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Tom Holzel's Reviews > Staff Sergeant Belinda Watt
Staff Sergeant Belinda Watt
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(This is a review by David Soliday, a professional photographer in Charlotte, SC.)
Oh, wow, this book is a VERY pleasant surprise! Talk about a creative storyline! It starts off straightforward enough: a very well-built woman wins the 2-Corp rifle championship. General Bloodworthy (what a name!) lures her to his hotel room pretending to present her with a medal—and tries to rape her. She kills him under odd circumstances which we don’t discover until much later, but which form a central part of the story.
Knowing that the Guardian Council will seek revenge for this killing of one of their elite commanders, the Judge Advocate decides to piggy-back Watt onto an already planned secret mission to the planet Magnus immediately after the court martial in a witness protection scheme. The early huge output of the precious metal lithium oxycarbide has fallen dramatically and Earth GalFed wants to know why.
Magnus is a Jupiter-size rocky planet whose 5-G polar gravity is off-set at 45o latitude by its ferocious spin rate. The inhabitants of the 45o habitable band are Praxtors—the native population nearly indistinguishable from Earthlings (or “Earthworms� as they call them) and Firenzi—who are Earth-Praxtor hybrids.
Watt and her GalFed spy start off opening a bar and trading company in hopes of gleaning information about what is going on. It’s not long before they discover that the Magnus GalFed has been taken over by the Guardian Council, the precious metal being diverted to its own coffers in order to take over the planet and secede from the Galatic Federation. Then the Guardian Council discovered Staff Sergeant Belinda Watt is there—and all hell breaks loose.
The intricacies of the plot are utterly fascinating, as are some of the supporting players. The short, dark Colonel Sharpe with his pencil mustache and paranoid suspicions, Nurse Bottom and her hypno-drugging activities to extract hidden secrets as well as her penchant for corn whisky and, of course, of Belinda Watt herself. She starts out as a pretty hapless dumb blond (in my opinion) but her physical skills reveal themselves when she is trained in hand-to-hand combat—and turn her into a kick-ass broad of very satisfying demeanor. Wow—I’m in love!
The story line is complicated yet unfolds skillfully and naturally. Pretty soon you realize that this is a marvelous adventure, really well-told and with an enormously satisfying ending.
Oh, wow, this book is a VERY pleasant surprise! Talk about a creative storyline! It starts off straightforward enough: a very well-built woman wins the 2-Corp rifle championship. General Bloodworthy (what a name!) lures her to his hotel room pretending to present her with a medal—and tries to rape her. She kills him under odd circumstances which we don’t discover until much later, but which form a central part of the story.
Knowing that the Guardian Council will seek revenge for this killing of one of their elite commanders, the Judge Advocate decides to piggy-back Watt onto an already planned secret mission to the planet Magnus immediately after the court martial in a witness protection scheme. The early huge output of the precious metal lithium oxycarbide has fallen dramatically and Earth GalFed wants to know why.
Magnus is a Jupiter-size rocky planet whose 5-G polar gravity is off-set at 45o latitude by its ferocious spin rate. The inhabitants of the 45o habitable band are Praxtors—the native population nearly indistinguishable from Earthlings (or “Earthworms� as they call them) and Firenzi—who are Earth-Praxtor hybrids.
Watt and her GalFed spy start off opening a bar and trading company in hopes of gleaning information about what is going on. It’s not long before they discover that the Magnus GalFed has been taken over by the Guardian Council, the precious metal being diverted to its own coffers in order to take over the planet and secede from the Galatic Federation. Then the Guardian Council discovered Staff Sergeant Belinda Watt is there—and all hell breaks loose.
The intricacies of the plot are utterly fascinating, as are some of the supporting players. The short, dark Colonel Sharpe with his pencil mustache and paranoid suspicions, Nurse Bottom and her hypno-drugging activities to extract hidden secrets as well as her penchant for corn whisky and, of course, of Belinda Watt herself. She starts out as a pretty hapless dumb blond (in my opinion) but her physical skills reveal themselves when she is trained in hand-to-hand combat—and turn her into a kick-ass broad of very satisfying demeanor. Wow—I’m in love!
