What Measure Ye Mete

Judges #8

by C.E. Murphy

United States of America, 2053 A.D.

There’s not a lot left for the last few cops of what was once New York City to do, these days. Officer Cera Cortez once dreamed of chasing down killers, but now she mostly just puts a friendly face on the implacable justice of the Judges.

Until a tiny robot falls onto her face screaming murder, giving her one last chance to do her job—and signs point to the killer being a Judge...

89 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 25, 2021

About the author

CE Murphy began writing around age six, when she submitted three poems to a school publication. The teacher producing the magazine selected (inevitably) the one she thought was by far the worst, but also told her–a six year old kid–to keep writing, which she has. She has also held the usual grab-bag of jobs usually seen in an authorial biography, including public library volunteer (at ages 9 and 10; it’s clear she was doomed to a career involving books), archival assistant, cannery worker, and web designer. Writing books is better.

She was born and raised in Alaska, and now lives with her family in her ancestral homeland of Ireland.

She also writes paranormal romance as Murphy Lawless and cozy mysteries as Catie Murphy.

Reviews

[Daniel Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second story in the JUDGES - Volume Three collection, and as such it occurs a few years later than the first story, "Necessary Evil,' and introduces a new cast of characters.

In 'What Measure Ye Mete' we read about the life of a former detective who now works as an aide to Judges, assisting them and being a friendly face to the citizens. By the end of the story, I found I wanted to read more from C.E. Murphy in this setting, as this was a wonderful, original and intriguing story.

However, I scored it a 4 because of my personal experience and a couple of problems I had with the writing in the first couple of chapters.

Firstly, the author occasionally phrased sentences in a way that I found difficult to process. Most of the writing was top-notch but there were quite a few times when I was caught off guard and had to keep rereading a sentence, trying to get to the intent behind it. I could understand the general gist from the individual words, but sometimes had to skip ahead without fully understanding what a sentence meant. I was still able to follow the story without a problem, it just left a sense of frustration for me personally.

Secondly, the name of the protagonist is Cera Cortez and we are introduced to her by her full name once. Then for the next few chapters, she is always referenced as either Cera or Cortez. This might be entirely my own flaw but I initially kept forgetting they were the same person, and found myself confused who was who in a scene. After the first couple of chapters I was used to the characters and the naming so it all flowed much more smoothly.

In summary, this is an excellent story that I recommend, and it may be a 5/5 for other readers, but due to the quirks above it was 4/5 for me. I hope C.E. Murphy writes more in this setting, either continuing with these characters or introducing us to more new ones.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effective hero

Good Judge story, and a really nice demonstration of how ordinary people with everyday weaknesses could take on Judges, and change the course of history. Within the bounds of the world, of course.

[Jefferson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great entry in this consistently excellent series.