Gemini Cell by Myke Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here's a neat trick and no bones or grafted body parts about it: Cole's writing is improving by leaps and bounds with each book.

The novel starts with a lot of great gory action perfect for all you special-forces fans with a hankering for a huge kill-count. I'll be honest, however. It took a while before the strange finally kicked in and before we got the magic, the jinn, the undead, and all sorts of nasty feral flesh crafting, but it was quite worth it.

Don't assume this is a normal UF, though, it's Fantasy-Military fiction, and our main character has ALL of these little elements within just little old him. :)

More than all the other novels that Cole has written, this one is the most character-driven, focusing more on family and his relationship with his wife, and also there's a lot of PoV from her, too. There's a lot of buildup, discovery, confusion, and development. I might say, firmly, that this is the novel's main strength. Or maybe that strength is tied with all the gory goodness that goes on between all the character developments. :)

This can be considered a distant prequel to his other novels, all early days of magic and full of deep-cover ops... preferably head wraps to hide the cadaver stare, actually. :)

Quite good. Quite fun. Still popcorn fiction, but there's a definite trend toward deeper goodness going on here. This time we've got some VERY interesting PSTD. :)

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