J. D. Cunegan

I recently had the opportunity to interview Cunegan for my blog. His answers intrigued me and the Bounty series found a home in my reading pile. I was looking for something a little different from my normal preferences and I definitely found it.

It makes sense, in my opinion, to read a prequel first. I enjoy knowing the backstory before delving into the main plot line. For that reason, I chose to start with Boundless: A Bounty Short.

This Novella/Novelette tells the story of Jill Anderson. If you like strong female protagonists, you are going to love Jill. She’s a homicide officer by day and vigilante by night, with some impressive abilities. Having been in the military, she agreed to a secret operation that, in essence, made her a mash-up of Wolverine, Robocop and Nancy Drew. She has a mystery to solve and what she can do legally in the daytime, she has no problem finishing without the law behind her when the sun goes down.

Picking a genre to place Cunegan’s work into isn’t any easy task. There’s an aspect of: Sci-fi, Mystery, Thriller, Fantasy and a bit of Horror. As you can imagine that’s a lot to pack into a short. The action starts on page one and keeps going all the way through. In fact, the one problem I had was perhaps it had a little too much going on all at once in some places, especially early on.

The fight scenes are incredibly detailed – you can visualize every punch, slice and bullet.

I did end up wondering – was her brother’s Canadian comic book hero Superman or Captain Canuck?

Readers should be aware of scenes with violence, resulting in blood splatter and/or loss, as well as strong language.

Four & a half out of five stars. Recommended read for all action lovers.

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I have mixed feelings about this book. It isn’t my usual fantasy focus, but I appreciate both the mystery/crime and the vigilante/superhero genres. There were a lot of scenes that really pulled me into the tale, the crime solving and deliberation over the evidence specifically. The premise is really interesting and I think it would serve well as a graphic novel, probably better than the novel format it was actually. It was well paced and built some interesting character development at the beginning. But that’s where it fell a little flat for me.

The characters didn’t seem to grow or progress as individuals. They were always true to their stock creation which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I felt like this novel had a lot of predictable elements, maybe that’s just my own writer’s mind though. I also felt sometimes it was trying to do too much. I am still sitting with the ending and am unsure how it actually makes me feel. It works for some superhero stories, not sure how it works for this one. It will be interesting to see what the author does in the next installment.
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