Coolhand
Spiff's Stunt Double
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2006
- Messages
- 495
Short Version: Enjoyable, fun spy thriller with a cool hero and an absolutely FANTASTIC bad guy.
Long Version:
HERE BE SPOILERS! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
There are many ways to start a fantasy book. Wistful descriptions of flowing scenery. Detailed studies of a character’s emotions. Introspective musings on ancient times gone by.
In his book Imperial Spy, Mark Robson says “nuts to that” and starts things off with a throwing knife fight.
And at that point I settled back into my chair with a smile on my face, a coffee one hand, the book in the other, suspecting that Mark Robson and myself have very similar ideas about what makes a good page turning read.
Imperial Spy follows the story of a teenage spy named Femke as she is dispatched to a rival kingdom on an apparently straightforward ambassadorial mission. Yet, as always, everything goes a bit Pete Tong, and Femke is left on the run, being hunted for a crime she didn’t commit whilst also having to deal with an ultra-evil assassin out for her blood.
Femke herself is quite a cool creation. She comes across as a teenage, female version of Jason Bourne, solving problems with an efficient mix of cunning, tradecraft and martial arts skills. She also (like Bourne or the re-imagined Bond) gets whacked, thumped, bashed, blooded and bruised, yet keeps kicking butt and taking names without whining about it too much. Harry "it's not fair" Potter please take note. In fact, if one were to transplant Femke into a certain school for witchcraft and wizardry, then Voldermort would have been defeated forever by the end of book 2. And that would be if she stopped for coffee halfway through. She’s the kind of black-ops secret agent I like to read about.
But Femke isn’t the only good thing on display here.
Mark Robson is a writer with a good eye for action. Much like film directors, writers either understand action or they don’t. Some of the greatest writers and directors out there, whilst excelling all other areas, actually don’t understand action at all. Mark Robson understands action. The various fights are nicely put together, fast, furious, tactical and surprisingly brutal for a YA book. Yum Yum Yum.
The plot, whilst taking a little while to actually suck me in, party due to it splitting directly off from the ending of Mark’s previous series, does end up taking some nice satisfying twists. And like all good thriller writers, Mark isn’t afraid to have some really bad things happen to keep us in suspense. There’s also a very interesting sequence where a good guy basically kills a basically innocent guard out of professional necessity, and then has to struggle with his conscience. It’s a great scene that looks at the moral complexities of doing a job where sometimes nice clean answers to problems may not exist, and Mark does nice work of subtly analyzing it without slowing the plot down or being heavy handed.
There are some downsides. The dialogue in the book isn’t always the best, falling a little too often into that “over formal” speech very prevalent in some fantasy series. I’ve never been a fan of it but I understand how it happens, because you can’t start throwing Yorkshire or French colloquialisms into a fantasy world. Even so, it’s a bit clunky on occasion. There are some odd POV switches mid scene which I found a little jarring and, without spoiling things, one of Femke’s escapes at the end of the book seemed a bit too...convenient.
But it’s still a cracking good read, YA or Adult, and the best thing is…the bad guy rocks.
We all love a "good" bad guy. Darth Vader. Hannibal Lector. Megatron. I think it must speak to something dark in the human soul, but show me a book with a great bad guy and I’m in for the ride.
Bad guys like Shalidar, the super-assassin and antagonist of Imperial Spy.
This guy is great. For instance, at one point he snaps the neck of a victim, and then gets angry with the poor guy for being overweight and leaving a corpse that’s hard to drag around. You’ve just got to love that. Wisely, Robson uses him sparingly in the book, but when he does show up, it’s usually to do something pretty nasty, making him all the more memorable. He’s a genuinely “Bad Muddle Fumper” as Lord Samuel of the Jackson might say in the "Edited for TV" version of Pulp Fiction.
Going back to my Harry Potter reference, if Shaladar was the antagonist of Harry, then by chapter three of Philosopher’s Stone about half of the school faculty would have had inexplicable fatal accidents. By chapter six Hagrid would be found dead after “accidentally” cutting his own head off whilst trimming his beard. And by chapter nine and Harry would be seen to “accidentally” fly his broom into overhead powerlines whilst simultaneously appearing to have stabbed himself with a poisoned throwing knife and decapitated himself. All at the same time. In mid air.
And then Shalidar would have probably topped things off by bumping off Voldermort and using his corpse to bludgeon the Death Eaters into a gooey paste for being a bunch of big girly softies.
