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Book Review: The Pale Court Duet, by Liv Zander

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I picked up a copy of Liv Zander’s King of Flesh & Bone as an Amazon freebie and then purchased Queen of Rot & Pain.

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Worse than a ruthless king… is a king obsessed.

Isolation, darkness, and rotting flesh,
Surrounds me, suffocates me,
But I am the vile ruler who controls it all.

I long for warmth,
Yet, all that I touch,
Is cold.

Then, she stumbles into my domain,
Lost and frightened,
Alone and confused.

And I terrify her even more.

She calls me the devil,
So I show her pleasure,
Like only the devil can.

I am the heat that stirs her flesh,
The longing that trembles her bone.

She begs her body to refuse,
To escape my embrace,
But I am her master,
The puppeteer of passion.
I am the King of Flesh and Bone.

Welcome to my court, little one.

My Reviews

King of Flesh and Bone:
I went into this one knowing it’s a dark romance, so I won’t do anything more than warn readers to check their triggers. The whole first half (more, really) is full-on non-con—not dub-con dressed up as non-con, but full-on non-consensual in every way. It’s not gratuitous, but it is what it is.

Having said all of that, once the relationship moved past that (which it does quite abruptly), I enjoyed the last half enough to purchase book two. I’ll grant that there really isn’t anything new and exciting. If you read any number of darkish romances, you’ll likely be able to predict the plot points. He’s not likable on the outside, but his internal monologue is. She has a backbone and seems bright enough, but I don’t feel like we got to really see her as much more than a victim until toward the end. Then the whole thing ended on a cliffhanger in the middle of what I would have otherwise called the third-act breakup.

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Queen of Rot & Pain:

Well, I dragged myself through to the end of the series. I accepted, during book one, that rapey is the name of the game. It’s non-con-central over there. But by the end, you get a sense of Ada as a woman, respectably clawing out some agency in a bad situation, and Enosh starts to show his soft underbelly. (He really wants to be a sweet, loving guy.) So, when the book ended on a cliffhanger, I decided to continue to the end. Unfortunately, there’s the big misunderstanding trope, and Enosh goes right back to rapey, but this time, angry rapey. I mean, it’s a dark romance. It’s not like I’m on some high horse about this. It just got redundant and harder and harder to root for the characters. By the end, I was kind of just shrugging at it all. It’s an entertaining enough read, but I’m kinda happy to be done with it, too.

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Recent Reads Reviews 📚 King of Flesh and Bone & Queen of Rot and Pain

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Book Review: The WitchSlayer, by Opal Reyne

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I received a copy of Opal Reyne‘s The WitchSlayer as part of a Renegade Romance book box.

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When Amalia’s cat brought home a strange flying lizard during a terrible storm, she had no idea that it was a Dragon. Or that he would save her from burning at the stake, only to imprison her in his lair when she saw his human face. Now she is stuck in this cave with a moody, hot-tempered, and arrogant warrior – one who has killed her kind by the dozens.

She expected to feel trapped, but he somehow makes her feel unbelievably… safe.

Rurik’s only goal is to kill the Dark Witch, Strolguil the Vast. He never expected to find himself in a White Witch’s home in need of healing, or that she would be completely oblivious about his kind, or her own. He intends to abandon her, a lowly Witch, to her fiery fate, but he can’t ignore his blood-debt after she saves him.

Nor can he ignore the fierce desire that she grows in him when she roams free inside his lair.

However, there are Dark Witches afoot, and Rurik isn’t sure if he can shed years of hatred to trust the enchanting woman he has in his keeping.

my review

Meh. Honestly, I didn’t love this. I didn’t hate it either. I was just kind of bored by it. I liked the FMC, but the MMC didn’t have quite enough growth for me to ever truly like him. I merely found him tolerable. The plot was okay, but the book is far longer than it needs to be, and some of the dialogue clunks. (Too many characters asking things like “bla, bla, bla, is it not?”) I’ve read other Reyne books that I enjoyed more. But this one was a letdown.

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Book Review: Fallen for the Two-Headed Dragon, by Delilah Dare

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I picked up a copy of Delilah Dare’s Fallen for the Two-Headed Dragon as an Amazon freebie. You can find a review of book one in the series (Married to the Mahr) here.fallen for the two headed dragon cover
A hiking trip with her boyfriend turns into a tragic late-night news episode when Dana is pushed off a cliff, only to land in the lair of a two-headed dragon.

Taken by surprise, Rathym watches her scramble away – but by dragon code, he knows she now belongs to him. He will not allow his property to stray very far.

When Dana is inevitably dragged back to his lair, tensions rise, and Dana begins to wonder if he was right – she does belong to him.

my review

I’m going to be honest. I didn’t plan to read this book. I was not impressed with the 1st book in the series, mostly due to the author’s style. So, I was gonna skip the rest. But I made a fundamental mistake. I grabbed my Kindle for a trip I knew would leave me waiting in the car for an hour, forgetting that it was a new one and I’d downloaded almost nothing. Literally, the only thing downloaded from the cloud that hadn’t already been read was this book. (I imagine I downloaded it and Married to the Mahr at the same time.) So, there I sat with very few options but to read Fallen for the Two-Headed Dragon, and let me tell you, I was no more impressed with it than the previous book.

Never have I seen an author set up an interesting element in a book that was as poorly utilized as Rathym’s two-headedness. I mean, sure, the two peens get plenty of play. But the two heads…none. Past the midpoint in the book, I started to wonder if he only had two heads when in large dragon form, but not the bipedal human-ish form. But I didn’t know. I DID NOT KNOW. Halfway through the book, I did not know if the character had two heads all the time or only some of the time! I never knew. Having two heads is of so little importance that I didn’t even Fallen for the two headed dragon photoknow how to visualize the character. The heads don’t speak individually. He doesn’t seem to use them separately. There is nothing to indicate that his two heads have a point.

I’ll be further honest: I skimmed the book’s last third, especially the sex scenes. There was so little plot, and I was so bored. I didn’t want to DNF because I dislike DNFing books, but I wanted to be done. This author seems to have conceptualized ideas that look like they should interest me, but the way she writes is a no-go for me.

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