Mercenary Heart

Mercenary Heart
Diane Merlin
Mardi Gras Publishing
ISBN: 0-9789024-4-0
Fiction, Science Fiction, Erotica
Reviewed by Dave Thompson

It really doesn’t sound promising. A gang of merciless mercenaries rescues an orphaned baby from the scene of a battle, retires from the war game and settles down to play happy families. They even hire a nurse, and that introduces its own domestic difficulties, as the biggest and baddest killer of them all, Miklus Armstrong, finds himself falling in lusty love with the fetchingly newcomer. (Although it takes him 243 pages to tell her as much.)
But, just as we’re settling down to watch them all play Space Family Robinson, in wade the ubiquitous mysterious baddies to snatch the baby, kill Miklus’ buddies, and catapult the ultimate odd couple into a helter skelter voyage across the cosmos, to rescue their tiny charge. And, by the time you reach the breathless conclusion, you’ve forgotten you ever had any doubts as to how the tale was going to pan out.
The credit for this is almost wholly due to Merlin’s writing style. Economical without stooping to parsimony, she wastes few words, preferring to slam images and characteristics onto the page, and let the reader make of them what they will.
She does trip up occasionally. The secret of great erotic writing is, bluntly, to call a spade a spade, but Merlin prefers coy euphemisms (very coy), and the accompanying dialogue is a little sticky as well. All of which is surprising because, elsewhere, conversation flows as naturally as the imagery. Thankfully, these interludes are infrequent enough that the breakneck adventure readily forgives their intrusions and, although Mercenary Heart looks the sort of book that you plan to read over a few relaxing days, you’ll probably wind up with the light on all night.