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A review by wingsofareader
Solomon's Jar by Victor Milán, Alex Archer
3.0
Yes, yes, yes, it's predictable. Yes, yes, yes, it's fluffy and full of fighting and a fair to middling level of violence. No, it's not always believable and no, it's not a meticulously researched piece of historical or archeological fiction.
It's not supposed to be, nor does it make any claims to be and critiquing it for being what it is is akin to going to MacDonalds and giving the Big Mac and fries a bad review for not being flawlessly prepared sirloin.
Really?
This is only the second instalment in a series just beginning to discover whether or not it has a stride to find, never mind finding its stride yet. The main character at least acknowledges the very the preposterousness of being the spiritual successor of Joan of Arc and struggles with the notion that she is somehow a Champion of a Power of Good, nevermind God, she has been rather determinedly and politely ignoring since leaving the Catholic convent where she was raised.
Less quippy and less supernatural than a Buffy (a comparison acknowledged in the book itself - hardly surprising since one of the original writers who falls under the house name of "Alex Archer" is Mel Odom, who has written for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel series) but less cool, confident and rich than Lara Croft, the main character of Anja Creed is painted as something of an more approachable heroine. Let's face it, however - character development is secondary to action, and happens largely through exposition through the course of plot reveals and action across books written quickly by various authors over half a decade.
If you're looking for deep, why in the world would you pick up a serial adventure fantasy that's published with lightening speed? If you do, and are disappointed, you have no one to blame but yourself.
This does not mean, of course, that there is no lesson to be learned - as one of the Grande Dames of Fantasy one pointed out, one of the reasons that Sci Fi and Fantasy remain so popular is perhaps because they are one of the last bastions of literature in which Good and Evil do overt battle and - generally, if after some hum-dinger knock-down-drag out altercations, Good more or less wins the day and limps off into the sunset, ready to battle on in the next tale.
In that sense, the Rogue Angels series delivers - a woman with a religious history who has essentially turned to academia and a secular notion of personal ethics is pulled into a series of conflicts which essentially demonstrate the historical but ongoing (and one must presume) eternal and supreme grapple between Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil in which the smaller ethical and moral behaviour choices of human kind may or may not truly figure. In the midst of violent melees, Creed ruminates on the revulsion-fuelled nausea her sometimes violent calling brings on her, and questions her moral rights and obligations (the good of the many vs. the good of the individual) even as she's cleaving gummy organ bits from their former possessors' rapidly cooling and suddenly deceased earthly containers.
Action, check. Gore, check, check...occasionally several more checks. Moral quandaries and fibre, check, check, check. Some moderately accurate introduction to basic history and mythology? Check. Male writers writing about sexist males who are verbally put down by a woman? Check.
As adventure brain candy goes, Rogue Angel gets the job done, most of the time. What does it lack, IMHO? Contextually flowing humour. Where many of the heroines in the Paranormal/Urban fantasy genre seem to be almost too snarky, too quippy, all of the time to the point of using humour as a weapon, Anja Creed is so uptight she verges on dour. Like her counterparts in other P/UF series, it's partly the chip-on-the-shoulder factor, but sometimes this character seems wound so tightly one wonders that she doesn't push the carbon remains of her food so quickly through the entire sedimentary process in her own body, that she ends up pooping diamonds enough to fund her archeology research.
Surely in Spider's Stone, with trickster Anansi, even with the dark powers which must come to bear (if the Sword and Anja are doing to be needed) there will be some humour???
It's not supposed to be, nor does it make any claims to be and critiquing it for being what it is is akin to going to MacDonalds and giving the Big Mac and fries a bad review for not being flawlessly prepared sirloin.
Really?
This is only the second instalment in a series just beginning to discover whether or not it has a stride to find, never mind finding its stride yet. The main character at least acknowledges the very the preposterousness of being the spiritual successor of Joan of Arc and struggles with the notion that she is somehow a Champion of a Power of Good, nevermind God, she has been rather determinedly and politely ignoring since leaving the Catholic convent where she was raised.
Less quippy and less supernatural than a Buffy (a comparison acknowledged in the book itself - hardly surprising since one of the original writers who falls under the house name of "Alex Archer" is Mel Odom, who has written for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel series) but less cool, confident and rich than Lara Croft, the main character of Anja Creed is painted as something of an more approachable heroine. Let's face it, however - character development is secondary to action, and happens largely through exposition through the course of plot reveals and action across books written quickly by various authors over half a decade.
If you're looking for deep, why in the world would you pick up a serial adventure fantasy that's published with lightening speed? If you do, and are disappointed, you have no one to blame but yourself.
This does not mean, of course, that there is no lesson to be learned - as one of the Grande Dames of Fantasy one pointed out, one of the reasons that Sci Fi and Fantasy remain so popular is perhaps because they are one of the last bastions of literature in which Good and Evil do overt battle and - generally, if after some hum-dinger knock-down-drag out altercations, Good more or less wins the day and limps off into the sunset, ready to battle on in the next tale.
In that sense, the Rogue Angels series delivers - a woman with a religious history who has essentially turned to academia and a secular notion of personal ethics is pulled into a series of conflicts which essentially demonstrate the historical but ongoing (and one must presume) eternal and supreme grapple between Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil in which the smaller ethical and moral behaviour choices of human kind may or may not truly figure. In the midst of violent melees, Creed ruminates on the revulsion-fuelled nausea her sometimes violent calling brings on her, and questions her moral rights and obligations (the good of the many vs. the good of the individual) even as she's cleaving gummy organ bits from their former possessors' rapidly cooling and suddenly deceased earthly containers.
Action, check. Gore, check, check...occasionally several more checks. Moral quandaries and fibre, check, check, check. Some moderately accurate introduction to basic history and mythology? Check. Male writers writing about sexist males who are verbally put down by a woman? Check.
As adventure brain candy goes, Rogue Angel gets the job done, most of the time. What does it lack, IMHO? Contextually flowing humour. Where many of the heroines in the Paranormal/Urban fantasy genre seem to be almost too snarky, too quippy, all of the time to the point of using humour as a weapon, Anja Creed is so uptight she verges on dour. Like her counterparts in other P/UF series, it's partly the chip-on-the-shoulder factor, but sometimes this character seems wound so tightly one wonders that she doesn't push the carbon remains of her food so quickly through the entire sedimentary process in her own body, that she ends up pooping diamonds enough to fund her archeology research.
Surely in Spider's Stone, with trickster Anansi, even with the dark powers which must come to bear (if the Sword and Anja are doing to be needed) there will be some humour???