Monthly Archives: October 2014

Book Review: Queen’s Man, by K. D. Sarge

Book Review of Knight Errant & His Faithful Squire, by K. D. Sarge

I purchased e-copies of Knight Errant and His Faithful Squire, by K. D. Sarge. At the time of posting, they were both on sale for 0.99 each.

Description of Knight Errant:
From pickpocket and con artist to little brother and trusted comrade is a tough transition, but Taro is making it. His new sister, former Marine Eve Marcori, promised his dead mother she’d look after him. To her that means family, home–her interstellar freighter–and a solid future. In four years she has trained Taro extensively; the next step is college. Taro would rather be shot, but he never forgets his debt to Eve, so he means to honor her plans or die in the attempt.

When Eve rescues former joy-boy and current layabout Rafe Ballard, death seems the likely outcome. Rafe is so apparently useless that Eve calls him ‘the baggage’ and appoints Taro his custodian. Irritated into disobedience by his carefree charge, Taro tries to get rid of Rafe. Instead he gets them both kidnapped by the jealous husband Rafe was fleeing. Though they are off-planet before Taro can act, his training may be enough to bring them safely through–but now he has bigger problems. Forced into partnership–and freedom–with Rafe, Taro begins to see him differently. Kind, funny, and caring, Rafe is everything Taro never knew he wanted. And all he can’t have. Eve’s plans leave no room for a playboy boyfriend who can never measure up, and Taro can’t let her down.

Caught between the sister he’d die for and the man he’s beginning to live for, Taro decides it’s time to start making his own plans. And if the new skills aren’t enough, he’ll give the old ones a try.

Review:
This was very cute in a shounen ai/Boy’s Love kind of way. (An impression that is, no doubt, helped along by the cover.) It’s a well loved plot, really—eminently capable and serious man is burdened with the care of an inept but goodhearted partner who eventually brings joy and levity to his otherwise dark life. But it’s one of my favourite, and Taro and Rafe fill the roles well.

I have to say the lack of sex was disappointing. Not just because I like a little summin’-summin’ in my reading but also because Rafe is a trained companion (prostitute, for lack of a better description), and the characters are having lots and lots of sex. Knowing it’s happening so often, but seeing none of it felt unnatural and forced.

Now I understand that to include it would take the book from a m/m YA genre to a m/m erotic novel, which is quite the jump, and I imagine there are people who would take issue with the graphic depiction of sex involving a 15-year-old, especially since Rafe is in his early twenties somewhere. But the truth is that I think the book needed some sex, and I really don’t think Taro’s age worked on the whole anyhow, so he could have been old enough to make it work.

He acts older, for sure, but he’s also supposed to be an accomplished brawler. He wins fight after fight. The thing about a 15-year-old boy is that they’re often not fully grown, and his character is on the small side anyway, so I can’t actually imagine him being so dangerous. What’s more, he’s treated as older, often invited to poker games and hanging out with ship captains and other marines. Being 15 just doesn’t fit. He desperately needed a few more years on him.

Having said all that, I adored both Taro and Rafe. I also loved that Eve, Taro’s sister, is so completely badass. I love me a strong bitch-queen. All the side characters, though not well fleshed, were fun too. The writing was witty, and the editing was good. An all-around satisfying read.

Description of His Faithful Squire:
Former joy-boy Rafe Ballard likes living on the freighter Pendragon’s Dream. Under the watchful eye of Captain Eve Marcori, Marine veteran, no one beats him. He eats well, his life is rarely in danger, and – most important by far – he spends much of his days and all the glorious nights with his beloved Taro.

Energetic Taro, on the other hand, is eager to take on the galaxy without his sister the captain standing by. Rafe doesn’t mind – he’ll follow Taro anywhere. He’s learned enough to get a real job so he won’t be holding Taro back. Taro is beyond capable of keeping him safe. What could go wrong?

With a Marcori in the picture, lots.

Review:
Like Knight Errant, this was really quite cute, but it wasn’t as good (in a purely subjective way). I wasn’t a fan of Rafe’s first-person narrative style. I’m never really a fan of first-person narratives to start with, but I’m especially annoyed at them when the narrator makes a habit of addressing the reader. And that’s what it is, annoying. Plus, while I adore both Taro and Rafe, Rafe was always the less interesting of the two.

To be fair, one of this book’s primary themes was Rafe’s attempt to find himself outside of his dedication to another and become more interesting. Or rather, Taro’s attempt to force Rafe to do so, or even just notice that he needs to be making an effort in that direction. And that makes Taro about the most loveable man in the galaxy. He’s wonderful. So is Rafe for that matter, as is their indomitable love for one another. It’s all very, very sweet. It’s just not very exciting.

