Category Archives: Challenges

Touched By Venom

Book Review of Dragon Temple Saga (#1-2), by Janine Cross

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Touched by VenomI picked up all three of Janine Cross‘ Dragon Temple Saga books from my local library.

Description of Touched by Venom:
Like her half-breed mother, young Zarq Darquel can’t always hold her tongue. A peasant on a large dragon estate, she goes unnoticed by the Dragon Temple-until she captures the attention of a dragonmaster. Her clan is plunged into destitution, her sister Waivia sold into slavery, and her mother lost to madness. Desperate to find Waivia, Zarq and her delirious mother flee. Zarq then develops a taste for the highly addictive venom of the dragons she has been taught to revere-and with it, she imbibes their memories and a glimpse of a plot for social revolution. But to achieve it, she must defy not just sexual taboos and patriarchal society, but the Emperor who rules her nation.

Review:
Good lord, this one keeps you wanting. It’s beautifully written, seriously intense, harrowing, with amazing world-building and an admirable, strong heroine. But it moves at the speed of molasses. I mean, it’s slooooow.

Seriously, the first 50% of the book covers Zarq’s life as a 9-year-old. The next 40% is age 10-17 and a whole heck of a lot of hard living and sacrifice. The next 8% shows her coming to grips with her situation and in the last 2% something finally happens. Yep, all that social revolution stuff hinted at in the book blurb happens in the last pages…THE LAST PAGES…and then, and THEN holy hotcakes, Batman, it’s a big ol’, rage-inducing cliffhanger. Grrrr!!

I have all three books in this series and spent most of this book thinking I wouldn’t bother with the second and third. I mean, even though it really is an astonishing piece of writing, it’s also a major downer. As an example, at one point, the fallout of the actions of one 9-year-old boy destroys the lives and livelihoods of an entire village, with devastating, irreversible, long-lasting effects. Honestly, what do you do with that? This is not a book to pick up for the feel-good factor. There isn’t any.

But that last 10% gives me hope that the plot might FINALLY be picking up, and I’ll see where book two goes. Ms. Cross can string a tale, she can weave atmosphere, she can bring you to tears—laughter maybe not so much, but heart-rending agony, sure—and she can create a believable fantasy world. Worth reading.

shadowed by wings

Description of Shadowed by Wings:

The Dragon Temple Saga continues as Zarq Darquel embarks on a trial by fire, defying Dragon Temple scripture by undergoing the rigorous training of an apprentice dragonmaster, while desperately searching for the doctrine that allows women permission to participate in the battles at Arena.

Yet Zarq’s difficulties pale in comparison to her craving for the hallucinogenic dragon venom, and her desire to understand the dragons themselves-both of which make her a vessel to receive the ancestral memories of the great beasts. And now, eager for the knowledge only Zarq can uncover, Temple has her imprisoned and subjected to starvation and torture-all to make her reveal the dragons’ deepest secrets…

Review:

I wasn’t sure I was going to bother reviewing the second and third books in this series. I just wasn’t sure what I’d say. I liked the book? I hated the book? These books left me reeling, cringing, demoralised, and strangely vitalised at the same time? How does one express that?

In reading others’ reviews, I sense I’m not the only person struggling to find the appropriate balance. I see a lot of middling reviews, indicative of a lot of emotionally confused readers. I can completely relate. That’s where this book shoves its reader, right into the middle on ‘how should I feel about that?’ The problem is that while it’s occasionally obvious, a lot of time it isn’t. Not because the things that happen aren’t horrid and denounceable in the extreme, but because so many really, really bad things happen that some bad things just don’t seem to rise to the level of atrocity anymore (even though in isolation, that would definitely be). It’s rare for a book to transport a reader there.

A major theme of this book (these books) is the abuse of the powerless by the powerful and its amazing ability to remain socially invisible to otherwise good people. As an outsider, it’s hard to imagine how it’s rationalised, but it is… every day. Here, it’s just made a little more obvious. We deal with a strict caste system, a violent patriarchy that allows women NO influence in their own lives, slavery, the marginalization of a native populace by a conquering people and the resulting institutionalised racism, economic entrapment, social stigmatisation, a dangerous and far-reaching religious organisation, and a ruling class that can no longer understand their duty, blinded as they are by their perceived superiority. This leaves a lot of powerless people, many powerless on numerous fronts, and a myriad of ways for victims to be victimised…traumatised.

