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A review by kkilburn
Killer Instinct by Zoë Sharp
3.0
Wonder Woman, Modesty Blaise, and now Charlie Fox. As Lee Child notes in his introduction, female action heroes are few and far between, and Charlie Fox is a welcome addition. Sharp has created a character with a strong backstory, a clear and solid presence, and plenty of room for emotional growth. She is far from perfect, but she has a good heart; she is someone I can like as a person as well as a kick-ass heroine. I have added the second book in the series to my TBR list and am eager to check it out.
Sharp tells a good story - I turned pages late into the night. Her prose is strong, and she has an eye for arresting metaphor. Unfortunately, poor editing led to some of those metaphors being mangled by grammatical errors, but I expect that will change with later books in the series.
As a martial artist and student of self defense, I often find myself suspending disbelief when I read fight and/or self-defense scenes. Sharp does a much better job than most at writing realistic encounters with realistic results in the forms of broken bones and other damage. I took issue most strongly with the way she shapes Charlie's thoughts about sexual assault and self-defense, which often lapse into the sort of victim-blaming that the best self-defense instructors work very hard to avoid. And the final fight, in which Charlie uses the old palm-strike-drives-bone-fragment-into-the-skull trick - well, that was just so over the top and ridiculous that I literally had to stop reading for a minute.
All that said, I enjoyed the book and hope that future books bear out the promise of this one.
Sharp tells a good story - I turned pages late into the night. Her prose is strong, and she has an eye for arresting metaphor. Unfortunately, poor editing led to some of those metaphors being mangled by grammatical errors, but I expect that will change with later books in the series.
As a martial artist and student of self defense, I often find myself suspending disbelief when I read fight and/or self-defense scenes. Sharp does a much better job than most at writing realistic encounters with realistic results in the forms of broken bones and other damage. I took issue most strongly with the way she shapes Charlie's thoughts about sexual assault and self-defense, which often lapse into the sort of victim-blaming that the best self-defense instructors work very hard to avoid. And the final fight, in which Charlie uses the old palm-strike-drives-bone-fragment-into-the-skull trick - well, that was just so over the top and ridiculous that I literally had to stop reading for a minute.
All that said, I enjoyed the book and hope that future books bear out the promise of this one.