She-Wolf and Cub

by Lilith Saintcrow

A cyborg assassin opts to save—not take—her target’s life, in this post-apocalyptic adventure by the author of Afterwar and the Dante Valentine series. Her name is unimportant. She is her a liquidator. Deep in debt for cyborg modifications, the agent eliminates whatever target she’s given. It’s a relatively simple job—until now. Her latest assignment is to kill a child, and she can’t refuse—because refusal means Dismissal, a fate worse than death. Instead, the operative smuggles her target out of the city, away from his corporate caretakers. But little Geoff is a gifted, genetically engineered, profitable experiment, and everyone—bounty hunters, fellow cyborgs, brain-fried cannibals, and other monsters—is desperate to get their hands on him. The agent may be practically indestructible, but she’s about to test her limits. Hell hath no fury like a mother protecting her own . . .

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Dystopia, Post Apocalyptic

194 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 9, 2015

About the author

Lilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as a child, and fell in love with writing stories when she was ten years old. She and her library co-habitate in Vancouver, Washington.

Reviews

[carol. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murderbot plus child. Maybe Dune as well. 

"When a corporation controls you, it’s not an enlightened despot. You’re fungible."

Jess--or maybe it's Abby--meets her facilitator and is given a mission she wants very badly to refuse. She's been working with him ever since the bad ol' days when she underwent the implementation process for nanotech upgrades, but this one has trap written all over it.

"'I couldn’t help myself. “What kind of kid are you?”
'I’m an investment.' Patiently. 'I guess I’m not earning out... I already told you it was okay.' Very patiently, as if I was subnormal. 'You smell funny. Cyborg, right?'”

On sale today. Move fast.

There are some weak points. Per another review, this was first written as a serial, and unlike Ilona Andrews, I'm not sure Saintcrow spent as much time re-working the narrative, as are some parts in the beginning that are almost literally word-for-word. I had to go back and make sure I hadn't hit the 'back' button on my kindle page. Glancing through Saintcrow's website, I don't see that, but she notes that the book had its genesis in her short story Pack, which ended up being something different. For inquiring minds (like me!), she also states this is a standalone. Too bad, really, because I would have enjoyed a lot more of these two characters.

"Kids can smell when one of their own is already weak. Humans: perfect predators before they’re socialized. Then they mostly get old and tired."

I won't say much else, because it took a couple of unexpected twists. The ending felt a little fast, and I felt like Saintcrow did indeed leave some potential threads hanging (ie, 'standalone' descriptor or not, she'll be able to jump forward into an overall arc, should she so desire), so that and the editing at the beginning were my biggest issues. Otherwise it felt like a delicious genre mashup of some of my favorite things, semi-explained in mostly plausible ways (I have one or two caveats).

"I could test the atmosphere, live off solar, kill the deadliest things in the Cities—other agents—without qualm. What I couldn’t do, though, was pretty much anything that might give Geoff a chance of, well, turning out a reasonably well-adjusted adult. If there was such a thing in the world we’d been given."

[Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best Saintcrow. I wish she'd make a longer book out of it.

[Mikhail · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF fairly early on.

I think there is something about Saintcrow's writing that just rubs me the wrong way. It's too... hm... I want to say pretentious but that isn't quite right. It's a little too intentional, too focused on the emotional effect that it wants to achieve, that it crosses over into almost self-parody. I struggle to take it seriously.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can tell this was ported right from her serial as there are a few sentences of info repeated between some chapters -- but aside from that ...

Love this world & characters! Hope there is a sequel already in the works -- the political situation is so strange & fluid. The history is murky because the main character only knows what her Corporation run city wanted to teach & now that she's 'Egress' she has revelation after revelation. :)

There is a bit of a 'God Emperor of Dune' feel to part of the story considering the link discovered between the desert life & the cub. Could just be though ... ;)

[Bridget Mckinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable, action-packed adventure. It seems to have been collected just as it was published, so its origin as a serial is obvious and there are some occasionally weird transitions between chapters and a couple of continuity errors that could have used some editing to smooth things out, but overall a solid story and compelling character arc for the cyborg mother protagonist. The ending is open enough that it leaves plenty of room for more stories about these characters or in this world, and I hope they materialize.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do want a sequel 😫

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[MrsJoseph *grouchy* · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://bookslifewine.com/r-she-wolf-a...

