Tag: SF

Chameleon Assassin, by B.R. Kingsolver

  By

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vexille

  By

★★★★
“Breaking the lockdown”

In the second half of the 21st century, Japan closed its borders, after a schism between it and the rest of the world over the development of advanced androids by robotics pioneer Daiwa Heavy Industries, which the United Nations wanted stopped. For a decade no foreigner has been allowed in, and no-one knows what the country is now like. Then evidence arises that makes government agency SWORD embark on an “off the books” mission, to insert a team into Japan. It doesn’t go well, and before long the only member left active is Lt. Cdr. Vexille Serra (Kuroki). She discovers the country is now run by Daiwa, and things are… not what you’d expect. She links up with the head of the anti-Daiwa resistance, Maria (Matsuyuki). But time is running out for them, and the rebels are forced to mount a last-ditch attack on Daiwa’s island headquarters, in the hope of preventing a similar fate befalling the rest of the world.

I was surprised to find how far back this was released, because the animation doesn’t feel 14 years old. It’s a slick combination of CGI and cel work, that looks particularly good in motion – and there’s no shortage of that. The other thing the film does well is balance the plot and the action. The central idea here, that Japan reverted to the state of sakoku, which isolated the country from 1639 to 1853, is intriguing – if a bit implausible – and the story delivers a few unexpected twists on its heels. However, it never topples over into grinding philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, what it means to be “human”, etc. and so is a marked improvement over some anime shows about androids [certain Ghost in the Shell incarnations, but I am particularly looking at you, Mardock Scramble!]

Instead, it uses the scenario as a jumping-off point for a number of wonderful set pieces. Firstly, an initial assault on a Colorado mansion which reveals the evidence of Japanese activity, and ends in a giant fireball to rival all giant fireballs. Then there’s a chase through a docks, between a super-powered motorbike and several mecha suits. And finally, there’s a long, extended attempt to get into Daiwa’s headquarters. This involves a full-speed race through service tunnels connecting it to the mainland, while pursued by “jags” – rogue nanotechnology, whose form and behaviour are not dissimilar to the sandworms from Dune. It is all great stuff, and the soundtrack, produced by trance DJ legend Paul Oakenfold, helps drive things forward.

Vexille and Maria are definitely the two main characters, so there’s no doubt that it deserves to be included on the site, and they have rather more success getting into Daiwa than the male members of the resistance. There’s no much background on the heroine; she has a relationship with another member of the team, its commander Leon Fayden (Tanihara), and his capture by Daiwa is about all the motivation provided. Or necessary, to be fair. Providing you aren’t looking for something deep and meaningful, but enjoy a good high concept, and watching things whizz past at a high rate of speed, this is a solid success as a slick piece of entertainment.

Dir: Fumihiko Sori
Star: Meisa Kuroki, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Shosuke Tanihara, Takaya Kuroda

Appleseed Alpha

  By

★★★½
“Before the war”

Though the most recent story told in the Appleseed universe, at the time of writing, this was the first to take place. It’s set before Deunan (Christian) and Briareos (Matranga) arrived in Olympus, back when they were still struggling to survive in the harsh world of the 22nd century, created by World War III. They are a pair of former soldiers, operating in New York, doing jobs of questionable legality for boss of the Big Apple’s underworld, Two Horns (Calvert). Their latest mission is to clear an area of automated drones, which now attack anyone who enter. While doing so, they rescue Iris (Palencia) and Olson, who are being pursued by Talos. He’s a cyborg, who needs Iris in particular to access and control a land battleship, which he’ll use to destroy New York, because… Uh, I’m sure he has his reasons. They’re just not very clearly explained in this installment.

That’s one of the few mis-steps in this, even if it does kinda rewrite established franchise history about how Deunan and Briareos got to Olympus. It’s a wonderful glimpse into a blasted world, with New York eerily short on people, and far from the bustling metropolis it was, pre-war. Oddly, the subway still seems to function, as we see in the opening scene, when D+B are attempting to complete one of Two Horns’s jobs, delivering a vaccine to him. Let’s just say, this particular subway line may be experiencing delays for a bit. I actually watched this back-to-back with the original 1998 film, and there’s a drastic contrast in style, with the CGI here slick and generally showing impressive detail. There are some jarring exceptions; a car flipping over looks like no effort went into it at all. But the finale involving the land battleship is undeniably spectacular, and may be good enough to make you forget the earlier glitches. Always good to finish on a high, and this certainly does.

