Diane took a deep breath. “I saw her come at you. I was a hair’s breadth away from gunning her down. But I knew she was just another scared and confused person – a victim in all this. And I let her stab you instead. Which feels like a betrayal.”

I waved a hand at her dismissively. “I’m one of the worst people in the known universe. And I can’t feel pain. People can stab me.”

Frank J. Fleming is a treasure – creator of the hilarious IMAO blog, and now a leading light at the indispensable Babylon Bee, he writes some of the funniest stuff going today. And he’s now three books into his Superego series, a dark-comic space opera about Rico, the greatest assassin in the universe. Rico is untethered by conscience and genetically engineered to be a perfect fighting machine. Only now he has somehow fallen in love with a tortured Christian woman called Diane and is trying to make himself worthy of her. In Superego: Betrayal, this change of course has landed him with responsibility for leading a rebellion against a universal criminal empire run by his own father.

I didn’t enjoy Superego: Betrayal as much as the first two books, but the reason is easy to understand. Every story has an arc, and it’s necessary to include an act where things go from bad to worse and the hero’s goals seem impossible to achieve. This book holds that position in the series (unless it gets even worse in the next book). Hopes are dashed, friends turn to enemies, people you like die. I hope Frank isn’t going to Game of Thrones this series, but can tie it all up and give us our happy ending in the next volume.

Great writing. Dark content. Not for the kids.