This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Requiem for Medusa
Series: Galaxy's Edge: Tyrus Rechs #1
Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF/Space Opera
Pages: 357
Words: 88K

Synopsis:

Medusa was a world class bounty hunter, with a disease, a disease that was slowly turning her into a machine. She was a doctor and used her bounties to search for a cure for herself and everyone else exiled by the disease. One job got her killed. The Bounty Hunters Guild isn't going to let that happen to one of their operators without severe repercussions. So they hire Tyrus Rechs.

For Rechs, this isn't just a job. He was a lover of Medusa and he doesn't want just Justice, but Vengeance. Wanted by the House of Reason, with Nether Ops continually on his tail, with other Bounty Hunters also gunning for him and his own past haunting him, Tyrus Rechs, a man over 2000 years old, is on the edge.

Rechs tracks down the client who hired Medusa, only to find out other bounty hunters, hired by other clients, had a hand in things. The trail takes Rechs to a rich gambling space station where 2 Crime Lords run a Death Game where hundreds of competitors vie to be the one lone survivor who will live in the lap of luxury for one year. The rogue bounty hunter who killed Medusa has entered the games and Rechs finds out that the Crime Lords are the one's who hired him. Said Crime Lords have also contacted Nether Ops so Rechs can't wait around to get the rogue bounty hunter. Rechs enters the game, kills the bounty hunter, escapes by the skin of his teeth and immediately faces off against a Nether Ops kill team. During this fight he also kills the 2 Crime Lords and finds out that in insane robot bounty hunter is the one behind it all. The robot dies, the space station is totally wasted and Rechs goes to a hidden asteroid to sleep for months to recover and to give his trail time to cool down.

My Thoughts:

After how much I was enjoying the main Galaxy's Edge series, I wasn't sure how a prequel trilogy was going to work for me. Thankfully, this was everything I could have wanted. I'll write about that in a second.

I am consistently giving these books 4 and 4.5 stars and raving about them and I had to think for a minute about what kept them from going into pure 5 star territory. I enjoy them enough, that is for sure. I think it is because these are pulpy enough that it is going to take a second read to see if the enjoyment stands the test of time. So it's not so much a bad thing holding it back, as my own hesitation in giving out a coveted 5star. Anyway, just needed to cement that in my own mind.

As I wrote above, this had everything I wanted. A quest, the chosen one, a hero of superb ability, evil villains, justice, vengeance, lots and lots and lots of action. It all was blended together and folded into a great story. I will almost always take a Lone Hero story over a Group, as I just enjoy seeing the Individual and how one person can make a difference.

In regards to Rechs himself, since we know his fate in the main series, this was all about finding out the tidbits of his past. We know he encountered something that gave him longevity and from this story it seems to have been some sort of Savage ship? It is not explicitly spelled out nor is it the main thrust. Anspach and Cole (the authors) aren't making the mistake that Star Wars made of making the Jedi be the center of attention nor are they filling the galaxy with Jedi barbers and Jedi mechanics and Jedi beauticians. The balance in these books just feels right.

This book has put to rest my niggling fear that GE was a fluke by the authors and that they couldn't keep up that level of great story telling. This was a fantastic story and I loved it and I am looking forward to the next two just as much now.

★★★★☆ ( )

Requiem for Medusa: Tyrus Rechs: Contracts & Terminations Book 1
by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole
Kindle Edition, 291 pages
Published June 15th 2018 by Galaxy's Edge
ASIN B07DS8B38B

What price would you be willing to pay for vengeance? How much of your substance would you be willing to spend, so that the wicked would not escape their due? To see justice done, even though the heavens may fall?

For Tyrus Rechs, that turns out to be just about everything. And in another sense, it turns out to be not much at all. To resolve that enigma, we need to understand the character of Tyrus Rechs. Rechs is fundamentally a very simple man, but to explain why is not so simple.

Let us start by looking at similar characters in fiction. One of the closest examples I can think of is Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane:

Solomon Kane is fanatical in personality, unadorned in both speech and deportment, and convinced of the absolute sovereignty of God. His characteristic boast is something I could see Rechs saying:

"It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives."

In another man, we might call this a humblebrag, but for both Kane and Rechs, they are simply being honest. Each of them is an avatar of truth and justice, and are constitutionally incapable of either dishonesty or subtlety.

Just call my Tyrus.

He said it like he was a normal person and not one of the most wanted men in the galaxy. Forget all the rumors, ghost stories, and legends that littered his reputation. He had a warm, almost wry voice that held no pretensions within it. If anything, he seemed casually ordinary and of few words. If you were to have asked her later, after everything had happened, what the truth sounded like if it had a voice, she would’ve told you it sounded like Tyrus Rechs. Like he was some kind of galactic true north that compasses couldn’t stop themselves from finding.

Fundamentally, neither man wants for anything. They have nothing, and want nothing, because they are sufficient unto themselves. Thus, it is easy for them to lay it all out each and every time, without hesitation. Whether as a soldier, or a bounty hunter, Tyrus is willing to lay down his life for others.

But this time, something is different. That something is a woman.

Rechs felt nothing.

Which was, as he well knew, when he was at his most dangerous. He rarely felt anything at all before he killed people. Or during it. Or after. Maybe because he’d done it so long. Because it was one of the only things he knew how to do well.

And to him, that was the way it needed to be when you killed someone. Emotionless. Otherwise…mistakes were made.

Impersonal personification of justice he may be, but Tyrus Rechs is also a man, and a soldier; stone cold killer he may be, he is is also capable of love. Not just the fraternal love which motivates men to run towards danger instead of away from it, but also the wild abandon of erotic love. Which explains one of the biggest questions I had in the Galaxy’s Edge series: what happened to Tyrus Rechs? Now it all makes sense.

As for the book itself, this volume struck me as the most cinematic of all of Anspach and Cole’s work so far. The climactic set-piece battle on a ruined world between Rechs and the man who betrayed his woman, I could see it. This would make a hell of a movie. Or a mini-series, as some devoted fans remind me frequently.

Cassio Royale itself, the doomed pleasure palace, gambling station, and wretched hive of scum and villainy, would also be spectacular. Perhaps we shall see it someday.

This book is a hell of a ride, and a fascinating bit of backstory behind one of the series biggest and baddest. Highly recommended. ( )