Tag Archives: Dreamspinner Press

Review of Some Kind of Magic & A Boy and his Dragon, by R. Cooper

I borrowed a copy of Some Kind of Magic through Amazon and bought A Boy and his Dragon from Dreamspinner. Both are by R. Cooper and part of the Beings in Love series.

Description from Goodreads:
Being a police detective is hard. Add the complication of being a werewolf subject to human prejudice, and you might say Ray Branigan has his work cut out for him. He’s hot on the trail of a killer when he realizes he needs help.

Enter Cal Parker, the beautiful half-fairy Ray’s secretly been in love with for years—secretly, because while werewolves mate for life, fairies…don’t. Ray needs Cal’s expertise, but it isn’t easy to concentrate with his mate walking around half-naked trying to publicly seduce him. By the time Ray identifies the killer—and sorts out a few prejudices of his own—it may be too late for Cal.

Review:
A sweet little story of a werewolf and his mate, a human-fairy hybrid. I quite enjoyed it. I thought Ray’s frustration and Cal’s flirting were a hoot. However, the situation is supposed to have gone on for two years! Considering the events of this book are a matter of days and I was already getting tired of it, two years would be intolerable. Because mostly it all comes down to two people not saying the things that need to be said and that’s a plot device that doesn’t work well for me.

There is no on-page sex, but all the longing kind of made up for it. And I quite like the idea of Beings, with shifters, pixies, fairies, etc being out in society. Plus, each having species’ characteristics and tht they have to contend with legends that aren’t always true. Again, a sweet story that kept me interested enough to want to read the next one.


Description from Goodreads:
Arthur MacArthur needs a job, and not just for the money. Before he dropped out of school to support his younger sister, he loved being a research assistant at the university. But working for a dragon, one of the rarest and least understood magical beings, has unforeseen complications. While Arthur may be the only applicant who isn’t afraid of Philbert Jones in his dragon form, the instant attraction he feels for his new employer is beyond disconcerting.

Bertie is a brilliant historian, but he can’t find his own notes without help—his house is a hoard of books and antiques, hence the need for an assistant. Setting the mess to rights is a dream come true for Arthur, who once aspired to be an archivist. But making sense of Bertie’s interest in him is another matter. After all, dragons collect treasure, and Arthur is anything but extraordinary.

Review:
It was cute. I’ll give it that and I did enjoy it as a cute, fluffy read. But exactly like book one, it’s a book who’s plot 100% depends on two men not saying what needs to be said. In fact, it pretty much is the plot. The dragon won’t tell the human what he wants, despite hinting at it, and the human won’t believe the hints or admit to his own desires. Thus, they pine for each other for 240 pages. Again, it was cute and well written, but that wasn’t really enough for me. Plus, I thought the ‘tragic sister’ (who’s life didn’t really seem so horrible that her brother had to sacrifice so much for her, she certainly seemed capable enough) was a pointless and over-used plot device. I’d read more of the series though.

Book Review of Black Dog Blues & Mad Lizard Mambo, by Rhys Ford

I won an Audible copy of Black Dog Blues from the narrator, Greg Tremblay and Queer Sci Fi. Because I enjoyed the first one, I borrowed an ecopy of the second (Mad Lizard Mambo) through Amazon. Thank you A.

Description from Goodreads:
Ever since being part of the pot in a high-stakes poker game, elfin outcast Kai Gracen figures he used up his good karma when Dempsey, a human Stalker, won the hand and took him in. Following the violent merge of Earth and Underhill, the human and elfin races are left with a messy, monster-ridden world, and Stalkers are the only cavalry willing to ride to someone’s rescue when something shadowy appears.

It’s a hard life but one Kai likes—filled with bounty, a few friends, and most importantly, no other elfin around to remind him of his past. And killing monsters is easy. Especially since he’s one himself.

But when a sidhe lord named Ryder arrives in San Diego, Kai is conscripted to do a job for Ryder’s fledgling Dawn Court. It’s supposed to be a simple run up the coast during dragon-mating season to retrieve a pregnant human woman seeking sanctuary. Easy, quick, and best of all, profitable. But Kai ends up in the middle of a deadly bloodline feud he has no hope of escaping.

No one ever got rich being a Stalker. But then few of them got old either and it doesn’t look like Kai will be the exception.

Review:
I really quite enjoyed this. 8 hours and 50 minutes and I listed to it in one day. Seriously, I got all my laundry folded, cleaned my house, did a little knitting. It was great. I think what I liked most was Kai’s sarcasm and the rough, fatherly affections of the stalkers. I appreciated how the elfin and human societies sat side by side, chafing at the edges. As well as how Kai was bisexual and the slow, slow burn of the romance.

I was annoyed with how women were represented. There aren’t a lot of them and they’re all cliched. The untouchable angel, the whore, the sexually aggressive cousin, the raving bitch, the manipulator and the mother (who was also disloyal). There wasn’t a single non-problematic women in the book, when taken all together. Why does MM so often do this?

