Book Review – The Machines of Bellatrix by Cary Caffrey

Series: The Girls From Alcyone

BooK: 2

Review by d c mallory

All righty then. The Girl’s are back safe and sound on Alcyone II. Sigrid and Suko are spending naked time together exploring their sexuality just about everywhere on the new compound they can find, private or not. The beach is good, even though the sand gets in every crack and orifice they have. The fields and prairies are nice. Their room is great, but apparently Sigrid is a screamer when it comes to getting her privates stimulated, so maybe the room isn’t great because everyone else know what they’re doing. The other Girl’s are doing whatever it is that they do, and life moves on. Only it doesn’t. Sigrid has realized that the Council will never stop looking for them, and Alcyone II and its occupants will never be safe until those that want to capture or kill them are dead. Not just discouraged from their actions; dead. As in exterminated with extreme prejudice. Yeah, baby! And that is why I love Sigrid; she realizes, with absolute objectivity, that them being dead is safe for her and her’s.

Sigrid explains this to Suko who, needless to say, agrees with her. To take care of the issue they put together a small team of Girls to help them because they knows they can’t do it alone. And yes, Suko is part of the team because she is not going to be left behind while her lover wanders off into the Galaxy. Once assembled and briefed, Sigrid loads them all in the Morrigan, her ship she won in the first book, and off they go to find out where the main threat to them is coming from. Along the way they meet people, get information, kill people, and then move on to the next target. All of this eventually leads them to the planet of Bellatrix, a dangerous shit-hole in the middle of nowhere. Yes, yes, you’re right. It’s the exact location you would expect to find a super villain to be conducting his evil business.

Once on the planet, it doesn’t take them long to figure out this is definitely where ground zero is. Everywhere they go they are under constant attack, and only their superior fighting skills and greater mental abilities allow them to survive. And, the tons of munitions they have on them can’t hurt either. Of course, the fact that Sigrid had their location on the planet given out to everyone so the bad guys would find her instead of her having to find them might not have been the greatest plan. Of course, the four Girls are super endowed having abilities above and beyond the norm, have great weapons, and don’t mind killing and maiming battalions of bad guys helps overall; still it was, in my opinion a shit plan; better to just sneak around and whack people indiscriminately; to me this is a better idea. Whatever. With the help of Miranda, who works for the Council and who Sigrid and her sisters consider to be one of their enemies even though she promises she is on their side and won’t fuck them in the ass when they bend over in front of her, they find the base where the Independents are doing their terrible genetics work; the work is so unorthodox more girls die during the procedure than survive. Knowing this pisses Sigrid off even more than she already was, which means her head is just about spinning off into orbit from it all.

Sigrid knows she needs to put a stop to this terrible practice along with protecting her sisters and their new home from future threats, and to that end she and her sisters manage to get into the secure compound. When they finally make it to the lower floors they find a huge room filled with dead girls, girls sacrificed by their doctors trying to activate them too early so they might fight Sigrid’s team thereby giving the bad guys the upper hand. Tough titty; he Independents felt it was worth a shot and really don’t care all the girls bit the big one. So Sigrid and the Girls do what they do best, which is killing, and kill everyone in the compound. Well, everyone except for the man responsible for the travesty. He manages to escape with his contingent of bad guy bodyguards. Sigrid can’t let them escape, so she chases them off into the desert to finish the job she came to do. This leads to the final confrontation between Sigrid and the Independents.

What? Alright, shit! I’ll tell them! Fine. Someone is thinking this might be a spoiler, but I’m not sure because I really don’t think about such things. At least not consciously. Also I don’t care either way. That’s why my conscience alerts me to such things. During the big battle, where they want to take Sigrid alive for devious purposes, Sigrid’s lover, who shows up to help her better half, gets hammered into jelly by the Independents. As things stand Suko doesn’t have  a huge chance of survival at this point, but Sigrid can’t let her lover go, even if it means Sigrid herself is to be captured and hauled off for nefarious purposes. She makes a deal with the Independent’s that if they get Suko to safety – and safety means back to her ship where her sisters are so they can save Suko, then Sigrid will go with them willingly. They agree, Suko goes to the Morrigan, and Sigrid is notifed that Suko is safe. True to her word she gives herself up. Oh, no she doesn’t; she’ll be damned if she’s going down without a fight. She plows through hundreds of enemies, kills the man responsible for the whole mess, and goes back to have torrid lesbian sex with her lover to celebrate their stunning victory.

Dammit! I’m being called out on the carpet for my succinct coverage of the end of the book. I’m being told I might have misrepresented some of the facts as they actually occurred. So, she does go back on her agreement of going with them willingly, instead launching herself at her enemies with every intention of killing them all. She kills more than half of the bad guys before she is brought down by sheer numbers, knocked out cold, secured to a stretcher, and hauled off. At this point she gets taken away to a base in an unkown location. Well, unknown to her and those that want to get Sigrid back. Obviously the bad guys know where it is. Duh!

So, to sum it up, I loved the book. It is a four star book as far as I’m concerned. There is everything in the book that you would expect there to be. There is a reason for the Girls to find themselves heading off into space. There is love to fight for. And, most of all, there is the need to keep themselves safe from all those in the Universe who would want to do them harm. Pick up the book and give it a read. I believe you will enjoy it as much as I did.