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Book Review: Valor, by Casey L. Bond

I believe I won this copy Casey L. Bond‘s Valor somewhere in the wilds of the internet.

Dragon. Warrior. Woman.

To honor her brother’s dying plea, Vayl Halifex carries a message that might prevent war with the location of their captive princess. Fortune and circumstance align in her favor and Vayl’s life is forever changed when an opportunity arises that only she can seize. With the help of a matchmaker, she becomes the emperor’s newest concubine. The new role affords her unfettered access to the gilded mountain stronghold, where the princess is rumored to be hidden away.

But she won’t take this risk alone. Her brother’s best friend, dragon warrior Estin, calls on the small army of elven assassins he leads to use their magic and might to flank her for the fight to come. The band of dragons takes Vayl into their fold and trains her as best they can before she’s whisked away to the palace.

Unbeknownst to the warriors, a dreadful magic simmers in the gilded fortress. With those fiercely protective of the emperor closing in, and the dragon assassins disappearing one by one, Vayl’s chance at escape narrows to a sliver, along with her hope of finding the princess or fighting her way out of the palace. With her heart entwined with that of the dragon warrior she was never supposed to love, she begins to fear the price of her treachery will be her life… or his.

OK, first things first, I was disappointed to discover there were no actual dragons, just a group that calls themselves the Dragons. Not a deal breaker, but it still made me sad. After that initial disappointment, I thought that this was a fine (if unexceptional story). It is, in fact, a fine version of what it is. But that’s also the problem. It’s a fine version of a story that there are 47 gagillion versions of. There’s nothing particularly new. So, if you know you like new-adult (bordering on YA) stories of young women triumphing over adversity to save the day and falling in love on the side, you will likely like this one as much as any other.

Having said all of that, I find myself lately becoming more aware of and on guard against sneakily fundamentalist stories, and I have to wonder if this isn’t one of them. Sure, Vayl has a backbone and fights for what she believes in. But when it comes down to it, she takes all the power offered her and gives it to a man she barely knows so that she can go home and be a wife and, one presumes, mother (given the conversation she has with Estin toward the end).

Sure, she offers up a help-meet to that man…in the form of a mute woman. A woman, I might add, whom Vayl does actually know and trust, who would have made a good leader. Plus, the only other young woman of power left to her own devices goes rogue and evil over a man. I would argue this serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when women are allowed too much freedom and power. They can’t be trusted with it. Then, add the fact that with the exception the Fae queen, literally every other woman in the book is related to serving male sexual desires in some fashion (a matchmaker pimping out concubines, her assistants, concubines, a maid that is hinted to have been a past concubine, a fae assassin in a new and exciting sexual relationship with another fae assassin, etc.) When I really start thinking about it, it’s not even subtle.

None of this is helped by the author thanking God, first and foremost, in her acknowledgements. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, obviously. But it does stand as a datapoint when one is looking at a (fantasy) story that so matches the fundamentalist agenda of seeing women as best serving in the home and as subordinate (silent) partners to men in positions of authority. I’m just saying.

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Book Review: Heart’s Prisoner and Dark’s Savior, by Olivia Riley

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I received a copy of Olivia Riley’s Heart’s Prisoner and Dark’s Savior in this month’s Renegade Romance Book Box. As an unrelated sidenote: since these are special edition covers, I’ll mention that I like them a lot less than the original covers. They are significantly (and disappointingly) less nuanced and detailed, and basically look like a cheap knock-off of the original.

****

He’s not like anything Lana has ever encountered.

Asset X: Massive, deadly, a little terrifying to say the least. A devilish warrior. And a killer. Captured on a hellish world after attacking a military campsite and now imprisoned in a state-of-the-art cell inside one of the military’s top bases–Lazris.

And Lana has been assigned to “study” him. To learn his secrets and gain his trust, if he is ever allowed to set foot out of his cell. As a top behaviorist, it is the biggest hurdle of her career.

Asset X–or Xerus as he is called–won’t give up his secrets easily. He is difficult, elusive, and–dare she say–unfathomably alluring…despite his seething demeanor and hard, frightening physique.

Something subconsciously draws her to him. Something wildly irresistible. Even if his wicked smile and needful gaze could just be a ploy to win her trust and escape his cell.

She shouldn’t think of him like that. He is an alien after all. And possibly their enemy.

For Xerus claims he is on a mission. A mission to destroy. And he cannot afford to fail. If he dares let Lana get close, dares open his cold heart to her, she could compromise everything.

I generally enjoyed this, so long as I don’t think too deeply about it. If I did, I’d have to admit that there are a lot of plot holes, and the editing is pretty shoddy. But, so long as I’m determined to overlook these facts for the escapism, I think this is a sweet, low-spice, fairly low-angst read. Lana is smart and shows a backbone when she needs to. Xerus is a paint-by-numbers alien romantic lead, but I liked him all the same.

I did struggle a little with two things that could be covered under plot holes, but I feel compelled to mention them since they especially annoyed me. One, Lana sends Xerus out to essentially run errands for her in the middle of what should be dangerous and frightening times. This very effectively undermined Riley’s attempt to build tension in the plot. Second, Lana’s willingness to give up her own culture and completely take on Xerus’ slaps of toxic patriarchy’s insistence that women, when they marry, give up who they are and become of-their-husband. Sure, I’m not reading Alien Romance for exemplary feminist takes. But I still call out our culture’s BS when it stands out so starkly in my entertainment.

A chance encounter can change everything.

When Aly joined the Grayhart mission to find advanced civilizations within deep space, she didn’t expect to be captured far from home and taken to Xolis–a galactic empire like none ever seen, ruled by the nillium–a powerful race with a serious god complex.

Now outsiders, Aly and her team of explorers are sent to the darkest place within Xolis: Lethe Maws. A mining city on a planet home to outcasts, slaves, and monstrous creatures lurking in the deep dark.

And home to the Dark One, a dangerous exile even the nillium fear, living at the bottom of the mines where all are warned never to go.

When Aly runs into the legendary alien in a very unlikely place, what she finds is no monster but a large, mysterious, nillium male with fierce silver eyes, who makes her heart race.

But though the nillium outcast had reached for her, desiring to touch her, fascinated by her as she was of him, Aly soon learns he’s not looking to be friends or possibly something more.

For what Aly doesn’t know is the Dark One–known by his kind as Ryziel, son of the nillium’s now dead ruler–isn’t looking for love or a mate. He’s looking to get off Lethe Maws for good and return home to his brother, the only family who accepts him for who he is, the only one who matters.

But the human woman brings out a darker part of him that he can’t control–something he never thought possible. As he is determined to escape, he struggles to understand his need for her. A need to protect her. A need to claim her. But determined not to let her get too close lest she be his undoing.

Try as he might to keep her at a distance, Aly will become the one thing Ryziel needs to be free.

Meh, this was fine, I suppose. It was structurally almost exactly the same as book one. The same “I’m pushing you away for your own good,” the same skeevy male attention, the same cardboard male romantic lead, the same sort of plot that keeps the two apart for most of the book, etc. This probably wouldn’t have made the books feel so generic if I hadn’t read them back to back. But I did, so…

I like Aly well enough. I thought the world interesting-ish. I like the shadow Ryziel casts. But that’s all I can call it. I don’t feel like the reader gets to know him well, and, honestly, I never really felt the spark between the two of them. All in all, this was a pretty middle-of-the-road read. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t remember it next week either.

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