Reviewed by Elizabetta

TITLE: Hakusan Angel

SERIES: A Loose Screw

AUTHOR: Alex Powell

PUBLISHER: Less Than Three Press LLC

LENGTH: 75 pages

BLURB:

Kaede is a Source, capable of powering a machine with her own energy, but she has been hiding the full extent of her abilities. Given the tenuous relations between her country and their rivals, she fears discovery of her full power would provoke the war that hangs over them. But others disagree, and firmly believe that power like Kaede’s is far too valuable to be hidden away …

REVIEW:

The premise is great. Hakusan (White Mountain) is a powerful war machine, a kind of tank that needs a highly skilled pilot and Source to command it. A Source is someone whose body has been engineered with ports which, when connected to the machine, will funnel their energy to power it. Someone with the capability to power the Hakusan is very rare and in demand. Such a human ‘battery’ could also off-set the delicate balance between two rival worlds which are in an arms race with each other.

I really like sci-fi stories that feature bio-engineered characters. Voinov and Haimowitz’s Break and Enter and Ann Tenino’s 18% Gray come to mind with their main characters outfitted with a hi-tech prosthetic limbs that can do all sorts of clever things. And I’ll never forget Sumi’s My Rifle is Human with its quirky take on soldiers who can morph weaponized limbs.

Those stories are more successful, however, in delivering well-developed worlds in which to show off their special heros. It’s a pity that in Hakusan Angel we really don’t find out much about this world and what motivates the aggression in it. Most of the development is about the strain between the pilot and Source cadres and how the military has reinforced this.

The delivery is ok. It all feels a little stiff, though. The dialogue, especially, feels stilted, almost like it’s been translated from another language. This is a Asian-inspired world — discerned by the character names, and the battling ‘monsters’ which are reminiscent of old B/W Japanese movies. I’m left wondering if there were stylistic choices made in the writing which mostly ended up confusing me.

Hakusan Angel picked up the pace about half-way through, after loosely setting things up. It’s a bit of dry reading until our hero, Kaede Nomura, realizes her true potential when she, a Source, gets matched up with the Hakusan war machine. Kaede also gets paired with spunky pilot, Mariko (Mari) Ishigaki. All manner of things get stirred up and these two realize they have more in common than war machines.

So, an interesting idea. But with little information about the characters and the conflict in their world, it’s hard to buy into it. The F/F tag intrigued me. There is the start of a sweet, platonic romance between Kaede and Mari that is only realized at the very end of the story. My guess is that if I remember anything from Hakusan Angel months from now, it will be the idea of humans adapted with ports to power machinery. Now, that’s cool.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Less Than Three Press smashwords