Category Archives: First Reads 2015

Wyn Dead Walk

Book Review of Wyn Dead Walk (Terrwyn Harvey, #1), by A. Rosemary Mauller

Wyn Dead WalkTwo years ago today, I apparently downloaded a free copy of Wyn Dead Walk, by A. Rosemary Mauller, from Amazon. So, I suppose it qualifies for my TBR challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
As a practicing necromancer Terrwyn Harvey has seen things that most people only thought existed in nightmares…

and as Keeper of the Dead, supernatural sheriff of the underworld, it’s her job to keep them from discovering the truth.

A task that’s easier said than done when eight hundred year old vampire, Alexander Norris, approaches Wyn with a job offer she can’t refuse.

An illegal spell used to raise the dead has resurfaced and Wyn must find the necromancer responsible before she loses her job or worse… her life.

Review:
This book was ok, amusing in its own way, but it was not a winner for me. I thought a lot of it just barely hung together, I found the main characters annoying and I figured out the bad guys before the 50% mark. Meh.

My biggest complaint comes down to the difference between what we’re told Wyn was and what we’re shown she was. We’re told that she’s the Keeper of the Dead, essentially the über necromancer, but we’re shown that she is utterly inept.

We’re told that she’s been training in necromancy since she was born and is a child genius (thus her high position at a mere 23-years-old), but in the book I remember her using magic twice. Once she needed help with something we’re told she’s an expert at and once as more of a relaxation technique than as a skill. Not once did she use it to defend herself when attacked.

We’re told she’s taken down vampires, demons, witches, warlocks, etc. But we’re also told that her training did not include combat teachings. A fact that makes no sense since her father was also fighting the supernatural, so it seems an odd thing to leave out. Especially since when she became Keeper of the Dead, she inherited a sword held by eight generations of Keepers, inferring that fighting is an expected skill set. What’s more, each and every-time she’s attacked she almost dies and has to be rescued, at one point by a 12-year-old boy. (Because apparently even he’s better than she is.) She swings her sword twice in the whole book, despite lugging it around all the time. She’s useless.

This all made the argument that she was special, stronger and/or skilled enough to be given the highest necromancer position available and be responsible policing all activities between the living and the dead and for training all future necromancers in the St. Louis area completely unbelievable.

The vast majority of the book is dedicated to her love life; or rather to the men she lusts after and who, of course, lust after her. First, there is her long-term, on again off again, live in boyfriend who despite seeming like a nice guy gets screwed in the book. Then there is the sexy vampire. Then there is the hunky werewolf, who she randomly invites out for a drink and kisses. I have no idea why. He played no role in the rest of the book. My guess is he’s a set up for another triangle in a future book. Meh.

The writing itself was fine. It flowed well enough and other than Wyn and Alex’s constant and annoying bickering the dialogue flowed well. The book needed a serious re-edit though.

All in all, the book was entertaining enough as long as you don’t look too deeply at the logic of it.

Ash and Echoes

Book Review of Ash and Echoes (Blessed Epoch #1), by Augusta Li

Ashes and EchoesI bought a copy of Augusta Li‘s Ashes and Echoes from the publisher (Dreamspinner).

Description from Goodreads:
For the past few years Yarroway L’Estrella has lived in exile, gathering arcane power, but that power came at a price. Now it’s time for him to do his duty: his uncle, the king, needs him to escort Prince Garith to his wedding, a union that will create an alliance between the two strongest countries in the known world. But Yarrow isn’t the prince’s only guard. A whole company of knights is assigned to the duty, and Yarrow’s not sure he trusts their leader.

Knight Duncan Purefroy isn’t sure he trusts Yarrow either, but after a bizarre occurrence during their travels, they have no choice but to work together—especially since the incident also reveals a disturbing secret, one that might threaten the entire kingdom. But will it ultimately work in their favor?

When a third member joins the precarious alliance, it seems to cement the bonds between all three men. But the arrangement isn’t perfect: Yarrow knows the power inside him and fears getting too close. The mysterious newcomer was raised to believe love and trust are weaknesses. And Duncan struggles to accept them as they are. Saving their home will take everything they have—including the fragile relationship they’ve built.

