"She's a secretary, bodyguard, and assassin all rolled into one!" the back cover of Executive Assistant: Iris proudly proclaims. She's also a ninja, sort of a slave, and kind of a whore, if you consider that her job requires her to have sex with her employer whenever he chooses.

This isn't a great book, and not just because the core concept -- sexy female ninja -- has been done before, and better.

In this case, Iris was raised in an orphanage that trains young girls to service powerful gangsters and businessmen. Iris is good at her job, the primary function of which is to murder anyone her employer orders her to. Sometimes this means killing good people, and if her conscience gives her a twinge now and then, she doesn't let it get in the way of carrying out her instructions.

Oh, eventually she catches on that her boss is a bad guy, and she begins a late-in-the-book rampage to stop him. But it's not because of her fickle conscience or the guilt she feels for killing innocent people; rather, she finally grows a spine when her employer's ruthlessness affects her personally.

More to the point, Executive Assistant: Iris ends up being a somewhat dull read, largely because it's not breaking much new ground, nor is its protagonist someone with whom we can sympathize very much. Artwork by Eduardo Francisco is, let's be honest, gorgeous, but writer David Wohl failed to reach the heights he achieved previously with Witchblade.