Royal Thunder Brings Lightning On Some Asses

I didn’t even know Royal Thunder was out bringing lightning on some asses until Rob Pierce hit me up and asked me to check it out for an arc.  I’ve raved highly about two of his previous works and during my peak on Twitter tried to start Robcon in honor of him with the tag line “what happens at Rob Con Stays at Rob Con”.  That’s how I wound up here, talking about how Royal Slaughter is not the fucking typical crackhead junkie heroin rage tale most of his books are famously known for.

This shit here s more of a political thriller with dashes of pomp mystery and medical biological warfare that round out the underlining conflicts, bringing about a carefully woven story of international betrayal without the usual tropes of Bond, Red, or any of those international incident type stories. In other words it’s a weird crazy fucking hybrid of bad political entities trying to overrule the will of the people with their own ambitions spearheaded by lust, greed, jealousy, envy, and plain old rich people’s first world problems that made Dynasty famous.  That’s not a bad thing if you’re into seeing rich stable motherfuckers fuck up and being so far removed from reality they have no concept of consequences.

If you’re in to Sidney Sheldon’s Windmills Of The Gods, you will fucking dig this to no end.

Royal Thunder just kicks you in the nuts, leaning hard on the modern Borne-esque international conspiracy brew ha-ha and government espionage the majority of the dumbed down population now considers as normalcy or a reason to wear a Chinese made Red slogan hat.  So here’s the tea, Royal Thunder is set in the time of a plague in England, which, if you know history, know those motherfuckers are no stranger to shit like that.  The United Kingdom government and the monarchy are having power struggles, which ain’t no fucking surprise there, but the twist is this version of the Brit monarchy is having a throwback Thursday moment to Edward III’s era taking out family members and shit so the last ruthless brother sister cousin standing gets the throne with the support of those assholes in Parliament, which are just as devious and cutthroat as a Congress led by Mike Pence acolytes.

In the midst of a nation’s bullshit is Jack Slaughter, Jackie if you’re all types of Mickey Nasty.

Jackie boy ain’t no Brit.  He’s a hard luck American that barely can keep from finding out shit from constantly falling in it and getting it on his upper lip.  Now this motherfucker right here is like part Baretta, part Mister Bentley from the Jeffersons, part Spenser For Hire, part Pound Puppy that’s probably mad he couldn’t star in a one man show on Broadway called Starsky and Hutch done like Victor Victoria.  He gets hired to go twelve rounds protecting the head bitch in charge, the Queen of England.  This bitch has more problems than Joan Rivers getting plastic surgery. She got family members trying to kill her for the throne, government cabinet members trying to kill her all because she’s her own woman and handling the haters and the thieves selling her country out for the riches.  So soon as Jackie boy catches up with her somebody shoots her ass.  I mean she makes it because he MacGuyvers through the castle kicking ass like John Wick on hallucinogents but still.  Both of them are fucked up from this but Jackie Boy’s fucked up from not following his first thought and killing everybody in there that had something to do with.  That’s why he gets sent packing and coming back to America tail between his legs like a dumb ass without so much as a pot to piss like a Vietnam war vet.  So he pretty much is tap dancing for a piece of bread a couple of years until internal struggles of the monarchy bring him back front and center to help the Queen sort out the grubby business of rule once and for all.

Now from here we got the meat and potatoes of the book.  There’s the Columbo part bumping around the playground asking questions.  There’s the Rambo determination part with Jackie boy bringing trouble wherever his feet firmly land because he’s mad as hell, needs something to eat, and is still harping on them drawing first blood the last time he came in country.  Jackie boy goes full on commando – he gives zero fucks on the casualties, including his allies.  He old, body giving out, ass kickings getting harder to bounce back to, and I’m sure he’s constipated from constantly having to nibble pork rinds and chips in between car chases and bodies flying all over the place.  The pace is nice and steady with what feels like two books in one – once you read the first part you’ll see what I’m talking about. Pierce is stepping out into unfamiliar territory from Snake Slayer, and that ain’t a bad thing.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the cover.  I hate a cover that looks like it came out of a Netscape 95 website template.  The publisher needs their ass kicked to throw out a cover with such poor design like it’s a power point print companion document for a college term paper.  If we wanted clip art books then they would be popular.  The cover ruined the momentum.