I absolutely loved Van Allen Plexico’s first Sentinels book, When Strikes The Warlord. So much, in fact, that once I finished, I immediately bought the second book, A Distant Star. These two books, along with Apocalypse Rising, form the first Sentinels trilogy, “The Grand Design.”

In this volume, we see the return of the Sentinels — Lyn Li/Pulsar, Ultraa, Esro Brachis and Vanadium. We also see the return of the enemy from the first book, the Warlord, albeit in a different form. There are a succession of Warlords, and every time one dies another takes his place, and it’s all part of something known as the Grand Design. Where this leads to is still something of a mystery that I assume will be the focus of the third book.

The Sentinels’ universe also expands with this book, with the introduction of the Kur-Bai, an alien race coming to Earth in order to eliminate the Xorex, a planet-destroying entity that served as the master of Kabaraak from the previous volume. Upon landing on Earth, one of the Kur-Bai, a warrior named Mondrian, and Esro get swept off on an adventure of their own in space, going up against Mondrian’s former shipmate in a Barsoomian setting.

There’s a lot of jumping around in this book as the Sentinels are seemingly pulled apart in all directions. Ultraa is injured, Pulsar has family issues, Vanadium appears to be corrupted, and the government is prepared to cut their support for the Sentinels, especially with Esro missing. All the while, the Warlord is scheming, but it’s really Esro and Mondrian’s story that serve as the most interesting set-pieces here.

Where Plexico succeeds is in his characters, once more. Mondrian is every bit as intriguing and fascinating as the characters introduced in the previous volume. Her interaction with Esro is a joy to read and Esro himself steps up to the plate, becoming a much more central character than he was in the previous book. It could be said that When Strikes The Warlord was more Pulsar’s story and in that case, A Distant Star is definitely Esro’s. There’s a grandness to this book, a sense of a larger universe outside of Earth. I know that there were aliens in the first, but this one feels more like a space opera.

That being said, one of the strengths of A Distant Star, of it feeling like a part of something greater, can also be considered a shortcoming, depending on your point of view. When Strikes The Warlord can easily be viewed as a stand-alone tale, but with A Distant Star, there’s a lot of set-up for Apocalypse Rising and you know there’s something else coming.

Apocalypse Rising is a book I will be reading in the very near future. So far, Plexico has not disappointed with his superhero epic, and I’m looking forward to an epic conclusion of this trilogy!

Have you ever had a book you weren’t sure you would like, but then once you started reading it, you couldn’t put it down?

That’s what happened with the first volume of Van Allen Plexico’s Sentinels series. I’ve known this author’s name for a very long time, had it come up many times in the writing circles I run in. But until now, I’d never read anything of his. And despite all the positive reviews about the Sentinels series, I was a bit gunshy.

You see, when it comes to original superheroes, it really is hit or miss with me. When superheroes first appeared. there was some hook to them. Superman was…well, Superman. He was the first, the big one. Batman was an evolution of characters like the Shadow, mixed with the burgeoning superheroes. When we came up to the Marvel heroes of the early 60s like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, etc., they all had these great hooks to set them apart.

But now, it’s 2012. If you’re a fan of superheroes, you’ve got over seventy years of stories to choose from and chances are you’ve read more than a few. So if you’re trying to get people with a new hook, you’ve got a pretty tall order. Most of the times, people think they’ve got a good hook, but it’s really not and the characters aren’t well developed.

Plexico, however, takes a different route. He knows that you know all these stories. He knows that there’s no hook you haven’t heard. And instead of trying to find the next hook, he does what writers of all other mediums do — he makes you care about the characters instead.

And really, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? How many times have you seen the basic hero legend retold over and over? How many times have you see the lone warrior story? If you show someone Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Brick, and then ask them to read Red Harvest, chances are they will get a very different experience each time, despite the fact that it’s basically the same story. And when it comes to superheroes, I doubt you could come up with a super power that hasn’t already been thought up. But does that matter? Are there many differences between the abilities of James Bond and Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne? Not really, it’s the characters that make them different.

