Tag: novel

Real Dangerous Fun, by K. W. Jeter

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

With this read of the fourth (in the Lincoln Square Books numbering) installment of the author’s Kim Oh series, I’ve now read all of the volumes that are currently available in paper format. All of the previous ones have earned high ratings from me, despite some flaws that can mostly be summarized as continuity or editing issues; it’s fair to say that this is one of my favorite action-adventure series, and I’m definitely a fan of the heroine. This particular book, however, proved to be the weakest of the series so far, and really only mustered two and a half stars in my estimation. The main drawbacks here only become really evident on reflection after the read, or at the very end, so all through the read itself I did enjoy the experience.

Korean-American (though, as we learned in the previous book, she and her brother are only half Korean in their ancestry) protagonist and first-person narrator Kim, as series fans will already know, is the guardian and caretaker of her wheelchair-bound younger sibling Donnie. Not able to pay for their food and rent as a bookkeeper (she’s good at it, but not very credentialed) the series opener showed how, by a believable story arc, she opted for a career change as a hired gun. She’s occasionally a paid assassin (though, as she says, only of “the kind of creeps on which there was a general consensus that if they stopped breathing, it’d pretty much be an improvement to the world;” she does have ethical “standards” for herself, and Jeter doesn’t directly depict that side of her work), but mostly as a bodyguard or “security” for employers whose business interests may attract violent hostiles. They tend to be shady types (whom she doesn’t much like or respect), and job security isn’t very dependable.

When our story opens, some two months have passed since the previous book. Kim’s now about 20, and Donnie around 14 (the ages aren’t explicitly stated, but inferred from time progressions from book to book). Since her former boss didn’t survive the previous adventure (and had fired her anyway), she’s been between jobs since then, and her savings are dwindling. Now, however, an opportunity knocks. A wealthy but sleazy tycoon wants to hire her to accompany his college-student daughter to fictional Meridien (supposedly the smallest country in South America) for spring break. This won’t (so he says) be a very taxing job; Lynndie Heathman doesn’t so much need a bodyguard as a kind of glorified nanny to keep her out of serious trouble. So, Kim’s soon flying to Meridien –with Donnie in tow, albeit against her druthers.

She’s reluctant to bring him anywhere near the sybaritic conditions that await them; but although he’s able to look after himself for awhile if he needs to (and has, at times), as he pointed out, Child Protective Services knows she’s landed this job and won’t look kindly on him being left to his own devices for this long. (And she doesn’t plan on letting him participate in any drunken orgies!) Knowing the kind of intense searches today’s airplane travelers are subjected to, she’s opted not to bring along a gun. But, hey, it’s not as if any danger is likely to present itself on this gig, right? (I was reminded of the Robert Burns poem about “best laid plans….”) On the flight, Donnie strikes up an acquaintance with Mavis, a full-scholarship anthropology student who’s headed for Meridien on her department’s nickel, not to party but to do research, and who’s (like him) more than a little tech-savvy.

We’ll see more of her (long story!). Jeter doesn’t explicitly establish her age, either (and that’s going to be an important detail, in my estimation!) We only know that she’s not old enough to drink, “Even for here;” if the drinking age there is 18, I’d guess she’s 17. (Kim noted that she seemed younger than the rest of the college crowd, and refers to her once as underage.) Some teens enroll in college early (and dual enrollment programs for high school juniors and seniors exist at a number of colleges); but this should have been explained, and I can’t think that she could be any younger than 17.

We’re not surprised when this expedition goes south (in more ways than the geographically obvious one!) early on. This tale is an excursion into the darker recesses of what human nature is capable of, though there’s light in the darkness. With a time span of just a few days, the plotting is taut and the pace mostly quick (it slows a bit in the middle, only because it has to). As always, Jeter handles action scenes well, and the setting is evoked effectively. Kim’s her usual self, and for series fans her wry, snarky narrative voice (with a chip on the shoulder as far as wealthy, entitled snobs are concerned, but given her circumstances, it’s hard to blame her) comes across much like her sitting down with you as an old friend she trusts completely, kicking back over a cup of tea and recounting her experience.

And along the way, there are the revealing moments that show her inner dissatisfaction with aspects of her present life, and her yearning for more normality and human connection; she’s a three-dimensional person who comes across as just as human as you or I, and that’s no mean literary achievement. A couple of plot elements show significant authorial research (smoothly integrated); and Donnie and Mavis’ video technology know-how will come in handy. There’s no explicit sex; and while there’s some h- and d- words and religious profanity, which I didn’t like, there’s no obscenity and the language is in the bounds of realism with a degree of tasteful restraint. You can expect some violent deaths, and you’ll encounter one grisly image in particular that even had Kim “a little nauseated;” but the grisliness isn’t any worse than it has to be.

