Review - Roxy Buckles and the Flight of the Sparrow by Nicole Little

Preamble

Nicole Little is a fellow author hailing from Newfoundland who has published most of her work with Engen Books, a local genre fiction publishing house. Prior to Roxy Buckles and the Flight of the Sparrow, she has mostly published shorter form fiction in various anthologies put out by Engen. I was excited to read an original and longer work by Little (I previously read her novella set in the Slipstreamers universe, The Lotus Fountain - review here). This one clocks in at around 192 pages according to the ‘zon.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

Review – 5/5

Sci-fi comes in many different flavours. You have your epic space operas like Corey’s The Expanse, philosophical mystical works like Herbert’s Dune, cerebral philosophical stuff like Aasimov’s Foundation, comedy like Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide, psychedelic fare like Dick’s Ubik, and on an on. It’s really quite an impressively diverse genre, and one particular flavour came through in the pulp fiction from the early 20th century.

These are the stories from an era when detective novels like Hammett’s The Glass Key were sitting side by side with pulp magazine horror stories like Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Conan the Barbarian. Roxy Buckles and The Flight Of The Sparrow captures this feel, yet also retaining a certain modernity and even a sense of femininity that was absent in a lot of the fiction of that era (pulp fiction was written by and large mostly by dudes – I know, huge surprise, given the era).

The story is by and large a human one, and not exactly what I expected when I started reading it. I would call it an ‘action love story,’ if such a thing exists. Roxy herself, the titular hero of the story, is one bad arse B, kicking butt and taking names. A ‘bounty hunter cum mercenary’ (as described in the blurb - heheheh, gotta love Latin!), she travels around the galaxy tracking down law breakers and bringing them to justice, along with her best bud Suki Kwan. What you don’t realize immediately is that she is chasing a past that comes into full focus as the novel continues.

The twists and turns are many, including one serious mistake about reality that Roxy has clung to like a lodestar throughout the past decade of her life. How do we cope with an injustice upon which we have based our identity? A large portion of the book is Roxy coping with a forced deprogramming from reality as she knew it, almost like a cultist waking up to the fact of her own indoctrination.

The story focuses on her ex-fiancé, Sam Sparrow, as is evident from the title. I do not want to spoil anything, but when the story starts, he is the villain and Roxy’s next bounty. Not just any villain, one who has apparently taken an enormous chunk out of Roxy’s identity, as well as quite a bit more from her friend Suki.

The story is fun, the characters are great, and Roxy herself is a very compelling heroine. Though there is only a little sex in the story - she ain’t no cum mercenary, you’re reading that wrong - there is enough there that casts her as a sex symbol, almost like an intergalactic Jane Bond. She moves through the narrative at a brisk pace, facing down darkness that nearly wins and emerging triumphant.

Roxy Buckles and the Flight of the Sparrow is an easy recommendation for anyone interested in a relatively light but very compelling story with plenty of heart.

You can check it out on the ‘zon here.