Category Archives: Challenges

Review of Covet, by J.R. Ward

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Covet

I picked up J.R. Ward‘s Covet (Fallen Angels, #1) from my local library. If I’m honest I more than picked it up, I was on a waiting list for it. Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to this one. 

Description from Goodreads:

Seven deadly sins. Seven souls to save. This is the first battle between a savior who doesn’t believe and a demon with nothing to lose!

Redemption isn’t a word Jim Heron knows much about-his specialty is revenge, and to him, sin is all relative. But everything changes when he becomes a fallen angel and is charged with saving the souls of seven people from the seven deadly sins. And failure is not an option. 

Vin DiPietro long ago sold his soul to his business, and he’s good with that-until fate intervenes in the form of a tough-talking, Harley-riding, self-professed savior. And then he meets a woman who will make him question his destiny, his sanity, and his heart-and he has to work with a fallen angel to win her over and redeem his own soul.

Review:

Oh, I just can’t tell you how disappointed I am right now. I was so very, very excited about reading this. I adore the Black Dagger Brotherhood books (most of them anyway), and Lassiter really piqued my interest, so a whole series based on the Fallen Angels…how could it go wrong? Well, I found out, didn’t I? It could go wrong in any number of ways, and Mrs. Ward seems to have found most of them. 

Don’t get me wrong, I still love her rather unique writing style–all full of la-di-das and unique grammar structures that sound so very right for the characters. But the story…the story was a serious letdown. Let’s start with the fact that Lassiter, the fallen angel who shows up in the latter BDB books to introduce this spin-off series, isn’t even in the book. That’s right, the very character who introduced readers to fallen angels was left out completely. How is that possible?

Next, the use of the noble whore falling in love with the flawed but redeemable billionaire businessman (and visa-versa) is about as cliché and trite as they come. Overused doesn’t even begin to cover it. Plus, I got really tired of all of the prostitute bashing disguised as Marie-Terese’s pangs of conscious. Yes, I concede that it is generally a mirror of society’s unfortunate opinion on the matter, but it was harangued on endlessly. 

Then there is the insta-love. Now, Ward is known for insta-love scenarios, so this isn’t really all that surprising. But here, it felt more extreme than normal since both characters had to break character to actually fall instantly in love. Marie-Terese had to abandon years of careful caution and Vin had to develop a heart he previously lacked suddenly. Even if I was willing to accept this cosmic shift in both of their mentalities I then had also to accept their sudden effusive natures. The ‘I love you,’ ‘I trust you,’ and ‘thank you for believing in me’ were flying off the shelf left and right, despite the fact that these people had known each other for collective hours. I couldn’t see for all the sappy hearts and flowers they were giving off. Gag.

I was also left wondering if Vin and Marie-Terese’s drama or Jim’s situation was the primary plot of the book. I honestly couldn’t tell. There is a serious problem when I finish a book and can’t tell who the main character was. Now, I liked Jim a lot. I liked his anti-hero personality and rather grey goodness. I liked his wingmen, Eddie and Adrian. I liked their mission, etc. But they felt incidental to Vin and Marie-Terese falling instantly in love, and I don’t think that was supposed to be the case. 

Lastly, I’m totally lost on the pantheon of these books. Since Black Dagger Brothers showed up in the background on occasion (Butch’s Red Sox hat in the last pew of the church service, running into Phury outside his NA meeting, her working for Trez, etc) I’m assuming this is the same general universe. So, how exactly do the BDB’s goddess and the Angel’s God fit together? I’m stumped. 

Since I generally love Mrs. Ward’s actual writing, I’d be willing to give the second book in this series a try to see if, given a different plot, I might like it better. But this particular book left me cold. Left me less than cold, it left me feeling like I had wasted time on. And all of it was only exacerbated by the fact that I had such high hopes going in. I really expected to love it. Such a letdown.

Man Made Man

Book Review: Man Made Man (Phoenician Series, #2), by Marjorie F. Baldwin

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Man Made Man

Author, Marjorie F. Baldwin sent me an ARC of book two of her Phoenician Series, Man Made Man. You can find my review of book one, Conditioned Response here.

Description from Goodreads:
Proctors don’t think–or they shouldn’t. A Proctor is supposed to follow orders but a Proctor named Raif can’t STOP thinking. He’s different and he knows it. He was MADE differently. Who made him and why? And what was he designed to BE anyway? With thoughts and memories that can’t be his own and donors from over a dozen genetic lines, all Raif knows for certain is that he was never designed to be a Proctor.

When Raif tries to find out the truth about his origins, he makes an even more horrifying discovery: his genetic design doesn’t exist. There’s no record of him in the Breeding Selections. The Archival records supposedly contain every human ever designed but he’s not listed. Was he supposed to be MADE or was his design some kind of experimental theory never meant to leave a laboratory dish? Was he given life by accident or was he made for some specific reason?

