Mistress of Death

Jason Striker #2

by Piers Anthony, Roberto Fuentes

In the second novel of the series, Jason Striker runs afoul of the black karate mistress Ilunga and a deadly drug conspiracy. These are fast-moving and violent stories, without ignoring human values.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Though he spent the first four years of his life in England, Piers never returned to live in his country of birth after moving to Spain and immigrated to America at age six. After graduating with a B.A. from Goddard College, he married one of his fellow students and and spent fifteen years in an assortment of professions before he began writing fiction full-time.

Piers is a self-proclaimed environmentalist and lives on a tree farm in Florida with his wife. They have two grown daughters.

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are demons roaming New York City, martial artists who take a unique drug and become nearly unstoppable, impervious to pain, with swifter reflexes, and superior strength.

Jason Stryker has vowed to stop the drug. Along the way, he sleeps with every woman in the book, and spends the rest of the time flailing about ineffectually until the end.

Entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have rarely read such garbage. Piers Anothony is capable of producing truly great writing, but he has also produced some of the most worthless garbage I've ever set eyes to. It's more than just the gruesome, gratuitous gore presented for shock value. Everything between these covers is offensive. And I don't care that this was written 50 years ago; open racism, extreme misogyny, and the wholesale appropriation and stereotyping of other cultures were not less offensive in 1974, only more accepted. Marked by wretched dialogue; ludicrous characters; the asinine idea that martial arts are somehow central to society; multiple ham-fisted plot elements (e.g., the central "kill-13," a cocktail of other drugs that renders its users addicts after a single use and confers on them miraculous fighting abilities along with an irresistibly violent urge to use them for no particular reason); the idea that mass murder could run rampant on a daily basis in the streets of a city without any repercussions; characters whose loyalties to one another seem to shift with the fickleness of the wind . . . it just goes on and on like this. And while this won't dissuade me from reading Anthony's other books, I'll approach the Jason Striker series with appropriate expectations, but only after warming up my eye-rolling muscles thoroughly. I believe the word I'm looking for is "wretched."

[Éric Kasprak · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first Jason Striker novel was not really a Men's Adventure novel per say, but this second output is definitely one. Jason Striker travels to some ancient temple in the jungle to destroy the birthplace of a super drug (Kill-13) that transform it's users into some sort of super martial arts killers. The story move at a rapid pace and the many fight scenes are well done with simple but effective prose. I was surprise to see some meaningful people to Jason Striker died in the story, but this will certainly affect the direction of series in the next instalment and I am excited to see where it goes.

[Hazel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book isn't nearly as good as the last book. It's still horribly sexist, but in a weird way. It also has a number of strong female characters, strong as capable and tough. They're still beautiful sex objects who fall for the male character. More importantly it addresses the issues of rape, race, Police turning a blind eye.
The plot of the book is far less interesting than the previous book. I wouldn't really recommend it.

[Andrew]

Wanted

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gore, Gore and more Gore. Martial Arts to the nth degree. I enjoyed the first book more which had a better plot. This was just kill, kill and finally over