Warslayer,The

Reviewed by Kathryn Andersen (02 May 2004)

Gloria "Glory" McArdle plays Vixen the Slayer in a straight-to-syndication TV show where even the fans say the villain is the better actress. The wizards of Erchanen have been searching all the worlds to find a hero, and Vixen the Slayer is the last name on their list.

http://www.baen.com/library/

This novel is one of those available from the Baen Free Library and it's certainly worth downloading; whether it's worth buying is up to the reader to decide.

Yes, this is a real-world/fantasy crossover novel, but more along the lines of a "Galaxy Quest" for fantasy fans than an irritating Mary-Sue story or one of those urban elves things. Indeed, the author makes it clear that she's very familiar with fandom, from the prologue and epilogue which are fannish to a T (one being a "Vixen" overview and the other being an episiode guide with commentary), along with mentions of Xena, Buffy and Galaxy Quest (yes, ironically self-referential). It's fun and serious both, with the messiness of reality brushing up against the question: what does it take to be a hero?

One minor irritation is that the heroine is supposedly an Australian, (an ex-olympic gymnast from Melbourne) but it's obvious that while the author did some research into Melbourne (yes, I spotted the reference to Bourke Street) they really needed to have their manuscript checked by a native Australian, in order to weed out such gaffes as "downtown Melbourne" and not knowing how cricket is played (yes, there are wickets, but one does not wave a cricket bat the same way as a baseball bat...) Non-Australians will presumably notice nothing, but I wonder why the author chose to do such a thing, unless it was simply another fannish in thing, making a parallel with Xena but making it Australia rather than New Zealand.