Requiem for Medusa book review
Requiem for Medusa: Tyrus Rechs: Contracts & Terminations Book 1
by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole
Kindle Edition, 291 pages
Published June 15th 2018 by Galaxy's Edge
ASIN B07DS8B38B
What price would you be willing to pay for vengeance? How much of your substance would you be willing to spend, so that the wicked would not escape their due? To see justice done, even though the heavens may fall?
For Tyrus Rechs, that turns out to be just about everything. And in another sense, it turns out to be not much at all. To resolve that enigma, we need to understand the character of Tyrus Rechs. Rechs is fundamentally a very simple man, but to explain why is not so simple.
Let us start by looking at similar characters in fiction. One of the closest examples I can think of is Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane:
Solomon Kane – illustrated by Gary Gianni
Solomon Kane is fanatical in personality, unadorned in both speech and deportment, and convinced of the absolute sovereignty of God. His characteristic boast is something I could see Rechs saying:
"It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives."
In another man, we might call this a humblebrag, but for both Kane and Rechs, they are simply being honest. Each of them is an avatar of truth and justice, and are constitutionally incapable of either dishonesty or subtlety.
Just call my Tyrus.
He said it like he was a normal person and not one of the most wanted men in the galaxy. Forget all the rumors, ghost stories, and legends that littered his reputation. He had a warm, almost wry voice that held no pretensions within it. If anything, he seemed casually ordinary and of few words. If you were to have asked her later, after everything had happened, what the truth sounded like if it had a voice, she would’ve told you it sounded like Tyrus Rechs. Like he was some kind of galactic true north that compasses couldn’t stop themselves from finding.
Fundamentally, neither man wants for anything. They have nothing, and want nothing, because they are sufficient unto themselves. Thus, it is easy for them to lay it all out each and every time, without hesitation. Whether as a soldier, or a bounty hunter, Tyrus is willing to lay down his life for others.
But this time, something is different. That something is a woman.
Rechs felt nothing.
Which was, as he well knew, when he was at his most dangerous. He rarely felt anything at all before he killed people. Or during it. Or after. Maybe because he’d done it so long. Because it was one of the only things he knew how to do well.
And to him, that was the way it needed to be when you killed someone. Emotionless. Otherwise…mistakes were made.
Impersonal personification of justice he may be, but Tyrus Rechs is also a man, and a soldier; stone cold killer he may be, he is is also capable of love. Not just the fraternal love which motivates men to run towards danger instead of away from it, but also the wild abandon of erotic love. Which explains one of the biggest questions I had in the Galaxy’s Edge series: what happened to Tyrus Rechs? Now it all makes sense.
As for the book itself, this volume struck me as the most cinematic of all of Anspach and Cole’s work so far. The climactic set-piece battle on a ruined world between Rechs and the man who betrayed his woman, I could see it. This would make a hell of a movie. Or a mini-series, as some devoted fans remind me frequently.
The Wheel, not Cassio Royale, but similar in concept
Cassio Royale itself, the doomed pleasure palace, gambling station, and wretched hive of scum and villainy, would also be spectacular. Perhaps we shall see it someday.
This book is a hell of a ride, and a fascinating bit of backstory behind one of the series biggest and baddest. Highly recommended.
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