Romance, and each written by a different author. It follows the fortunes of the four firearms-capable Hardin sisters; the first book explains how they came to share the position of “sheriff” (actually, town marshal) in the fictional western Texas community of Waterhole in the later 1870s. From the beginning, it was predictable that each book would focus on one of the sisters’ finding her life partner; and the identity of those partners for the middle two sisters, Jo and Dan, was already adumbrated in the series opener. (The books definitely need to be read in order.) Our story here takes place a bit over six months after the preceding one. In terms of both general literary vision and prose style, the two have a lot in common, although the editing and proofreading is much better here –there were no continuity issues, and no bracketed editorial comments surviving into the printed text. There’s little information available online about Brooksie Cox, but this seems to have been her first publication, and one of only two (Goodreads lists four, but two of those are omnibus editions that apparently each include one of the other two). With no author’s or publisher’s note(s), we don’t know the genesis of this series and its unusual multiple-author structure; but I’d hazard the guess that the idea may have come from the much more prolific author of the first book, Teresa Ives Lilly (who seems to be the publisher’s mainstay house author, and maybe the actual owner), and that Cox modeled her own prose style on that of the more experienced Lilly. Given that the latter’s is verbally repetitious and averse to using pronouns where they would make the text smoother, the reproduction of both of these features here isn’t felicitous. :-( Second-oldest sister Jo (Josephina) is an avid animal lover, and the most tender-hearted of the sisters. (Though she’s a good shot, her hunting was often hampered, to her father’s great displeasure, by her reluctance to pull the trigger on an animal.) Waterhole’s storekeeper, Tom, is similarly soft-hearted (the first book let us know that he prefers to catch a fly by hand and release it outside rather than swat it!), and it wasn’t surprising that he and Jo were attracted to each other. By the time of this second installment, she’s running an impromptu amateur animal hospital from the back room of the store. Here, there are two intertwining plot strands: one involving Tom’s younger (and much more spoiled and self-centered) brother Henry, who’s been a trapper in Canada for years, but shows up early on with a young Indian woman, Morning Glory, in tow as his personal slave, and the other involving a pair of not-very-bright would-be train robbers. My rating for the first book was two and ½ stars. Several aspects of this second one, though, don’t work as well for me in terms of realism, and I wasn’t able to give it more than two stars. First, while (for at least some Native American peoples) tribal law may have allowed the fathers of young women to sell or gamble them away as slaves, by the late 1870s U.S. law didn’t countenance that. So the community’s project of buying Morning Glory’s freedom was unnecessary. Given the long warfare between Texans and the Comanches, and the ill-feeling of many whites in that era towards Indians, as well as Texas’ secession in the previous decade with defense of slavery as one of its officially-avowed reasons, the community’s unanimous sympathy with Morning Glory also seems a bit of a stretch. Though it’s true that slavery was much less entrenched in arid west Texas than in the east Texas cotton country; and Jo’s mother was apparently Northern-born, since her two brothers died fighting for the Union. Second, it’s a standard romance-genre trope that at least one party to the romance has hang-ups to overcome, but Tom’s here seem sort of contrived. Yes, his previous fiancee broke their engagement because she didn’t want to live in a place like Waterhole; but it’s patently obvious that Jo doesn’t have that problem, and by now the community is becoming more female-friendly than it was then. His fear for her safety in a potentially violent job is more credible (if she has a problem shooting a deer, might she not also have a fatal hesitancy in shooting a human, even with her life on the line?), but the denouement here doesn’t actually discredit that fear. That brings me to some issues with the denouement. In the first book, I had no trouble believing that a sober woman with quick reflexes, who’s trained and experienced with a pistol, could outdraw a partly-drunk male, even if he and a bunch of cowed townsfolk thought he was pretty hot stuff with his gun. It was said in the Old West that, “God created men and women, but Col. Colt made them equal.” But here, I did have trouble believing that a woman could tackle and physically overpower a presumably bigger and stronger armed male; and not much respect for her intelligence in trying it, when she could easily have covered him with her own gun from behind and demanded his surrender. Her two armed sisters didn’t display much smarts there, either. If I were Tom, that incident would have exacerbated my concern for her, not laid it to rest. The outcome of the tale here also depends on believing (which I’m not certain that I do) that it can automatically be assumed that every cave in west Texas is inhabited by a swarm of bats which will emerge at sunset; and we’re also asked to believe that Jo’s love for animals makes her the only Hardin sister who would know this, when all of them are wilderness-wise. I also had a problem with our heroines letting an arrested petty thief just walk out of jail, even on the condition that he leave the area, in exchange for a tip leading to the arrest of bigger prey. Finally, although I give Cox credit for treating inter-racial romance positively, the secondary romance here came across to me as implausible and unconvincing. All of this said, I did finish the book (my wife and I read it together – and she liked it much better than I did, her taste in Westerns not being nearly as critical), and it held my interest. Cox’s characterizations aren’t deep, but most of the characters are likable. Like the author, the main characters are evangelical Christians, and there’s a positive portrayal of the role of faith in their lives. We also see the effects of Christian conversion in a couple of cases, though we’re not privy to the scenes/conversations where those conversions take place (so there’s no lengthy evangelistic exposition). The series can appeal to fans of Westerns, Western romance and “Christian fiction” who don’t expect much depth and just want some harmless, time-passing entertainment. A brief word about the cover art is in order. It’s a nice bit of action-heroine iconography, and does depict an actual scene from the book (a rifle-shooting contest). But while the young lady here has lovely brown eyes, we’re told in the books that Jo and all of her sisters are green-eyed; and the kind of colored nail polish this markswoman is wearing didn’t come into vogue until the 1920s. So, no awards for accuracy here! Author: Brooksie Cox Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance Press, available from Amazon, both as an audio book and a printed book. A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Arisen: Operators, Volume I – The Fall of the Third Temple, by Michael Stephen Fuchs

