Steve Perry, Silat and The Man Who Never Missed

I couldn't think of a "S" tie-in to go for my fave alliteration gimmick :-(

Steve Perry... I first heard of him because I was deeply into reading science fiction and fantasy books circa high school and early college days. He wrote the Matador series, and no, he is not the former lead singer of Journey. Same name, and no relation IIRC. Digression: the new lead singer of Journey sounds like Steve Perry and had a hard life before he joined Journey to replace Perry. Great human interest story for another post someday.

The Man Who Never Missed

catchy title, IIRC, the paperback copy I bought had the protagonist leaning against the wall, with one foot on the wall... one hand in the air with what may or may not be a weapon. It looked cool. The caption under the title read:

"Soldier, Traitor, Terrorist - The Legend Begins."

Oh, frag me, I will post the picture of the cover :-)



The Reader's Digest version of that book is that the protagonist, Emile Antoon Khadaji (cool name! why didn't my parents name me that), was trying to bring down the evil Confederation and he waged a one-man war starting on one planet. He grew his legend by seemingly never missing. He had a weapon which shot paralyzing serum and IIRC, Khadaji didn't want to kill his enemies... choosing to paralyze them and have their forces depleting by caring for their fallen comrades... kind of like the philosophy of the Russian style, Sambo, in that the leglocks were used to break legs and that the fallen soldier was a liability to the rest of the forces when crippled than if he was dead. That got me hooked and I read the others in the series...

I need to reread that series again... my memory is fading.

For more info on Steve Perry, check out:

Wiki entry
His website

and more importantly,

his blog

Anyway, there was a type of martial art/dance some of the characters learned. There were 97 steps to it... some of the steps were hard to get to given the placement of the previous step. At the time I read the books, I was into some JKDC, WCK, and Tai Chi. Didn't quite explore FMA yet. Never heard or knew what Silat was until a bit later when I really started to check into JKDC.

Fast forward, what, 15-20 yrs later, and with the advent of the Internet, I read Steve Perry's blog on and off and he's a Silat player! 97 Steps indeed.

I highly reco The Matador series... I have yet to read the other books he has written, but he is a good writer and I liked the Matador series well enough to check out his other books soon.