I also liked the narrations. I was a little iffy with the Irish lilt, given the appearance of the character on the cover and the obvious Japanese influence. It didn’t match what I would have imagined. But it worked, given his adoptive father and once I got used to it.


Description from Goodreads:
Kai Gracen has no intention of being anyone’s pawn. A pity Fate and SoCalGov have a different opinion on the matter.

Licensed Stalkers make their living hunting down monsters and dangerous criminals… and their lives are usually brief, brutal, and thankless. Despite being elfin and cursed with a nearly immortal lifespan, Kai didn’t expect to be any different. Then Ryder, the High Lord of the Southern Rise Court, arrived in San Diego, Kai’s not-so-mundane life went from mild mayhem to full-throttle chaos.

Now an official liaison between the growing Sidhe Court and the human populace, Kai is at Ryder’s beck and call for anything a High Lord might need a Stalker to do. Unfortunately for Kai, this means chasing down a flimsy rumor about an ancient lost Court somewhere in the Nevada desert—a court with powerful magics that might save Ryder—and Kai’s—people from becoming a bloody memory in their Merged world’s violent history.

The race for the elfin people’s salvation opens unwelcome windows into Kai’s murky past, and it could also slam the door on any future he might have with his own kind and Ryder.

Review:
I enjoyed this in much the same way I did the first. I still liked Kai’s sarcasm and his tough outer shell that guards a big, squishy heart. I still liked Ryder and the side characters. I liked where the story seems to be going and the mysteries that are being revealed about Kai.

I did think there were a lot of coincidental, none plot related things happen. Like getting caught in a sudden flash flood or a buffalo stampede. I kept waiting to find out there was a weather mage or something causing it, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Additionally, they were supposed to be going somewhere super dangerous, but they barely encountered any challenges.

Regardless, I hope the next comes out soon. I can’t wait to read it.

brute

Book Review of Brute, by Kim Fielding

I purchased of a copy from Kim Fielding‘s Brute from the publisher, Dreamspinner.

Description from Goodreads:
Brute leads a lonely life in a world where magic is commonplace. He is seven and a half feet of ugly, and of disreputable descent. No one, including Brute, expects him to be more than a laborer. But heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and when he is maimed while rescuing a prince, Brute’s life changes abruptly. He is summoned to serve at the palace in Tellomer as a guard for a single prisoner. It sounds easy but turns out to be the challenge of his life. 

Rumors say the prisoner, Gray Leynham, is a witch and a traitor. What is certain is that he has spent years in misery: blind, chained, and rendered nearly mute by an extreme stutter. And he dreams of people’s deaths—dreams that come true. 

As Brute becomes accustomed to palace life and gets to know Gray, he discovers his own worth, first as a friend and a man and then as a lover. But Brute also learns heroes sometimes face difficult choices and that doing what is right can bring danger of its own.

Review:
I thought this book was ok, but ultimately a bit of a disappointment. This is partly because I went in really expecting to love it and ended up just liking it, which is fine, really. Normally that would be enough, but when you have especially high hopes, ok feels far worse than it is.

There were several things I didn’t like about the book, but let me start by saying how much I did like Brute, Gray and the characters of the palace. Plus, I loved that the main characters are a bit older, both physically disabled (one a maimed, ugly, giant and the other blind, stuttering, and emaciated) and this is a really sweet read. I liked the book, but the following things were an issue for me.

I was uncomfortable with the power dynamic in a romance between a prisoner and a guard. Yes, the prisoner is the one who initiates the relationship. Brute is not supposed to have taken advantage of Gray in any way. You can tell that from the text. But I was still never comfortable with it. There are too many ways it could go wrong and too many ways that Gray’s psychological state surely was effected. I just couldn’t be comfortable with it.

The book is slow. It takes a long time for Brute to even meet Gray, and then a long time for anything to progress between them, and even once it does, there’s still a lot of book left. Because of this it did seem to drag at times.

I couldn’t buy how Brute’s life went from being so horrible in his village to being all hearts and rainbows as soon as he moved to the palace. Was there really not one kind person in his whole previous 27 years? Was there really not one jerk he encountered in the city? It was too stark a difference and honestly just felt clumsily done.

Lastly, everything was too easy. For over a year Brute and Gray were never once interrupted, never once caught doing anything they shouldn’t. Then there is the whole last adventure, which I won’t spoil, but it’s all too easy. Until, in the end, a happily ever after is just dropped in their lap without their even pursuing it. People suddenly let old hurts go and forgive each other before running off into the sunset.

All in all, a sweet read that I’m glad to have spent time with, but not the home run I had hoped for.


What I’m drinking: Hot almond milk with sorghum molasses, kind of like hot chocolate, but…you know, not.