Vic: Never Give Up

Jerry Gill

Average Rating 9/10 (1 Review)

1920's adventuress Vic Challenger and her friend Lin Li are off again. There shouldn't be any danger this time. Their plan - No bad guys, no monsters. It's basically a camping trip. Oh well. Adventure stretches from Arizona to the Highlands of Scotland. They run into bad guys, centuries old evil, prehistoric creatures, bad luck and life. They find more than once that life can sometimes be harsh on top of harsh. Death comes calling more than once but they Never Give Up!

Review by Paul Lappen (300914) Rating (9/10)

Review by Paul Lappen
Rating 9/10
This is the third in a series of novels about your average female resident of the early 20th century who isn't really so average.

Victoria Custer's "day job" is as a travel and adventure writer for her local, Nebraska, newspaper. Using the pen name Vic Challenger, she travels to places that even experienced, male adventurers would hesitate to visit. Vic has a very good reason; she has inside of her an avatar of a 100,000-year-old cavewoman named Nat-ul. She came from an era where violent death could come at any moment. If Nat-ul has survived all these centuries, then Nu, her lover, must also be alive. That search is the real reason for Vic's adventures.

Vic and her friend, Lin Li, are booked on a very fancy ship for a trip to England in a couple of weeks, so they make a quick trip to the Grand Canyon for some camping. They will take some photos, write some articles; it will be fun, right? They are taken prisoner by some Native American warriors who accuse them of being human slavers targeting Native American children, they are later taken prisoner by actual human slavers, and they come across a bottomless cavern full of what looks like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. They manage to reach their ship for England with minutes to spare.

Once in Britain, they head for Scotland, intending to camp in the ruins of a Scottish castle on the shore of Loch Ness (home of the famous Monster). The local inhabitants are tormented by the mysterious disappearances of animals, and people. Some say that the Loch is inhabited by a number of "beasties." Other tales are about a family of human cannibals. Vic and Lin learn, to their horror, that both stories are true. Amid all this Vic just misses meeting an artist named Stu James, who she is sure is the reincarnation of Nu, her lover.

I totally enjoyed this book (and this series). It's got a strong female main character, it's got plenty of action and brushes with death, and it would make a really good movie. This is very much worth reading.
Paul Lappen (30th September 2014)