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Book Review of The Convergence Theory, by Lia Cooper

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The Convergency TheoryI bought a copy of Lia Cooper‘s The Convergence Theory, book 2 of the Blood & Bone Trilogy. I reviewed book 1, The Duality Paradigm, here.

Description from Goodreads:
Walking away from your soulmate is not for the faint of heart… 

Following the Matilde Walker murder, Detective Ethan Ellison is back working misdemeanors and minor crimes, but he’s only just begun to realize how much the experience has changed his life. 

Meanwhile, Detective Patrick Clanahan would give anything to get the memory of Ethan out of his head. If he can’t have him, and every sign suggests that he can’t, he sure has hell wishes everything at the station didn’t remind him of the other man.

Review:
This was one seriously frustrating read. The problem? I sooo almost loved it. It was so close to being a really good book. But it’s horribly unbalanced, concentrating in all the wrong places and skimming over everything I would have considered important.

The two main characters, Patrick and Ethan, don’t even get together until 50+% into the book and they are miserable for that time. Then there is the mystery to be solved. It’s ok, the mystery. It’s of sideline importance at most and you can feel it as the killer comes out of nowhere and is given very little attention.

Then after spending 200+ pages apart and miserable, the reader is given two brief sex scenes and one skimpy conversation to settle the men’s misunderstandings and future as mates. It’s nowhere, NOWHERE near enough of a payoff in the romance department. In fact, it feels very much like the author when ‘ta-da!’ there’s your sex scene, everything’s all better now. Um….NO! That’s not at all romantic and I feel very, very cheated.

I did still very much enjoy the writing and I like the characters, even the random female sidekick (who of course will turn out not to be so random in the next book, if I know my fantasy tropes) was fun. Patrick holds so much potential to be a heart-melting lead. I just know I could truly adore him if given the chance. Please, Ms. Cooper, don’t’ cheat us out of it next time. So, it was ALMOST wonderful, but disappointing instead. (Oh, and just like in book one, I have no idea what the title refers to. I wonder if book three will finally explain the titling.)

Towers

Book Review of Towers, by Matthew Bryant

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TowersAuthor, Matthew Bryant, sent me an ecopy of his novel, Towers. (I’ve also seen it on the KDP free list.)

Description from Goodreads:
The next job, the next fix, the next thrill has been the mindset of Heath Fallows since the day he abandoned his broken home for the harsher call of the streets. But being a homeless thief in a conglomerate society will only get you so far, and he soon finds himself surviving by skirting outside of business infrastructure. 

A career of breaking and entering and drug-peddling is brought to a screeching halt when a successful job leads to being chased down by a supernatural entity and left for dead. 

Working outside of his traditional networks, Heath is forced to dig deeper into the underbelly of society, locked closets of high culture, and the deadly unknown beyond the district boundaries to uncover what he overlooked and the truth behind the towers of corporate dominance.

Review:
I don’t often use star ratings here, but I think, in this case, it will help me make a point about how I feel. I’m really torn between a three-star and a four-star (out of five). Certainly, the writing is good enough to qualify for a four-star rating, with few editing mishaps to detract from what is just a wonderful use of language to tell a story. However, that story is somewhat on the vague side.

It’s action-packed. What feels like a good 80% of the book is dedicated running, fighting, blowing things us, etc. In all honesty, it got old. I needed something to break it up, even as well-written as it was. But all that action leaves little time for figuring out what is going on. Even as I reached the end, I was still wondering what exactly was happening and why exactly the main character took the particular, extreme actions he did. It’s not that his actions didn’t make sense, given that someone was trying to kill him, it just that there was so little time dedicated to exploring the situation that it felt like he leapt from one baseless decision to the next.

The book is a strange blend of cyber/techno-thriller and Mad Max-style dystopia. It made for an interesting world. However, that world, while described well, isn’t well developed. I was left with a lot of questions about it, like, for example, what the ‘ancients’ actually are. I did appreciate its harsh grittiness and some of the gender perverting that happened around the Barron Junkers, but as with everything else, I felt cheated of the details.

All in all, this is a true 3.5. Giving it a three feels like I’d cheat it of well-earned praise, but a four feels like an inflated score. *sigh*

Strength of the Pack

Book Review of Strength of the Pack (The Tameness of the Wolf, #1), by Kendall McKenna

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Strength of the PackI grabbed a copy of Kendra McKenna‘s Strength of the Pack on a day it was running free from the publisher (which is a bit of a miracle since it’s normally $8.99).

Description from Goodreads:
A Marine werewolf and his commander bring legends to life while surviving combat deployment in Afghanistan.

Lieutenant Lucas Young doesn’t know much about shifters. When Sergeant Noah Hammond is assigned to Lucas’ platoon, the Marine Corps’ True Alpha werewolf challenges the Lieutenant’s authority and his self-control. As Lucas learns to dominate and command Noah, he struggles against a strong attraction and deepening emotional bond. During their combat deployment to Afghanistan, Lucas and Noah begin mirroring legendary partnerships. Their bond and their power grow as they survive dangerous combat and ambushes. When one of them is wounded in battle, they both must embrace the strength of their bond before they lose each other forever.

Review:
I’m disappointed. I was really looking forward to reading this book and it started off so well. For close to half of it, I was loving it. I thought both Lucas and Noah were damn sexy. I thought the sexy-scenes were hot (even if there was no actual sex). I thought the set up to go to war was interesting. I happen to have a special love of scenting in fantasy romance/erotica and there is a lot of that here. I was truly enjoying the experience.

The problem is that the book then had its second half, which pretty much just felt like the first half on repeat. It takes far, far, far too long for the relationship to progress. In the mean time, the characters keep doing the exact same things over and over and over again. The author even uses the same phrases to describe the same actions a lot of times. So, honestly, it just feels like the exact same sexy scene again and again (but still no sex until the very end).

I was annoyed by that, but I would have tolerated it. What finally snapped my patience was the fact that the two men had a psychic bond. They were literally in each-others’ heads, hearing thoughts, sharing emotions, etc. So, I find it 100% and absolutely unbelievable that Lucas could go sooooo long without realising Noah’s true feelings or that his situation was not just a professional one. It was beyond the realms of reasonable believability, therefore extremely frustrating to watch the relationship stagnate because one character hasn’t figured something out that I can’t understand how he couldn’t see. Plus, he’d practically been told more than once by more than one person. Gah!

Then there was the whole Dominant of the True Alpha thing. For the first half I understood it (even if I had to force myself to overlook the obvious contraction of it). Lucas was shown to be…well, dominating of Noah. But by the second half he had fizzled out to the average mm romance ‘bottom’ and any domination that might have been happening was not by him. So, it lost all significance for me. Let’s just call a mate a mate and stop trying to dress it up as new and unusual.

The writing was fine. The editing was passable. I noticed a few mishaps, but not enough to bother me. All in all, an OK read that felt far worse than it was because I had such high hopes, but also really was not as good as it could have been, for fairly obvious and easily fixable reasons.