The Informationist (Vanessa Michael Munroe, #1) in Action Heroine Fans

Mar 01, 2013 Danielle The Book Huntress rated it really liked it

Shelves: thriller-suspense, unusual-profession, yearly-reading-challenge-2013, nerd-prof-scientist-genius-geek, action-adventure-challenge-2013, lovers-reunited, heroine-i-liked, tough-as-nails-heroes, woman-in-pants, set-in-texas

The Informationist has one of the most daring and distinctive heroines I've personally read about. Vanessa Michael Monroe is practically a force of nature. Her personality is hard to pin down, even if you know her very well, which few people do. And she makes a very bad enemy. While some characters might go to Africa to run away from their past or to define a new life for themselves, Monroe is the opposite. She was born in Africa and raised there. Although she is Caucasian American descent, Afri The Informationist has one of the most daring and distinctive heroines I've personally read about. Vanessa Michael Monroe is practically a force of nature. Her personality is hard to pin down, even if you know her very well, which few people do. And she makes a very bad enemy. While some characters might go to Africa to run away from their past or to define a new life for themselves, Monroe is the opposite. She was born in Africa and raised there. Although she is Caucasian American descent, Africa flows in her veins and helped to make her who she was, and not all in good ways.

Monroe doesn't let fear define her, instead she walks in defiance of it. Being afraid is not her problem. It's the rage and anger she keeps under lock and key. She struggles against demons from her past that simmer in her blood and make her heart beat fast with the tribal beat of war. Control is a way of life when she knows just what she's capable of. Yet, she is unafraid to go into dangerous places when others would shirk such a responsibility. When Emily Burbank's adoptive father contacts her to find out what happened to his daughter in Africa four years ago, she is going to have to go back to the place she was born and face her ugly past.

I love to read about heroines who are tough and resourceful. Who can kick butt just like the action heroes. Monroe is definitely one of those kinds of heroines. I like that she is very adaptable and clever about thinking through situations. While she has other weapons, she uses the one between her ears very well. Her personality is really abrasive and she's not what I would consider a typical "likable" heroine. And yet, there is something about her that resonates with me. I like that she is such a survivor. I mean, who could go through what she did and still be 100% sane and free of scars? She actually is quite sane, although I think deep down, she fears what lurks in the abyss she keeps locked away inside. She's sort of the opposite of Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness. She's been there and she walked away. It holds no appeal for her.

I liked the complex relationship that Monroe has with Francisco. I didn't expect it, yet when it happened, I thought, "Of course." I knew that Monroe would have to come full circle and get closure about Africa in order to heal. That process was ugly and painful, but necessary. I also liked her relationship with Miles. Each encounter helped to shape her in different ways, as relationship with others should do.

While I didn't like everything about the narrative, I did like how the author builds tension and unfolds the story, and keeps me guessing what's going to happen next. While one could easily draw conclusions about what happened in Equatorial Guinea, it's different from what I thought, and complicated. I think this is a book that lends itself well to audio, because some of the written facts about Emily's disappearance and the various places she went/the stonewalling she encounters, and Monroe's search in those places might be a bit dry on paper. I also think that some of the action scenes could have been more suspenseful and intensely written. There was a sense of risk, but it was a bit muted at times. As far as the narrator, I liked her voice a lot. She captures who Michael aka Monroe very well.

This is one of those books that doesn't build up one's faith in humanity. Corruption runs so deep and twisted in this world, and some places are built on this foundation. And while some of us who are lucky to live in a more lawful country, those same individuals go to other places in the world and make things worse in their conquest for power and money because they can get away with that in some places in the world, where life is cheap. Like some of my other thriller/suspense/action hero favorites, Monroe is there to teach them a lesson, but in her case, that lesson is a costly one for her as well.

I couldn't imagine living the life that Vanessa Michael Monroe has lived. One of the things I love about fiction is that I can go on a journey with a distinctive heroine like Monroe and see life through her lenses. I can feel her pain and her anger and experience the victories and defeats she has, and it helps me to understand that life is a complicated thing, but we can make it through things we never imagined possible.

This book might not work for everyone, but I found it interesting and thought-provoking. It felt unique and Monroe is an unforgettable heroine. She's kind of lawless in some ways, but deep down, she has a code that she won't stray from. She's a complicated women. Readers who enjoy this kind of heroine or a reader looking for something different might enjoy The Informationist. ...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Robert rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle-deals, robert-s-reads

She’s a tool. A weapon. Like Jason Bourne or James Bond. Able to blend into her surroundings. She speaks 22 languages, and she’s damn near deadly with a knife. And she’s androgynous. She’s Vanessa Michael Munroe. Or Michael for short.