What pulled my rating for this installment down wasn’t the kind of continuity and editorial issues some earlier ones had; those weren’t present here. But there were more serious basic logical issues. In the first place, the main villains here acted in a way that was (from their standpoint) highly unnecessary and unwise, against their own interests, and that’s just papered over in the apparent hope that we won’t notice. But that creates a logical hole you could drive a fleet of trucks through. Secondly, Kim’s plan at the end completely depends on somebody else acting in a certain way in two respects, one of which was likely enough but not guaranteed, and the other of which was IMO actually quite unlikely. Things fell into place here because she had the author pulling strings on her behalf, but in real life that factor wouldn’t be present.

Kim also came across as uncharacteristically naive in accepting the supposed lack of danger in this job so uncritically; and later she made one error of judgment that immediately set off even my warning bells. (Her late mentor Cole would have chewed her out royally!) Finally, Jeter introduces one or two intriguing mystery elements in the first chapter –and soon drops them completely down the memory hole. :-( Another major negative (for me) appeared only in the final paragraphs. For that reason, it might be spoilerish to discuss it here, though it isn’t a spoiler for anything to do with the main plot. But despite these negatives, I’d still recommend the book to most fans of the series.

Author: K. W. Jeter
Publisher: Lincoln Square Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Arrival, by Nicole MacDonald

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Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

I’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t recall exactly at what point in reading this, I first came to that conclusion. It may have been the multi-page description of dress fitting. It could have been the lengthy shopping expedition. But it’s safe to say that, if I hadn’t been running behind on book reviews, this would almost certainly have been a Did Not Finish, and consigned to the recycle bin of oblivion. The main problem, if definitely not the only one, is the mismatch between the description and reality. The Amazon page describes it, rather breathlessly, as “An Epic Fantasy Romance Adventure.” Silly me, I expected this to mean about equal amounts of those elements, especially given the cover. A more accurate description would be, “A Romantic Epic Romance Fantasy ROMANCE Romance Adventure ROMANCE, with added ROMANCING”

It’s basically the story of four young women from New Zealand, who find themselves transported from Wellington to the mystical realm of Gar’nyse, after engaging in an occult ritual. Ok, it’s casting a love spell. There, dragons and all manner of other mystical beasts roam the lands. As well, naturally, as hunky young men: barely have they arrived, before they have encountered their soulmates, in the form of four incredibly handsome members of the Griffon Guard. And that’s where the book basically grinds to a halt, plot advancement being replaced by a slew of gazing deep into each other’s eyes moments. Oh, the quartet of interchangeable Barbie dolls, largely distinguishable only by their skills and hair-styles, are essential to the survival of the kingdom, naturally, due to their possessing “Elemental” abilities. After much training under Elena the Sorceress, they’ll go up against… the Wicked Witch of the West, or her blonde equivalent anyway.

For let’s be honest, she doesn’t show up until the very end, gatecrashing a palace ball (did I mention the dress fitting?) in Maleficent style. I had largely given up paying attention by that point, after slogging through two hundred or so pages of this nonsense. /gestures vaguely. Additionally, I found myself irrationally annoyed by the author’s inability to stick to a single point of view. The “I” in a paragraph was not necessarily the same as the “I” in the next one, and though the changes were usually obvious enough, I sometimes had to pause, then try and work out who was now the first person. It is an unnecessary chore made reading feel more like homework. But the main problem is, there simply isn’t enough going on to drive the narrative forward. I’d potentially have been interested to see how the four heroines survived as “strangers in a strange land”. Instead, as soon as the Griffon Guard show up, everything becomes too damn easy for them, and virtually the only challenges faced the rest of the way are ones of the heart. A very, very hard pass.

Author: Nicole MacDonald
Publisher: Little Leo Reads, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Birthright series.

Real Dangerous Place, by K. W. Jeter

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

Note: My previous reviews of this series had incorrect information on the series numbering, and about the relationship of this printing to the first one. That first printing had seven volumes. If Lincoln Square Books reprints all of the series, their edition will have six, because they combined the original Real Dangerous Girl and  Real Dangerous Job (which form a single story arc) as Parts I and II of a single novel with the first title. However, they did NOT combine any of the later novels, which all have their original titles; the next two, including this one, were divided into Parts I and II to start with. I apologize to readers for the earlier misleading information; but a late correction is better than no correction!

Having read (and reviewed) the previous volumes in this action adventure series, all of which got high ratings from me, I was glad to follow along with this next installment. Most readers of this book will probably have read the earlier ones –and should have, since this series is one that absolutely needs to be read in order. (This review will contain some spoilers for the preceding book, though not for this one.) Likewise, most readers of this review will most likely have read my takes on the preceding volumes, so will already have a basic idea of Kim’s personality, family situation, and back history.) The main body of this story takes place on one day, mostly in a tense hostage situation, and Part I ends in a cliff-hanger in the very middle of that situation.