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

From what I can tell, Arisen is a massive zombie apocalypse saga, with a heavy military focus, by Fuchs and Glyn James. There are fourteen books in the main series, but Fuchs has also spun off related sets to tell other stores set in the same universe, such as Arisen: Raiders. The Operators series appears to be another. It looks to be intended as a trilogy: at the time of writing (March), part one is out, with part two next month and the finale in 2026. It feels like subsequent installments might be more team-oriented, but part one? Hoo-boy.

Yeah, this is the first book to ever get a five-star action rating from me. It just doesn’t stop. There’s a sub-genre called “hard SF,” which according to Wikipedia, is “characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic.” I suggest this could be labelled as hard action, with a great deal of information about hardware, like guns and vehicles. Here’s a sample paragraph: “The boat itself is a low-observable, reconfigurable, multi-mission surface tactical mobility craft with a primary role to insert and extract SOF in high-threat environments, but can also be used for fire support, maritime interdiction, and VBSS missions, as well as CT and FID ops.” I’m not sure what much of that means. Though I suddenly have a strong urge for a glass of whisky and a cigar.

The heroine here is Yaël Sion, an Israeli special forces soldier, who lost her parents in a terrorist attack when she was young, and has become utterly self-reliant as a result. We begin with her part of an operation against Palestinian terrorists on the West Bank. But it’s not long before the pandemic strikes, and political concerns become irrelevant, as the world turns into a hellhole. Every hour brings a new, ferocious battle for survival, and any sanctuary can suddenly become a deathtrap. It’s positively relentless, Yaël needing to fight not the infected, but the living. Things perhaps peak in an ocean-side fire-fight simultaneously involving the Israeli military, Hamas terrorists, civilians desperate to escape, and the undead. And Yaël, who just wants the boat described above.

