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Book Reviews: Risdaverse #3-4, by Ruby Dixon

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I received a collection of the short stories (#.75-2) and the first two full-length books in the Risdaverse series by Ruby Dixon (When She Purrs and When She Belongs) in a monthly Renegade Romance Box. Thank goodness they are special editions, because I full-on HATE the covers on the normal version. I would NEVER have picked them up.  I think they are cheap-looking and tacky, and they don’t AT ALL fit the tone and content of the actual stories. These are a vast improvement.

Though, as a funny side note, When She Purrs has a side character named Jamef in it who is a Mesakkah (therefore large and blue with horns and dark hair), who has prosthetic limbs and a red eye. Imagine my surprise when I get to reading When She Belongs and find that the character on the cover is not in fact Jamef but a new character named Jerrok. Cue three chapters of confusion until I went back and double checked the names. LOL

risdaverse covers

I reviewed the short stories here, where I said “collectively, I thought they were merely OK. One I disliked; the rest I found entertaining but fairly bland, trope-heavy, and overly reliant on telling the reader about things that happened off-page in undocumented passages of time.” I reviewed them individually on Goodreads. This post is for the full-length books (#3 & #4), When She Purrs and When She Belongs. 

When She Purrs:

Life on a farm planet at the edge of the universe can be dangerous for a human woman alone.

That’s why I need a husband. ANY husband.

Unfortunately, all the men I approach keep running off. So I hire a bounty hunter to kidnap me someone capable and strong, someone who will scare off the creeps that are trying to move in on my territory.

It’ll be a marriage of convenience only.

I should have been a little more specific about who I wanted, though…because the intimidating and fierce praxiian male that the bounty hunter brings to me? The one with feline features, big arms and an even bigger…uh, farm?

He’s the problem I was hoping a new husband would scare off. What am I supposed to do now?

(Don’t ask him, because all of his suggestions are completely and utterly filthy and have nothing to do with a marriage of convenience.)

Review:

100% I think this full-length book is significantly better than the preceding short stories. Plot-wise, they are all very formulaic. They’re basically the same story arc in different colors. But the full-length book gives the story the time to develop that the short stories lacked and desperately needed. That said, I still thought this was only OK. The premise requires that the FMC do something so ridiculously stupid that I could not believe that someone with any sense of their circumstances (which she definitely has) would do. Also, all of it could have been resolved before the book even began with a simple conversation…or even so little as introducing themselves to one another. Plenty of books have this problem, but it was especially stark here. The characters are very sweet, though, and I do like an MMC who is 100% all in. Plus, the bounty-hunter comic relief was funny. As I said, it was an OK read, and sometimes that’s enough. Not everything has to be high literature.

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When She Belongs:

He’s the biggest jerk in the galaxy.

I can live with being stuck on the far end of space. I can live with having to spend weeks on an abandoned station in an asteroid belt. Sure, I don’t belong, but I’ve got my book and my eight-legged attack cat with me. I should be fine.

I’m not fine.

My alien host, Jerrok, is a jerk. He’s surly and unpleasant. He hasn’t bathed in years. He’s part cyborg – and all those parts seem to be falling to pieces. He’s the one in charge of this remote station, which means we’re forced to interact. It’s an absolutely miserable situation for both of us…

…until I realize that all his anger and bluster is covering the fact that he’s thoughtful and understanding. He’s protective, too, keeping me safe when the bad guys approach. When I get hurt, he’s the one tenderly caring for my wounds.

Jerrok is also intensely, utterly lonely, just like me.

As time passes, I start to wonder…maybe where I belong isn’t a place…but a person.

