Spoiler Free Summary: Blood of Innocents by James Young s the 13th story in the Four Horsemen anthology, For a Few Credits More. Bolivar Thompson just bullied a client into a $10 million contract. Each time they get closer to the objective, things only get more complicated, and just reaching the planet they need to get to will leave his team changed forever.
Character: Bolivar is a pretty solid character. He’s a little bit arrogant and a little bit of a jerk, but it works for him. I wish he were more proactive and competent. His fatal flaw frustrates me in regard to how it relates to the plot, but I got a kick of of the story as I was reading it. (So I had to scan back a bit to recall the plot. This provides me an opportunity. This story, like many in the anthology, were not bad. I measure that by how well the characters stick with me. So Lessa, Ruth, Rand, Vin; those characters stick with me. They own a place in my heart. The next level down are the characters I remember by talent or skill. These are like the guy from Tron or the cop from The Women’s Murder Club. I remember things about them, but they only bring up images or good feelings. This is still cool, but not next-level characters. Next down are characters like Bolivar. These are guys I like while I’m reading, but then after time (in this case six months), they fade away. Sure, if I read it again, I’d like it, but it doesn’t hold up in the test of time. That’s unfair considering it’s taken six months to review all of these, but this anthology has a great character that has stuck with me for that long (and will for more). So when I say a character wasn’t bad, that’s what I mean.
Exposition: If I liked the story, this was minimal. I can’t stand stories that get lost in exposition or description. I’m a man of motion, and I want a plot that moves, this story does that. My problem is that I felt like the cliffhanger ending let me down (I hate all cliffhanger endings).
World building: This was good. I didn’t feel lost, and most of the elements in the book helped me better understand the world around me. It was well thought out and showed this universe through a window I could understand.
Dialogue: This is where Bolivar’s personality was on display. It felt a bit like watching a good episode of House, only instead of investigating a disease, they were working on a contract. The dialogue had a wit and humor that I liked.
Description: This story gave description from a point of view better than others I remember. You were always in Bolivar’s head, and the description was another place where his personality shown, especially when describing the other aliens in the story. I got a kick out of this.
Overall: You have to be okay with cliffhangers if you’re going to like this story. It’s entertaining with a, perhaps inappropriate, humor. It has some emotion to it, and more drama than action, but this story’s charm is in it’s character interactions, which I personally liked. So if you like a touch of House and a touch of character drama, you’ll like this story.
Thanks for reading,
Matt
M.L.S. Weech 