While the open water is relatively safe, it’s hardly the end of her problems, as she encounters survivors, good and bad. It’s a chilling realization that survival means suppressing the natural human desire to help, even when this means condemning them to death. Yaël is utterly ruthless when she needs to be, and certainly has the skills to handle the situation. I’d love to see a movie made of this, though to some extent we already did: World War Z is a clear touchstone, with other genre classics also referenced, such as Aliens. The action here is almost non-stop, very well written, and considering the book is 573 pages, I raced through it. If any of the other entries are GWG-oriented, I’m certainly going to check them out. Just as soon as my heart-rate returns to normal.

Author: Michael Stephen Fuchs
Publisher: PF Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 1 (for now) in Arisen: Operators. But as discussed above – it’s complicated…

Sheriff Bride, by Teresa Ives Lilly

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

This short (107 pages) novel is the series opener for the Sheriff Bride series. (The latter has more recently been marketed as the Brides of Waterhole, Texas series, which includes additional books; but my interest is just in the original tetralogy.) Each of the four books (all written by different authors) focus on a different one of the four Hardin sisters, whose unique situation is delineated in the first book, set in the later 1870s. (No date is actually given, but there’s a passing reference to a wanted poster for the notorious outlaw Sam Bass, who was criminally active in 1876-78.) Raised in eastern Texas, the sisters were reared in the Christian faith by their devout mother, who’s been dead for years. But their father was a physically abusive drunk, who resented the fact that they were born female. However, he was a tough customer well versed with firearms, and in his sober moments taught them gun skills, hunting and tracking techniques (he lived off the furs from their hunting, though he drank and gambled away most of the proceeds) and wilderness survival. By the time our story opens, his reputation for prowess at shooting has spread to western Texas.

The book opens with the text of a short letter from one Mark Carlin, banker and leading citizen of Waterhole (population 35 in the town proper, all male), accepting John Hardin’s application for their advertised position of first-ever town sheriff. (That’s actually an authorial error, since in most U.S. states sheriffs are elected to serve entire counties; a peace officer hired to serve just one community would be a town marshal, as opposed to a Federal one.) Having celebrated his good fortune with a drinking binge, however, the inebriated Hardin died in a fall from his horse on the way home. But Carlin had sent him a generous amount of cash for traveling expenses. At the suggestion of eldest sister Sam (Samantha), not having any money or other employment prospects, Jo, Dan and Rob, a.k.a. Josephina, Daniella, and Roberta, agree to join her in traveling across Texas to present themselves as willing to share the position. As readers will be well aware, the wild West of that day wasn’t a hotbed of equal employment opportunity ideals, so the prospects for the success of the ladies’ quest in the face of ingrained male sexism are daunting.

While this is an excellent and very original premise for a novella series, though, the execution of it here has to be called somewhat lackluster. Lilly’s prose style tends to be repetitive, both in language (and in using character’s names over again where a pronoun would serve her better) and in ideas, with points often being restated or reemphasized in the same paragraph when it’s not needed; she also has a tendency to tell when there would be more effective ways of showing. Some attempt was made at editing, but the proofreading was poor (there are only a few typos as such, but I finally deduced that the three or four bracketed repetitions of a sentence in different words were vestiges of textual corrections that weren’t edited out in the final draft!).

There are continuity issues that better editing would have corrected; for instance, in one chapter characters continue talking while waiting after knocking at a door, only to arrive at the door and knock after finishing the conversation; and while the sisters arrived in Waterhole by stagecoach, in a late chapter their arrival was said to be by train. (The town has no train station.) These tended to take me out of the story. In one scene, a doctor extracts a bullet from a gunshot wound in a man’s hand; but the average revolver in that setting fired a .44 bullet, which at the short distance involved there would never have been stopped by the relatively flimsy carpal bones of a human hand. ((On reflection, though, given the position of the combatants, this is actually plausible, given that the bullet had to first pass through the target’s clenched fingers and then through the handle of the gun he was holding. But in my opinion, that still should have been explained.)