Review:

As I said above, the longer books are better than the short stories. However, I think this one was too long. It felt like it took me 2 years to finish, and I found it repetitive…redundant even. Dixon tells the reader the same thing over and over and over again. Having said that, the characters are very sweet. I like that she is as fiercely protective of him as he is of her, and he doesn’t (much) try to discourage that. And I love that he falls hard and is 100% in. But, as with the previous books (they are all very formulaic), much of the plot’s tension could have been resolved with a simple conversation. There are also a whole host of other characters who feel very much like they are from other series/books (probably are), but I don’t know which ones. So, to me, they just felt random, whereas for others, they may be a sentimental check-in with a known couple. All in all, this was an OK read. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it.

As a side note, I noticed some formatting issues in this book (not in the previous one)—things like words being split with a hyphen for no reason. I am assuming that’s because in other versions that would have been a line-wrap, and it wasn’t corrected for in the special edition. Just mentioning it.

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Book Review: Wicked Creation, by A. Vrana

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I picked up a copy of A. Vrana’s Wicked Creation as an Amazon freebie, probably during a Stuff Your Kindle event. (Side note: Does anyone know if A. Vrana and A.J. Vrana are the same person?)

wicked creation cover

Doctor Leilani Kāne is no stranger to death. Earth became uninhabitable many decades ago and now the human race is living on Mars, fighting to keep from going extinct. In a last-ditch effort to find a new planet to call home, she is assigned to a station on one they call Cerebrius 207. However, this new planet is deadlier than any she’s ever seen before. In the four years she’s been there she’s lost hundreds of lives, but her superiors won’t listen to reason and give up on a planet that seems insistent on killing them. With dwindling resources and a sickness plaguing the humans from an indigenous plant, she has no choice but to continue to save the lives she can.

That is, until one fateful night …

When she goes to investigate a mysterious sound coming from the clinic, there’s nothing there except some footprints that don’t look human. Next thing she knows, she’s somewhere she doesn’t recognize and thrown into a confusing world of aliens she never knew existed. Faced with the idea of being true mates to not just one, but four of them, she has to decide whether to go back to her human life, or stay and learn to live among strangers with new rules she doesn’t ever plan to obey.

my review

Look, I didn’t hate it. I appreciate a 35-year-old, non-virgin who likes sex, military educated, doctor, theoretically POC, curvy heroine (though neither are very well established and not at all incorporated). I liked the way the men/beasts were very caring, perfectly willing to say lovely, loving things. Plus, the subversion of the “mine” trope, where the men say they belong to her, not that she belongs to them, made me happy. But I definitely had issues with it.

Some of those issues are of the ‘this is problematic’ sort, such as the fact that there are basically no other women in the book. There is a single human friend who appears briefly (thus, I expect she’ll be the heroine in the next book); otherwise, the heroine is the only female in the entire 400+ page book. Or the whole noble-savage-y, Native American-like representation of the aliens. Hmmm, kinda icky.

Mostly they are of the annoying deus ex machina variety, where the heroine gains almost limitless power and then defeats aliens —bigger, more knowledgeable, better trained, and more powerfully socially positioned than herself—with ease. Suuuure, I believe that. Or the way she only encounters five males, each of whom falls for her instantly (one is dispatched). But then that whole plotline is dropped, and the reader never knows whether she magically meets her mates first or whether the humans really do entrap every male they encounter. It’s sloppy wicked creation photoplotting. In fact, I think a lot of it is sloppy plotting. Very author-insert-y.

And yes, I do realize that the sex really is the point here. World-building is just the frame that the sex is hung on, and the plot is mere garnish. But that didn’t make it any less annoying, especially since the book is so unnecessarily long —far longer than what feels like the genre standard. All in all, I call this a middle-of-the-road read. I didn’t hate it, but I was kinda meh about it.

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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.

****

heart's prisoner special edition cover

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.

my review

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.

hearts prisoner photoI did struggle a little with two things that could be considered plot holes, but I feel compelled to mention them since they particularly 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.

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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.

my review

Meh, this was fine, I suppose. It was structurally almost exactly the same as book one. The same darks savior photo“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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Bookishly Nomes: Dark World Mates Series Reviews