Its plot is not dissimilar to the original 1988 version, with a young girl the key to a terrorist acquiring a weapon of mass destruction. The main difference is that D+B are operating as independent contractors, rather than state-sponsored security. This probably makes their actions more heroic; they could simply have walked away from Iris and Olson, as not their problem. But perhaps the most interesting character arc belongs to Two Horns, who goes from employer to enemy, before eventually riding to the rescue after discovering, first-hand, how much of a bastard Talos and his sidekick, Nyx, can be. I must admit though, to finding Deunan’s costume a tad distracting, since it appears to be designed largely to draw attention to her beautifully detailed, CGI cleavage. While I’m not typically going to complain about that kind of thing, the rest of the film is rather too classy for this to be needed.

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice): Luci Christian, David Matranga, Wendel Calvert, Brina Palencia
[While it seems odd, I believe the English language version is actually the original,  with the Japanese being the “dub” in this case]

Appleseed XIII: Tartaros and Ouranos

  By

★½
“A Herculean labour to get through”

These two features, Tartaros and Ouranos, are an edited-down version of the Appleseed XIII series. This consisted of 13 episodes, each 22 minutes long, with their release beginning in June 2011 and running through the following January. Obviously, if you do the math, you can see that some fairly harsh scissoring was needed to get that down to a pair of 85-minute films. It also loses the obviously episodic nature, with some of the parts intended to be stand-alone. But, if I’m blunt, I think the problems here are considerably more intrinsic. By the end, I was glad I had decided to go with this version; the prospect of sitting through the longer version had little or no appeal at all.

The most obvious problem was the animation style, which managed to combine the worst features of both CGI and traditional animation. The end result is something which looks flat-out ugly, and thus a far cry from creator Masamune Shirow’s original art. For what I can only presume was good reason, the producers decided to have 13 different animation studios handle things, each doing one episode. While they were all clearly working from the same source material, it’s obvious that they were not all equally competent. Especially when compiled together, the decent bits simply make the bad look all the worse; it would probably have been better had it all been bad. As the original 1998 OAV showed, your eyes can get use to limited animation eventually – providing it isn’t frequently been shown anything else.

The other issue is a story which felt, at best, like another warmed-over rehash of previous elements. Oh, look: pro-human terrorists are threatening the peace of Olympus. Yes, again. It also drops in weird elements which made no sense. Did you know Deunan’s mother was African, and was killed while walking across a street reserved for white people? Briareos is also African. I’m not quite sure what woke point writer Junichi Fujisaku was seeking to make with this, also a sharp deviation from Shirow’s material. But it’s so badly-handed as to actively subtract from proceedings, and has aged very poorly over the decade since. A lot of the content is “inspired by” Greek mythology, in particular the 12 Labours of Hercules, to the point it feels on occasion like a SF episode of The Legendary Journeys.

The overall story arc mostly concerns Olympus’s “Ark Project”, which is intended to secure a future for humanity, but is being opposed by the Human Liberation Front, and in particular Deia Chades. There’s also a clash between Olympus and another city-state, Poseidon, which confused the heck out of me, as in the previous version, Poseidon appeared to be a multinational conglomerate. Whatevs. To be honest, it would have been a bit of an improvement if I could have brought myself to care about this, or anything else presented here. Instead, I found myself largely uninterested in the watered-down version of Deunan which we got here – someone who seemed more concerned about getting in touch with her feelings than with kicking ass.

Dir: Takayuki Hamana
Star (voice): Maaya Sakamoto, Kōichi Yamadera, Mikako Takahashi, Hiro Shimono

Appleseed Ex Machina

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★★★½
“The Deunan wears Prada.”

