Oh dear. This is just... not good. The other book in this series, Devil's Advocate, on the young Dana Scully, wasn't great either but this is worse.

First, credit where it's due. The one thing that works here for me is the absolute fracturing of Mulder's family. After Samantha's abduction, that family falls apart, each member in his or her own way, and it's not pretty but it is realistic and affecting. It doesn't, however, make up for the two glaring problems here. One is Mulder's love interest and best friend Phoebe (not the Phoebe from "Fire", either, I don't know if that makes it better or worse). Phoebe is a Scully-clone, essentially, and given the Scully-Mulder relationship is at the heart of The X-Files trying to recreate it seems a poor decision at best. The most successful part of Devil's Advocate was Scully's relationship with her sister Melissa, a pre-existing character who filled a niche perspective different from either of the two main characters, and that set the book apart and gave it a little originality even if the plot was shite. Garcia instead goes the mirror image route here and all it did was annoy me.

It didn't, however, annoy me as much as all the fantasy novel wallowing and referencing, because part of this book's stupid plot (why are both of the Origins books so idiotic plot-wise?) was a heavy reliance on a Michael Moorcock book. Stormbringer, which I have not read, is apparently about magic soul-swallowing swords, and while it's clear Garcia is a fan of monstrous proportions she has succeeded in putting me off the prospect of reading it, perhaps for life. Agent of Chaos makes Stormbringer sound absolutely asinine, and whenever it got dragged into the text here my eyes rolled harder than Scully's at the Fiji Mermaid.