Actually, THAT is my desired ending for the Deathly Hallows. I’m placing bets now…
Long Version:
HERE BE SPOILERS! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
There are many ways to start a fantasy book. Wistful descriptions of flowing scenery. Detailed studies of a character’s emotions. Introspective musings on ancient times gone by.
In his book Imperial Spy, Mark Robson says “nuts to that” and starts things off with a throwing knife fight.
And at that point I settled back into my chair with a smile on my face, a coffee one hand, the book in the other, suspecting that Mark Robson and myself have very similar ideas about what makes a good page turning read.
Imperial Spy follows the story of a teenage spy named Femke as she is dispatched to a rival kingdom on an apparently straightforward ambassadorial mission. Yet, as always, everything goes a bit Pete Tong, and Femke is left on the run, being hunted for a crime she didn’t commit whilst also having to deal with an ultra-evil assassin out for her blood.
Femke herself is quite a cool creation. She comes across as a teenage, female version of Jason Bourne, solving problems with an efficient mix of cunning, tradecraft and martial arts skills. She also (like Bourne or the re-imagined Bond) gets whacked, thumped, bashed, blooded and bruised, yet keeps kicking butt and taking names without whining about it too much. Harry "it's not fair" Potter please take note. In fact, if one were to transplant Femke into a certain school for witchcraft and wizardry, then Voldermort would have been defeated forever by the end of book 2. And that would be if she stopped for coffee halfway through. She’s the kind of black-ops secret agent I like to read about.
But Femke isn’t the only good thing on display here.
Mark Robson is a writer with a good eye for action. Much like film directors, writers either understand action or they don’t. Some of the greatest writers and directors out there, whilst excelling all other areas, actually don’t understand action at all. Mark Robson understands action. The various fights are nicely put together, fast, furious, tactical and surprisingly brutal for a YA book. Yum Yum Yum.
The plot, whilst taking a little while to actually suck me in, party due to it splitting directly off from the ending of Mark’s previous series, does end up taking some nice satisfying twists. And like all good thriller writers, Mark isn’t afraid to have some really bad things happen to keep us in suspense. There’s also a very interesting sequence where a good guy basically kills a basically innocent guard out of professional necessity, and then has to struggle with his conscience. It’s a great scene that looks at the moral complexities of doing a job where sometimes nice clean answers to problems may not exist, and Mark does nice work of subtly analyzing it without slowing the plot down or being heavy handed.
There are some downsides. The dialogue in the book isn’t always the best, falling a little too often into that “over formal” speech very prevalent in some fantasy series. I’ve never been a fan of it but I understand how it happens, because you can’t start throwing Yorkshire or French colloquialisms into a fantasy world. Even so, it’s a bit clunky on occasion. There are some odd POV switches mid scene which I found a little jarring and, without spoiling things, one of Femke’s escapes at the end of the book seemed a bit too...convenient.
But it’s still a cracking good read, YA or Adult, and the best thing is…the bad guy rocks.
We all love a "good" bad guy. Darth Vader. Hannibal Lector. Megatron. I think it must speak to something dark in the human soul, but show me a book with a great bad guy and I’m in for the ride.
Bad guys like Shalidar, the super-assassin and antagonist of Imperial Spy.
This guy is great. For instance, at one point he snaps the neck of a victim, and then gets angry with the poor guy for being overweight and leaving a corpse that’s hard to drag around. You’ve just got to love that. Wisely, Robson uses him sparingly in the book, but when he does show up, it’s usually to do something pretty nasty, making him all the more memorable. He’s a genuinely “Bad Muddle Fumper” as Lord Samuel of the Jackson might say in the "Edited for TV" version of Pulp Fiction.
Going back to my Harry Potter reference, if Shaladar was the antagonist of Harry, then by chapter three of Philosopher’s Stone about half of the school faculty would have had inexplicable fatal accidents. By chapter six Hagrid would be found dead after “accidentally” cutting his own head off whilst trimming his beard. And by chapter nine and Harry would be seen to “accidentally” fly his broom into overhead powerlines whilst simultaneously appearing to have stabbed himself with a poisoned throwing knife and decapitated himself. All at the same time. In mid air.
And then Shalidar would have probably topped things off by bumping off Voldermort and using his corpse to bludgeon the Death Eaters into a gooey paste for being a bunch of big girly softies.
Actually, THAT is my desired ending for the Deathly Hallows. I’m placing bets now…
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