I think this is probably my favourite of the various incarnations of Appleseed. It may not be the best characterization, the best animation, or the best plot. But I think in overall terms, the combination is the most successful. In all the others, you can typically point to one of those three areas as being at least somewhat deficient. Here, if none are outstanding, they’re all solid and competent. It may help that legendary Hong Kong director John Woo was one of the producers. If you didn’t know that, you could probably tell from the early scene in which Briareos crashes through a church’s stained-glass window, a gun blazing in each hand. “All that needs is some white doves in slow-mo,” I thought. And, lo, later on, the birds in question do appear – and are even necessary to the plot, which is probably more than Woo managed!

The story here begins with the latest in a series of terrorist attacks, carried out by cyborgs. It turns out they are not acting of their own free will, but are being “puppet mastered” into their actions. Worse, the human residents of Olympus now appear to be joining in, baffling Deunan (Kobayashio) and her colleagues in ESWAT. Viewers, however, will likely be quicker to figure out the cause there, given the rather obvious mentions of a hot new piece of wearable technology called Connexus, which simply everyone who is anyone is now sporting. Meanwhile, a new kind of soldier biodroid is being developed, basied on Briareos (Yamadera), designed to possess the talents of humans or cyborgs, but without the negative traits. After Briareos is injured, Deunan is partnered up with one, Tereus (Kishi). This freaks her out, because he looks just like Briareos, before his cybernetic upgrades. Meanwhile, Olympus leader Athena (Takashima) seeks to leverage the terrorist attacks to gain support for her plan to create a worldwide security network.

There’s a lot going here, yet the script manages to keep the elements clear and moving forward without confusion. There’s a sweet spot in SF between the simplistic and the over-complex, and this hit it better than most. The animation is a tad short, however. Weirdly, what stood out as defective was the hair, which didn’t move in the way it should. Either that, or I guess, after the apocalypse, hair lacquer is not in short supply. In general though, the technical aspects were competent enough and occasionally better than that. Perhaps due to Woo’s involvement, it feels a perfect candidate for a live-action adaptation, though the budget would need to be well into nine figures. I’d go with Ruby Rose as Deunan and Dave Bautista as Briareos. Change my mind. :)  Oh, and the tagline? Yeah, some of Deunan’s outfits in the film were indeed designed by Miuccia Prada. She has been running the family’s clothing company since 1978, and was a fan of the previous film. A very well-dressed action heroine indeed…

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice):  Ai Kobayashi, Kōichi Yamadera, Gara Takashima, Yūji Kishi

Appleseed (2004)

  By

★★½
“Weak at its core.”

This is obviously technically superior to its 1988 predecessor, with CGI done in a way that the people, in particular, look like cel animation. I suspect that being a theatrical release, rather than a original video animation, gave it a significantly larger budget, and it hits the ground running. The opening sequence is a bravura use of all the tricks in the CGI locker: swoops, zooms and majestic camera movements round a half-destroyed cityscape. Deunan (Kobayashi) fends off a host of enemies, but ends up being knocked unconscious, and taken to the utopian city of Olympus. There, she’s reunited with Briareos (Kosugi), and becomes part of the ESWAT team. But not everything is idyllic in Olympus, which is populated about equally by humans and vat-grown biodroids, who administer the city and keep humanity’s emotions and violent tendencies in check.

In particular, there are tensions between the administration of biodroid Athena Areios (Koyama), and the army under General Uranus. The latter are fiercely opposed to biodroids, and a faction take action, destroying the facilities which extend biodroid lifespans. They want to realise the “doomsday device” which will wipe out all biodroids. But a group in the administration want to activate biodroid reproductive abilities – this is the “Appleseed” of the franchise title. They need Deunan’s help in this; her mother created the biodroids and her DNA is in them. But the question of who actually has humanity’s best interests at heart, is considerably more murky than it initially appears.