The most obvious difference between the previous installments and this one is that we’re no longer in our familiar upstate New York setting. Landing on her feet at the conclusion of her previous adventure, our rough-edged heroine had wangled herself a job as chief of security for her deceased boss’ erstwhile newly minted partner, Mr. Karsh (whose business practices unfortunately aren’t any more ethical or strictly legal than the late Mr. Falcon’s, though he also aspires to a veneer of legitimacy). In the interim between the two books, his far-flung business enterprises have taken him to L.A. for an extended stay, so he’s re-located Kim and Donnie (I’d say she’s now at least 18, if not 19, and Donnie’s 12-13) there along with him. When our story opens, Kim’s making better money than before; she and Donnie can afford a better apartment, and Karsh’s gotten him into a private school that caters to special-needs kids. She’s thinking that their situation is looking up; but with her luck, it can go south very quickly. And then things get really hairy, when she finds herself, in a Karsh-owned equipment truck, in the middle of a late afternoon traffic jam on an elevated L.A. freeway, in which Donnie’s school bus is also stuck –and shooting and explosions start to happen.

That brings us to another difference, or set of differences, from the previous books. Here, the unity of time and location is much tighter. Events are also, in a sense, more straightforward. True, Kim doesn’t have a clue why a gaggle of heavily armed thugs have set off vehicle explosions that block 50 or 60 cars between them, with no escape, and neither do we as readers; Jeter will disclose their leader’s plan and motivation only very gradually. But figuring out who the enemy is here isn’t going to be a problem; they’re toting their assault rifles quite openly. There are also a number of scenes and events here to which Kim isn’t privy at the time. Given that she’s our first-person narrator, that’s a challenge to pull off, but Jeter does it successfully. He’s already used the technique, in previous books, of her describing a scene the way she imagines it went. (But as Kim says, “The thing about my imagination, though –I’m not usually wrong about whatever I come up with. Kind of a gift, that way.” :-) )

Here, he just has to use it a great deal more. Finally, there’s not a lot of moral ambiguity or grey areas in this tale; anybody who’s not morally brain-dead can recognize that the perpetrators aren’t doing good things, and Kim doesn’t need to agonize over whether it’s right to try to mess up their plans and hopefully get Donnie to safety -and herself and maybe others as well, if she’s lucky. That’s pretty much a given. The real question is whether she can rescue anybody. (The cover art here is highly misleading; Kim never has a pistol in her hand in this book.) Her treasured .357 is in her shoulder bag in her boss’ car (long story), and the head thug quickly relieved her of the Ladysmith in her thigh holster. So she’s unarmed, and not blessed with a physique that gives her much advantage in hand-to-hand combat, nor martial arts skills. But she does have guts, smarts, and determination; and her colleague Elton (whom we met in the previous book), who’s with her in the truck, has the same qualities.

The action-adventure aspect of the story is more prominent here than in the previous books (though Kim herself gets to display her chops only towards the end –she’ll more than make up for that, however!), and is presented with a good deal of tension, suspense, and excitement, punctuated by explosions and mayhem. (Hollywood disdains to adapt indie or small-press books as films; that’s their loss in this case, because the narrative has a highly cinematic quality. It would be tailor-made for adaptation as an action film, and would probably be very popular at the box office.) Strong characterization is an asset, as always in this series; Donnie in particular comes into his own here (and we actually learn what his medical condition is; it’s esophageal atresia, and compounded in his case with complications from surgical infection, it’s life-threatening). And don’t sell him short in a crisis, either; yeah, his legs are useless, but his big sister isn’t the only sibling in that family who’s got fighting spirit…. Bad language is restrained (no obscenity, and not much religious profanity), and there’s no sexual content; Jeter’s prose is vivid, and the narrative is fast-paced.

Continuity/editing issues, as in the previous book, are the one significant flaw here. An important plot point results from a scuffle that supposedly took place earlier; but in the earlier part of the book that describes that encounter, there was clearly no scuffle at all. At one point, Kim refers to being aware of something she actually couldn’t have known until later. Most glaringly, a character who’s shot dead with a close-range pistol bullet between the eyes appears two pages later, walking, talking and menacing people. In fairness, I had to deduct a star for those issues, but they didn’t keep me from really liking the book. (All of them could be fixed with fairly slight editing.) For series fans, it’s a must-read; and I think most fans of clean action-adventure, especially those who appreciate a protagonist from the distaff side, would greatly like this series if they’d try it.

Author: K. W. Jeter
Publisher: Lincoln Square Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Casey Jones Mysteries Vol 1-3 by Katy Munger

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

While omnibus editions of series are often a good way to pick up a large volume of content for a discounted price, they do have their downside. Especially for someone like me, who is basically bloody-minded and regards the dreaded Did Not Finish as a badge of failure. So even when a book is not that entertaining, I still find myself slogging on: and when there are three volumes in one, its a process which naturally takes that much longer. I think if I’d had just the one story here, I’d perhaps have looked upon this with a kinder eye. Three was tough, not least because the final story was the longest, occupying a solid forty percent of the set, and is also the least entertaining of the trilogy.