On the positive side, the story held my interest, and my wife’s (we’re reading the series together –and yes, we do plan to follow it.) The theme of women proving themselves in a demanding and male-dominated profession that requires some combat skill comes through despite the mediocre execution, and appeals to readers (like myself) who admire action-oriented heroines and appreciate an equalitarian feminist message. (In the latter respect, the ending is also particularly good.) Given that the small-press publisher here is Lovely Christian Romance, it won’t be a surprise that Lilly (and the other series writers) is an evangelical author and that Christian faith plays a role in the tale. (One character is a preacher; Christian ethics underlies the discussions about lethal force, and there’s a serious appreciation of the redemptive power of the gospel.) It also won’t be a surprise that one aspect of the story (which doesn’t swallow up the other aspects!) is a clean romance, but for me that was a plus. (Given that the main storyline takes up a bit over two weeks, it could be faulted as a case of insta-love, but I felt it was plausible under these circumstances and in this era.)

A final point that could be made is that while we’re told that Rob, the youngest sister, is only 14, we aren’t told the older ones’ exact ages, and I’d like to have been. (Their mother was married for 25 years, and died when Rob was fairly young; but we’re not told exactly how young, nor how long it was into the marriage before she bore Sam. Sam could be anywhere from her mid-30s to her very late 20s; I picture her as about 29, and the other two ladies in their mid-to-late 20s.)

Author: Teresa Ives Lilly
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance Press, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Overturned Heart, by A.W. Hart

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

A. W. Hart, the nominal “author” of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the post-Civil War West, is actually a house pen name; the books are all really written by different authors. (The writer here, Paul Ebbs, though working in a quintessentially American genre, is an Englishman, but a long-standing Western fan.) Barb and I were introduced to the series because the author of one of the books, Charles Gramlich, is one of my Goodreads friends. Before starting on this one, together we’d read and liked three of the books. But, because it’s a long, episodic series (in which the books after the first one don’t have to be read in order), and I was impatient to see whether one romantic connection and another possible one set up in the first book would really come to fruition, I suggested that we make this concluding volume our next read, and she agreed. (To avoid a spoiler, I won’t say whether or not my hopes on that score were fulfilled.)

No exact dates are given here; but since the first book began in 1865 (the next book would have to have been set in 1866) and judging from the number of intervening adventures, I’d guess the main storyline here to be set no earlier than 1870, making co-protagonists George Washington (“Reno”) and Sara Bass in their early 20s at least. But the book opens with three short Prologue vignettes, the first dated “twelve months ago,” from the viewpoint of an unnamed female pushed off of a bridge to a 40-foot drop into a raging river, followed by two more dated, respectively, three and two “months ago.” None of these give us much information; but we are told that she survived, that her brother Robert Stirling-Hamer was a wealthy Arizona copper-mining magnate who has been murdered, and that his accused killer “Don” was in turn killed by bounty hunters (guess who?), but that Don’s brother in New York has now gotten an anonymous letter claiming that his brother was innocent.

Our main story opens with the Bass twins in a tight situation in West Texas, in danger from a psychotic fugitive who’s already murdered his own parents and set fire to a schoolhouse full of kids. But they’re soon to learn that there are now wanted posters out for them, claiming that their killing of Donald Callan eight months previously was an unauthorized murder. From there, the present narrative is periodically interspersed with flashbacks to “eight months ago,” doling out strategic memories of the earlier events (which will finally come together with the present), and at times some short scenes from an omniscient third-person narrator describing present goings-on in Robert’s town of Dry Mouth; but none of these fully explain what actually happened with Robert’s murder. and may at times deepen the mystery.