The story line is complicated yet unfolds skillfully and naturally. Pretty soon you realize that this is a marvelous adventure, really well-told and with an enormously satisfying ending.
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Staff Sergeant Belinda Watt.
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Started Reading
August 4, 2016
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August 4, 2016
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Tom
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rated it 5 stars
Aug 14, 2016 06:05AM
(This review by David Soliday.)
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Tom, since you're the author of this book, have you considered crediting David for this review (which I'm guessing is from Amazon, or a similar site) in the text of the review itself, to avoid confusion? Your comment doesn't show when people just read the review where it's attached to the book description, unless we click on the comment link itself (and most people don't do that; I only happened to stumble on your comment when I checked out your profile just now).Best wishes for success with this book! And glad to notice that you've joined the Action Heroine Fans group; I'll hope to interact with you there in the future.)
I tried to do that, but there doesn't seem to be any way to edit the review to give credit to Dave Soliday.
The link isn't very prominent. At the top of your review, across from the heading (that is, the part that gives the title of the book, your name, rating, date read, etc.), there's a review date in faint gray type. Next to that date, in the same faint type and small letters, is an "edit" link. Click that, and it will take you a box where you can add, delete or change text. (And be sure to hit "Save" at the bottom of that page when you're done.) Hope that helps!
Yes, but that only lets me change my post, not repost Soliday's review.
Would it allow you to write at the top, "This is a review by David Soliday," or something similar?
Tom wrote: "Good advice--I did it."And David Soliday just had an exhibit of his aerial photography of the former rice field of southern U.S. in a wing of the new Smithsonain museum of black history. (Rice was a big crop before cotton, and worked by slaves.)
Werner-- The version I sent in to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ had a lot of typos in it. I've since corrected them and would like to resubmit. Can that be done?
Yes, Tom, if the new edition has a different ISBN, you can add it as a new edition, and note in the description that it has a corrected text. Unfortunately, though, I don't think you can delete the old edition. Authors aren't allowed to delete a book that has any reviews or that's been shelved by anybody (even if it's not offered for sale and never will be again). I'm thinking this applies to edition records, as well as to records of books that have only one edition. But you might want to ask about that in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Feedback group (/group/show/... ) just to be sure.
Ha!--I'm getting some negative feedback from committed feminists! From what I can decipher, they don't like a powerful female man-killer who can also fall in love with one! (It beings to mind Freud's famous question: "What do women want?")
"Feminists" is an often misused term, IMO, because it's used to designate at least two positions that are actually completely alien to each other and incompatible. Historically, feminism was a movement that simply advocated legal and social equality between the sexes; it wasn't anti-male as such (many males are and historically have been feminists, in this sense), and certainly not anti-marriage or anti-family. Many women today are still what I call "equalitarian" feminists, in this sense.Today's media and cultural elite, however, tends to co-opt the term in order to describe what's sometimes referred to as "gender feminism" (though "female chauvinism" would be more accurate), which is defined by blanket hostility to males as a group, glorification of females as inherently superior, rejection of family relationships, and suspicion and disparagement of childbirth and child rearing. Gender feminists tend to see any relationship with a male as inherently equivalent to slavery and dehumanization, and to view celibacy or lesbianism as the only legitimate choices for authentic womanhood.
Obviously, not all or even very many women are "gender" feminists. Freud's question implied that "women" are somehow a sort of monolithic mass whose thinking is somehow biologically determined by their gender (an assumption that gender feminists, ironically, would tend to share); but beyond the basic needs that all humans share, each woman's wants tend to be her own. So if you're bashed by "gender feminists," you're in good company; but you can be sure that a great many women have a much healthier view of gender relations, and an openness to male/female relationships based on equality, respect, and caring.
Wow--what a great commentary! Thanks.
Well, I took the advice of some commentators to correct the grievous typos--all twenty-five of them!! Henceforth, all print editions will be the corrected version. I think the e-book version is also O.K., (but I'll check).
