Synopsis:
Monster hunter Akina Azure inherited the most powerful weapon in the martial world before retiring to a peaceful life raising her twin girls.
The Reaver has them kidnapped, thinking Akina will trade that weapon for their safe return.
Will she? Or will she use it to wreak a terrible retribution on the men who took her girls?
You get one guess.
Review:
I’m going to start off this review with this little factoid about myself: I don’t like math. But if real world math were half as fun as what Akina does with her Infinity tactics, I think I would love it (I’ll explain more about that later.)
Partial Function is action-packed, full of banter, and has a lot of heart. As the main character, Akina is witty and the source of most of the banter (I’ve read the author’s space opera series, The Hybrid Helix, and to me, Akina is a lot like that series’ main character, Rohan. If you like Rohan, you’ll like Akina.) But Akina is different in that she’s a mom focused solely on the safety of her children, and she will do whatever it takes to do so. At one point in the story, she asks another character if they see her as the hero or the villain of the story. Based on her actions up to that point, she could be seen as either (which I loved. I have a soft spot for those types of characters.)
Akina’s style of martial arts revolves around an infinity pattern, and every move she performs has a name related to something mathematical. Subtraction, Division, various Waves, and Partial Function (which plays a key role in the story, hence the title), are just a few of them. Akina is the only major character who practices this particular martial art, since arts used are based on the person’s clan. And not all of the arts are strictly physical; there are a number of them that are more “magical” or mystical in nature (teleportation, sonic attacks, and the like.) It was a really fun mix.
But my review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention Dog. He is Akina’s pet and follows her everywhere, but he’s more than just a loyal sidekick (and yes, his name is Dog.) He has a big role in the overall story, though it didn’t seem that way for most of the book. When it was revealed, it was the best kind of plot twist!
Partial Function was exactly the sort of entertainment I was looking for when I picked it up: creative and funny, with characters that felt entirely human and relatable.
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