The heroine is a private detective – albeit rather unlicensed, due to a previous felony in another state – operating out of Raleigh, North Carolina. Because of her status, she works under Bobby D, a 360-pound eating machine in PI form, though it seems that Casey is a little on the well-built side herself. For example, one of her breakfasts is itemized as “A pound of grits and butter – never mind the fried eggs, sausage and biscuits,” or she describes herself as “chubby at first glance, and stocky at second.” This does not seem exactly to be reflected on the book cover (right), and gluttony isn’t the only one of the seven deadly sins of which she’s fond either. She has quite the wandering eye, and at times it feels as if there’s hardly a man who crosses her path – be they cop, suspect, witness, or merely a convenient to hand bar-tender – about whom she does not have carnal thoughts, to some degree. I mean, it’s a legitimate part of her character, but I’d prefer to have seen the same effort put into delivering action.

There too, the cover’s accuracy must be questioned, offering a level of gun-toting that’s never quite achieved.  Though at least in the first couple of volumes, the plot is decent. #1, Legwork sees a political campaign derailed when a corpse shows up in the driveway of one candidate’s house, for whom Casey has been working as a bodyguard. This job gets upgraded to finding the killer, which gets her involved in a murky conspiracy of real-estate corruption. It could easily have toppled over into needless complexity, yet Munger manages to keep everything clear and moving forward. Part two, Out of Time, has her trying to clear a woman who is on Death Row for murdering her detective husband, and there’s a similarly tangled web here, this time involving police misconduct. It does actually have a meaningful and reasonably exciting climax, in which Casey is hunted through the woods by a corrupt cop.

Then there’s the third part, Money to Burn, and that’s where scenario fatigue really set in for me. It’s perhaps also where the fact these are almost period pieces nowadays (the first volume was originally published back in 1997) hurt the books most, with a slew of elements which felt particularly anachronistic to a modern reader. A tobacco company scientist is murdered, opening the door to a mess of corporate shenanigans, rich familial strife, a serial rapist and a far too long description of the heroine’s attendance at some kind of debutante ball, about which I cared not in the slightest. There’s almost a class struggle subtext here too, with Casey repeatedly feeling her low origins when operating in the world of high society. It’s an unengaging mix between Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with The Jerry Springer Show. I persisted, yet am now completely burned out on Ms. Jones. Wild horses probably could not drag me into reading parts 4-7.

Author: Katy Munger
Publisher: Thalia Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1-3 of 7 in the Casey Jones Mystery series.

Sinister: Unhallowed, by Christopher P. Young and John Logsdon

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

This seems to come from a subset of a whole slew of Paranormal Police Department series in which Logsdon is involved with various authors, e.g. NYPPD. I don’t believe you need to have read those, although I did feel a bit dumped in at the deep end here. Evangeline is a resident of a demonic realm and member of House Sinister, a group who are all but wiped out in a surprise attack. Key words: “all but”. The job needs to be finished, but before that can happen, Evangeline flees to the human world – Los Angeles in particular – taking over the body of a rich socialite who conveniently just died in a car crash, so is ripe for possession.

Evangeline shouldn’t be there at all, and consequently ends up press-ganged into the local Black Ops wing of the PPD. This basically makes her an assassin to order, of “certain criminal elements,” alongside her partners, the hellwolf Kayson and Q, a vampire. She’s fine with that, being a hellion herself. However, those who tried to take her out in the netherworld, are keen to complete the job. They send their own operatives to Los Angeles, to locate the fugitive final member of House Sinister, and end her life. She won’t go out easily: especially when her precious me-time is broken into by one such killer: “Never interrupt a woman who is about to eat dessert!”

This is a bit of a mixed bag. The overall setting isn’t bad, with a milieu which includes every kind of fantasy creature you can imagine, from pixies through succubi and were-bears to orcs, co-existing both in the human world and on their own turf (for some loose definition of “co-exist”, anyway). Evangeline is a “hellion,” and I’d have welcomed being told a bit more about what that is: “demons mixed with dragon blood,” is about all the explanation you get, and is not particularly helpful. She is a bit – okay, make that very – sex-obsessed, and this is written in a way that it comes across as if she was still an irritating teenager. Mature subject matter, discussed in an immature fashion, if you will. Not really my favourite approach.

However, it does end up gelling better than I expected. After feeling like a moderate slog in the early going, I ploughed through the last quarter in a single sitting. In it, Evangeline and her partners are trying to assassinate crime boss Macy Bale. while simultaneously being hunted by Moloch, the entity tasked with ending House Sinister. It’s almost non-stop action, with a particularly cinematic tone. Although there is not much in terms of a resolution – more a pause than a finish – I found myself curious where the story would go. More things coming to find Evangeline seems a fairly safe bet…

Author: Christopher P. Young and John Logsdon
Publisher: Crimson Myth Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Black Ops Paranormal Police Department series.

