Vigilante (The Vigilante Chronicles #1) by Natalie Grey and Michael Anderle
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars
One man leaves the life of a lawman behind him and works to clean up a new area in space.
On the planet now known as High Tortuga, the mine workers are far too close to being slaves so the ruler of the planet shut them down.
Except for the mine owned by Venfirdri Lan.
He’s taken his mine off the grid and decided to keep everything running. With no need to pay the workers, profits should be good.
After all, who’s going to stop him?
He had no idea there was a new type of man working for justice on the planet.
A man named Barnabas.
In fact, he didn’t even know who Barnabas was. But he’s about to.
Barnabas may not be Ranger One anymore, but one thing definitely has not changed: when someone screws over the powerless, Barnabas is going to bring the pain. With a bloodthirsty AI running his advanced spaceship, those who love evil should start looking over their shoulders.
Life just got a lot more fun.
Vigilante is yet another book series in the Kurtherian universe created by Michael Anderle. I have to say that, when reading this book, I was wondering whether I was not getting a bit of Kurtherian fatigue. This universe has no spread out into so many series and sub-universes and God knows what that the things are starting to become blurred (for me at least). Most of the books are good, that has to be said, but the really really good ones starts to become further and further apart.
To me this book is one of the ones I found good but only just so.
The main protagonist is Barnabas from The Kurtherian Gambit which in itself is a good start. The story however is “just” yet another side story playing itself out mostly planet side and does not really advance anything in terms of the overall story arc.
The general theme is what you would expect. Dumbass criminals do what dumbass criminals do. In comes Barnabas and explains the error of their ways in his usual colorful, violent and painful way. As usual the survival rate of Barnabas “students” is on the low side.
The episodes of Barnabas’ “intense explanations” of right and wrong are intermingled with character introductions (it is the first book in a new series after all), humorous dialogue and all that stuff that belongs in these kind of books.
Barnabas is cool of course and so are a lot of the other characters. Most of them are likable, well, with the exception of the ones that should not be likable. No surprise there. I could not really make up my mind whether the shoot-first-then-shoot-some-more AI on his ship was actually funny or just silly though.
Vigilante is a decent book, no doubt about it. I did however fail to get the same kick from reading it as I have gotten from many of the other books in this universe. This could of course also be because it is the first book in the series and it is finding its pace and style.
PG's Ramblings 
I have to admit, these “spinoffs” seem to be more about selling the book based on “Kurtherian” than on their own merit. I find that rather off-putting.
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Yes, I am sure it is very much selling by using the “franchise”. As such they are better than many blatant attempts to sell based on just a name though. But yes, I think it’s getting a bit over the top now.
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