Revenge might as well be her middle name, though. She reminded me of Lisbeth Salander with the way rage completely consumed her. And yet she still managed to show some heart, or at least her slightly abbreviated version of it. Emotions seemed to fill her, consume he ...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Werner rated it really liked it

Shelves: action-heroines, books-i-own, action-adventure

Note, Sept. 14, 2017: I just edited this review to correct a slight misspelling of one word.

The Goodreads description for this book simply quotes the first paragraph of the jacket copy, which gives the impression that our heroine's adolescent career as part of a gang of gunrunners lasted for years. It didn't --she fled from Africa at the age of 15, after about a year with the gang. (They also weren't mercenaries, and their smuggling operations included drugs as well as guns.) Otherwise, the info Note, Sept. 14, 2017: I just edited this review to correct a slight misspelling of one word.

The Goodreads description for this book simply quotes the first paragraph of the jacket copy, which gives the impression that our heroine's adolescent career as part of a gang of gunrunners lasted for years. It didn't --she fled from Africa at the age of 15, after about a year with the gang. (They also weren't mercenaries, and their smuggling operations included drugs as well as guns.) Otherwise, the information is accurate as far as it goes. We meet her nine years later, when she's 24 years old. Before we do, though, we're treated to a two-page, attention-grabbing prologue, set somewhere in West Central Africa, describing a terrifying experience which we quickly realize is related to our main plot, and which gives us a little bit of information and a whole lot of tantalizing ambiguity.

Four years later, Michael is approached by a super-wealthy oil tycoon, who wants to hire her to trace the now four-years-cold trail of his adopted step-daughter, who vanished somewhere in Africa on the cusp of adulthood. Finding a missing person isn't something she's ever done; she's an information broker, a compiler of deep background on foreign countries, for governments, NGOs and corporations. But she's extremely good at this, blessed with a facility for learning languages, strong computer skills, a powerful intelligence and single-minded focus and determination. She's also a mistress of disguise, who (with her hair cut short and her bosom tightly bound) can pass for a male if she needs to. [Some reviewers focus on this, and on her preference for using her middle name, to make "androgyny" a central aspect of her character. IMO, this idea has been overstated; her character comes across as essentially female, without any ambiguity (though she's more in touch with her kick-butt side than many women are). Passing for a male is a tactical device that can come in handy in some situations (and she's not the only fictional heroine to find it so; Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance, for instance, does it frequently), and doesn't entail any repudiation of her femininity. As for preferring "Michael" over "Vanessa," she's not the first person in literature or real life to want to change the way she's addressed after a major transition in her life --especially from a traumatic period that she'd like to forget. (Her African associates knew her as Essa.]) Anyway, Richard Burbank has been assured that these skills will be transferable to ferreting out the fate and whereabouts of a person, and that Michael can succeed where others have failed.

Combat-capable females aren't as rare in literature as they once were, but her fighting skills aren't what make Michael a rather unique fictional heroine (though she has few peers where those skills are concerned). She's a very complex and nuanced character, with aspects of her personality that aren't all pretty. Her missionary parents, who didn't plan for or want her, raised her in a mindset that sees God as an angry and condemning Judge rather than a loving and forgiving Father. The experiences of her African adolescence left her with massive internal abysses of guilt and anger which she uses her work to keep at bay; she has hardly any friends, and walks a psychological knife edge between moral decency and a homicidal darkness she could easily plunge into for keeps. Now, with the quest for Emily Burbank taking her back into a world she left nine years ago, she'll face external conflicts with some very nasty villains; but her most desperate and consequential battle will be inside herself, and she'll come to a moral decision that may save her --or destroy her.

Taylor Stevens' unique personal upbringing gave her a first-hand knowledge of a number of world locales; this is probably reflected in the vivid way settings in several countries on three continents are realized. (Some of Michael's formative experiences may have something in common with Stevens' own as well --though one hopes not.) The African milieu that forms the main setting is particularly life-like, with a you-are-there immediacy especially marked in the portrayal of the dangerous, paranoid Twilight-Zone nation of Equatorial Guinea, the model for Frederick Forsythe's setting in The Dogs of War, a novel that Stevens references here (see my comment at www.goodreads.com/review/show/342479647 ). Her prose style is crisp and quick-moving, with a wealth of realistic detail that lends verisimilitude. All of the major characters are fully three-dimensional, adding to the texture and emotional evocative quality of the storyline. Plotting here is a tour-de-force, with major twists and surprises in store; the quality of suspense is very taut through much of the book, and comes right down to the wire.