In MAN MADE MAN, Raif searches for answers and instead finds the Phoenicians, strange people that human records claim are indigenous to the planet yet still not understood by humans even after 400 years of sharing a planet.

When the Phoenician Seven Chiefs learn of Raif’s personal quest, they decide to help him. Of course, they’re not just being nice. With the Seven Chiefs, there’s always a Plan!

Now the question Raif will have to answer is whether he’s a man who was made for their Plan or if their Plan was made for him?

Review:
I had high hopes for this book, since I loved Conditioned Response (CR) so much. Ms. Baldwin’s writing always leaves me exhilarated and it is no less marvellous here than in book one. I love the Phoenician universe she’s created and the characters who inhabit it. In all respects this is a five star book.

However, I also found myself a little disappointed in it. I would almost call this more of a companion book than a sequel (or rather, prequel). While it’s interesting to see events from Raif’s POV, instead of Shayla’s and it’s great to see said events in greater detail than in book one, there is very little new here. Almost everything that happened in this book was mentioned in CR. Granted, in CR the reader is just told X happened and here you see X happen, it’s still the same series of events and you know the outcome. I just kept waiting for that something more.

Now, having said that, let me also say how much fun it was to see the staid, unflappable Raif as an unsteady newborn and the serious Shayla as an innocent youth. If, like me, you loved CR’s characters its worth reading this book just to see them again and understand a their history a bit more.

I did think Raif’ talents felt a little overemphasised. There didn’t seem to be anything he couldn’t do and it left me wondering how someone so much more advanced than everyone else could possibly be bested by Drammond…ever. Same for the Administrator. How could someone who is able to monitor a whole city not be able to pinpoint the location of his own Heir in that same city? Also, though well written, some of the romance or sexual references seemed to come out out nowhere. For example, one moment Raif is in a high stress, life or death situation, the next he’s deciding to make up with his ex and imagining all the things he could do with her. I had no idea where that came from. It felt a bit like cheap titillation.

All-in-all, though I had a gripe or two, for those who liked CR I highly recommend reading Man Made Man. As a prequel, it would also be perfectly followable for those who hadn’t read CR and wanted to start the series here. Baldwin’s writing is a gem worth exploring.

☆ I also read When Minds Collide (A Phoenician Series Short Story). You can see my review here. 

The Nirvana Plague

Book Review of Gary Glass’ The Nirvana Plague

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The Nirvana PlagueAuthor, Gary Glass sent me an e-copy of his novel The Nirvana Plague.

Description from Goodreads:
What if perfect peace and happiness were a contagious disease? In this fast-paced, thought-provoking thriller, a schizophrenic scientist, an ambitious Chicago psychiatrist, and a hard-driving Army colonel are at the center of a frantic international struggle between the powers of government and a mind-bending outbreak of cosmic consciousness.

Review:
This is absolutely a five star book, but where to start describing it is a difficult decision. It isn’t action packed. There aren’t any real fight scenes and very little gets blown up. There isn’t any passionate romance (though there is love) and there’s not even a whiff of sex. But the whole book is chocked full of delicious irony. Plus, it has Karen Hanover and Karen Hanover is now my official favourite character of all time. She is marvellous–quick witted, sarcastic, determined, persistent and willing to fight the good fight for the man she loves (even if he doesn’t know her anymore).

The whole world is, literally, going mad…at least from the perspective of the CDC and other governing bodies. The book does an amazing job of highlighting the dehumanising (and often illogical) effects of bureaucratic thinking and red tape, until even the most mentally stable people are so enraged that they end up being treated as insane for not playing their culturally-scripted well-behaved roles well enough. Until the people in charge have wound themselves so tightly into the illusion of a problem that they aren’t able to step back and reassess the situation or recognise reality (and they can’t let anyone else either). Until they’re almost just fighting themselves in the end.

I also really appreciated that, while some arms of the bureaucracy may have been inept, the government was never portrayed as an evil entity, as it so often is in fiction. The military, CDC, Homeland Security, etc may have been failing, but they were legitimately trying to do the right thing and never once does some over zealous general order the needless killing of innocents.

Truly, anyone who has ever filled out a form in triplicate and wondered how people who could require something so inane could also successfully run the world should be reading this book. Anyone who likes to see a little bit of science-speak in their fiction should be reading this book. Anyone who likes good ironic, situational comedy should be reading this book (though it’s not ostensibly a comedy). Really, anyone who is happy to read a book that digs a little deeper, but moves a little slower should be reading this book. Highly recommended.

Side note: Mr. Glass, where-ever you are in the world, whatever you’re doing, could you pause and post a page count for this book somewhere? I love my kindle   and it’s all well and good to know I’m 36% through a book. But I’d really like to know if I’m 36% through 100 pages or 1,000. Thanks, that would be great. 🙂 Ok, I’m being sarcastic, but really, please.