The Last Contract of Isako - Fonda Lee

The Last Contract of Isako is a standalone sci-fi adventure from Fonda Lee, also known for her brutal, emotional and very kinetically involved Jade City. Isako is a hired gun on an extraterrestrial planet; a contractor brought in to execute corporate warfare with a mixture of charm and lethality, bringing a rather more martial tone to the phrase "corporate takeover". And Isako is also, to some extent, getting older, getting slower, using experience and a history of influence with those who shape her world to balance out slowing reflexes, and a sword-arm that isn't quite as fast as it could be. 

 Because this is, one way or another, Isako's story. We can feel her past in the way she moves, each survived engagement leaving a mark, each cut from her blade backed by years of fights just like the one that you're currently losing. Because Isako is a killer, and Isako is also the best at what she does. Now, having said that, Isako isn't just a killer. She's a wartime concierge, someone who can commit a bit of light corporate espionage before lunch, and read off discrepancies in the opposition's P&L reports with one hand while dealing with an assassin with the other. But she's also a woman with a lot of old friends in interesting places, someone who has made connections wherever she's gone, and has, somewhere in there, built a family, a family which isn't just blood and bone, but shared truth and shared horror and shared love. Isako is getting a little tired, and she has quite a bit to lose, but she's not out just yet. Which is just as well, because her brand of weary, slightly cynical, backed by genuine emotional weight for her friends and family...makes her the kind of protagonist who strides confidently off the page, smacks you upside the head and tells you to keep reading, because she's not dead yet.I'm always a bit reluctant to use the word, but as a protagonist, Isako is fierce. She gives approximately zero fucks, and, given a mission she cares about, is an undeniable force of nature. 

Mind you, there's some other stuff on the page here. It's not all Isako doing backflips, complaining how much they hurt, then sinking a short-blade into the neck of some mook. It's that, oh absolutely, but not just that. We can see how she struggles to connect with a daughter lost to her through time and the vagaries of work, estranged through chance more than outright neglect, we ca see how her friends are...well, they're hired guns as well, with a gendas of their own, and how those agendas make everyone involved step carefully around each other while they try to find a way through, off the back of older, bloodier, simpler times. 

Isako is the heart of this story, that's a fact - but the supporting cast of professional "Contractors". limpidly malevolent corporate aristocrats and scrabbling underclass...they give Isako the heart of her own that makes the story work. 

And the story works because Isako's world is very odd indeed. An airless rock, slooooowly being reclaimed by terraforming. A population living under domes, walking out into the uncovered desolation when they can't bring in resources any more, hoping for a better world centuries down the line. Corporate departments trying to shape a planet, city districts controlled by the departments that employ them divergences in direction by vice presidents backed by blades and knives in the dark. It's a dystopia, yes, but a frighteningly plausible one, where most people don't even know what they're missing, or might think it's worth it. This is a company town, fallen into navel gazing whilst heavily armed. Where employment guarantees resources, and where the social safety-net...really isn't. This is Isako's world, where the bosses run things more literally than ever, and where everything may be about to change.

That#s...well, no spoilers here. But the paradigm on which this place is built, absolute corporate sovereignty traded for the chance one day at a better world...may be out of date. There's rebels, of course, but that's not all that's going on, not all that Isako will have to investigate, while she tries to work out who knows what, and what they want to do with the information. Whether the old order is worth preserving, and if she's willing to be the one to do it. Because this is a thriller, a conspiracy of moving parts and silent pawns and quiet people in back rooms making deals that they sign in someone else's blood.

 The Last Contract of Isako is beautiful and brutal and bloody. It's heartfelt and messy and thoughtful, a story of kindness and killers, and a story of how far people are willing to go for the truth, or for the lies wrapped around it. 

It's a fun book, an emotional book, a book that sneaks off the page like a stiletto, that will leave you feeling, one way or the other. It is, basically, a damn fine story. 

Daughter of Crows - Mark Lawrence

Daughter of Crows is the start of a new series from Mark Lawrence. A dark, bloody, violent work of fantasy, with a compelling protagonist steeped in the blood of her friends as well as her enemies, in a world that manages to be rich and vibrant and alive whilst also being wondrous and horrifying in...I'm not going to say in equal measure, okay? But the world has weight to it, a depth that sucks you in like an undertow, even if there's times when you'd rather not be there. Lawrence has written...well, at this point lets just say quite a few books, and I've enjoyed them all. And, as always, this series brings us something new, a different way of looking at the world, a different way of appreciating the people and the spaces and the things happening around us.

And, you know, there's more than a fair share of action and adventure here, too.

Because this is a story about Rue. Rue is a lot of things. Loyal, certainly. A steadfast friend, one who holds a quiet, absolute commitment to her found family quite deep down in her heart. Someone who has tried to make a life away from the things that shaped her? Absolutely. We see Rue in two timelines, intertwined, her past and her present, and in each she's a builder and a survivor, someone who is willing to do a lot of things to live - and wants to remake herself in her own image, given the chance to do so. And Rue is traumatised, oh, in so many ways, across all of her pasts, pushing back against horrors nearly unfathomable with both hands. Rue is a pragmatist, a woman who wants what she wants, but is willing to settle for whatever she can get - or, more typically, what she can grab hold of with both hands and get away with.

Both Rue of the past and Rue now are lethal, sharp-edged killers, of course. Survivors of the sort of school where making it out alive is very much not a part of the curriculum. But Rue is thoughtful. Kind, where she can be. A woman who has spent a long time searching for, and getting away from family. Hers is an emotional journey, and it says a lot that her emotions are often incorporated into the deaths of others - be they friends or enemies. And...you know what, I like Rue. The older Rue, the one tired of all this nonsense, the one who's a bit slow off the mark, the poisonously ironic and straightforward Rue is a great, entertaining read. And the younger Rue, the one struggling to find herself or her voice, fighting every inch of the way to make herself a lethal instrument without losing herself, the Rue who reaches out and finds solace and survival in the friends she makes and the enemies she despises...she also kept me turning pages well into the night.

And this is Rue's story, make no mistake. Daughter of Crows is a character study outlined in carmine, a biography etched into the graves of everyone around her.

And it's Mark Lawrence at his absolute best. Rue's time in a school for killers is expertly crafted, from the murderous, mutilated staff to the horrifying, esoteric mysticism which also, you know, works, to the seething jealousies and alliances that put the sheer youth of its students into perspective...this is Dark Academia if Dark Academia was handed a stiletto, a grudge, and a nemesis tied to a chair.| And the world outside Rue's school isn't much better, filled with dubious monarchs, murderous mercenaries and other factions who seem to have a less than savoury interest in our protagonist. This is a world that has a history, though we only catch pieces of it from the corner of our eye. This is a world of refugees and rebuilding and long, long crafted plans for vengeance. But it's a world, true enough, where people live and get their meals and pop down the pub and are, you know, real, even if they're a bit more concerned about social collapse or the blade at their throat than I am.

The story is often grim, with twists and turns that will keep you guessing - I thought I'd figured out what was going on several times, only to have my carefully crafted theories thoroughly upended. But always, always it manages to come back to telling us about people, about Rue and her loves and her fears and her family and her friends, and what they want, and how they might get it. It's a story with a sparkle, even if the sparkle is the shine of a blade bouncing off the eye of a recently deceased guard. It has a power to it, a kind of honesty between the pages that meant I couldn't put it down - and in that, it's vintage Lawrence.

In short, this is the good stuff - go give it a read.

On holiday - back soon!

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