Tag Archives: challenge 2013

Book Review of Nicky Charles’ The Mating

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My acquisition of Nicky Charles’ The Mating (Law of the Lycans, #1) is a bit of a mystery to me. I found it on my desktop one day. Almost certainly I downloaded it. I mean, who else would be downloading books to my desktop, right?  I can’t find any emails from the author in my inbox to suggest to she actually sent it to me and it’s free on Smashwords, so I’m fairly sure that’s where it’s from, but I have NO memory of it. It feels like it just magically appeared one day. (Sorry Ms. Charles if I’ve just forgotten communicating with you, but I suspect that I didn’t. I put it in my review pile just in case though.)

Description from Goodreads:
Elise had no idea when she came home that day that she’d end up mated to a complete stranger. A new Alpha and the need for an alliance between packs have made her a pawn.

Review:

I thought this was a good werewolf story. It was well written, well edited, and had characters I could connect with. I really enjoyed reading it. I found bits of it really frustrating though. Some parts were exceedingly predictable. I mean, who didn’t see Marla coming? Who didn’t want to absolutely wring Elise’s neck for trusting her even a little bit? I think this was also a little unrealistic. I’m fairly sure most women wouldn’t have after their first initial meetings. Same thing goes for Elise’s frequent Scarlet O’hara moments. If you have something THAT important to say, let alone multiple important things to say you find a time, you don’t wait for tomorrow over and over again. There were an unreasonable number of interruptions. But these are just gripes really, part of the overall story, not any sort of comment on the value of the book. It was well worth reading. I’ve got the sequel (The Keeping) and will be reading it too.

 

Storm Dancer

Book Review of Rayne Hall’s Storm Dancer

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I’ve come across Rayne Hall on a number of social media sites. I’m familiar with her as an author, though I don’t actually know her. Her twitter avatar is Dahoud’s face. I’ve always liked the look of it, so based on pretty much just that I grabbed Storm Dancer off of the KDP list when I saw it.

       

(For the record I completely prefer the first version of him, but the second is the one currently on Amazon and probably more accurate to the character.)

Description from Goodreads:

Demon-possessed siege commander, Dahoud, atones for his atrocities by hiding his identity and protecting women from war’s violence – but can he shield the woman he loves from the evil inside him?

Principled weather magician, Merida, brings rain to a parched desert land. When her magical dance rouses more than storms, she needs to overcome her scruples to escape from danger. 

Thrust together, Dahoud and Merida must fight for freedom and survival. But with hatred and betrayal burning in their hearts, how can they rebuild their fragile trust?

Review:
Storm Dancer wasn’t at all what I expected and I was pleasantly surprised. Honestly I just expected a bit of a dark, rape-themed alpha male PNR (but still I read it). It’s a lot more than that. Yes, poor Dahoud is possessed by a djinn focused on the cruel sexual domination of women and he has committed horrible atrocities in the past. But the book is largely focused on his attempt to atone for those sins. He’s tempted constantly, but he’s also trying really really hard to be a good man. He is a seriously flawed anti-hero, and a disciplined soldier, but has to learn to recognise and discipline his subconscious too. Enter Merida. If there is one thing Merida thinks she is, it is disciplined of the mind. While Dahoud is straining to lash his mind down Merida is struggling to accept that maybe she needs to give hers a little more leeway. (Though I have to admit I loved her obsession with symmetry.)

Both Merida and Dahoud find themselves mired in the mind games of a despotic ruler, international politics, war and a complete lack of interpersonal communication. These two managed to go months without speaking to one another, which only served to exacerbate their alienation of each other. My heart went out to Dahoud over and over again, even though with his past one might question if he deserved my sympathy. All in all a well fleshed out story.

It did feel like the book took a long time to get started. The two main characters don’t even meet until 40 or so percent of the way through the book. But all of the world building and political back story that is revealed is useful to know. A few threads seemed to have been left open. What happened to Tarkan for example, but I didn’t really mind. The book was full of serious, dark themes but wasn’t a particularly dark read. It even had a fairly mushy ending. Defiantly glad I picked it up.

Hellbound

Book Review of Tim Hawken’s Hellbound

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I grabbed Tim Hawken‘s novel, Hellbound, off of the KDP list.

Description from Amazon
“You look very confused when I say I’m just trying to help these lost souls make their way to Heaven,” he said. “The reason you’re confused is that you think I’m speaking metaphorically. Well, my dear friend, take it very literally. You see, I may have introduced myself as Asmodeus, but let me run off a few of my more well known aliases. Now, let’s see, we have Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Bafomet, Iblis, The Fallen One, Lucifer, The Morning Star, Lord of the Dark, The Devil, oh and my favorite; Satan.”

Face to face with Satan, Michael has awoken in the bowels of Hell with no memory of who he is, or why he has been damned.

Hell, however, isn’t what he expected. Rather than the fires of torment, he finds a hedonistic city of gambling, sex, murder and revenge.

With the Devil as his guide, Michael embarks on a quest of self-discovery and self redemption. But will he get a second chance at salvation? And why is Satan helping him?

Review:
Well that was interesting. I didn’t really know what to expect when I got into Hellbound. I’m happy to say it isn’t a proselytical text. In fact I imagine hard-core Christians would set up picket lines outside of Hawken’s home if the book ever gained any traction. But then that’s probably why I like it. It presents an interesting take on the relationship of God and the Devil, the purpose of Hell, and the existence of the afterlife. I won’t call it groundbreaking, but it made me think.

I did find both God and Satan’s characters to be a bit trite at times, Satan the Joker and God the bumbling omnipotent. Michael came up with some convenient help on more than one occasion, like a parade passing and practically giving him the answer to a riddle he needed to solve. Though I suppose I could read divine intervention into this. And I kind of wonder where all of the women in Hell were. Surely they couldn’t all be prostates, right?

All in all it was an entertaining, thought provoking read. It is published by a small press called Dangerous Little Books who claim to publish 6 “dangerous, contentious, thought-provoking and controversial non-fiction books each year on topics we think are important and interesting to our readers.” I might question whether this one was non-fiction, but it’s an interesting premise and I’ll be keeping my eyes open. I also look forward to seeing what Hawken’s comes up with next. There is a sequel, I am Satan. Maybe I’ll pick it up.