There’s a lot of plot going on here, as the above would appear to make apparent [tip: the more often a society describes itself as “utopian”, the less likely it is to be so]. The problem for me was, it seemed as if the makers all but forgot about the characters. For all the technical wizardry on view, the 1988 film achieved a significantly higher degree of emotional resonance. I don’t think it’s a particular result of the voice acting. I suspect it’s just that the creators constructed this world, and all these groups operating within it, leaving little time in the script to develop Deunan as a character. She feels less like a person than a walking collection of plot elements. There’s also very little depth to the relationship between her and Briareos, which is among the most enjoyable elements in other versions. 

Unfortunately for the sake of my headline, I can’t honestly describe this as “rotten.” But it definitely did not manage to sustain my interest consitently. Since I was watching it in Japanese, I did have to pay a certain amount of attention, since I couldn’t just listen to it. This was particularly during the gobbets of exposition provided by the Council of Elders, a group of old men who debate with supercomputer Gaia about how to run Olympus. However, it was definitely at the bare minimum level for a significant chunk of the running time. After the spectacular opening, it felt like it was largely downhill for the rest of the way, with the usual superweapon finale only somewhat able to rescue things.

Dir: Shinji Aramaki
Star (voice): Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi, Yuki Matsuoka, Mami Koyama

Appleseed (1988)

  By

★★★
“Apples to oranges”

This feels like one of the first anime releases to get an official release in the West, and to be honest, the animation in particular is showing its age. It couldn’t be much more eighties, if the heroine had big hair and wore legwarmers while listening to her Sony Walkman. That said, when you get used to the relatively simple style, it’s decent enough. We are introduced to the post-WW3 world and in particular, the city of Olympus, which was designed to be a utopian environment for survivors. However, like all utopias, it failed to take into account human nature. In particular, some are very concerned by the prevalence of biodroids. These artificial creations were intended to be humanity’s servants, yet for their opponents, feel increasingly more like our masters.

In that camp is terrorist A.J. Sebastian, who is working with a disgruntled Olympus police officer, Charon Mautholos (Furukawa) to bring about the collapse of Olympus and its all-powerful computer, Gaia. Against them stand the Olympus anti-terrorist forces, in particular Deunan Knute (Katsuki) and Briareos Hecatonchires (Sakaguchi). They are refugees from the blasted hellscape which forms much of the world, who were taken in to Olympus, and became part of its police force. Already bearing a grudge against Sebastian for his killing of a colleague during a hostage situation, they are not unhappy to be tasked with his extra-judicial killing by Olympus’s leader, the bioroid Athena Areios (Sawada). But with the help of Charon, Sebastian is one step ahead of the authorities.

As shown in the video below (you’re welcome!), the original release of the anime did have its fair share of bumpy moments. Several signs clearly refer to the city as “Olumpus”, which doesn’t quite sounds like the home of the gods! Similarly Charon is referred to as “Karen” in the subtitles, which has a rather different set of associations in 2021, never mind the gender confusion it caused. Finally, Briareos is called Buliaros: I guess they were still settling down in terms of his Western name. It’s also surprisingly low-key in terms of action. Once you get past the hostage rescue mentioned above, it’s really Sebastian and Charon that are responsible for much more of the mayhem than Deunan and Briareos.

I did like the characters here though. It’s clear the heroine and hero have an easy-going relationship, trusting each other implicitly. Yet the script still finds the time to give Charon a back-story which makes his action understandable in the circumstances. Sebastian, not so much, however; he’s just a villain. The world-building is generally solid, though I would like to have learned more about life outside Olympus, to provide some contrast. The soundtrack – something I remember as a highlight of many films and series of the time – is utterly forgettable. It’s no Bubblegum Crisis, that’s for sure, and is even further below Ghost in the Shell. Overall though, allowing for its age, it did keep me entertained; truth be told, considerably more  than I feared it might.