Ebbs writes very well, with a gift for apt and fresh (but not overdone) similes and vivid turns of phrase. He also brings the varied Southwestern landscape to well-realized life. The publisher and writers have always tried to make this series Christian-friendly; but where it’s clear that some of the authors had only vague knowledge of Christian beliefs, Ebbs actually does explicitly refer to Christ’s sacrificial death for sin in one place. A unique feature here (at least, compared to the other three installments we read) is that all of the chapter titles have biblical or hymnic cadences, and epigraphs that I’m guessing come from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Although the book is very violent (as usual for this series), bad language is scanty and not very rough, and there’s no graphic sexual content and little reference to sex at all. (A Catholic priest is a sympathetic character, Reno’s search for God’s guidance here is a realistically-treated and important theme, and the Bible he inherited from his dad plays a big role.) Reno and Sara’s character portrayals are in keeping with the earlier series books we’ve read (except that Sara’s ruthless streak, at one point, cranks up a notch that even startles Reno).

There are a few nits to pick here, mostly with a number of places where typos in the form of omitted words, negative statements inadvertently expressed as positives or vice versa, etc. change the meaning of sentences; but I could always tell what was meant. A statement early in the book seems to suggest that Sara has lost her faith, but Ebbs subsequently back-peddles from that. Reno’s Bible at one point is described as a “Lutheran Bible,” so while the author knew about the Christian gospel, he obviously wasn’t much versed in church history. (Many U.S. Lutherans in the 19th century were still German-speaking, so would probably still have used Luther’s 16th-century translation; but any that were English-speaking used the King James Version, like all other Anglophone Protestants.) But these are minor quibbles. Overall, I found this an outstanding entry in the series! However, Barb did not; she greatly/exclusively favors linear plots, so she was VERY put off by Ebbs’ non-linear storytelling here (and also disliked the ending, though I didn’t), to the extent of being soured on the rest of the series. So, we’ll be abandoning it, at least for a while.

Author: A.W. Hart
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 12 of 12 in the Avenging Angels series.

 

 

Robyn Hood: A Girl’s Tale, by K.M. Shea

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

Despite being a short 158 pages, this definitely managed to out-stay its welcome. There’s books aimed at the young, and then there are books which leave you feeling like you have actively lost IQ points reading them. Guess what category this falls into? It’s not a terrible idea, taking Robin Hood and making her a woman. Could have been worse: she could have been a black, bisexual rapper too [I wish I was joking]. We have been somewhat here before, with The Adventures of Maid Marian, in which Marian takes over after Robin Hood goes off to join the Crusades. The problem here is, a gender switch is where the creativity stops.

The setting is the same: ye olde middle-ages England. Robyn is forced to flee after shooting with an arrow one of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men. She hides out in nearby Sherwood Forest, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, and assembling a band of outlaws around her: Friar Tuck, Little John, various people called Will. There is an archery contest. In order words, pretty much all the stuff that happens in the original story, or one of the dozens of adaptations which are embedded deep in popular culture. Apart from RobYn, Shea does nothing interesting with the tropes. Life for the heroine is pretty, pretty easy, with the locals giving them everything necessary, and wannabe outlaws falling over themselves to become Merry Men.

Indeed, there’s only one point at which there is a genuine sense of danger, when the Sheriff’s men launch a surprise attack, where Robyn is thrown into a river and nearly drowns… until she is rescued by her horse. Yep. Said equine is certainly smarter than the antagonists here, who are mind-numbingly incompetent, when they aren’t being purely obnoxious. The ease with which Robyn is then able to rescue her captured henchmen renders their threat impotent. I get that this is not intended to be, in the slightest, a realistic depiction of the time. However, it’s not a convincing depiction of any time, and might as well take place as a skit at your local Renaissance Fair.

This volume ends with Robyn leaving the group, after being beaten in an archery contest by one of her men – under dubious circumstances. While it makes precious little sense, considering the slavish devotion they have shown to her up until that point, it’s the first time the author has done anything with the potential to be interesting. However, it comes far too late to salvage my interest in my going on to the second book. Which, given the short length, could easily have been combined into this volume. If you’re going in, to avoid disappointment I would suggest you expect something aimed at a slightly backward eleven-year-old. To be safe, maybe expect something which was written by one as well. 

