Author Archives: sadie

Descended From Dragons

Book Review of Descended From Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #1), by Tricia Owens

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I grabbed Tricia Owens‘ Descended From Dragons when it was free on Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
To save Sin City, she must battle Hell. Too bad the odds are against her. 

Beneath the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas lies another city. A secret city in plain sight, full of warlocks and demons, shapeshifters and golems. A city that feeds off the chance magick that is generated by gamblers and which is ruled by mysterious beings called the Oddsmakers. 

It is in this strange underbelly of the occult that Anne Moody runs a cursed pawn shop for the desperate, the curious, and the magickally inclined. Though the job is boring, it keeps her under the radar. None of her customers have any inkling that she is a dragon sorceress with a power that’s been feared throughout history. One day, a visitor to her shop pawns a stone statue that is more than it appears. The statue is a gargoyle named Vale, who is shrouded in mystery and secrets. When she learns that Vale is possessed, and that the person responsible for cursing him plans to take over Las Vegas with a horde of demons from Hell, Anne realizes it is up to her to defy the Oddsmakers and save the city, and possibly the world.

Review:
Eh, amusing enough but not overly impressive, nothing we haven’t all seen before. But I still enjoyed the couple hours it took to read it and I’d read the next one. I liked that Anne unequivocally saved the day and that the characters were racially and culturally diverse. The ending felt a bit abrupt and the world wasn’t very developed. All in all, a nice fluffy book to pass the time with, as long as you’re not looking for something particularly original.

Coexistence

Book Review of Coexistence (Human Hybrids #1), by Clare Solomon

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Clare Solomon sent me a copy of her novel Coexistence for review. There is also a prequel available on her website and a second book available if you sign up for her newsletter.

Description from Goodreads:
Scientists have genetically engineered five human hybrid races known as werewolves, vampires, dragons, sensers and wendigoes. The first four races coexist with humans in relative peace. The fifth one wants to butcher the others and they are getting stronger.

Jaspal ‘Pal’ Khatri is nearly killed and forced to leave his home with a werewolf pack in Oxford, England when the local HyCO group leads a mob of anti-hybrid rioters against them. He travels to the Highlands of Scotland for a fresh start and meets Brand, a werewolf still grieving after the murder of his lover, Kye, a year ago. He and Brand find a dead vampire and Pal is suddenly in the nightmare situation of being accused of the murder. There is a link between this death and that of Kye and Brand works for another branch of HyCO so, to prove his innocence, Pal must join the organisation he loathes and try to ignore his growing feelings for Brand as they work to uncover the real killer. Can they solve the case in time or will they become the murderer’s next victims?

Review:
Umm, no, this did not work for me. It’s too long, provides the same information over and over again, is far too heavy on the tell vs. show, has a ‘love’ that is rejected for ridiculous reasons and then has a sudden and unbelievable turnaround, a mystery that is solved with far too much ease and a second that drags on eternally, a doctor that never doctors and a world with five types of humans that isn’t really explored beyond wendigos bad everyone else good.

Solomon has a good idea here and I liked the characters. The book even starts out really well. But in the end the writing, editing, pacing and plotting wore me down and I was just glad to finally finish it.

What’s with all the blue aliens?

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OK, so this may not be something you know about me, but I have a weakness for the Mars Needs Women trope. It goes against so many of my ideals, often involving dub or non-con, the woman invariably learns love ‘submitting,’ women are valued for their sex and ability to breed and for little else, and the males are overbearing and frequently violent. I shouldn’t like the trope, but I do. I do, in a snicker-at-the-cheese sort of way, but still I enjoy it.

And earlier today, I was looking into a couple of books involving this trope and noticed a pattern. I know aliens are often referred to as ‘little green men,’ but what’s with all the big blue men lately? Seriously, a casual scroll through Google netted these. It literally took me about five minutes to copy them all. Imagine how many I’d find if I really went looking or included those with blue-toned covers, and not just blue aliens. And, yes, I do realize some of them are series. That’s totally fair, but a lot of these aren’t. So, my question stands.

Honestly, it’s not even that I have anything against ripped, blueish alien beings. I like Avatar, after all.  But this seems a tad homogenized. A whole universe out there and all the planets needing females are populated by humanoid, blue males? What’s up with that?

Yeah, this is the sort of thing you find yourself thinking when you are a visual person with a tendency to pick out patterns, but where’s my chartreuse alien, or mauve, or red? They can’t possibly all be blue.

Just a thought really.

Edit: Since I wrote this, I’ve seen blue aliens everywhere and I’ve added a couple covers to the original list. Plus, I’m noticing Aliens all seem to be warriors and Alien Princes seem to do a lot of claiming. LOL