Book Review of Light of Kaska, by Michelle O’Leary

Despite its horrible cover, I downloaded a copy of Michelle O’Leary‘s Light of Kaska from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Escaped convict Chase Stryker is on the run from the Collectors, an agency that tracks down criminals and brings them to justice. Hiding on a drowsy farming planet seems ideal, but murder and mayhem follow him wherever he goes—in an ironic twist of fate, he’s blamed for a murder he didn’t commit and sentenced to death by flame without a trial. Rescue comes in the form of Sukeza bet Marish, an unlikely champion whose unassuming, fearful exterior inspires his contempt. But there’s more to his little rescuer than meets the eye, starting with the fact that she’s not part of the farming community and the secret they’d kill to protect. His reluctant fascination begins when he discovers that she smells like sunshine, tastes like nectar, and can offer him everything he never knew he needed.

Review:
Very middle of the road read, for me. It has good points and bad. On the good side are some interesting side characters, a sexy alpha hero, a HEA, older main characters (40ish maybe), and some really cute scenes when Chase basically freaks out over finding himself the recipient of kindness. The writing was also fine and the editing wasn’t too mistake laden.

On the bad side was some major repetition. Apparently, Sukeza is small and Chase is big. This fact is reiterated about a bagazillion times. Apparently, little bitty Sukeza can’t imagine a big, dangerous, predator-type man would be interested in her and big, dangerous Chase can’t imagine a skittish slip of a woman would look twice at him. Again, we’re told this about a million times.

The romantic plot line is stretched far beyond reasonable limits based on nothing more than misunderstandings, jumped to conclusions and refusal to communicate. This is frustrating and unpleasant. Plus, all the sex scenes were about as effective as a snapped rubber-band, as Chase pulled away, away, away and then gave in and pounced back, again and again.

Sukeza’s character is inconsistent. Roughly halfway through the book she has a personality 180. The author tries to explain it away by saying it’s because she’s come home, but it doesn’t work. The her at the end is irreconcilable with her at the beginning.

The book is too long. The first half of the book feels very disconnected from the storyline of the second half of the book and there is a large lagging bit in the middle, where Chase and Sukeza aren’t even together. It’s essentially useless to the rest of the book. Though, to be fair, Harle and Chase’s bromance is BY FAR my favorite part of the book.

So, in the end I’m calling this ok, but not great, with the caveat that the beginning is better than the end.

Best scene in the book: when a chained up, intimidating Chase is forced to ask Suzeka, with complete incredulity, “Are you petting me?”

Book Review of Ashkewheteasu (The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo #1), by Rose Anderson

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I downloaded a copy of Rose Anderson‘s Ashkewheteasu from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
What does an immortal Native American shaman do when the grave he’s sworn to watch over for all eternity disappears under urban development?

His purpose of guarding his wife’s burial mound is gone, Ashkewheteasu seeks to end his immortal existence. In his despair, Ash assumes the form of a wolf and steps in front of a moving car and into the life of Dr. Olivia “Livie” Rosalini. The veterinarian saves the animal’s life, and in the process saves the man within. Livie has no idea the wolfish dog she’s taken into her home and grows to love is a magical being seeking to win her heart as a man.

While Ash is learning a new world filled with new love, friendship, and happiness, an old menace makes plans to steal it all away; just as he had 3000 years before.

Review:
This book and I just generally didn’t get along. There is, I’ve found, a certain subset of romances, especially common in the SP/Indie realm in which all characters except for the villain are Mary Sues and Gary Stues, every single one of them. They tend to speak in full, contractionless sentences and use each other’s names/titles too often to feel natural. It reads as if they should all be talking in gentle falsettos, as if to a child. They have intense and often anchorless emotions that they or the narrator openly declare and they tend to hug a lot.

I’m serious here. Think about how often you’ve encountered this same combination in books. The thing is, I hate this subset of romances. I’m not sure if this is something authors purposefully do or if it’s a failure to produce something more believable. It’s gotten to the point that I evaluate all hugs in a book to see if they are part of this pattern. Not all are, obviously, but they sure are in this book.