In the middle of all this is Zarq, a young, powerless woman who trips along and, by dint of simply surviving the MANY horrors of her own life and being the right person in the right place at the right time, manages to almost accidentally start a revolution. (Ah, the transformative power of even one person willing to sacrifice their all for the greater good!) And she does survive and witness horrors. Thus, the reader deals with them too. Beyond just the basic hardships of poverty and austerity (she spent ten years in a remote convent as a child), there are kidnappings, rapes, battles, betrayal, attempted assassinations, loss, and pitifully few moments of relief. It’s all hard on the readers’ psyche.

The book also treats sex as amazingly mutable. I actually really liked this about it, but we all know sex can tie people in knots faster than just about anything. We deal with consensual and non-consensual (a lot of the latter, though blessedly vague on details) sex of both the hetero- and homosexual (both M & F) variety (In fact, this is the clearest case of institutionalised rape I’ve ever seen in a book), incest, pedophilia, and even bestiality (though there’s no interspecies penis/vagina contact). I can readily imagine a whole host of readers being put off by any one of those, let alone all of them in one text.

So, in the end, I’m left wondering what I thought of Shadowed by Wings. I certainly didn’t enjoy reading it, but having finished it, I’m really glad to have read it. I recommend others do the same.

 

 

Dark Indiscretions

Book Review of Dark Indiscretions (Dark Indiscretions #1), by Shakuita Johnson

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Dark IndiscretionsI downloaded a copy of Dark Indiscretions, by Shakuita Johnson, from the Amazon free list. 

Description from Goodreads:
What happens when your whole family is scarier than any nightmare and you have no desire to be anything like them? Do you stay and go along with the family plans or do you rebel and have them possibly turn their viciousness on you?

Jennifer Johnston experiences first hand why whispers are spoken in the dark about her species’ being evil when she was just a century old. What should have been another family dinner spent arguing over why she didn’t want to keep the bloodlines “pure” by being married off to her older brother turned into a nightmare and left her with more than tortured memories.

Jackson Dawls and Taylor Durham had been pack mates, best friends, and the other’s mate for as long as they could remember. They were a deadly species all their own but even they feared the Mystics and their overly cruel and barbaric ways, but unforeseen circumstances bring them face to face with not one but a few. Will there lives be in danger or is something great and unexpected awaiting them?

They also have to stay under the radar of the human society that is set out to destroy those they believe to be “Tarnished” and a danger to mankind.

When the three meet long ago secrets are brought to the light. Secrets no one but Jennifer knew. Not only do they have to learn to get along with each other because they are fated, someone is also stalking Jennifer and preforming sinister acts without her being any the wiser.

Jennifer must seek guidance from old acquaintances and form alliances with those she never thought she would. She is met with riddles and startling revelations that she never would have imagined possible.

Will they accept their fates and work together or will old fears destroy their lives? Will Jennifer be able to reclaim what was taken from her right from under her nose?

Review:
Years ago, when my husband and I were young and had time for such things, we used to enjoy something called Good Wine/Bad Movie night. It was exactly as the name implies. We would take turns picking out a good bottle of wine and a bad movie. The idea being the better the wine was, the worse the movie could be. We had a lot of fun on such nights. You couldn’t take the drack we were watching seriously (serious B grade sci-fi was a favourite), but when paired with high quality alcohol you would have been laughing at it too. It was fun.

If Dark Indiscretions was a movie, it would have been a prime contender to pair with an excellent Côtes de Bordeaux. It’s bad. I mean, really bad. I wish I used star ratings here so that I could say that the only reason I’m not giving this a one star is because it’s so bad it trips over into the ‘so super-bad it’s funny’ category and since I’m the sort who enjoys staying awake to watch the cheesy late-night fantasy fair I actually got a kick out of this.

I cringed at the writing. The dialogue just about killed me. The plotting was a disaster. The editing was MIA. The character development was nonexistent. The sex was brutally blunt, brusque even. The POVs and tenses were erratic at best. But it was like a train wreck I just couldn’t look away from. Not once did I consider putting it down and not finishing it. I was too busy being amused at it’s horridness.

I highlighted a number of examples that I had intended to include here, but I think at this point it might just seem cruel. Instead, I’ll link to my Amazon highlights. And despite my assertion that the book is a rolling disaster, I’d still recommend it to people like me who enjoy a good cheese-fest on occasion, maybe a little WTFery thrown in on the side. This is the book for you.

Book Review of Toni LoTempio’s No Rest for the Wicca

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I grabbed Toni LoTempio‘s PNR novel, No Rest for the Wicca, from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting, it was still free. I’ve included two covers because I intend to address them later in the review. The grey is from Goodreads, and the red is from Amazon.