Dir: Kazuyoshi Katayama
Star: Masako Katsuki, Yoshisada Sakaguchi, Toshiko Sawada, Toshio Furukawa

Mardock Scramble

  By

★½
“Scrambled: adj. a jumbled mess”

Originally a series of three novels by Tow Ubukata, then a manga series published from 2009-12, I can only presume that something was lost in the translation to these three short (~65 minutes each) movies. Actually, make that just about everything. For after a promising first entry, I can’t think of a franchise that fell so completely off the rails. Okay, maybe The Matrix, with which this shares similar problems: taking itself far too seriously, and diverting into social commentary for which no-one was asking. I gave serious consideration to bailing and make this a rare “Did not finish,” which I’d not even bother writing about. But perhaps if my experience can serve as a warning to others, the tedium will not have been experienced in vain.

It’s the story of teenage prostitute Rune Balot (Hayashibara), whom her pimp Shell Septinous (Nakai( tries to dispose of after she becomes too much of a liability. Near-dead, she is rescued by the mysterious Dr. Easter, who transforms her into a powerful cyborg, under the provisions of the murky “Mardock Scramble 09” protocol, which allows for extreme measures to be taken in pursuit of the preservation of life. Accompanied by a multi-dimensional entity named Oeufcoque (Yashina), which takes the form of a mouse (!) that can transform into any object. She’s unleashed to track down the evidence necessary to convict Shell of murder, but has to deal with Oeufcoque’s former owner. Dinsdale Boiled (Isobe) – really, who comes up with these names? He underwent the Mardock Scramble process as well, except went more than a little bit mad as a result.

The first movie is not bad at all, and ends with Rune at the mercy of Boiled and Oeufcoque disabled, after a vicious battle. I rushed off to immediately find the second and third films. A fatal mistake. I should have guessed from the “with one bound, she was free” resolution to the cliff-hanger. For rather than the same blend of cyberpunky action, in the vein of Ghost in the Shell, vast swathes of the second and third film are spent watching Rune play blackjack and roulette. No, seriously. Apparently the proof of Shell’s crimes was encoded on four million-dollar casino chips, and these can only be obtained by accumulating wealth at the gambling tables. Very. Slowly. And with far too much explanation. If I didn’t know better – and, to be honest, I really don’t – I”d think they blew all their animation budget on part one, so had to cut back severely for parts two and three.

Even the bits between the gambling sessions are borderline ludicrous, like the wonderland where cyborg Tweedledum is in a gay relationship with Tweedledee. Who is an enhanced dolphin. Tack on a whole bunch of psychobabble about the nature of things, and yeah – my Matrix mention above begins to look increasingly relevant. The whole saga feels as if the creators simply vomited out ideas onto the page, then turned that over, in lieu of a completed script.

Dir: Susumu Kudo 
Star (voice): Megumi Hayashibara, Norito Yashima, Tsutomu Isobe, Kazuya Nakai

Spare Parts

  By

★★½
“Somewhat more than pure junk.”

All-girl punk band “Ms. 45” – and I’m awarding half a star purely for that name – are on tour, though things threaten to fall apart due to the bitching between members Emma (Alatalo) and Amy (Argyris), despite them being sisters. Driving away from their latest show (which turned into a bit of a bar-room brawl), they are run off the road by stalker fan Sam (Rouse). The local cops are kind enough to arrange for a tow to a nearby scrapyard. Except, there, the four woman are drugged, and wake up to find themselves each missing an arm, and forced to fight in gladiatorial combats for the pleasure of the Emperor (Richings), Sam’s father and his devotees. But Sam has taken a shine to Emma, and has an eye on using her to replace his Dad, while Emma and her friends only want to escape.

It’s not a bad idea, though the contemporary American setting is poorly considered. Make it a Central American shithole, post-apocalyptic wilderness or something similar; as is, it’s ludicrously implausible, and outside the first five minutes the musical angle is completely irrelevant too, bar a couple of axe jokes. It’s more than similar to Kiss Kiss, which had four women, kidnapped and made to fight in a rural American setting. Admittedly, their count of functioning limbs passed three, though here, it’s never less than obvious that the makers just slapped a weaponized glove on top. There’s no Imperator Furiosa level effects here, and you wonder why they bothered, rather than just handing the women their tools. Though the arm-flamethrower was appealing. It’s not as if I use my right arm for much…

If you liked Gladiator, but felt that it needed more punk rock, this is perhaps for you. I was moderately amused, even though there are only about three actual fights over the ninety minutes, and while those are decent, much of what goes on between them isn’t particularly exciting. You’ve got Sam’s plotting against his father, and there’s a trainer type who seems to be quite an interesting character. Otherwise, it’s kinda meh, especially since the members of Ms. 45 got off on the wrong foot with me, by being cringeworthy stereotypes. I cared little or nothing for their fates thereafter.

