Summary:
If Taken starred Michelle Yeoh and was set on a Jurassic Park – inspired Cradle. Monster hunter Akina Azure inherited the most powerful weapon in the martial world before retiring to a peaceful life raising her twin girls. The Reaver has them kidnapped, thinking Akina will trade that weapon for their safe return. Will she? Or will she use it to wreak a terrible retribution on the men who took her girls? You get one guess.
Review:
Partial Function by JCM Berne is dog revenge martial arts extravaganza, and not the John Wick type of dog revenge, moreso in the manner that the main character’s dog is the star of the book. Not really, but Dog is a fantastic character and central to all the humor in this balls-to-the-wall revenge story.
Set in a martial art world of dragon/dinosaur-like beasties, PF follows renowned Wedge hunter/martial artist, Akina as she begins to start all-out chaos because her twin daughters have been captured. Akina is the Spiral Witch, the Azure Dragon, founding member of the legendary Five Fangs, and the last practitioner of the Millenium Qi — a ridiculously powered martial art technique. Her daughters have been taken by the Reaper, a man who believes another great surge of Wedge (the dragon/dinosaur-like beasties) is about to unfold and the only way to beat them is to possess the Millenium Qi. Akina goes all Liam Neeson by using her very particular set of skills, skills she has acquired over a very long career hunting Wedge, to stop at nothing in getting her girls back.
Akina is a wonderful main protagonist. Not only is her drive single-minded, she’s pretty snarky and plucky. She’s also a badass at martial arts, but most of all, she’s middle-aged and full of bones in need of a solid crack. She recruits BFF, Remy, one of the Five Fangs and master of the Bear Clan martial art techniques. Remy is the loyal friend, the voice of reason, and the big cuddly bear of the group who uses two rope darts as weapons. Along the way, Akina captures Zhu, an adept of the Star Clan, who agrees to help Akina for 100 days, creating portals as they traipse across the world starting shit. Finally, there is Dog, the aforementioned pooch. Dog is a simple canine that pretty much humps everybody, licks faces, and urinates on defeated villains. Dog is the bestest boy. 13/10.
If there is one thing that shines in this book, it’s the love letter to Wuxia films. This book is chock full of fight scenes, just one after the other until the big climax, and each fight is amazingly nostalgic of classic films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, and Kung Fu Panda. Each character is a master or adept at their own style and during the fights, the character will call out their move. Like Infinity Bagua: Major Wave or Way of the Bear: Greater Den. It seems kinda funny to picture these people announcing their moves while they jump thirty feet in the air before landing in hero pose or creating a force field of silence, but there was a meta joke in the story so I really enjoyed it. Also very cool that Mr. Berne was able to come up with so many different types of techniques. But each was unique and it was fun to witness people flying across the page.
The world was great. I liked the Wedge concept as the species ranged from small to mountain sized and it took Wedge hunters certain skill to kill them. I also liked that Wedge bones were the source of currency. And the Reaver’s fortress was the bony corpse of a massive Wedge killed in the last surge. There are a number of different clans using different techniques and we get to see many of them. Also, there’s griffins.
This story is brisk, going quickly from one location to the next as Akina starts shenanigans to rouse the other clans either into war or as allies. The writing is crisp and the descriptions are very simple, yet concise. If I had one criticism, it’s that while the main trio of characters are great, there isn’t a whole lot of introspection and at times it wasn’t clear who’s POV we were in as this story is told via 3rd Person Omniscient. We are not truly in anyone’s head (except from Akina a handful of times) as it’s more we are following the character as they perform an action. But that certainly never took me out of the scene as the dialogue is top notch, a mix of theory and sarcasm, giving us all the emotional responses we don’t get from being in a character’s head.
Partial Function is an excellent adventure that ends as a solid standalone while also leaving open the possibility of additional stories. I certainly enjoyed the heck out of this story and do hope there is more to come from Akina, Remy, Zhu, and Dog, especially Dog.