Author: K.M. Shea
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 2 in the Robyn Hood series.

Stepping Outside, by Theodore B. Ayn

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

This e-story (at 73 pages, it’s at the longish end of the “short” story continuum) by my Goodreads friend, new independent author Theodore B. Ayn, is one of several recently-published works to his credit, and so far the only one of them that I’ve read. (I’m hoping eventually to read the rest.) While I didn’t officially receive it as a review copy, I treated it as one (the author kindly extended a general offer of a free e-copy long enough to allow me to take advantage of it when I’d otherwise have missed out). When I started it, I’d intended to read only a short bit, and to return to it later; but I wound up finishing it in a single sitting. As that indicates, it was (at least for me) a page-turner, and a propulsively quick read.

Ayn has an obvious admiration and respect for women who are both strong and muscular physically and who have a matching moral and emotional strength (an attitude that I share); and based on the cover art and descriptions, this is exhibited in all of his works, not just this one. (Arguably, the description of this one provides information that would be better picked up by the readers as the narrative goes along, though it isn’t a “spoiler” as such.) Basically, this particular story, set in a small Midwestern town that’s never identified in any more detail than that, pits brawny waitress Jeannie against even brawnier ex-biker gang member Clyde (no last names given for either) in a physical confrontation brought on by his sexism, arrogance, and hot temper. That description, however, is deceptively simple. This is a character-driven story which isn’t simple at an emotional level, and also isn’t predictable. (It should also be stated at the outset that it’s not an “enemies to lovers” romance; there’s no romantic element in the tale at all, let alone between the two adversaries.) Both main characters are complex, and developed in surprising depth.

The prose style here is straightforward and direct. Overall, Ayn prefers straight narration over dialogue, though he provides realistic dialogue where it’s needed to reveal character and move the plot. Technically, it could be claimed that, especially in developing his two lead characters’ back stories, he uses a fair amount of telling rather than showing. But within the constraints of the short format and of the centralizing of the fight itself as the outward core of the story (though inward developments are taking place at the same time), there’s no real alternative to that technique, and it’s actually well-suited to the kind of effect the author successfully creates. This is descriptive fiction, with no speculative element. I’ve characterized it as general fiction, rather than as crime fiction or action-adventure, because the characters are ordinary civilians, neither career criminals nor law enforcement professionals; no guns are involved, the setting is mundane, and the situation is one that could easily occur in everyday life. We’re in a very different atmosphere and milieu than that of, say, a typical Modesty Blaise adventure.

A word is in order about the art work here. While this isn’t a graphic novel as such, it’s greatly enhanced by, altogether, no less than 30 illustrations (some full-page) of particular scenes, in the same style as the cover art. These serve the same purpose that traditional book illustration always has, that of enabling the reader to more vividly visualize the characters and events of the story (and serve it very effectively!), but as the author confirmed to me in a personal message, they’re AI-generated. Personally, I would argue that such a use of AI to supplement the author’s creative vision is legitimate; it brings to life scenes he wants to depict in the way he wants them depicted, but with a draftsmanship he wouldn’t actually be able to create by hand. (Though the ability to use AI to create it also requires an expertise of its own.)

Unless a reader is scandalized by the sight of bare female arms or legs, there’s nothing salacious about the art here, and nothing suggestive or sexual about the story’s content. Bad language is limited to a couple of d-words. While this isn’t “Christian fiction,” it is fiction written by an author who’s a Christian; but it’s not “preachy” in any sense. (The lead characters are secular, and their spiritual state is only referenced in a single sentence.) It is, though, fiction that focuses on a rough, no-rules street fight between a man and a woman, with an antagonist whose moral code doesn’t include any scruples about hitting a woman, and a female protagonist who doesn’t see her gender as disqualifying her from slugging or kicking a man if it’s necessary. The author also has the kind of moral vision which can view a physical fight as an instrument, rather than an antithesis, of moral order. This story wouldn’t be recommended for readers who would be repelled or triggered by that type of imagery, content, or messaging. However, I’m not numbered in that group; and for me the story proved to be ultimately wholesome, emotionally enriching, and rewarding.