No Honor in Death, by Eric Thomson

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

This SF novel takes place in the future where the human Commonwealth is engaged in a brutal space war against the militaristic Shrehari Empire – imagine Klingons on krack, perhaps. They have superior technology, but humanity’s ability to think outside the box and improvise has helped level the playing field. Siobhan Dunmoore has just survived  – emphasis on “just” – a battle against the Imperial cruiser Tol Vakash of Captain Brakal, forcing him to retreat by attempting a kamikaze crash of her badly-damaged craft into his. As a “reward”, she is assigned command of the Stingray, a craft with a bad reputation. Its previous captain is now facing a Disciplinary Board, and the crew are barely even trying. It seems Dunmoore has been set up to fail, and she’ll need to overcome resistance from enemies both domestic and alien, as well as overt and covert, before she can even think about going another round with Captain Brakal.

I felt the most interesting section of this was following Dunmoore as she attempted to lick her crew and the Stingray back into a shape, where they could survive an encounter with the Shrehari. Both of them are in need of a lot of work. The former are utterly demoralized after events under the previous captain (including a number of suspicious deaths), and the latter has been short-changed on supplies and resources, to the point it’s largely held together with sticks and wire. Fixing them require their new captain to use a lot of psychology, both in order to get the crew to trust her, and extract the necessary materials from the Commonwealth and its bureaucracy. It works almost as a “how-to” manual for aspiring leaders, and even if that’s not exactly me, still makes for an engaging read. I also liked the very final face-off between Dunmoore and Brakal, their two ships edging round the perilous environment of an asteroid field, where Stingray‘s manoeuvrability gives it an edge. 

However, in between the Stingray taking off and the last battle, the book struggles with its descriptive passages. There is a large chunk taking place in hyperspace, and Thomson never manages to make clear the rules which apply here, resulting in the discussion of “jumps” and “bubbles” failing to make sense. Worse, this brings the pace of the book to a halt, with entire pages you find yourself barely skim-reading. There’s also rather too extended of a coda after the battle, as the book tries to tie up a lot of loose ends – mostly ones we never particularly cared about to begin with. On the other hand, I did appreciate the effort put into making Brakal an interesting adversary, with his own set of motivations. He and Dunmoore represent the book’s greatest strengths, and it’s at its best when concentrating on them. If subsequent volumes do that, I’d be tempted to try them.

Author: Eric Thomson
Publisher: Sanddiver Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 7 in the Siobhan Dunmoore series.

The Swordswoman, by Malcolm Archibald

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

I am, probably, biased here. Scottish action heroines are pretty rare, to the point I am hard pushed to think of a single one I’ve covered previously, in the twenty years I’ve been running this domain. [I just made myself feel very old…] So I was likely disposed to feel kindly towards this literary example. But even setting aside patriotic tendencies, I genuinely enjoyed reading this. It takes place, I’m guessing, around the 9th century, when Scotland was still a loosely connected set of tribes, albeit with a king in what’s now Edinburgh, and a rather fragile peace with the Norse neighbours.

That peace is shattered when someone is washed up on the Western Isles island of Dachaigh where 20-year-old Melcorka lives with her mother. It turns out the Norse are invading, and the king must be notified of the threat. Melcorka and the rest of her clan head towards the capital, only to arrive too late: the army of Alba (as Scotland was then called) has been routed and the nobles scattered. However, Melcorka has a destiny to fulfill… And also inherits a large sword, Defender, with a history dating back centuries, whose powers transform her into the titular character. It’s up to her to rally forces, including the ferocious Picts from the North, to take on the invaders, and send them back across the North Sea to Scandinavia.

It’s not quite historical, not quite fantasy: or, rather, this has elements of both. Events occur in real places: fun fact, up until he retired, my father worked in Burghead, the modern site of Pictish capital Am Broch in the book – I grew up less than 20 miles away. I kept found myself going to Wikipedia to look up particular locations, as Melcorka and her allies moved through the country. But there are some elements which are mystical, such Melcorka venturing into Elfhame, the realm of Faery. At least in this volume, those are limited, and the rest feels grounded. Very grounded in some areas, particularly the battle descriptions, which don’t pull punches: “the slide of intestines as blades ripped open bellies and the pink-grey splurge of brains as swords split skulls.”

It’s certainly not all gore though, and Melcorka realizes there’s a gulf between battle as described in the sagas and heroic songs, and the real thing. It’s part of her development as a heroine, which may be this book’s strongest suit. She starts as an innocent, almost naive young woman, takes her lumps and comes out the other side, wiser if not necessarily happier for it. Credit is also due to Archibald for telling a complete, satisfying story without the need for a gratuitous cliff-hanger. That helps leave me much more likely to invest further in the series, as time permits. He has done the country proud, and I look forward to discovering where Melcorka’s destiny will take her.

Author: Malcolm Archibald
Publisher: Next Chapter, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in The Swordswoman series.

