Off the success of The Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist I picked up an omnibus of Darren Humphries' first three 'Man from UNDEAD' novels on Kindle.
Agent Ward continues the fight against bad magic and extradimensional gribblies, and further establishes a corps of recurring characters to help him out: Veronika Bevilaqua, super-sexy palaeozoologist and dinosaur wrangler; Penny Kilkenny, super-sexy administrative assistant to the Director of UNDEAD, Mrs Friedriksen (who is not super-sexy, although more than one male character evinces a belief that she has a steamy side); rookie agent Peter Albright; and terrifyingly indestructible security chief Mettles.
Humphries writes a decent adventure yarn and avoids the worst excesses of the Bond genre he is parodying with the introduction of Veronika as a long-term romantic interest instead of making Ward all things to all women, but three books in there is a touch of sameness creeping. Moreover, the set-up and pay-off are not balanced or matched, so that the mad plan to defeat a dragon in book three, for example, is based not on anything that has come before, but on factual and legal conceits of the fictional world which have not previously been mentioned, which for my money is a significant failing.
The minor pop cultural differences between our world and Ward's fictional universe (Jaws exists, but was a French film, for example) were also a little irritating. I confess that it is a conceit that I rarely have time for unless there is a good reason, and Humphries hangs a lampshade on it a little too much.
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| The omnibus cover actually has more curvy silhouettes than the books have significant female (or in fact male) characters. |
Humphries writes a decent adventure yarn and avoids the worst excesses of the Bond genre he is parodying with the introduction of Veronika as a long-term romantic interest instead of making Ward all things to all women, but three books in there is a touch of sameness creeping. Moreover, the set-up and pay-off are not balanced or matched, so that the mad plan to defeat a dragon in book three, for example, is based not on anything that has come before, but on factual and legal conceits of the fictional world which have not previously been mentioned, which for my money is a significant failing.
The minor pop cultural differences between our world and Ward's fictional universe (Jaws exists, but was a French film, for example) were also a little irritating. I confess that it is a conceit that I rarely have time for unless there is a good reason, and Humphries hangs a lampshade on it a little too much.
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