Author: Theodore B. Ayn
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, currently only for Kindle.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Nite Fire: Flash Point by C.L. Schneider

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

Dallas Nite is a dragon. Well, some of the time. For dragons are actually shape-shifters, capable of changing form, and that’s how she is able to pass for a human here. On her home planet, she had been an assassin for Queen Naalish, until she balked at carrying out one hit. Condemned to death, she fled through one of the interplanetary portals, ending up on Earth. Effectively immortal, Dallas has been in exile here for ninety-seven years since, making sure no other unauthorized creatures come through the portals – part of an uneasy truce between her and the aristocracy. Part of her job also involves ensuring any trace of dragon activity is covered up, these being explained instead as “spontaneous human combustion.” But after a whole family is slaughtered in fiery fashion in their home, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to keep a lid on things, and her past comes back with a vengeance too.

As urban fantasy goes, this is solid, rather than spectacular. There’s some nice world-building, with the idea of the portals well-explained, and offering plenty of scope for a variety of adventures (the epilogue does a particularly good job of pointing the way forward). I also appreciated how Dallas is employed as an investigator of “suspicious fires” by the local police department in Sentinel City which, given the obvious dragonish nature of her talents, is a good fit. Additionally, she has the ability to sense and re-experience people’s traumas. While the talent comes with baggage of its own, this is particularly useful for the case in question. It does feel like you’re joining the story in progress, almost a century having passed since Dallas’s arrival on Earth. I would be very interested in hearing, for example, what she got up to during World War II. A were-dragon would seem to offer certain advantages as a secret agent.

While the more relevant gaps of her past are filled in eventually, it is a bit of a cheat, with knowledge being withheld from the audience, that Dallas and the other characters clearly possess. We probably needed additional background on the dragon hierarchy too. There were some characters whose roles and significance remained a little too obscure. For example, Reech is one who only shows up at the half-way point, and I am still not sure exactly how he fits into things. What ends up as the central conflict, between Dallas and former apprentice Brynne, delivers some impressive battles (I said effectively immortal above, for a reason…), and focusing more directly on that could have paid dividends. At almost four hundred pages in length, there were times where getting through this did feel a bit of slog. However, a turn of the page would then bring me into something cool, and it provided enough of those moments to cross over the finish line without too much trouble. 

Author: C.L. Schneider
Publisher: CreateSpace Indepenedent Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Nite Fire series.

Gehenna: Naked Aggression, by Patrick Kindlon and Marco Ferrari

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

“What I need is stories where men get kicked in the chest. Stories where guns only run out of ammo for dramatic effect. I need pulp. I need exploitation. I need fun.”  I used to read a lot of comics, before moving to America. As in, most weekends involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, Gosh!, or Mega City Comics, coming home with a carrier bag of new issues. Then there were the trips to Paris… But I just kinda stopped – no particular reason – when I emigrated. There is still a large cardboard box, unopened from the move 25 years ago, in our boxroom. Some are probably worth a bit, e.g. the first issue of Hellblazer. But reading the first issue of Gehenna makes me want to restart. Well, if space, time, money and aging eyesight weren’t issues, anyway.

“This book is equally for the diehard comic reader and someone who hasn’t read sequential art since Garfield,” according to co-creator Kindlon. I’m certainly closer to the latter category, but certainly found it accessible, once I got into the comic-book rhythm again. It’s different from word-based literature, and even from cinema, where the pace is dictated entirely by the director. In a comic-book, you can linger over a panel to admire the artwork for as long as you want, or whizz through them so you’re basically picking up subliminal imagery. The text becomes a complement to the imagery, filling in the gaps. And the imagery is great. I now have a new backdrop on my PC desktop. Page 18 of the PDF, should you be interested. 