In concept, this feels like something out of Japan, perhaps by the creators of The Machine Girl. It just doesn’t have the necessary sense of gonzo, go for broke-ness, save for a couple of nice uses of an arm-chainsaw. Richings seems to be the only one who is truly buying into it, giving the Emperor a sense of insane omnipotence that’s a lot of fun to watch. The other performances need to be equally larger than life, in order to sell what is, let’s be honest, a difficult concept – and in most cases, they weren’t enough to hold my interest. Never a good sign, when the ending seems to point to a better movie than the one you just watched.

Dir: Andrew Thomas Hunt
Star: Emily Alatalo, Michelle Argyris, Jason Rouse, Julian Richings

Valhalla Online by Kevin McLaughlin

  By

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

I could have sworn this isn’t the first entry in the LitRPG genre I’d reviewed, but I’m damned if I can find the previous one. So, just to be safe, I’m going to explain what LitRPG is: apologies if this is unnecessary! Basically, it takes the structure of role-playing games (RPGs) – things like character levels, ability scores, etc – and applies them onto a story structure. Obviously, the overlap between RPGs and books has been a long one: Dungeons & Dragons is heavily influenced by the work of Tolkein. But it has been mostly one-way traffic. The LitRPG genre sends things back the other way, producing novels that adopt the practices of the games.

Quite how this is managed, is up to the author. Here, the heroine is Samantha, a military police officer who wakes to find herself part of Valhalla Online. This is a fantasy-based online RPG, which was intended to act as a virtual repository for the personalities of the deceased, granting them eternal life. Which comes as a shock to Sam, because she never signed up for this very expensive process. However, for good reason, the “virtual dead” are extremely limited in their ability to communicate with the outside world. Only those who complete the entire game are allowed to do so. This means Sam will first have to figure out how to rack up a high score, in order to begin finding out how she got here and what’s going on. Her army training might help. But even West Point didn’t prepare her for dealing with magic spells and storming castles.

It’s a quick and light read, one which contains few surprises at all. We don’t learn much about Sam’s life before Valhalla Online, and I’m not even sure we even discover what she looked like in the real world. All we’re told is that in-game, “Her hair seemed to be about the same color. Her skin tone looked familiar to her.” The cover tells you more than the entire novel. It would probably help to be loosely familiar with at least the concept of RPGs, though McLaughlin does a decent job of explaining the game mechanics, without getting bogged down in it.

The main issue is that death literally has no sting here. If Sam suffers a mortal wound, she just gets sent back to a set location. She may lose some of her equipment, and suffer a bit of psychic shock, but that’s about it, despite the author’s efforts to put over some mental trauma. It’s accurate enough as a computer game goes, but shows that what works there doesn’t necessarily transfer to other media. This lacking of a sense of mortality may partly be why Roger Ebert said in 2010 that computer games can never be art. But that aside, this keeps moving forward at a brisk pace, and for obvious reasons, the reader learns about Valhalla alongside Sam, which makes for a smoothly entertaining experience. It’s more or less standard hack and slash, though towards the end, she subverts things nicely by recruiting a pack of enemy kobolds (think: mini-orcs) to her side. Pretty sure that wasn’t in the tutorial…

The ending is little more than a save point, though it does come after a neat bit of loot sniping. Again, the lack of mortality applies as much to Sam’s enemies as to her; there’s little sense of triumph when the villain will simply re-spawn tomorrow. I finished the first volume having been pleasantly entertained, just not much more. I feel I probably don’t need to buy the remaining entries, because I suspect I can largely figure out how things are going to progress in them. There’s just not enough replay value to be found here.

Author: Kevin McLaughlin
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Valhalla Online series.