Everyone except for Eli is gentle and caring and accepting of one another. The dialogue is stiff, though to be fair the author explains some of this away with Ash’s age. Ash and Livie’s emotions are instant and intense. Ash proclaims his love immediately and, despite knowing each-other only a collection of hours, Livie accepts and returns it…and everyone hugs a lot. So, based on this alone, I probably wasn’t going to like this book much.

But there is also just weirdness. I am in no way turned on, titillated or attracted to scarlet dog or wolf cock. I’m just saying. But this phrase was used at least four times, which infers that there were at least four incidences in which a wolf (thought to be a large dog) got his (always scarlet for some reason) cock out, in this book. At least one of which was while actually engaged in pre-coitus with a woman. I’m just gonna have to go with EWWWW on that one. Not fun!

But there is also the problem of encountering a “cock” at all. The whole book is a Mary Sue, so encountering crude language like, ‘cock’ or ’empty his ball’ feels out of place in context. It’s as if the author sat down with an eight year old and told him/her about a man getting his cock out to stroke off. It’s just all around wrong. It doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the book.

I also had a hard time accepting that Ash had lived 3,000 years and never encountered humanity beyond brief observations. Yes, seeing him discover instant fire (a lighter), learn how to button a shirt, what a phone or TV is and such was cute, but ultimately unrealistic (and repetitive). What exactly was he supposed to have been doing for 3,000 years in the midst of an urban setting if he never ventured far enough from his cave to meet people?

I wasn’t a fan of this book. I should have known better than to read a book I can’t even pronounce the title of, but I couldn’t pass up that first line in the synopsis. It really is great.

If I were going to star-rate it I would have given it a full 3/5 stars up until the end. I appreciated the Native American knowledge that went into writing it. I didn’t even dislike the characters, just how they were presented. But the fact that it ended without the big, climactic showdown that it had been building toward from the beginning sank it for me. It’s not quite a cliffhanger, though there is obviously meant to be another book, it just doesn’t feel wrapped up and well-ended.

Reblog: Authors Supporting Our Troops #ASOT2015

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Posted by Armand Rosamilia on December 15, 2014

We had such a huge success with Authors Supporting Our Troops 2014 (#ASOT2014) that we’re doing it again in 2015 (#ASOT2015) with bigger goals! And you can help!

Let me explain the program again so I don’t have to spend so much time this year telling helpful people what we do and do not need to make this another successful year.

First off, we never really stopped collecting author-signed books, we just haven’t posted too much about it once the official end date of May 15th 2014 came and went. We collected 2,500 books from authors and publishers in the four months we promoted it. I think that is awesome.

Since then we’ve managed about 400 more books and sent out three more shipment overseas to soldiers. The goal for 2015 is to break 3,500 books collected and shipped. We can only do that with your help.

So, what are we looking for?

Author-signed books.

YOUR books. If you’re in an anthology and want to sign your story, we’ll take it. If you put out a release, sign it and we’ll take it. We don’t want you sending us your dog-eared copies of Stephen King. We don’t want books you weren’t involved in unless you’re the publisher or collecting other author’s books to ship to us at once.

Books only.

While we know troops overseas could use new toothbrushes and soap and Dorito’s, we aren’t collecting them. Neither are we collecting eBooks and e-readers. Print books only. There are many other organizations who collect necessities for the troops, but we aren’t one of them. Our modest goal is to put 3,500+ print books into the hands of soldiers in remote areas of the world like Kuwait and Afghanistan. If a soldier is stationed in Germany or San Diego, they can easily buy a book or have access to TV, games, e-readers, etc. This event is for the men and women of the military who don’t have easy access to read. It’s something for their downtime between hostile situations.

$A fraction of this year's book donations.$

What genre(s) do you accept?

Everything but blatant porn. Nothing taboo or racist, nothing pushing the envelope. Anti-military books might not be so popular. Last year many authors didn’t think their romance books would fit, but they did. Soldiers will read anything if its the only book around. There are also many women in the military. They like to read a good paranormal romance, you know.

