Oh Lordy, she’s back! and how! Iona Sullivan. Agent Sully. Her royal feistiness just bursts off the page in this exciting sequel to The Year of the Knife. Whaddya mean you haven’t read it? Sully won’t like that! Best you do. Yeah? However if you do not yet have the inclination to read The Year of the Knife, yet, fear not, it won’t impact on your enjoyment of The Wounded Ones at all. The book works as a standalone as much as it works as a sequel. But if you fell in love with Sully in the previous book you’ll be desperate to know how she is faring.
And I’m not going to tell you! Oh no, I do not do spoilers. But this story sees Sully tested to the limits of her character, her physicality and her magical abilities. The story is a tour de force and so many elements of the magical and the supernatural come together, not necessarily amiably, and it’s absolutely explosive. Sully’s brief is broader than tackling grisly murders this time around. Citizens of America are vanishing. Where are they going and why?
Sully’s penchant for the putdown retort to those who try her patience, to put it mildly, is much in evidence here and will have you chuckling and desperate to remember her words for the next time you might need them. But it’s a story, not just of words but of high powered, supernatural action.
Penman strikes an engaging balance between good, old fashioned storybook values of romance and bravery, swashbuckling heroines, love and hate, right over evil, loyalty over treachery, yet he maintains the edgy, urban nuances that render this very much a contemporary tale. There is often the sense that you are engaged in a literary video game. You are passing levels and witnessing Sully destroy the ’bosses’ and you’re just willing her to make it to the end and triumph before her lives run out. But does she? Read it.
We are also treated to a little of Sully’s past which serves to define and deepen the existing characterisation. Dammit we even get to meet her mum! I don’t think we did in the first book or did we? Oh darn! I’m going to have to read the Year of the Knife again. But we are also treated to a plethora of disparate new characters. Some of them originate from legends and fables from centuries ago. But there is a comfort in hearing that the Dante Inferno spell is still very much in the mix! And Schrodinger units are still busy. Ceejay and Raavi play their parts. There's everyone's favourite vampire, Marie........ It's a meeting of old friends. But Leonard is no longer Leonard, he's Pratt! Go figure!
Penman’s plotting is complex and efficient. His imagination is boundless. He doesn’t allow his reader to second-guess. Every time you think you know what might be about to happen the opposite often does. He keeps you reading on and on and on. The world he’s created is unique and yet it takes its place alongside other evil empires and I found myself sometimes thinking of Star Wars and sometimes Harry Potter and sometimes the Hunger Games. But Sully is unique. I remember when I was a kid there was a series of books about the worst witch. Sully is the best witch.
I hope that in the tradition of dystopian, speculative fiction there will be a third in the series. I just have to,no,I need to know what happens next. My thanks to Meerkat Press for an advance copy of this book.
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