Accompanied by Wink, Kay sets out to help her family solve the riddle of the deaths, even if it means risking humiliation. (No Vastalimi thinks twice about risking mere death.) Keeping Wink safe from duelists and hunters just makes things interesting.

Meanwhile, the rest of the company has a job: an up and coming corporation is cutting in on their employer’s profits; their task is to reverse this trend and put a serious spoke in the rival company’s corporate wheels. Too bad for Cutter – these guys fight dirty. Sabotage is business as usual, but they call in… his ex-wife to deal some blows where it hurts most.

One of the best features of this series is the way these guys spend their downtime or fill the intervals between fights: they tell each other stories. Last time, they were telling a newbie who was struggling with the shock of his first kill their own “firsts”, although a few held their silence. We hear one of the missing stories now, and also how “Rags” Cutter came by his nickname. It’s a great story. As bonus, we find out how Wink got diverted from a normal nerd’s course to nerd-who-mainlines-epinephrine. I only hope Perry continues these stories-within-stories in future volumes; the give a wonderful Arabian Nights quality to Cutter’s Wars. With a film noir-ish quality to Kay’s storyline, realistic and accurate detailing of fights and battles, a lot of wit and humor, and a nice nod to “The Most Dangerous Game”, this is a blast to read. ~~ Chris R. Paige