We ship through USPS.

We have a nice and easy system setup for us through Craig and Suzanne at Change Jar Books in Flagler Beach Florida. It gives them some business and they do all of the hard work by setting the boxes with tags and mailing stickers, etc. Last year so many people tried to be helpful and let us know about alternate ways to send books. None of them were as cheap or easy as the USPS. No carrier ships boxes for free. No carrier can get close to the cost we send them through the mail for and the ease we can ship them. For a box of books (about 50 books per box) it costs us about $25.00 to ship. Add in the ease to ship for me and there is no alternative that makes sense.

Donations are accepted and welcome.

I am not a non-profit and we are not a business. We are a couple of people who want to help soldiers. We don’t go through the USO or have contact with military groups. I’ve never served in the military but Special Gal (the other half of the team) has a Godson, James, who is serving. it started because she wanted to send him books. This all comes out of our pocket less donations and sales of t-shirts (more on that below). As an example: 3,000 books shipped means about 60 boxes. At $25.00 each to ship. So about $1,500.00 is needed. That doesn’t include buying the shipping boxes and the stickers to place on the boxes. Any monetary donation is accepted and welcomed. We really do appreciate it.

ASOT2015 T-shirts.

Yes, we will be doing the shirts again in 2015. The first one or two will kick off on January 1st 2015 when the event officially begins. We’ll have several colors this year. We try to keep the price as low as we can so more people will buy them and represent. The small profit from the shirt sales goes towards the shipping cost. Last year over half of the shipping was paid for thanks to the shirt sales. We’ll also do like we did last year and post your picture in the shirt and probably do some prizes and whatnot for those helping us out like give away our brand new bumper sticker we made.

Can you send books and/or donations now?

Of course. But the real fun will begin on January 1st 2015 when the event is officially open. Just send me an e-mail with ASOT2015 or something similar in the subject line asking about the information. I will not be putting my home address on this post or on Facebook. But I will respond as quickly as I can to any queries. if you have questions, contact me at armandrosamilia@gmail.com

How else can you help?

By helping spread the word about the event. Even though we hit so many authors the last time around (about 325 or so) that is such a small blip of the writers and publishers out there. If you belong to an organization, let them know about it. I belong to the Horror Writers Association and the late great President Rocky Wood (R.I.P.) stopped me at a convention and wanted to make sure the HWA was involved with getting me books. You can’t ask for a better comment than that. And the HWA will be a large part of the event this coming year. Ask your publisher to get in touch. Many of them sent us boxes of books last year, which was great.

What branch of the military do you send to?

We’ve shipped to all of them. If a soldier is in a remote area, we want to reach out and hand him/her a book. We find one contact soldier in the unit and ask them to hand out the books when two boxes arrive. We also hope they can take time to send us pictures of the troops holding some books. That is one of the best parts to me. The smiles on their faces holding an author-signed book.

How do you get the soldier’s addresses?

From you. Like we said, we don’t work with a company or the military. We rely on family and friends of soldiers overseas to get in touch with them to make sure they’re interested in handing out the books. Then we need their COMPLETE address (including their name and APO/FPO) to ship to them. That’s it. The goal is 35 soldiers in 2015 or more.

What’s the Facebook address to stay in touch and see all the pictures?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ASOT2014/ and also friend me on Facebook so I can tag you in any pictures we post anywhere on Facebook, too!

The 2015 event from January 1st through May 1st will be held at https://www.facebook.com/events/1534524343483468/?ref_notif_type=like&source=1 as well!

We’re hoping the Authors Supporting Our Troops 2015 blows away all estimates. Last year the original goal was to break 500 books. We did that easily. Here’s hoping 3,500 books gets passed by thanks to the generosity of authors.

Armand Rosamilia

See Sadie Read

Sci-fi, fantasy, UF/PNR & LGBT+

Book Review of Light of Kaska, by Michelle O’Leary

Book Review of Ashkewheteasu (The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo #1), by Rose Anderson

Reblog: Authors Supporting Our Troops #ASOT2015