Book Review : Chelsea Cain - One Kick (2014)

DISCLAIMER: Cheslea Chain got in trouble on her Facebook page a couple days ago because of comments she made about book piracy, and got a slew of vengeful one star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads from the internet moral police. Please note that I finished reading ONE KICK on August 30th and that book piracy comments were made on September 2nd. I thought the book was bad before Cain said anything, so please don't file me in the same group than these people. I don't have anything to do with the moral pirhanas of Facebook and I wish Mrs. Cain the best of luck in dealing with these assholes. Now onwards to my scathing review.

Order ONE KICK here

Kick stepped directly in front of him, stark naked; all hair and breasts and pubic hair, scrapes, bruises, and strained muscles. She drew herself up taller, shoulders back, feet apart. Except for the sound of Monster pawing frantically under the couch for something, it was quiet. No rotor noise. Which meant that she chopper was parked, waiting, on the roof above them.

Bishop regarded her thoughtfully. ''You have some really interesting issues.''

I'm a good audience. If you take a moment and browse through my Goodreads reviews, you'll find out that I rated more than 90% of my readings between 3 and 5 stars. Not only I'm easy to please, but I also love to read and I know myself. So I never deliberately read bad novels. I consider my time to be too valuable for that. I wanted to read Chelsea Cain for some time now, because several friends of mine recommended her original series to me. When I was courteously offered an ARC of ONE KICK by Simon & Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review, I thought I'd cleverly hop in the bandwagon at the start of Cain's new series. Except the hopping part never happened and now the good people at Simon & Schuster are about to read a probably more honest review than what they've bargained for. Just holding up to my part of the deal, you know? 

So, Kit Lannigan was abducted when she was six years old by some fucked up child pornographer named Mel Riley and lived with him for 5 long years under the name of Beth, starred in a whopping 67 child porn movies and unexplainably learned some killer skills from him like shooting a gun, picking locks and making bombs. That would make Mel an hybrid of Charles Manson, John Rambo and...I don't know, a famous child pornographer? I don't know who these people are. Kit got eventually saved by the FBI at 11 years old when they busted Mel,

Kit moved on with her life and spent the next 10 years studying martial arts, picking up more skills and pursuing her infatuation with firearms. She also changed her name to Kick, which is silly. So Kick became obsessed with missing children, trying to cope with her own fractured self. When destiny comes knocking and she's given an opportunity to save young Adam Rice, Kick going all it, even if it means facing the demons of her childhood, because these demons are very real and they happen to have abducted her 15 years ago.

There are several major issues with ONE KICK. 

1) A poor premise

Let me ask you a question. If you survived the worst possible form of child abuse, and grew up to become a paranoid gun freak, what would you do if a dashing stranger broke into your apartment while you were in the shower, arrogantly sat in your couch and fed you a bullshit explanation about who he is as you threatened him with your Glock? You'd shoot that fucker in the face, OF COURSE. That's it, END OF STORY. The logical ending point of ONE KICK is at page 53 or something. Kick Lannigan would've never seen the inside of a prison cell for putting two in Bishop's dome, given her back story and that, you know, he blatantly broke into his apartment for no good reason? 

The sympathy I could've had for Kick Lannigan was drained right away because she decided to follow a perfect stranger who broke into her home, called himself an ex-weapon dealer (like you could retire from that life) and told her: ''let's save children together.'' The level of survival instinct on that girl struck me as being appallingly low.

2) No sense of purpose

ONE KICK is a novel that deals with a super dark subject matter : extreme child pornography. By that, I mean child rape. Let these two words simmer for a second: child. rape. That's seriously fucked up. I'm all for a novel discussing this issue, except that ONE KICK strangely avoids it. I understand that it's only tasteful if left off the page, but you don't get a sense that any of the bad guys are actually dangerous people. Sure, the child molesters behave like creepy uncles a little bit, but Jesus: these people rape children, I need to see that they are fucked up, at least a little. There is one character (I don't remember who) saying that the bad guy ''gives pedophiles a bad name'' like he's talking about stamp collectors or something. At that point, I laughed out loud. 

3) Who's the bad guy?

Kick and Bishop are looking for I don't know, some guy from the past for the first hundred pages. Then, they are looking for a guy named Klugman. But that guy is not the guy and by page 260, you still have no idea who they are actually chasing. Kick and Bishop know, but not you. For all I know, every bad guy in this novel is a child abducting pedophiles and I need to know who the bad guy is. Even at the end, it's not clear.

4) The 'show, don't tell' rule is broken

I don't care if Kick Lannigan knows 571 ways to take someone down with her left hand or 4 different ways to kill someone  with a jacket. I need to see it. I know that it's supposed to be her neurotic mind trying to comfort herself with her intricate knowledge of martial arts, but she ends up sounding like a white belt talking shit at the bar. 

5) Dime store badassery

Kick Lannigan has throwing knives and shurikens in her purse. It's silly. This detail would be at home in a silly pulp novel, but in a novel that is meant to be serious like ONE KICK, it just comes off as stupid. Why does she have both? Variety? These things take a lot of place and must be dangerous as hell when you rummage through a purse. I don't think it's legal either. Plus, anybody bothered telling Kick that knife throwing was a circus act? There are plenty of good, modern weapon a woman can have in her purse that aren't silly: pepper spray, a taser, a stun gun, a telescopic baton.

I am extremely sensitive to dime store badassery. Being badass is a zen state. The more you want to be, the less you are. It appears to me that both Kick Lannigan and Chelsea Cain wanted Kick to be badass a little too much for her own good.

6) The ending

Oh Jesus Christ! What the fuck? The ending of ONE KICK is such an insult to my intelligence that I would've DNF'ed the book right there if it hadn't been already over and I NEVER DNF books. There are no valid reasons for Kick to do what she did at the end of ONE KICK. I don't care what her ulterior motives are, it's the absolute dumbest thing. I'd be glad to discuss the ending wit you privately on Facebook or via email, but you have to know that it's infuriating.

I gave ONE KICK two stars on Goodreads because it's apparent that Chelsea Cain is a talented author and her novel is so sharply written and well-structured that I forgot for a chapter or two that I was reading a terrible novel. Takes skills to do that. It intrigued me enough for me to want to try out the series of novel that made Cain famous, which I heard have absolutely nothing to do narratively with ONE KICK. There are plenty of good, mainstream female characters in literature: Lisbeth Salander and Katniss Everdeen for example. Kick Lannigan is not part of that group. I would gladly read Chelsea Cain's earlier novels, but I will not put myself through a Kick Lannigan novel ever again. Oh no, sir. I'm done with that.