“Everything went to hell. And now that’s where I live.” But this also means exposition and action can co-exist: the latter doesn’t need to pause. Consequently, over the 24 pages here, there’s barely a pause for breath. You reach the end, to be honest, not necessarily sure what’s going on, but this is just part one of four. I presume things will become clear – or, at least, clearER – in due course. We have a dark-haired woman, kidnapping the son of a gangster because of reasons apparently connected to her husband’s death – leading to the quote above. There’s another woman, blonde, following in her wake – with bad intent if her line, “I’ll call you when the woman is dead”, is anything to go by. I will bet the house that they will end up facing off against each other, before very long. I certainly hope so. 

“It’s pulling from Beyond Hypothermia and Naked Weapon, and all of Hong Kong,” says Kindlon. So far, Naked Aggression has been more about the aggression than the naked – though cleavage certainly abounds, and an alternate cover (below) does deliver. It is difficult to judge the series overall, in the same way as giving your verdict of a film based on its opening twenty minutes. We’ve all seen movies which hit the ground running, only to run out of steam. But there’s no reason this shouldn’t be able to sustain the blistering pace: it’s not like a comic-book is going to run out of budget. If we weren’t looking to move house, this might well be the one to entice me back into the comic-shop. Failing that, I’ll just have to wait for the movie version, hopefully starring Eva Green and Charlize Theron. 

Author: Patrick Kindlon (text) and Marco Ferrari (art)
Publisher: Image Comics, available through their site, from July 2, or for Kindle through Amazon.
Book 1 of 4 in the series, also available in four alternate covers as below.

Desolation, by David Lucin

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

When the apocalypse comes, if popular fiction is any guide, it’s going to be undead and craving brains. But not far behind in terms of literary popularity, appears to be an EMP. This is a high altitude nuclear detonation, which would unleash an electromagnetic pulse – hence the name – capable of frying anything with a circuit board, continent-wide. It is generally not good for civilization. I think this is the first such book I’ve covered, and I was particularly intrigued, because it’s set here in Arizona. Which is a little weird, because the author appears to be based out of Vancouver, British Columbia. I presume some connection to the state.

It mostly takes place in the northern mountain town of Flagstaff, where Jenn Jansen is attending college when the power goes out, and the world grinds to a halt. Not that it’s exactly a great world to begin with, already teetering on the edge of famine and war, with multiple conflicts around the globe (in particular between the US/NATO and China), while most of the population live in poverty, even in the United States. Jenn’s parents are down in Phoenix, which… the author doesn’t seem to like much, calling it a “desert hellscape” among other things. [Looks out window] OK, he’s not wrong… But it doesn’t get any better after the city gets hit by multiple air-burst nukes. Help is not coming to Flagstaff any time soon.

Jenn has to figure out what to do, though at least initially, basic survival is not too rough. However, she gradually realizes not everyone is willing to pull together, and hard times make for difficult moral decisions. She’s rather better at these than her boyfriend, Sam, who comes from a more privileged background. His family are in Payson – between Flagstaff and Phoenix – and the pair head down there to bring them up to Flagstaff. That pushes Jenn further along her evolution. According to the author, “By Book 4, she’s not the impulsive, bossy, and sometimes annoying girl from Book 1; she is a soldier and a cool-headed leader,” and I can see the early signs of this appearing already, though I never found her especially annoying. 

Action-wise, it is fairly restrained, but there is a sense of escalation, with the book giving us good insight into Jenn’s thoughts. Of note, her reaction to having to use increasing degrees of violence is explored in more detail than I would have expected. It’s not easy or facile, but by the end, the blood on her hands is mounting. I sense that’s only going to increase, as it appears the next part has her becoming part of a reconnaissance expedition to Phoenix. That’s a story I am interested in reading, and not just for reasons of personal familiarity, also to see how Jenn develops. But perhaps my neighbourhood might make an appearance. Even if it’s going to be a bit radioactive.

Author: David Lucin
Publisher: Highway 3 Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Desolation series.