Tracie Tanner Thrillers, Vol 1-3 by Allan Leverone

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

This largely unfolds over the period of about a week in May-June 1987. History buffs will recall that being the time when the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart, and it’s that which provides the background to the novel. President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to shepherd his country into a more open era, but is facing strong opposition from some elements within the government. He writes a letter to his American counterpart, Ronald Reagan, whose contents are potentially explosive, and which the anti-Gorbachev faction in the Kremlin will do anything to stop. They fail to stop the communication being handed to American courier and CIA agent Tracie Tanner in East Berlin, but that’s only the start of their efforts to prevent Tracie completing her mission.

This is the kind of book I liked despite its flaws – and there are quite a few of those. The plot really wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny: it’s the old “She can’t trust anyone” trope, and it’d take about five minutes of thought by a trained intelligence operative to figure out how she could bypass that. Meanwhile, Tracie has no qualms putting her complete faith in the male lead, hunky (but thoroughly doomed – he just found out he has an inoperable brain tumour) air-traffic controller Shane Rowley. No surprises for guessing where those two end up. Despite the period setting, there’s not much sense of that very specific era, and Leverone does spend too much time diverting into background information on characters who, in truth, are not more than fringe players. Finally, while it’s clear who the “bad guys” are, it might have helped if there had been a particular antagonist, rather than a series of relatively faceless Russian agents and American traitors.

However, you shouldn’t necessarily let any of the above dissuade you, since they are largely the kind of criticisms I only realized after I’d finished the book, and was contemplating this review. The author does a fine job of managing the pace, keeping things moving at a fast and furious rate. There’s one hurdle after another for Tracie and Shane to overcome, as they hurtle towards the final confrontation, atop a building in Washington. There are even occasional moments where I was genuinely impressed by Tracie’s smarts, such as her taking two motel rooms on opposite sides. Leverone has a very good eye for action, and some of the set pieces are positively cinematic, such as the fight on board a B-52, and its subsequent marginally controlled descent. Could quibble about the way Tracie needs “rescued” at the end, except it’s foreshadowed well enough to make sense.

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

After finishing Volume 1, I was pleased to discover I’d been smart enough to pick up Volumes 1-3 as a freebie (you can also get the first seven books for ten bucks). Having been solidly entertained by the first book, I headed more or less straight in to the next two, figuring that it would be a good candidate for our first ever featured book review. I wasn’t disappointed. This is another slick page-turner, albeit one with some of the same issues as its predecessor.

It begins only a couple of days after the events which ended the first volume. Traci is already back out in the field, even though she is still healing – both physically and mentally – from the damage she suffered while completing her mission.Only the personal intervention of President Reagan saved her from being drummed out of the CIA by Director Aaron Stallings, but it’s clear she is not exactly his flavour of the month.

A couple of months later, in September 1987, things kick off properly with the abduction of US Secretary of State J. Robert Humphries from his home in Georgetown. He’s a close personal friend of the President, who orders Stallings carry out an off-the-books operation, using a lone operative, to find out what happened and who’s responsible. No prizes for guessing to whom the director gives this fraught mission The initial evidence all seems to point to it being a Russian plot, this being the peak of the Cold War, but the more Tracie looks into the matter, the more it seems the Russians are being set up to take the fall, and the real culprits are elsewhere. Trying to tell Stallings this only gets her fired from the CIA; naturally, this is barely an inconvenience for the heroine.

As in the first book, the circumstances do throw Tracie back onto relying almost exclusively on her own talents. While she does get some help from CIA Analyst Marshall Fulton, it’s mostly information, which helps her put the pieces together. He’s a desk jockey, and although brave enough, ends up literally dropped off by the side of the road, as Tracie speeds off on her rescue mission. There is a slight sense of romantic tension between them; it doesn’t amount to much, yet still feels a bit awkward, considering how close we are to the personal tragedy Tracie endured in book #1. Her stoic refusal to call for back-up also felt a little strained. I get she no longer had official standing, yet there’s a point where this seemed a tad contrived.

It is a bit more of a stealth mission, which is what leads to the slightly lower kick-butt quotient for this: there’s more creeping around, trying not to be detected, in place of plane crashes, gun battles and chases. However, it feels more coherent and has a better ring of plausibility to it. Each piece of the story connects well to the next, and does a good job of drawing the reader along, towards the eventual climax on an small island off the East coast. My reading is usually split, with one book on my phone and a different one on the tablet. So it likely says something that, as soon as I finished this, I loaded up volume three on both my devices, the better to get into it.

The Omega Connection
Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

Again, there’s no much of a pause between the end of one story and the beginning of the next. No matter how much Tracie may have been taxed by her exploits, she’s thrown back out there by boss Stallings, on another hazardous mission. I do wonder about her motivation, since she’s now entirely off-books, no longer even being a CIA employee: why love your country so much, and be prepared to put your life on the line for it, when its agencies treat you in such a disrespectful manner? I’d be high-tailing it towards the private security sector after all she’s gone through. That might just be me though.

