Hong Kong-based Jame DiBiasio is an award-winning journalist at Haymarket Financial Media. In 2013, he authored the critically acclaimed tourist guide, , and then wrote his first fiction, , the enthusiastically reviewed thriller vehicle for his heroine, Val Benson.

She returns in , an overly long, often convoluted quest novel that nevertheless proves DiBiasio can think up a plot, choreograph a fight, and produce a titillating cover. This 308-page sequel begins badly in California, however, because DiBiasio rushes new readers' introductions to Benson's character, thereby reducing the physically and emotionally scarred blonde to little more than a virtual fantasy figure.

Benson often seems decorative in this forgettable, sporadically edited yarn about the recovery of an ancient Cambodian sword. A more attentive publisher might have increasingly emphasised her character to fulfil 's promise as a grrrl-on-top, shoot-em-up, pan-Pacific romp, but DiBiasio has been allowed to cramp her "brand development" with too many subplots. As the author revs his quest, Benson often seems lost in a colourful, if guffaw-inducing, cast of limb-shearing Japanese heavies; several bullet-riddled Thai or Cambodian goons; a Navajo American with an unnecessary, dialogue-delaying stutter; and two Japanese porn stars with a lesbian history.

DiBiasio peeps at porn but scrimps on its sex, and reduces the red-light depravity of Bangkok to demure travelogue. The author relates a supporting character's wistful thoughts of "the sparks of their breasts pressing against each other", but that's as far as the sex goes until a strap-on dildo looms in Poipet.