This is an action-adventure novel, so the reader should expect that it's going to have some violence; more than a few people are going to get killed here. None of the violence is gratuitous, and it isn't over-described for its own sake; but some readers might find one scene a bit disturbing. There's no explicit sex, but some sexual encounters are noted without being described in detail, and Michael's sexual behavior is, like every other aspect of her life, affected by the psychic damage she carries. The most problematic aspect of the book in terms of content is the bad language; there's a lot of obscenity, and profanity/cursing. (For perhaps the first third or more of the book, this isn't so marked, but it gets worse.) Granted, a couple of the English-speaking characters could be expected to have barracks-room vocabularies, but "realism" isn't a useful excuse to invoke for putting English obscenities into the mouth of non-English speakers. It's also not likely that Michael's English speech would be that much colored by this kind of thing, given the probable absence of that type of peer modeling when she was developing her speaking style. I considered this stylistically lazy on the author's part, and deducted a star for it.

In a couple of places, I have a quibble or two with details. (A camera affixed to the peephole of a hotel door, for instance, would register images directly in front of it --NOT the adjacent door. And one tactical action near the end seems to have no credible reason for being done, except that it serves the author's ultimate plotting purposes.) But quibbles don't interfere with the fact that this is, overall, a very strong first novel. And, although there are sequels in the series, this opener comes to a very satisfying conclusion in itself; for readers who don't want to get sucked into another open-ended series, this book can function perfectly well as a completed stand-alone. ...more

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Oct 09, 2014 Mike (the Paladin) rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller

Well....if you love this/these books please forgive me. I just could not get involved or even interested in it. The character(s) left me cold. This includes the protagonist.

I just didn't get into the book at all and finally laid it aside. I decided "back when" that if I "quit" a book I'd go 1 star.

Now I know many people love these. In a way I get this. I can tell it's well written. That said, I'm just not the intended audience for the book. The odd thing is the subject seems very interesting. It ...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Alex rated it liked it

Shelves: thriller, debut-book

THE INFORMATIONIST (Pub. 2011) by Taylor Stevens was an interesting read. I'm giving it 3.5 stars, mostly because I like the lead character, Vanessa Michael Munroe, and the unusual African setting.

Vanessa's background is what makes the story interesting, more so than the mission she is on. Vanessa was raised by missionary parents, traveling the world and ending up in Africa. She runs away from home at 14 and ends up living with a band of guerilla soliders who perform both legal and illegal activ THE INFORMATIONIST (Pub. 2011) by Taylor Stevens was an interesting read. I'm giving it 3.5 stars, mostly because I like the lead character, Vanessa Michael Munroe, and the unusual African setting.

Vanessa's background is what makes the story interesting, more so than the mission she is on. Vanessa was raised by missionary parents, traveling the world and ending up in Africa. She runs away from home at 14 and ends up living with a band of guerilla soliders who perform both legal and illegal activities to earn a living. She's abused in a terrible way while living with the rebels, but also obtains fierce physical skills because of it. She brings those skills to the table as an adult, now living her own life as a person who can gather intel from any city/country in the world. She is an independent contractor hired by various corporations to fill in the blanks before they make business decisions in countries with unknown factors.

This is the first book in a trilogy featuring Vanessa, and is the author's debut book. For a debut novel, I think Stevens has done an excellent job of giving us an intriquing main character and a story that is definitely different from the average thriller on the shelves today, which I enjoyed.

This was my second time reading the story. I gave it a another go because I didn't finish it the first time as I found it somewhat boggy for a thriller. For some reason, it moved a little more quickly for me this time around, but I still found myself thinking the action scenes weren't as exciting as they should have been, and the exposition and character interaction in between seemed a little repetitive. The ending was interesting and satisfying.

While I enjoyed the author's writing style, I'd give it a 'good', not a 'great', but at least it was definitely her own, and I've heard that her writing improves with the second book, which I plan to read.

I'm giving this one 3-stars for somewhat lackluster action scenes and a bit boggy plot, and 4-stars for the overall story and strong main character, so 3.5 stars total, and I look forward to reading the second book in the trilogy, The Innocent, and to seeing Vanessa in action again. ...more

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Mar 22, 2017 Michael rated it liked it

First book. I'll read another. Very good debut. ...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Carrie Naughton rated it really liked it

Shelves: thrillah

"Blazingly brilliant" is overstating it, but this was a great beach read. The heroine is really not at Lisbeth Salander's level, but I still kept reading. ...more

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