This begins with an electronics company being decimated by a bomb attack, with its CEO also murdered in his hotel room. Threatening letters had been received, blaming the corporation for its role in the Bay of Pigs fiasco over a quarter of a century previously, an abortive invasion attempt against Fidel Castro’s Cuba, which cost the lives of many Cuban expats. Now, it appears, someone is out for payback. Tracey is assigned, first to bring in the only surviving member of the board, its R&D genius, Edison Kiley, then find out the person or persons responsible and make them stop. The task will take her into the darker corners of the expat community in Miami, over into Cuba itself, before she has to go deep into the almost unexplored territory of the Florida Everglades.

There is a certain sense of deja vu, in that as in All Enemies, the culprit for whom Tracie is seeking, is not who it initially appears. Neither book makes much effort to hide this fact: they’re not really whodunnits. However, it is a little too familiar for my tastes, and she also accepts what she is told regarding this by a certain party as the truth. While she is limited in what she can do, due to her unofficial status, I’d still expect her to be a little more “Trust, but verify…”

The best thing here is likely the main antagonist. They spend most of the film in the background, with Tracie dealing mostly with the results of their action. However, the eventual face-off is worth the wait, a downright brutal and savage brawl in the depths of the Florida swamps. It’s good enough to make me wish they’d met up earlier in the story, and had more than one such encounter. By the end, I’d be hard-pushed to say Tracie had shown much character development. She’s more or less in the same place she was at the start of volume 3 – just with a bullet wound in her leg, and a nasty concussion. However, the whole trilogy proved to be more than an adequately fun read, and I would not bet against further volumes showing up here, down the road.

Author: Allan Leverone
Publisher: Rock Bottom Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Books 1-3 of 9 in the Tracie Tanner Thrillers series.

Warchild: Pawn, by Ernie Lindsey

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

This dystopian future takes place after the United States of America is no longer united, having fragmented into a group of disparate regions that exist in an uneasy piece with each other. The heroine is 14-year-old Caroline, who lives in a remote part of the Appalachians, her town loosely affiliated to the People’s Republic of Virginia. She’s a scout, and one day encounters forces from the Democratic Alliance. The population of her village who escape, head towards the state capital of Warrenville, pursued by the invading army. On the way, Caroline begins to come into startling abilities which were literally injected into her as a small child.

The collapse of the US is a concept which seems considerably more relevant now, than when the book originally came out in 2014; I was surprised to discover that it takes place several centuries into the future, rather than… oh, next Tuesday. This is the element which I think I found most interesting. While the story is a real page-turner, and I enjoyed it at the time, it’s one where I found myself stumbling into plot-holes when it came to writing the review. For instance, if you can get superpowers by syringe, why are there less than a handful of people so enhanced? I’d have expected the authorities to be all over that kind of thing, in particular the military. Instead, it seems almost to be like a post-apocalyptic version of winning the lottery.

Similarly, the way in which Caroline leads the refugees to Warrenville would have made more sense if she’d come into her powers first. That would plausibly help turn the teenager into a Joan of Arc-like figure. Instead, it seems rather contrived the way adults – even the fiercely independent and survivalist Republicons – defer to her, for no particular reason beyond Caroline being the heroine of the book. However, if you can get past that (and again, I didn’t really think about them while I was reading it), then you should be able to enjoy a fast-paced surge of a book, which tends to have something going on, more often than not.

Lindsey certainly doesn’t pull his punches. On more than one occasion a character meets an unexpected and brutal end, and this gives a sense of danger for the rest of them. Well, except Caroline, of course, who is fully engulfed in Heroine Armour, naturally. Still, there is a genuine character arc here, as her relatively pastoral existence is turned completely upside down, and she’s forced into maturity over the course of just a few days, after losing everything she knows. I would be tempted to read the next two volumes, just to see where the story goes: for instance, I’m curious about what happened to Crockett’s gang of Republicons, who just wandered off in the middle of the story. Though I’d need more of a “special offer” for the omnibus edition than the 49-cent saving it provides over buying parts two and three separately!

Author: Ernie Lindsey
Publisher: JCL Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Warchild series.

The Draka and the Giant, by Liane Zane

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

Liane Zane brings her Elioud Legacy trilogy to a rousing and powerful conclusion in this novel, which was actually my favorite of the three. (Full disclosure at the outset: Liane, who’s a Goodreads friend of mine, generously gifted me with a paperback ARC, because she knew I’d really liked the two earlier books. No promise of a good review was offered or requested; this book amply earned that on its merits.)

This is definitely a series that needs to be read in order. Our story here opens in medias res, and readers who begin here won’t have much knowledge of the premise or the situation –nor, especially, of the characters and their relationships. You really need the context of the first two books to fully appreciate this one. (With that context, though, it becomes a wonderful capstone to the arch the author has crafted!) However, for the benefit of readers who haven’t read either of those books nor my or others’ reviews of them, and who may not have seen the book description either, the titular “Elioud” are human-angel hybrids (matings between the two races having begun before the Flood, and some unions –or rapes of humans by fallen angels– supposedly continuing to occur). Depending on their degree of angelic inheritance, Elioud may have special abilities that most humans do not, and may be quite long-lived (as in, centuries) as well. Those who are aware of what they are may choose, like other humans, to knowingly serve God or Satan (or, also like many humans, to imagine that they can just ignore that whole conflict and be neutrals). But for those on one side or the other, the term “spiritual warfare” may be a lot more literal than it is for most believers.

