Review of Havelock: A serial, book 1 by Jane D. Everly

HAVELOCK: A SERIAL, BOOK 1


Curiosity Quills Press
A Division of Whampa, LLC
Reston, VA
http://curiosityquills.com
Copyright 2015 Jane D. Everly

Three Stars

I will admit up front that from a reader’s perspective, I have no patience with serials (not the
same as a series of stand- alone novels) offered for commercial consumption.  Having said that, I
will try to be as fair as my predisposition against serials will allow.
What, exactly, is a multi-talented female protagonist, Eliana, doing being tortured in an
interrogation cell in Kurachi?  Unfortunately, we’ll never know unless we read the rest of Ms
Everly’s Havelock serial and that could stretch into many books.  This one, at sixty-six pages, is
minimally a novella. Eliana is a bigger-than-life female character endowed with superior strength and agility,
superhuman martial arts skills with an ingrained need to beat-up on British MI6 agents and bad
guys with equal vigor.  Eliana is an enigma, as far as MI6, Spiral (the incipient criminal
organization) and the readers are concerned.  She is a fictional character that while, perhaps,
portraying a noble quest, isn’t blessed with the slightest hint of believable humanity or
vulnerability.  Yet, there she is on the page in front of you, making MI6 look like amateurs and
Pakistani bad guys look like choir-boys.
The other main character, MI6 Director, Rawlston is slightly more believable than Eliana,
but a Board of Inquiry looking into MI6’s operations, while tense, is just another day in the life
of a national intelligence agency.  The author never really says this board has any real power to
affect the agency; although its ability to threaten the agency is implied, it is never spelled out and
thus becomes the specter of a threat, more of an irritation, than a real part of the story.”
Nothing in this installment provides Eliana with any creditability. Nothing alludes to her
motives or provided her with any incentive or sanction for being where she is.  She is, for
purposes of this installment at least, a dangerously loose cannon.  The lack of knowledge of
Eliana’s motives is the basis for Director Rawlston’s concern, and the basis upon which a reader
should be concerned as well since Eliana seems not to represent any interests but her own
undefined self-interest.
The text is written in short simple sentences.  There are some misused words and other
editorial errors but they are not overwhelming.  Havelock, a Serial should appeal to young adults
who enjoy stories about heroes of near inhuman invincibility taking on enemies against near
impossible odds.  The female hero, Eliana, is perhaps reminiscent of Emma Peel (the Avengers)
or perhaps Lara Croft of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider fame and may perhaps, be expected to appeal
to a similar demographic. Three Stars.

Clabe Polk