Author Archives: sadie

Shrouds of Darkness

Book Review of Shrouds of Darkness, by Brock E. Deskins

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Shrouds of DarknessI downloaded a copy of Brock E. Deskins‘ book, Shrouds of Darkness sometime last year, when it was free on Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Leo Malone is a vampire for hire to do just about whatever you need done. Leo is hired by a young woman and her brother to find her father, a werewolf and mob accountant, who has gone missing and is suspected to be responsible for several killings around Brooklyn. Leo soon finds there is far more going on than a”simple” werewolf run amok problem. Leo’s no nonsense, bullet diplomacy approach to problem solving has him leaving no stone unturned and no toes un-stepped on as he tries to unravel a conspiracy that threatens to topple the enclave and reveal the existence of vampires.

If you like vampires with overly emotional teenaged angst, Leo is not your guy. If you like a wise-cracking, sword swinging, bullet spewing, hard-charging vampire, you don’t want to miss out.

Review:
Another reviewer said it took him a couple chapters for this book to draw him in. That reviewer was being kind. The beginning of this book is…off putting. (Now I’m being kind.) It starts with a first chapter that would be better termed a prologue. We then meet the main character for about a page before the book leaps into a lengthy flashback. He then starts reminiscing about a friend. We see him for another page or so before a large info-dump.

I’m not even exaggerating. It’s a good 15% into the book before we actually really ‘meet’ Leo. And given we hadn’t met him yet, all that information about his past, his friend, the vampire dynamics was nothing more than detritus. I simply couldn’t care yet. Even worse, it’s all told in a stiff, almost formal first person account. Off putting.

If it hadn’t been for the previous reviews stating it gets better, I would have given up and tossed it on the DNF pile. But I didn’t. I stuck with it and it does get better.

Leo is a bit of an anti-hero. He is not a nice man. In fact, he’s pretty much an asshole. But I would deem this ‘men’s fiction,’ in other words written for a male audience, and men do always seem to idolise violent jerkwads. So, that kind of makes sense. And you can appreciate the politically incorrect, socially disinterested, devil may care attitude he sports.

A lot of it is over the top. He’s sarcastic and/or unnecessarily abrasive even when he would be better served otherwise or well after he’s gotten what he wants and further retaliation is not only pointless, but cruel. However, a lot of it is also quite funny. The man is completely neurotic on top of sarcastic, so there are a lot of opportunities for quips and quick wit. It’s this humour that carried me through the book. But it’s pretty borderline too much.

I don’t mind violence or gore, but I got tired of the endless fight scenes and weapons descriptions. I also cringed away from the first person narrative. I’m not a big fan of the style, especially when it’s a first person, present tense narrative. (I always get distracted wondering why the character is narrating their current life.) But it’s especially hard when dealing with a hard-boiled, apex predator type character. It just feels wrong to read things like, ‘My powerful legs flexed.’ Or to hear a character tell the reader how much stronger, faster, scarier, etc he is than anyone else. It just plain feels like bragging and who likes spending time with a braggart?

Plus, it’s never really addressed how he became so badass, as if he’s bad because he’s a vampire. Problem is, so are a lot of other characters. This makes it feels little hollow. I want to know what his reputation is based on, not just that he says that he has it.

The first quart of this book is difficult to get through, but once you do the story is pretty good. The mystery isn’t hard to figure out, if only by virtue of identifying the single person the character pays too little attention to, but it’s engaging enough. There’s a painful example of sex-equals-love, at least on the woman’s part, but she’s a fun character. There are a lot of chuckle worthy moments and plenty of fight scenes. I noticed a couple editing issues, but not enough to make an issue of. This is one of those books where ‘if you like the sort of thing’ you should pick it up, but it probably won’t work for those on the fringes.

Vision Quest

Book Review of Vision Quest, by A.F. Henley & Kelly Wyre

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Vision QuestI downloaded a free copy of Vision Quest, by A.F. Henley & Kelly Wyre, from Amazon. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
When Arik Beltrán checks into a hotel on business, he expects the tedium of unfamiliar beds and boring meetings. He expects to meet a financial client and be home before the solitude of being a stranger in a mundane land becomes too much to bear. 

Instead Arik finds Blaze: a mysterious man with an inner fire that lives up to the name. Nothing in Arik’s life, not his deranged father nor even his faint brushes with the magic only Arik can see in the woven web of life could have prepared Arik for the man in the hotel lobby who casually invites Arik to room 1109 for late night … well, anything at all. 

Blaze Zaituc, on the other hand, knows exactly who Arik is and what Arik needs: Blaze. He has crossed land and sea to find the man who has appeared in Blaze’s Visions as the next target in the Quest that comprises Blaze’s life. Arik is someone for whom the Universe has plans, and Blaze must make sure Arik complies. Or else. 