No Rest for the Wicca No Rest for the Wicca

Description from goodreads:
Communing with the dead is an everyday occurrence for PI Morgan Hawkes. A half-Wiccan witch who can commune with spirits of those caught between worlds, Morgan uses her talents to exorcise the trapped ghost or demon as part of the Paranormal Investigation Squad – until a string of murders with a voodoo slant prompts the Special Forces Agency to ask for her assistance. Someone’s killing pureblood witches- and the SFA’s convinced Morgan’s heritage (her father was a voodoo priest) could be instrumental in solving the mystery. Teamed with dashing SF agent Cole St. John – an Inheritor Vampire that sets her blood racing – the two of them fight their attraction for each other as they race to stop a madman from unleashing a demonic force upon the world.

Review:
I got a couple of good chuckles out of No Rest for the Wicca. Morgan was a fun character who managed to pull off the tough snark without pushing it over into the suicidal diarrhea mouth so many such characters have. I enjoyed her, her desire do the right thing, her intelligence and her backbone, maybe not so much her tendency toward alcoholism and self-destructive behaviour. But a few quirks make a character more interesting.

I also enjoyed the mystery here too. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to figure out, but it wasn’t super obvious either. However, Morgan didn’t seem to have to do much investigating to solve it. She just needed to present herself, and people handed her all the information she needed. As an example, she met one of the suspects once (never even had a conversation with him, she was picking up a dropped pencil), and he offered her an assistantship. Now, anyone who’s been to university and tried for an apprenticeship knows this isn’t at all realistic, but even in fiction, it’s a little too easy of an in. What’s more there was one particular side-character who essentially laid every clue she could need at her feet with almost no prompting and without suspecting why Morgan would be asking such questions. Too easy!

As was the fact that the main villain, who managed to spend years carefully planning the whole thing, suddenly lost all composure and got sloppy as soon as Morgan came on the scene. How do heroines do this to bad guys so often? I’ve never figured this out, no matter how often I read it in novels.

A lot has already been made in previous reviews of the whole half-wiccan/half-voodoo thing. So I won’t go on about it, but I’ll admit it threw me for a loop too. At one point, the half-vampire compares the two of them as the same, but I’m still lost as to how someone who is half biologically something (a species) can be the same as someone who is half socially something (a religion). In the end, I just had to tell myself I’ve read tons of fantasy with elves, fairies, witches, sorcerers, vampires, werewolves, etc, as races/species, and it works. So, if LoTempio wants to call them Wiccans instead, I can force that in the same vein.

There was a light romance as a subplot. However, IMHO it really needed to be played up more and made a more important part of the plot or dropped. Half-assed as it was, it’s just a distraction. Granted, Cole was sexy (except for the whole ‘My Dear’ thing that totally didn’t match his character and was exceptionally annoying), and I liked him a lot. But the romance didn’t seem to contribute anything to the story. I was left wondering what that was about. Plus, the whole 25-year-old virgin was ridiculous, considering how easily she gave it up. It felt like a needless attempt to conform to outdated social dictates of acceptable behaviour (good girls remain chaste).

There were some serious editing issues. There were missing words, misspelled words and passages like this one: “He swung his long legs out in front of him. “What I’m proposing is this—“ he swung his long legs out in front of him. “You and I go…” How many legs does this man have? It was distracting, but the book was still readable. I don’t think it was bad enough to pass the book up for.

Finally, a note on covers, and I promise I’m not trying to be mean. I’ve seen two Kindle covers for this book, and they’re both ATROCIOUS, but more to the point, don’t match the book. The first being the grey one with a woman with straight blond streaked hair and scary long fingernails. But the character is described as having curly black hair, and as she’s quite active, I can’t see the nails working out. So, who’s on the cover? The second is even worse (though a more attractive cover, I’ll admit). It’s the red one with the scantily clad woman in lingerie waving a deck of tarot around. However, the main character is described as a virgin, and as there is only one rather mild sex scene, how exactly does that erotica-like cover match the book? It doesn’t, and it is doing a disservice to the author. I would suggest one of the cartooned covers like one sees on H.P. Mallory‘s, Rose Pressey‘s, or Robyn Peterman‘s books. I think it would match the genre better. Only my opinion, though, of course, and I mention this so that others who know the genre will more accurately know what to expect.

So, I finally thought…it was a fun read. It had a few issues, but nothing that would prevent me from recommending it to PNR/UF readers.