Near the beginning of the series opener, the three heroines of the trilogy, a close-knit trio of cross-national friends in their early 20s, all of them both working for their respective countries’ intelligence services and involved on the side in a sub rosa vigilante operation of their own against sex traffickers and predators, met three long-lived Elioud warriors, who revealed to the ladies that they also have angel ancestry. Together, the six of them were involved in fighting the nefarious plots, continued across the first two books, of the fallen angel Asmodeus, who’s now set himself up as a cult leader for a sect of brain-washed humans who call themselves bogomili, after a medieval heretical sect (but who are a lot more malevolent and murderous than their earlier, peaceful namesakes). The other aspect of the series plot is that each member of these two trios felt a strong attraction to a member of the other one. It wasn’t hard to predict that each of the three novels would focus on one of these pairs, and that the course of their romance would be an important plot strand. So here, Beta Cerna and Andras Nagy take center stage.

For me, in the previous books, these two characters had always seemed the least interesting and appealing, largely because I didn’t really know them. Indeed, Beta (short for Alzbeta –she’s Czech) is hard to get to know. She’s a “lone wolf” with very few friends, and a brusque manner that can come across as practically feral. And because Andras is big, strong and taciturn, and mostly inclined to obey orders, it’s easy to fall into the trap of subconsciously dismissing him as not very smart or sensitive (though that’s a great mistake!). But here they come into their own; we see them as the complex and special people they truly are. The previous book ended with Beta arousing a sleeping, half groggy Andras for an unexpected sexual encounter in his bed –and then vanishing before morning. When this book opens, none of the other five main characters have seen her for three years (so it’s now 2018). But we soon learn that there’s been more of a reason for her disappearance than her commitment issues. Much is going on, and Asmodeus (and his fellow demon Yeqon. whom we met in the second book) are exponentially ratcheting up their plans, which won’t bode well for humanity if they come to fruition. But the Archangel Michael (directed, of course, by God, though here He operates offstage) has plans too….

Many of the strengths of the preceding books are evident here also. Zane realizes the settings well (events take place in several European countries), and flavors the narrative with glimpses of the various customs, languages, folklore and cuisine of the nationalities represented. Her characters are round, vivid, dynamic, and distinct (every one of the six main characters have their own unique personalities, rather than being clones of the others, but the supporting characters are also clearly drawn). There’s a strong good vs. evil conflict (with a recognition that we wage this conflict in our own hearts, not just with other people), with high stakes and a lot of dramatic tension. Though this isn’t commercial “Christian fiction,” it’s fiction written by a Christian (the author is a practicing Roman Catholic) and the basic message is Christian. (As in much supernatural fiction, the angels vs. demons conflict is a metaphor for the spiritual conflicts of the real world.) My one quibble here is that our heroes and heroines don’t pray much in crisis situations (and they’re up to their eyeballs in the latter, which would do wonders for my prayer life!). But that’s a fairly minor point. It was also actually easier for me to achieve “suspension of disbelief” here than in the first two books, despite the continuing murky points of angelology/demonology, and the ramping up of Elioud powers here (the mating of two Elioud warriors enhances their abilities). Perhaps that’s because by now I’ve gotten more used to my Elioud friends and their fictional world. :-)

Bad language here is minimal. There are some references to lewd and disgusting sexual behavior (Asmodeus and Yeqon hang out in Amsterdam’s red-light district, and their sexual attitudes are what you’d expect from demons), and one instance of premarital, though not casual, sex; but Zane doesn’t emphasize the former any more than she has to, and the latter is explicit only up to a point. (Basically, the romantic content is quite wholesome, and a wedding –I’m not saying whose!– is one of the more moving scenes in the book.) This is definitely the most violent book of the series, though, with two major pitched battles and a body count through the roof, not all of the casualties being bad guys. However, fans of action thrillers won’t mind this, and fans who like their heroines tough will love Beta. (She’s a deadly accurate shot with both a pistol and a long gun, but her favorite weapons are her chain whip and her karambit, a hooked originally Indonesian knife modified as a switchblade, which she finds it soothing to flick open and closed when she’s nervous, the way some people tap their foot. :-) )

While this is, like the others in the trilogy, a thick, substantial novel, at 525 pages it doesn’t feel a bit overly long; I was immersed and interested immediately, and stayed so for every page. It’s also a highly evocative read emotionally, with some beautiful writing and imagery in places (and some very grim images as well). I’d enthusiastically recommend it to fans of supernatural fiction with Christian themes, of action thrillers or action heroines (or heroes), and of paranormal romance.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Books; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.