Unaware of the lives and risks hanging in the balance, Arik untangles himself from the sheets in the silent hours of the morning. He wonders if he will find the door to 1109 open and waiting. He’s not a risk taker, but this one time, just this once, maybe he’ll take a chance… 

And seal both his and Blaze’s destinies forever.

Review:
Oh boy, I hardly know where to start with this one. To start with, it’s probably 75% sex. Yeah, you read that right. There is A LOT of sex (This is a 200+ page book.), which I don’t actually have a huge problem with, but I like to know that’s what I’m in for and was surprised to find it here. Some of that sex was smoking hot, some not so much and after a point it was just redundant.

The plot is weak. There is one and it hangs together up until the last 15% or so, which I’ll address in a moment. The reader spends the beginning of the book confused, as is intended. Once things start to come together the book smooths out, however the writing style is such that information is left scarce. This creates a certain horror-esque atmosphere, but also leaves the reader always feeling a little off balance.

Again, I think that feeling of just barely grasping what is happening was purposeful on the part of the authors. And it worked to a point…until the end. It felt like throughout the story the authors constrained themselves and walked a narrow path in which the book maintained a certain necessary level of realism. Then in the last 15-20% (pretty much everything after the lodge and definitely everything in Luca’s home) they just decided to let loose and skipped hand-in-hand off into La-La Fantasy Land. Things just got weird and not in a good way.

I could have dealt with the LSD-like visions. Visions often are symbolic, even if most of them had been pretty straightforward in the rest of the book. But that last sex scene…no, just weird. Not disturbing in any fashion, just too Middle-Grade fantasy merged with m/m sex. Lets just say, it didn’t work for me.

If I was going to rate this book, I’d give the first 80% a 3.5 and the last 20% a 1.5 star. The writing itself was fine. It was a little over-wordy at times, but readable. I noticed a few editing mistakes, but not enough to be bothered by.

The Wolf Within

Book Review of The Wolf Within (Purgatory #1), by Cynthia Eden

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The wolf withinI downloaded a copy of Cynthia Eden‘s The Wolf Within from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
FBI Special Agent Duncan McGuire spends his days–and his nights–tracking real-life monsters. Most humans aren’t aware of the vampires and werewolves that walk among them. They don’t realize the danger that they face, but Duncan knows about the horror that waits in the darkness. He hunts the monsters, and he protects the innocent. Duncan just never expects to become a monster. But after a brutal werewolf attack, Duncan begins to change…and soon he will be one of the very beasts that he has hunted.

Dr. Holly Young is supposed to help Duncan during his transition. It’s her job to keep him sane so that Duncan can continue working with the FBI’s Para Unit. But as Duncan’s beast grows stronger, the passion that she and Duncan have held carefully in check pushes to the surface. The desire that is raging between them could be a very dangerous thing…because Holly isn’t exactly human, not any longer.

As the monsters circle in, determined to take out all of the agents working at the Para Unit, Holly and Duncan will have to use their own supernatural strengths in order to survive. But as they give up more of their humanity and embrace the beasts within them both, they realize that the passion between them isn’t safe, it isn’t controllable, and their dark need may just be an obsession that could destroy them both.

 Review:
This is one of those books I refer to as ‘meh reads,’ because that’s my response to them. Meh. Nothing really horrible about them, but nothing particularly good either. I’d say this was designed simply to appeal that lizard, hind-brain we all seem to have. It’s all growly, über alpha precariously contains his inner beast for the benefit of the simpering female who’s caught his eye. Meh. Seen it all before.

I’ll give Holley points for having the moxie to say what she wants. But she also seemed perfectly content to let her brother control every aspect of her life. Meh. Not a total wet noodle, but not a wonderfully strong heroine either.

The plot had a few twists to it, but they didn’t work well for me. They felt abrupt and more like new plot arcs than twists. Meaning, it felt like, ‘ok, finished that bit up, now we’re going to race off in this direction now.’ Not boring but not natural.

Plus, many of these new arc directions were predicated on shifting character traits. The previous super evil, murdering bastard was suddenly the wounded victim. The good brother was suddenly the manipulative director, wait, no, he’s the real hero, wait, no, he’s obsessively possessive. Again, not boring but not natural either.

Every obstacle set up was overcome almost instantly, even the final climactic one. There was very little build-up or time for tension to heighten before solutions were found or bad guys defeated, etc. Meh.

The same middle of the road, shoulder-shrugging indifference can be applied to the sex too. There was no foreplay to any of it. It’s claim to eroticism seems to have been based solely on Duncan’s intense, animalistic need. Meh. One such scene might have been nice, but when that’s all we get…Meh.

So, again, it wasn’t a wholly bad book. It was just clumsy and obviously designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It needed more character development, world-building and plain old substance.

As a side note: I think that cover model has to be one of the most over-used men in the indie publishing world. I’m so sick of seeing him!