Review: Hell & High Water

Hell & High Water by Charlie Cochet
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I picked this up on a recommendation and then promptly forgot about it until I went back through my ereader to get a sense of my TBR pile (spoiler: I cried both happy and terrified tears at the size of said pile) so by the time I started reading this had had totally forgotten what it was about.

Thus I was highly irritated through the first couple of chapters when they kept talking about how due to military shenanigans some people's genes had awoken/mutated creating an off-shoot of homo sapiens, what the author refers to as 'Therins' I'm not going to bother looking up if I spelled it right as the author didn't think it was necessary to tell me until about 20% in that it was just a fancy word of 'Shiftier.' Yep this book is about a special government unit staffed by shiftiers, character archetypes, and oddly, their extended family. They also apparently have a crazy amount of funding and extra special computer programs.

There is a hell of a lot of world building in the first 30-40% which gets in the way of getting to know the main character Dex, meaning that the feel and pacing of the first half of this work is very uneven and Cochet might as well have just introduced half the side characters with 'and this guy will be having his own book in the series so hope you enjoy his unnecessarily grumpy/nerdy/co-dependent ass.'

Okay, fine, I was willing to let most of this go (lord just say 'shiftier!) because Dex is an interesting character put into a difficult spot as he turned his human police partner in for killing a shiftier and everyone he works with seems to have taken this as a personal insult and takes every opportunity to beat the crap out of him. I liked beginning of the book Dex, what I could see through the world building that is. However, once he is transferred to the THIRDS (fancy well-funded shiftier and friends science SWAT team) he turns into the world's biggest joker. I get it, you like singing music from the 1980s, you have no problem with making dick jokes with your co-workers, being a car owner is something you enjoy.

But this gets me to the part that really bugged the hell out of me, apparently CSI: Shiftier must have the world's worst HR department. I don't know if I've become really sensitive to workplace harassment and power imbalance, but I spent most of the middle of the book think 'where the hell is their supervisor? Every interaction Dex has with one member of the team (the team he is supposed to trust enough to have his back in life and death situations mind you) is a series of sexual jokes and intimidation on the other guy's part. And no one in the team seems to think this is a big deal? Then the first time Dex gets...together I guess? with the romantic lead there were some consent issues that had me giving the whole thing a pointed side-eye. Dex is into it, but honestly I spent most of the book thinking 'leave, you can do better and this is just a lawsuit or something worse waiting to happen.'

The plot is all about trying to solve killings by a shiftier that you as the reader will figure out pretty quickly and then spend the rest of the book wondering why none of the characters do. The reason to why the killings happen...ugh, a bit of a weak cop-out to me.

Anyway, the next books might be an improvement as (in theory) you wouldn't have to get through as much world building. I found the ending to this one irritating as Dex, I know you are irritating and if you were my friend I could only hang out with you once a month as you are literary and introvert's nightmare, but you can do better! The sexytimes are pretty graphic so if that isn't your jam you can probably skip those pages. I had problems with them as each time the characters did the 'oh we shouldn't!' and then did anyway. I need to have at least one conversation where they discuss it as I'm not a fan of the 'I love you so much our sexual relationship will be dictated totally by your needs' trope. Blah.

As it is, I doubt I will be picking up the next book.

View all my reviews