And it’s the same with superheroes. The Sentinels does not have a unique hook. There aren’t any reality TV shows or hidden conspiracies or trying to overthrow the existing order or anything like that.The Sentinels are superheroes who fight supervillains, pure and simple. But if you’re expecting a cheap, Avengers/Justice League knock-off. you will be pleasantly surprised. Because despite the superficial similarities with popular comic book heroes (and while they’re there, they are very much in passing — I doubt you’ll confuse Ultraa with Superman or Esra with Iron Man), what sets Plexico’s Sentinels apart from the numerous other books is that he focuses on his characters as characters, not as powersets. Even the Cavalier, who is set up from his first appearance as unlikeable, becomes someone you can relate to. And that’s a real testament to Plexico’s characterization skill. Even when Plexico hits the familiar story beats (and I won’t detail what they are because I don’t want to spoil them), there’s a sense of originality because of the great development he’s invested in these characters.

And because of these characters, I could not put this book down. When it comes to books, some take me longer to finish than others. On average, I take about a month or so to finish a book. I finished all 236 pages of this book in a week. Whenever I had some downtime, my first inclination was to read more of Sentinels, and I found myself thinking about it even when I didn’t have the time. It’s rare for a writer to inspire that kind of dedication in a first-time reader.

Needless to say, immediately after I finished this book, I bought the next in the series. And that’s a rare thing for me. Not long before this, I finished The Gunslinger, the first book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. But I have not yet bought the second book. Yet I already bought the next Sentinels book.

Van’s got me hooked. Fortunately, I’ve got quite a bit of material to catch up on.

“Ignore her. She loves to throw all that time travel stuff in our ignorant nineteenth-century faces.”

That quote sums up what I love about Blood of the Universe, Volume 0 of Mark Bousquet’s Gunfighter Gothic series. It’s a snappy piece of writing and more importantly, it tells the readers that this is a world where the bizarre and unexplained is more or less an every day occurrence. Prevailing wisdom seems to be that when you enter a world like the one Bousquet’s created, you need to hold the reader’s hand, explain why all this weird stuff exists, or give you a character who’s more used to the real world.

I’m tired of that. As a reader, I have no problem being thrown into a world with vampires, zombies, werewolves, and time travel. I’ve been around the block a few times, don’t insult my intelligence by making me go through the whole “why do these pale men have such sharp teeth?” thing. 

Fortunately, Bousquet knows better. And he’s given us a tale in a genre that I absolutely love — the supernatural western. Combining these things together makes even the stale conventions of the separate western and supernatural genres feel fresh and new.

A little bit of info on the book’s story: in 1866, Jill is a well-to-do merchant’s daughter who was engaged to be married and ran off. By her side is her family’s servant and her sometime-lover, the Korean-American Hanna. Trying to start a new life, the girls get thrown right into trouble when they came across vampires, werewolves and a time traveling British spy on their train.

And then Bousquet does something really interesting. Jill, who one might assume is the central protagonist? She dies. Writing a book about a duo and killing off one of the partners in the opening pages? That takes balls. At first, I thought I must’ve read it wrong.

Jill’s death drives a large portion of the book, with Hanna now teaming up with two time travellers and an agent of President Grant. All of them are after something called the Universe Cutter, a knife with the power to resurrect the dead.

Hanna is a great character. I’m a sucker for female protagonists, especially in a traditionally male-dominated literary field like westerns and pulp. Not only is she a woman, but she’s a woman of Korean descent, which is great because minorities, particularly Asians, have gotten the real short end of the stick in pulp, dogged by extremely racist stereotypes. Bousquet seems pretty well-aware of this and he avoids any of the traditional clichés — Hanna is not a kung fu master, she’s not a dragon lady, she’s not a math whiz, and most importantly she doesn’t speak “rike dis.” She’s a very capable gunfighter, born and raised in America. Whenever someone comments on her country of origin, she always remarks that she’s American-born. Asian Americans and Asian immigrants weren’t exactly well-regarded during the late 1800s, so it’s definitely an interesting period for a character like Hanna.

Bousquet’s writing pops all throughout. The dialogue is real, even when in these unrealistic situations and the action moves at a brisk pace.

Unfortunately, for all the good in Blood of the Universe, there is a bit of bad — namely the technical aspect. In the Kindle edition, there were more than a few errors throughout, even some parts where Hanna was incorrectly named as Jill (and that was a cause for confusion more than once). These errors mostly amount to a distraction at worse, so don’t let that deter you.

Overall, we’ve got an impressive start to what I hope will be a long-running series.