Review: `Revenge is a sort of justice'
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 14, 2014
Though originally a Southern California product, P. E. Sibley began seeing the world in her mid twenties in travels to Europe (Scotland repeatedly), the Middle East, Israel, and other places before returning to Southern California Cal State Long Beach for to prepare for and gain a teaching credential, then doing her student teaching stint in Hampshire, England. She now lives in rural Eastern Washington State where she has settled to write - her passion (or compulsion) since a child. A SORT OF JUSTICE appears to be her first published novel - and whether she will continue in the sci-fi fantasy genre remains to be seen. (She moved numerous times more--mostly eastward and northward including San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada mountains--and now resides in rural Eastern Washington State with her husband, a wolf-canine mix, a cattle dog, and a cat that believes she is really a dog.Sibley takes chances - perhaps not for the devotees of sci-fi fantasies, but for the average reader she creates bizarre names and make believe place that clutter the storyline. For example, in her Prologue she opens: `Robert Fitzhugh was cautious as he wound his way down the steep, spiral staircase. Cautious because the ambient light was murky in the best of spots and completely nonexistent in others. Also the stone steps, slick from the sodden atmosphere, were worn smooth by the thousands who had been herded down them. Fitzhugh could imagine the long file of war prisoners as they were marched deep into the bowels of the fortress. He could almost feel the press of unwashed bodies, hear the pleading of the wounded and dying, smell the bitter stench of their terror as they waited to suffer their fate. Some five hundred years after the occupants had annihilated each other in a bloody civil war, their buildings remained most of them intact and habitable. The dungeons of Brelinta although intact, were not habitable, at least not by human standards, and the current owners had done nothing to improve the property. etc' Into this setting we meet half alien/half human Mark Praed in chains - the reasons explained as the book progresses. Mark has a skill for reading minds inherited from his alien mother makes him a valued agent at Commonwealth Intelligence Service. He has used his unique abilities to run a covert operation on an alien planet but is betrayed by his superior leading to the rape and death of his romantic interest, and his own torture. His skills and his motivation place him on a path of revenge, a path complicated by his association with one Alexandra Lansing, a veteran operative. How these two function separately and as a team to accomplish the mission is the progress of the story.Sibley's writing is structurally strong and dealing with half alien/half human creatures likely places the need to create some strange names, stranger beasties (like the ginderbete), and bizarre situations. For those fond of sci-fi this book will likely score. From the subtitle `A Mark Praed Novel' it sounds like this is the course she is taking. For the general reader it does give evidence of a new writer with potential. Grady Harp, March 14