The book also isn’t as focused as the first one. Since Taro and Rafe’s love is the primary plot point, the book is essentially about them running around, encountering a variety of unrelated challenges and overcoming them. There is no overarching plot beyond how much they love each other. By the end it eventually just degenerated into sketching out events for the reader.

I do have to stress again, as I did for the first book, that for two characters said to be having soooo much sex, it’s annoying to see none of it. Yes, I understand that would drastically change the genre classification of the series, but both characters are over 18 now, and the book is full of references to sex, sexual innuendo, and plain old ‘we had lots and lots of sex’ type comments, so it feels like a glaring omission to see none of it.

Having said all that, the fact that I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first book isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it at all. I really did. Again, Taro and Rafe’s love is full of amazing ‘awww’ moments, and though I’m not a big fan of the hearts and flowers sort of romances, and they’re pretty thick here, even I melted a little. There is something about stiff reticent men speaking about love that does that to me. I also like Keen, the new addition to the crew, and still adore the cast of the Dream, though they play a reduced role here.

All in all, mildly disappointing simply because it didn’t stand up to its predecessor, but still a fun cute read full of humour, emotion, and good writing. I’ll definitely be up for more of Sarge’s books.

Review of Beasthood (The Hidden Blood Series), by A. Z. Green

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Author, A. Z. Green sent me a copy of her novel, Beasthood. (I’ve also seen it on the Amazon freebie list.)

Description from Goodreads:
What would you do if you discovered you weren’t human? That you turned into a bloodthirsty monster against your will?

What if your instincts, emotions and desires were torn between your own and the dark, dangerous animal lurking inside of you?
If it could make you yearn for someone you shouldn’t, make you say and act in ways you wouldn’t and overwhelm your whole existence?
If everything you’d ever known about your life was a lie?

In a world where a deeply hidden community is swathed in mystery, deadly secrets, betrayal and murder, Jaz Barker struggles to fight against the dangerous Beast within her and the emotions and desires it thrusts her way.

When tensions ride high and people she cares about are put in danger, she will have to decide how much of her newly awakened animal-side she’s willing to let in.

And if it is worth the risk…

Long, slightly spoilerish review:
I was really hoping to like this novel. The idea seems promising and it has an interesting cover. However, despite a lot of wonderful potential in the story and characters, the whole thing fell completely flat for me…even worse, I actively disliked a lot of it. Partly because I spent at least half of it confused and partly because I spent most of the second half becoming increasingly annoyed at certain aspects of it.

But before I get into all that I want to stress that this book has a lot of great reviews. So, it’s obvious that some readers love it. It’s possible that the book and I simply didn’t mesh and another reader would enjoy it as much as I didn’t.

For starters, editing was an issue. According to Amazon, this is a re-edited edition (I even checked to ensure I was reading the most recent one.) but there were still a lot of missing commas, almost uninterpretable formatting around dialogue (so it’s hard to tell when speakers change), and misused or just not quite right words.

I hate to say this, but the writing felt amateurish. Not necessarily the mechanics of it, an editor could have helped, but I mean the pacing and fleshing out of the story. For example, the actual narrative style was inconsistent. Green utilised both first person diaries and 3rd person storytelling, which is a fair stylistic choice, but occasional first-person thoughts thrown in just confused matters.

The way the POVs were so random and uncontrolled was also a big part of the reason. It wasn’t just head-hopping, which is bad enough, but it felt like the POV just went where ever the author happened to glance, with no forethought. For example, the POV would shift to someone on the other end of a telephone conversation for one thought by someone who had never previously been given a POV and then back again. It’s completely jarring. Plus, there was absolutely no character development or world-building and the endless internal thoughts were disruptive.

A lot of time was spent relaying day-to-day nonevents, like going to the gym, eating, picnicking, building a barbecue, etc and then important events were just glossed over. For example, we spend chapters and chapters seeing Jaz resist her situation and Driver. Then we’re just told weeks pass and they spend time together. No, I want to see them spend time together, see how the frost between them melts.

We’re shown a fight between Jaz and Skye, but never the making up. They just are suddenly hanging out again. Also Jaz isn’t told she’s a werewolf, in fact she pointedly never asks and no one seems to want to tell her until she does. OK. But then Skye just drops it into a conversation all easy like and Jaz doesn’t comment or react in any way and then it’s used freely after that. I suppose she’s supposed to have figured it out at some point.