Even though I have now finished She Wolf and Cub, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It felt like a lot of the book was set in an already established universe. As a reader, I was not given a map to this universe and thus I felt lost quite frequently. There was a lot of made up tech-speak - which was frustrating and often dropped me out of the text, making my read longer and prompting me to put the text down often.

The skimmers veered again, just at the edge of my range. The commchatter was alive with excitement, rough words and male bonding. When they get together together in packs, they urge each other on. If you want someone who hunts alone, make sure they have ovaries.
-Chapter: Night Moves

She Wolf and Cub was originally a serial and I can see a lot of that serial still - the lack of information and world building that lends itself much more successfully to the serial format. The loose ends that were most tantalizing are the ones that [more than] suggest that the reason Abby was willing to fall furiously in love with Geoff is related to a tragedy in her past. That tragedy then drove her to become an agent - as a sort of self punishment. Agents are turned into almost immortal cyborgs but are owned completely by the Agency. They are powerful but they are slaves to the Agency who trains them to assassinate. If the Agents don't toe the company line, they are "Dismissed" which means their body is turned off and they die.

What I loved about She Wolf and Cub was the sheer emotion. The strength of the love of a mother for her child. Abby/Jess loves Geoff - Abby loves Geoff with her whole heart and would do anything - kill anything - to save him. She is his mother, and she is coming. She IS a wolf and Geoff is her cub. Don't mess with a wolf's cub - it's not at all healthy.

My kid. They have my kid.
Past rage. Past fear. The place where you make a simple decision. Where complexity has been stripped away, and all that remains is your fist, drifting forward, getting closer, and—
-Chapter: Black Hat Collective

Geoff is...strange. Different. He knows things - things like when it's going to rain and how to speak to sand worms. Geoff was created and raised in a lab. He was not abused but he was a commodity and thus unloved. Abby changes that. She rescues him and loves him. She fights for his life and kisses him goodnight. Geoff - who had been unloved suddenly has a mommy.

"I knew you’d come. I knew you’d come. I knew it.”
I decided not to tell him how close it had been. Ever. Before we got out of here, I needed to pull that rack of tubes down on [redacted].
It pays to be sure.
“I will always...” I had to cough. My nanos moved sluggishly. I needed fuel. “I will always come for you.”
-Chapter: Who Owns You Now?

I'm not sure how I feel about Sam and his feelings for Abby. He seems to be crushing a bit on her - but all of Abby's feelings are wrapped up in Geoff. Sam, Abby/Jess's handler, is working for a shadowy rebel-type boss. Sam also works for the Agency and supposedly has told them that she has died (so they won't find and dismiss her). While Sam's place in Abby's life is ambiguous even at the end, both Geoff and Abby would be dead without his [frequent] assistance.

One of the biggest loose ends - or maybe opportunity and space for a sequel - is that Sam will reappear in Abby and Geoff's life at some time in the future. She Wolf and Cub ends with a "safe for now" that definitely can lend itself to a sequel. Of course, I expect any sequel to include a much more powerful Geoff who will be just as ferocious in defending his mommy as she is in defending him.

[Jayda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had all day to think about She Wolf and Cub and i cannot get over the bond between our main character and her not so normal but adorable kid. They are both individually great characters but together, you feel that loving mother-son chemistry. By the way, she's a badass. She is absolutely wild with no regrets and i love that. The relationship she also has with her handler is fun as it can be described as "You're useful but i hate you but you're also alright".

Some might say that they feel like they are being dropped into a world that was already established but i feel that Lilith did a great job building it up. It's not too detailed because i believe she wanted to focus on fleshing out the bond and the story that makes their bond stronger. Now, i can see people getting "taken out of the story" at very few points because of some of the terminology and the lack of detail given of the tech and the world but it did not bother me much, maybe because she did something similar with her Dante Valentine series and i kind of got used to it there (however, it's not as complex as it was with Dante). It definitely does not stop you from enjoying the story and the more you go on the more familiar it becomes and the blanks start to fill in.

There were some awesome and gruesome fights that felt like they came straight out of the Mortal Kombat games and i appreciate the hell out of that. I love a good action scene in books and i should have known this was gonna have some good ones as her Strange Angels series, one of my favorite series of all time, had great action sequences.

Damn, i want a sequel. I would love a sequel. It had an open ending and it could definitely pick up with [Possible spoilers if you haven't read the book] Abby and a teenage Geoff fighting side by side and maybe Sam comes back in the picture like Geoff dreamed he would. It doesn't matter, just give me more Abby and Geoff.

[Debrac2014 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so good! Action packed! I hope there's a sequel!

