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Book Review: Cold read, by Renee Joiner

I borrowed an audio copy of Renee Joiner’s Cold Read through Hoopla.

His future is in her hands….

Tasia Jackson is a psychic working occasional cases with the police department and the rare one-off for an old friend at the FBI. Her real business is super-secret because even the government doesn’t know just how powerful and dangerous she is and what she can actually do. Her FBI friend Daniel Cordeiro probably has his suspicions, but he’s never voiced them until she gets a strange vision of him pleading for her help.

Daniel’s latest case is a run-of-the-mill missing persons, but it’s personal this time. It’s his missing person, his sister, and he’s desperate to beat the 48-hour clock imposed by her kidnapper. So, he goes it alone and gets himself in deep trouble. His hail-Mary hope is Tasia and the powers she is afraid to fully use. He can only pray she hears him when he calls….

Can Tasia tap into things she knows are better left alone in time to save innocent lives, or will her dangerous magic do them all more harm than good?

I wouldn’t say this was bad, just thin. There’s a plot, but there’s not much to it. There’s a world, but it’s not overly robust. There’s the bare bones of a romance, but it’s not particularly developed. There’s a mystery, but it’s not elaborate. I think this would have really benefited from an additional 100 pages and the extra meat that would have allowed the author to give the book.

I thought Kate Poels—the narrator—did a passable job. But the accents are pretty inconsistent. And lastly, I like the cover a lot (it’s what convinced me to pick the book up), but it doesn’t accurately represent the story. The heroine shepherds the life energies of the dead and has visions/prophetic dreams. She doesn’t read tarot cards or use any circle based or academic magic (as the books on the cover would suggest). I don’t suppose it’s a big deal, but it did lead me to expect something entirely different than what’s actually in the book.

All in all, I’d probably read another Joiner book, but she’s not making the favorites list based on this showing.

Book Review: Bleacke’s Geek, by Lesli Richardson

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I picked up a copy of Bleacke’s Geek (by Lesli Richardson) as an Amazon freebie, after seeing it recommended in a fantasy readers’ group I’m in. It was still free when I posted this review.

When girl meets geek, the fur’s gonna fly.

Dewi Bleacke is a no-nonsense Prime Alpha wolf. As head Enforcer of the Targhee pack, she’s in charge of Florida. Her assignment is to kill a dirtbag who sold his daughter. She doesn’t expect to find her handsome, albeit geeky, soulmate in the process.

Dr. Heathcliff McKenzie Ethelbert lives a quiet, boring life. A professor at USF, he has no girlfriend, no car, and is a devout vegetarian. So when a mysterious woman with mocha eyes literally drags him out of his booth and then proceeds to have her way with him, it’s not his average night out. When she follows their sexy interlude by abducting him after killing a man, he suspects life has just taken a drastically odd turn.

Now Dewi, her partner Beck, and her surrogate father Badger, have to educate her new “grazer” mate on the ways of the Targhee wolves. “Ken” does his best to fit in. But an old killer lurks in the shadows–the wolf who murdered Dewi’s parents. Can she keep Ken safe, or will her mate prove to everyone that he’s a lot more than just Dewi Bleacke’s geek?

This was recommended by someone in a fantasy readers’ group because a member had asked for books in which strong women protect nerdier guys. I loved the idea and when I saw it was free on Amazon I picked it up and read it soon after. The problem is that, while it fits the description of strong woman protecting nerdier guy, it doesn’t actually subvert the patriarchal, women as the weaker sex script and suffers greatly for it.

Let me be clear. If I pick up a book about an female alpha werewolf falling in love with a nerdy, vegetarian university professor, I want her to be the stronger party. I want it to actually subvert, not just flip the gender dynamic. Bleacke’s Geek doesn’t even try.

Dewi is the only ever female Prime Alpha (the alphas’ alpha), stronger than even normal alphas and even more unable to submit to others. Excerpt…she’s really not. Dewi, sweet special Dewi, really just wants to submit to her weaker human husband (something no male prime would ever do, even to another alpha), cries a lot, and ALL the men in her life coddle and protect her. They keep information from her to keep her safe and unstressed. Information they tell Ken immediately so that he too can protect her from it.

I found the whole thing worse that being given a weak heroine. Here we were promised a strong one and then it was taken away. But I’m not supposed to notice.

Then there is the abuse problem. One of the things I complain about most in reviews is the easy use of abuse of women as a plot device. Here we have Dewi’s parents murdered, her mother raped in front of her first. Dewi almost killed as a child. Dewi kills a man who has sold his daughter into sexual slavery and has plans to do the same with the other two, she saves a woman whose husband has tied her up and is beating her, Ken’s mother is murdered in a bout of domestic abuse, and the man who killed Dewi’s parents shows up to rape and murder her. That’s a lot of unrelated cases of abused women in less than 200 pages. I think I’m justified in wondering if Richardson simply can’t think of a single other plot device to use, because that is some pretty weak storytelling.

Additionally, the ONLY other women in the book are faceless waitresses and the co-ed students in Ken’s class who go slutty and throw themselves at him as soon as he mates a werewolf. One of whom he can’t remember her name, but remembers masturbating to the memory of her triple Ds several times. (And this is a man I’m supposed to like?) So, every woman but Dewi is either a victim or sexually disposable, or a sexually disposable victim. This I can do without, especially from female authors. I simply expect more and better.

The writing and editing is competent, even if the author makes some odd stylistic choices. The first sentence of the book has no verb, for example. But if this is the authors idea of a good story I have no desire to read anything else they every write.