Blades of Winter, by G.T. Almasi

It's hard not to like a book with this first line:  "Nothing pisses me off more than being shot at while I'm eating. . . . The food here is spectacular, but right now I'm kind of distracted by that bullet hurtling straight at my left eye."  That sets the tone for G.T. Almasi's Blades of Winter, the first (hopefully of many) installment of his Shadowstorm novels.

The surgically and chemically enhanced Alix Nico, who managed not to get killed by that bullet, in an ExOps agent in an alternative U.S., on in which World War 2 ended quite differently.  In the Shadowstorm, the alternative version of the Cold War, the four superpowers, the U.S, the Soviet Union, Greater Germany, and the Nationalist Republic of China vie for global power.

With this alternate history as a background, Almasi's story follows Alix on her violent, bloody quest to find her father, a missing ExOps agent.  The bloodshed in her wake is nothing less than astonishing.  Alix is still human, but she has so many enhancements that she's leaning toward being mostly cyborg.  But she's a likable enough heroine and, violent as she is, I was rooting for her.

The action is graphic and colorful, but the spy story is a bit weak.  Many of the great spy novelists, e.g., Ian Fleming, John le Carre, Graham Greene, were spies themselves, drawing inspiration from their careers.  Almasi draws inspiration from these guys, but most of his inspiration is from action movies, and it shows.  Don't get me wrong, Blades is a fun read, but you definitely want to read it for the action more so than the intricate plot.  This is action-packed, escapist fun.