Review:
I found this book to be a disappointment. It’s unfortunate too, because it has (or suggests it has) so many elements I love. I’m attracted to well drawn covers (not the horrid CG things so many authors use, but actual art) and this one has a very pretty cover. Fantasy. Check. Demonic possession. Check. Moral ambiguity. Check. A threesome. Check. Strong, dangerous men. Check. Looking at it from the outside, I really should have loved this book. But I just didn’t and I didn’t half because of objective quality reasons and half because I don’t like the type of book it turned out to be.

Let me clarify. On the objective side, I found the writing and dialogue very stiff. There was no natural progression of feelings between the men. It’s not insta-love or insta-lust, but from one page to the next they went from disliking in one case and hating in another (remember there are 3 of them) to lust and then almost immediately to love. And these are men who generally claim not to be able to love. One won’t allow it because of his demon, another has been trained not to feel emotion and the last puts his duty first, so love is not an option. But they all fall hard and fast. Even homosexuality being illegal and a three-way relationship being socially unheard of weren’t hurdles to them.

For three otherwise emotionally closeted men, they all spewed unfathomable amounts of open praise and adoration. It felt out of character for the men presented. In fact, none of the characters are particularly consistent, often acting in ways that they shouldn’t according to their character, as described. Yarrow was especially bad about this.

Ages were never defined. I needed this information since Duncan is said to be older and looks on Yarrow and Sasha as almost boys. This is a tad disturbing since Yarrow, who I’m guessing is in his late teens, maybe early twenties (but I’m leaning toward teens) lost a lover named Rini, who he consistently describes along the lines of ‘my Emiri boy.’ And since Yarrow’s history shows underage sex isn’t off the table in the book, I started imagining Rini as a tween. (It kind of squinked me out.) But also, I just needed to know how to visualise the men—teens, young men, middle-aged, old. It left my imaginings of them vague at best.

The three-man relationship often felt awkward. Scenes built for two were stretched to include a third and it felt a bit like a wobbly wheel. I didn’t even find the sex scenes, as written, erotic.

The world-building, while elaborate didn’t make a lot of sense. The multitude of goddesses worshiped by a strictly patriarchal society. A vague history that forbade mages to rule, but no real depth to it. No placement of mages in the society at large, meaning I had no understanding of the magic system. No placement of demons (if that’s what Yarrow has) in the pantheon, so no way to understand it’s existence, etc.

On the more personal side of things, I’m not into those books where characters constantly tell one another how wonderful, special, beautiful, sexy, amazing, important, awe-inspiring, handsome, enticing, smart, strong, loyal, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc they are and that is exactly what most of this book is.

For one, people, especially men, don’t tend to be so effusive so it NEVER feels natural and believable. Two, it’s cringe-worthy. I can’t tell you how many times I just plain rolled my eyes at this book. Three, it’s repetitive. Four, it ruins a sex scene. Five…five, gag. It just makes me gag and there was just so darned much of it. I don’t like it in general. I sure don’t like it from men I’ve been told are (or have previously been) absolutely, 100% not the sort of men to engage in such conversations and declarations.

Lastly, I didn’t like the book’s ending. So, for another reader this book might be a hit. It was not for me.

Book Review of No Light (The Dems Trilogy #1), by Devi Mara

No LightI downloaded a copy of Devi Mara‘s book, No Light when it was free on Amazon. (I included both covers because the one I read had the second cover, but I so hate the new one that I wouldn’t have picked the book up if I’d seen it first. Seriously, that blank, innocent look on the MC’s face screams TSTL. I would have run the other direction from it and I didn’t want to post it here as something I would have been attracted to. Petty, I know.)

Description from Goodreads:
“Name?” he demanded. 
“Sarah Mackenzie.” She swallowed hard. She would be like the ones who had fallen, her remains something to be cleaned from the floor. 
“Age?” 
She tried not to tense when he brought his face to her neck and inhaled deeply. 
“Twenty-two.” The lie tried to stick in her throat. 
He pulled back and gave her a dark look. “Try again.” 
“Eighteen,” she whispered, tensing when his lips pulled back from his teeth in a shark smile. 
“A lie, Sarah? How nice that you are not as innocent as you look.” 