These are important, pivotal scenes, far more important than the endless details were given about everyone’s wardrobe, the exact shape of their lips, hairstyles and such. At one point, several pages were spent describing a kitchen and less than a page of events in said kitchen. The whole focus of the book seems just a little off and, frankly, it felt very much like all the exciting events were left out in lieu of the boring stuff.

It also leapt around a lot and was really hard to follow, especially in the beginning. This did get better as the book progressed. But there is very little explanation given for the hierarchy of the packs/council. I often didn’t know who was in charge when. For example, Driver shows up as a…well, a driver when Jaz is picked up. There were hints he’s more, but that’s it at the time. You don’t even get his name until then. He’s just “the younger man” at a council meeting. He’s bossy, but you don’t find out he’s the alpha until 30% into the book. So, for a very long time I was left wondering who was in charge. I assumed it was Arik as we’d been introduced to him as the council head (though I didn’t know council of what at the time).

My point is that it’s very sketchily explained and confusing as hell. There are also a lot of characters who pop in and out with no introduction and I often had no idea who they were. As a further example, it was at least 30% in before I realised Nik was Driver’s first name and thus the same person. I spent that whole time wondering who Nik was whenever he was mentioned.

I found a lot of the book either confusing or unbelievable. For example, Jaz was essentially kidnapped and then locked in a room for 3-4 days. During this time, her kidnappers watch her and assure eachother she’d come to trust them and everything would work out. However, despite watching her starve herself because she’s afraid the food is drugged, no one even once tries to speak to her, or convince her the food was fine, or explain to her what was happening. Nothing. They just locked her in a room and watch her. How does that make sense?

What’s more, it made the whole thing hard to swallow. We’re told Driver is very concerned for her, disturbed to see her cry, etc but we see no evidence of this. In fact, this whole first 25% or so of the book feels like nothing more than a hollow sketched out idea, because we’re told what people are supposed to be feeling, but see none of it. So ,we have confusing actions that aren’t supported by what we’re told they feel. Like locking up and not attempting communication with someone you care for.

Then there was the whole hybrid, halfblood, halfbreed thing. I THINK werewolves are born as twins, one is a halfbreed one is a were (maybe) and the weaker usually dies. Or maybe it’s what happens when a human and a were breed. I never was clear. But I was certain both of Jaz’s parents were full werewolves, she was convinced her sister was a halfbreed and so was she. But with two full werewolf parents I can’t figure out how. She should be full werewolf. This is either a plot-hole, too weakly explained or a mystery for a future book. Either way, I was confused.

Then there were just a whole host of personal irritants. The way information and identities were skirted around (“the contact,” “the young man,” “the older man,” “the mature light-haired woman,” “his dark-haired source,” etc instead of names) was a big one. It felt like the reader was being purposefully kept in the dark. Of course, they often are in books, but you really felt it here and it began to feel manipulative and irksome. Especially when it was carried all the way to the end and the identity of an important character was left untold.

Also obvious questions weren’t asked (reference to a pack leader, but not asking who, being told you’re not human and never asking what you are instead) and it was a clear ploy to preserve the mystery. It felt like the scaffolding of the story was still showing.

As it happens, I strongly dislike the use of Hollywood comparisons to describe people—Angelina Jolie lips, Chad Kroeger beard, like an older Gwenith Paltrow, like Viggo Mortensen, etc. Part of why I read is to avoid the all-pervasive reach of the visual media. I haven’t watched television in over two years. I have no idea what Chad Kroeger looks like and resent the easy assumption that everyone does. What’s more, I think it’s a lazy way to write characters, like you’re using ready-made templates instead of creating something new and original.

Jaz displayed more than a little Too Stupid To Live behaviour. For example, while living on a werewolf commune and being told explicitly not to go in the woods after 11 she then runs right out and does just that. Of course she encountered werewolves and almost died. Or being told a particular jar of herbs is very dangerous and could kill her and then sneaking back to get it. STUPID and this type of stupid puts me right out as a reader

Lastly, the “oh dearest virgin, you are holy” trope annoys me. What the hell does it matter if she’s a virgin or not? It was not at all relevant to the story.

So, as you can see, I had a lot of complaints about this book. I probably could have been less longwinded about it in this review, but oh well. I did like that Jaz was described as a size twelve and considered skinny and weak. Being soft and delicate wasn’t considered to anyone’s benefit. Instead, a woman who was strong and capable was valued. Right on. And Jaz’s anger felt real to me. In fact, her frequent outbursts were the most realistic part of the book.

As I said before, there is a lot of potential here. I think it could be worked into a really good story, but the one I just read wasn’t.