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Isadora Daystar Reviewed By Lavanya Karthik of Bookpleasures.com
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Lavanya Karthik

Reviewer Lavanya Karthik: Lavanya is from Mumbai, India and is a licensed architect and consultant in environmental management. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and six-year old daughter. She loves reading and enjoys a diverse range of authors across genres.



 
By Lavanya Karthik
Published on January 10, 2012
 

Author: P. I. Barrington

Publisher: Smashwords (e-book)

ASIN: B0066GOCT2




Follow Here To Purchase Isadora DayStar

Author: P. I. Barrington

Publisher: Smashwords (e-book)

ASIN: B0066GOCT2

At first glance, Isadora Daystar, protagonist of this dark adventure set in an unspecified future,  seems anything but heroic. Blessed with a knack for getting into trouble, this former soldier, occasional prostitute and thoroughly incompetent assassin will do just about anything to feed her drug habit. Scrambling for survival in the murky underbelly of planet New Cheiros, Isadora  is little more than a pawn in the hands of influential politicos, ruthless pirates, and just about anyone aware of her addiction. 

On the run after another contract killing, she burgles the home of her employer and makes her way onto a luxury space shuttle. But trouble has a way of finding Isadora and, sure enough, a mysterious bacterial outbreak wipes out everyone onboard, except our drug addled heroine and the belligerent teenager she manages to rescue, the rather quaintly named Iphedea. The odd couple winds up on a desolate planet  teeming with ferocious creatures and something even more terrifying – devout monks, keeping alive a religion long outlawed by intergalactic governments ! It now unfolds that Iphedea is a ward of the head monk’s, rescued from being aborted, and seeking her father’s killer – who just might be our much-bruised and weary Isadora.

But if you think Isadora is set for a long, mind numbing stretch of austerity , clean living and wholesome meals, think again. Embroiled in a monastery coup , she is wrongly accused of murdering the head priest, is about a second away from being ceremonially disemboweled,  only to be saved– again! – by a pirate invasion. On the run yet again with her increasingly whiny charge, she now realizes she is being hunted – for something she has taken from her elusive employer. Will she stay alive long enough to get Iphedea to safety? Will her murky past catch up with her before she has a chance to put things right with the child she has reluctantly bonded with?   And is there even the slightest chance Isadora will have a future beyond her next fix and tentacled john? Surprising everyone – including herself – Isadora finally faces off her nemesis in a finale involving torture, tears and a very unlikely family reunion.

For a former soldier, Isadora seems remarkably low on pluck, easily manipulated  and makes for a rather hapless paid killer, even managing to shoot herself – twice!  Considering she is the adult with some combat experience, the teenaged Iphedea rapidly emerges as the smarter, more resourceful of the duo, with all kinds of hidden (and conveniently useful) talents.    And yet, somewhere along the way , I found myself cheering for this deadbeat , as she slowly turns both fearless and maternal.

Some parts of the plot haven’t been thought out well. Why, for instance, do the two women survive that outbreak in the first place? Isadora even manages to get through a rather horrific orgy with several men and atleast one giant arachnid while nursing a gaping chest wound.   In a world as technically advanced as this, why is word of mouth the only way Isadora’s evil employer can keep track of her? (Then again, this is a world brimming with smart weapons, and really poor marksmen, given how regularly poor aim features in the plot.)  And how, given his significance in her life, does Isadora fail to recognize Palisar the two times she meets him?

The most compelling feature of this story is the world behind the main narrative – dark, dystopic,  inhumane. Species intermingle – sometimes in particularly unpleasant ways – religion is considered more dangerous than drugs, and mysterious cults steal and protect aborted fetuses. It’s an intriguing  world demanding to be seen,but remains largely hidden behind  the haze of Isadora’s breathless interplanetary race.

 Follow Here To Purchase Isadora DayStar