In The Corridor, there are the immortal Dems and the human handlers who guard them. When the leader of the Dems gets a handler straight out of training, she is not expected to live beyond her first day. She is everything he hates and he is everything she fears, but an accident permanently binds them together. With corruption growing among the humans and the threat of war, they must escape The Corridor and find common ground in a place with No Light.

Review:
This book was at best OK. The actual writing itself is fine, though it needed another edit, but the story is so full of inconsistencies, insubstantial world-building, poor character development and absent emotional growth that it pains me to discuss it.

I’ll start with Sarah. For 2/3 of the book, she is such a limp noodle, so weak and scared of everything that she literally can’t even communicate in complete sentences, just stutters and apologies. Then for the last 1/3, she miraculously, with no apparent instigation for change, becomes a strong-willed, brave, stand-up for herself and those she loves, fighter and I was left thinking, ‘this is not the same girl.’ Her character was wholly inconsistent.

Then there is Farran. He too has an instant and unfollowable change of temperament. For 2/3 of the book, he’s gruff and unfeeling, hates humans and barely tolerates Sarah. Then, he morphed into an expressive, demonstrative, lovely man. What? How? Why?

The plot…it makes no sense. The Dems are imprisoned on what I assume is Earth. They are bigger and significantly stronger than humans. They can see in complete darkness, heal almost instantly and are maybe psychic. But they are guarded by a single person with nothing more than a stun gun. What’s more, they always seemed to be alone with that guard, or at least Sarah and Farran do.

Plus, it’s inferred that Sarah is assigned to Farran because she’s the only day guard in the current training class, therefore the only one available. But what makes a day guard, morning guard or night guard different is never addressed. If it’s just preference for time of shift (and it’s shown guards can change shifts) why does it matter? Even more to the point, couldn’t someone cover the shift long enough for Sarah to at least get trained?

Plus (again), if a Dem has three guards, why is the day guard the only one referred to as ‘his handler?’ What about the other two, do they not count and if not, why not? Nothing about the prison-setting, handler/guard set up makes any sense. NOTHING.

Then there is the Marking (which I suppose is intended as the romance). Farran marked Sarah by accident. That’s right he didn’t mean to and he even actively disliked and was disgusted by her at the time and for most of the book. But that marking, which should take years to develop is unusually strong, but we’re never told why. And in and among all this being disgusted by Sarah and Sarah being terrified of Farran, they’re supposed to have fallen in love. I saw no indication of this until BAM love. But it’s anyone’s guess what it’s based on. She’d hardly even been able to speak to him and he did nothing but snarl and bark at her.

Then there is the world-building…oh, wait, no there isn’t. There really isn’t any world-building to speak of, sorry.

There are also some really cliché scenes. For example, the alternative love interest taking her clothes shopping and changing the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan with the help of his riches and a good sales girl. Meh. This same theme is echoed in Farran picking out Sarah’s clothes for her. Because, obviously, what a girl looks like and how she visually presents herself is sooo important.

Lastly, (or the last thing I’ll mention for fear of appearing to attack a book) some of the plot-devices are extremely obvious. As an example, Farran has no problem understanding humanity or communicating. (In fact, for much of the book I wondered how everyone did communicate so easily—newly arrived aliens even using English when conversing among themselves, for example.) But toward the end he is painfully dense and unable to understand why he’s ineffectively communicated an important point, which leads to Sarah running out and committing the requisite TSTL acts and obviously needing rescue. The set up on that scenario was so obvious I could have provided bullet points before reading it. Similarly, Sarah’s inability to see the obvious so that the author could drag it out as a big ‘Ta-Da’ at the end was worth at least one eye-roll.

The writing does have an appreciable eerie feel to it. I liked Farran’s Colonels. They were funny. I liked that Luke seemed to have a little grey to his character. He genuinely seemed to want to help Sarah, but was in too deep to be able to do it. I liked that the Dems actually committed violence that supported the claim that they were dangerous, as opposed to the reader being told they’re dangerous but never seeing anything to prove it. I’ll even grant that the boook lacked the normal NA angst about sex, for which I’ll thank every literary god there is. So, it’s not that there wasn’t anything I liked about the book. But the dislikes outnumbered the likes by a significant amount. (And the totally sappy ending was my final straw, really. *shudder*)