Book Review – Codename: Night Witch by Cary Caffrey

Series: The Girls From Alcyone

BooK: 3

Review by d c mallory

So, all is going great for Sigrid and Suko now that they have kicked ass and taken names. The illegal, and morally corrupt, genetics lab on Bellatrix has been taken care of, Mr. Smith is dead, and the location of Alcyone II remains hidden. That has to be a job well done, right girls. What? Oh, fuck. Never mind. You two aren’t allowed to touch each other for a week! So everything is true except for things being good for Sigrid. Oh, and things aren’t going so well for Suko either. Damn. Suko has been hammered into flesh jelly, her leg is beyond repair, and if she even lives she may well lose it. In a misguided attempt to save her lover, Sigrid agrees to surrender herself to the Independents and be taken away by them, but only after Suko is taken back to the Morrigan. Upon hearing that Suko is safe with her sisters, Sigrid accepts her fate.

Oh, wait. No, she doesn’t. Suko make it back to the Morrigan and let’s  Sigrid know, at which point Sigrid flips the Independents of with both hands. She then does her best to plow through three hundred Spartans and four hundred Independents, and a stack up of the French Castle in the Monty Python flick in order to get away and back to Suko, her oath to these bastards be damned. What are you saying? Hmmm, OK. Forget the three hundred Spartans. Leave out the French Castle, too. It’s definitely four hundred Independents, though, give or take a few. And plow through them she does. Well, almost all of them. OK! OK! She plows through slightly over half before she is brought down by the sheer numbers, bound up like a cheap whore at a masochist convention, and taken away to an undisclosed location for disassembly – is that better? Thankfully, for Sigrid everything goes black about this time, so there is no pain or humiliation involved with the process.

When she comes back to a state of awareness, she finds she has a new master and this one, unlike her old Mistress, Hitomi Kimura, is one mean bitch. She has found a way to disable Sigrid’s PCM, taken away many of her memories, and has her strapped down naked on a table where she can program our girl to do frightening things. Sigrid would do well to get used to this table setup, as she seems to spend a lot of time on it; it seems her jailer has been spending a lot of time on it, too, but only when Sigrid is unconscious. If we take the time to follow the trail of destruction throughout the galaxy, it would seem that she spends a lot of time off of it as well, even if the memories of her activities seem to be non-existent for her.

Unbeknownst to Sigrid, her new Mistress, who is in reality Mrs. Smith – you know, the dead Harry’s Smith’s comatose shell of a wife – who has been brought back to her old self through Sigrid’s sacrifices – well her body parts anyway, has Sigrid out killing and destroying her enemies, raping small school girls with a huge strap-on, and kicking stray dogs with heavy steeled toed boots. What do you mean I’m getting carried away? Fine. Just fine! There’s no raping of school girls – with or without optional equipment – small or otherwise, probably because Suko would kick her ass for cheating on her. And, there’s no kicking of stray dogs either, although I can’t figure out what’s the fun in leaving that out of the equation. But, she does work on Mrs. Smith’s enemies. Who are not Sigrid’s enemies, but they might as well be because she can’t disobey the Mistress or pain and mayhem will ensue. You get the picture; Sigrid is trapped with no way to go but down. So, with her new job description, and the killing of those she considers friends, who are now not friends because they are dead, and the friends of those dead sisters no longer consider Sigrid a friend because, well,  she killed their friends. Still with me? Good, because now it’s time to meet the Night Witch.

Oh, never mind; you’ve already met the Night Witch, and her name is Sigrid. Sigrid Novack. And, she is one holy fucking terror. Already deadly from her genetics patching and hardware add-ons – internal add-ons you deviant, not wearable – her new programming, which is mainly to be remorseless, makes her even more deadly. But, in the case of the new Mistress, nothing good lasts forever. Sigrid comes to on the table one day while laying there unsupervised, figures out she can’t access her PCM, and forces a reboot of the system. Once the PCM is back, it’s time for Sigrid to hit the road; she breaks free of her restraints, kills the man who’s been coming in to knock the bottom out of Sleeping Beauty  – he’s used her unconscious body like his own personal blow-up sex doll time and time again, and then, using the computer in the Security Office, figures out she’s been a captive for six years! Six. Fucking. Years! Yes, my friends, it’s time for some serious payback.

After fighting more of the enemy – her real enemies – in order to facilitate her escape from the compound, she manages to make it to the road where she is picked up by a passing trucker. The guy simply hands her a coat so she can cover her naked body with it, and off they go. From this point on Sigrid is in constant danger as the group she escaped from desperately want her back, and they will do anything and kill everyone to succeed. To say much more at this point would be a major spoiler, like the killing of Suko could be, and that is not the intent of this review. Let’s just suffice it to say that there is plenty of action and surprises in store for everyone she comes across, friend or foe.

Like the previous two books, I really liked this continuation of the Girls From Alcyone series. There is something for everyone who loves Sci-Fi and Romance. The ending is big, I suppose, although I’m not sure it was needed to end the book, but I can live with it. So until the next book in the series comes out, which I believe it will, this is a four-star book that will not disappoint most readers.  Give it a read and see if you don’t agree.