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THE RED HOT EMPRESS
by Meredith Blevins
Forge, September 2005
352 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0765307812


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Annie Szabo is a freelance journalist whose articles are on the more outrageous side. As is her life. Her late husband's mother, who claims to be centuries old with psychic powers, insists that Annie write an article about a young boy in Chinatown who has the power to heal people with the use of sound waves.

Afterwards Annie learns that there are a lot of different people starting to put pressure on the boy and his elderly guardians to get the child to work for them. One is a popular evangelist who can no longer heal people on her own who is desperate for a new money maker, there's a strange man who insists that he needs the boy to help him discuss mankind's future with the dolphins, there's Chinatown's criminal element, the tongs who want to use the healing talent, and yet another group with their eye on the boy is the US government.

When one of the boy's guardians is then found murdered, Annie realizes that her article was the catalyst for trouble. With the permission of his one remaining guardian, Annie whisks the boy away from his home. Though she's not at all qualified to protect him, she thinks that she can handle the job with the help of her ever growing strange family and her own force of character. But she's wrong.

Securely in the 'wacky' style of writing, author Meredith Blevins takes for granted that her main character is, in this the third installment of the series, a well-beloved and adored character who can do just about anything and the readers will think her funny and clever. Since this is the first of the series that I've read, I admit that I was not bowled over by Annie's wit, self-assuredness or outlook on life.

I can easily embrace the main unusual premise of the book, suspending logic to believe that the young boy Jimmy can indeed heal people with sound or that Annie's mother-in-law is 300 years old and has psychic powers. But when Annie decides that the boy has the know-how to blow up safely a building inside a city block so that the bad guys will think they are dead, and that, with only some well-applied make-up she can pass as a Chinese man to the other people in Chinatown, is simply more than my patience can accept. And when the use of the explosions and underhanded goings-on all turn out to be for nothing, I suspended my interest in the story too.

The writing, though witty to a certain extent, was entertaining enough, but on the whole didn't call to me to continue to read. I found myself putting the book down a lot and only picked it up again when I had the time to read, rather than my usual habit of making time to read because I couldn't stand not getting back to the story.

THE RED HOT EMPRESS is not very focused or honest with the readers. I found it to be a wonderful way to waste time if you've no other book to read.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, October 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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