[John A. Sillasen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Story Well Worthy of a Sequel

Lilith Saintcrow always leaves you wanting more when she writes. This book , set far into a distant future is centered around an agent of the Control who modifies warmbloods, what we would call people who has been accepted as a candidate well suited to be implanted, the result being a nearly indestructible humanoid android, we know as Jess. Jess is an agent or liquidator designed as a killing machine sent on missions to eliminate those assigned to her by her handler, another android who hands out missions for kill orders or to bring in a warmblood or other modified some corporation deems must go. Jess's only n rule is no kids! When she's assigned to take out a 7 year old boy taunted by other kids of corporate types. She determines to do otherwise and keeps the boy safe, escaping the protected city and leaves for the inhospitable wasteland of what remains of the world. Only to learn the boy has been heavily genetically modified. Organs repair themselves and the body themselves which would take away all the profit out of being modified by the various Corporations. Definitely a tale destined to keep your interest.

[Troy Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Good Book

I really enjoyed this book. Interesting concepts. After a global gene war, everyone lives in domed cities. Just like in Logan's Run, the ones in charge lie to the people and tell them that they couldn't survive outside the domes. The corporations use gene editing to create the monsters from myth, vampires and werewolves, along with cyborg enhanced agents. There is lots of action, pretty much non-stop. There is not much relation to the anime Lone wolf and Cub, except that an adult is traveling with a child. They escape the city and the majority of the action takes place in what is called the wastes. Very good character development and an amazing child/ parent style relationship.
I highly recommend this book.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was suitably energetic and largely kept me involved to the end, but it did commit the cardinal sin (in my eyes) of mashing together a serialized story into a single book without any additional editing. This meant that there was a lot of repeated sentences (and not just in a Basil Exposition sense), and also at least one place where a statement in one chapter seemed to disagree with the previous chapter. So, a good read, but a few minor faults meant I kept bouncing out of the story. Still, if there was a (better edited) sequel, I would be interested.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is addictive. A merciless cyborg assassin gets a kill order for a child. Instead she takes the child and escapes from the city. Out in the wastelands, there are cannibals, radiation, giant worms, and other dangers. When reading Saintcrow, I alternate between delighting in her creative word play, being swept up in her fast paced action, and connecting with her unique, fleshed out characters. When I finish her books, I always want more because I am so involved in the story.

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dystopian borderlands science fiction novel about taking control of your future, atonement, doing the right thing, the maternal instinct, redemption, and trust. It’s “Ghost in the Shell” meets the Wild West on Arakis, filled with cyborgs, vampires, and a hive mind, with extreme violence, carnage, a high body count, and a barrage of techno-words.

[T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I checked this out from my local library. I've always been a Saintcrow fan-of both her dark paranormal works and the YA PNR stories. I didn't find this novel as well-edited as prior books-- too many repeated (cut-and-paste-type) phrases, and a few spelling errors. I'd love to know what happens next, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel.

[Dr susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than dystopian sci fiction

Fair warning: this book is graphically violent. She-Wolf has horror elements, genetic manipulation, hints of a spy thriller, multiple mysteries, a high body count, and a very determined woman protecting a very unusual boy. The relationship between Abby and Geoff kept me reading a book I wouldn't normally have finished.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Binge worthy

There has to be a sequel, follow up, something. This starts off a little slow but after the first couple chapters were she meets geoff things really start moving. Again i Really hope that Saintcrow writes another book to continuing this story.

[Susan Haseltine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoy isn't really the word for experiencing this work, unless descriptions of dismemberment are your thing. Still it has something going for it in the intensity of the killer cyborg with a heart protecting the germ of a whole different pantheon.

[Marisa Solorzano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it

Jess is my girl and I feel the realness of her character with every word. Please please let there be a sequel.

[Alex Acks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cyberpunk done right.

[Jonathan Lupa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Action!

I just love this author's prose. A good bit of drama and the pace of play is always high. I almost always end up awake to late reading her work.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a strange little tale. I want more.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Jessica Lewenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just realised this is the same plot of The Mandolorian, and now it's my fave trope!

[Wetdryvac Wetdryvac · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and well structured ride.

[Wetdryvac Wetdryvac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody fabulous.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, an interesting read. Would like to read more in this setting. She decent world building that I'd like to see more of

[T]

On audio, but dnf

[elsalmon L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyborg corporate liquidator accepts a contract to eliminate a young gene patented boy but instead egresses the city with him into the unknown desert and waste beyond.