Tag Archives: fantasy

Savage Hunger

Book Review of Savage Hunger, by Shelli Stevens

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Savage HungerI grabbed a copy of Shelli Stevens’ novel Savage Hunger from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
Being the daughter of a world-renowned scientist, Sienna Peters has struggled to carve out her own career in the field. But her world is sent spinning when she discovers a secret species being held in the lab where she works, and the horrible things being done to them. Compelled to do more than hand off an information-packed jump drive to her father, she sets out to free the creatures.

The minute his team enters the compound, federal agent Warrick Donovan knows their mission will have more trouble than they bargained on. Unfortunately, trouble comes in the form of Sienna Peters, the younger sister of his close friend. Now not only does he need to save her pretty ass, he needs to discover just how involved she is with the imprisonment of the shifters.

Sienna knows she should trust no one–not even the man she might still love. But as the danger escalates and past passion ignites, her heart has other ideas. Even when the shroud of mystery is ripped off more than one stunning truth…The man who vows to protect her may be her biggest threat.

Review:
This book has a cool cover (that really doesn’t represent the book at all), but that’s about it. I suppose a lot of it comes down to personal preferences in the books we read, but this one made me grind my teeth. Everything from odd uses of male and feminine as descriptors. For example: “…but instead a surge of confidence at the feminine awareness in her eyes.” What the hell is “feminine awareness?” Or when the characters say, “I love the way you feel,” she murmured. “So hard. So…male.” Which was why they worked well together. Why, because he’s a man and she’s a woman? Is that really all it takes to fit together? Remind me to grab the next man that passes me on the street, then. To the fact that as soon as they had sexy-time for the first time, Warrick was all of a sudden “baby” this and “baby” that was annoying. 

But mostly, I didn’t like the fact that I was bored silly for most of the book. Seriously, it was a fairly consistent pattern of 5-6 pages (or some similarly long time) of angsty, “I want him/her, but can’t have her/him blah, blah, blah,” a paragraph or two of plot-related action, another series of pages about how sexy Sierra is or Warrick is or how they wished they could be together or not. All multiplied by about a million. 

Plus, there’s just no joy here. Every-time the characters engage in anything that should be a moment of bliss–sex or cuddles or basic kindness–it is immediately followed a fight, anger and mooooore angst (mostly because Warrick is a total jerk). This left no light moments. 

Also, the plot is really pretty weak in general. I mean, Sierra is hunted by the organization for having a jump drive that proves their nefarious deeds (and “jump drive” is used about a 1,000 times, BTW). Sure, OK. But then it turns out the whole thing is legal–contracts are signed, etc. So, why hunt her down at all? What’s more, the big bad guy is just some random person who plays no real role in the book, you never get to know, and whose motives are never disclosed. Meh. 

Plus, everyone acts like Sierra is soooo stubborn to not give up the information she has. But a highly trained, hardened para-military group pretty much just politely asked her to tell them and then backed off when she said, “No.” What? Really? So unbelievable. 

Lastly, and just as important as the boredom, is the basic predictability of it all. At 50% through, I posted a status update that said, “So, we all know how this is going to wrap up and end, right? Right.” And I did. Everything worked out just the way I expected it to. 

For those readers who love a story that is almost entirely based on two people working their angsty out, drooling over one another, and moving toward sex, this is a good book for you. For those who need a little more plot or who have a low BS tolerance, maybe not. The mechanical writing and editing were all fine, one way or the other, though.

Hainted

Book Review of Hainted, by Jordan L. Hawk

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HaintedI borrowed a copy of Hainted, by Jordan L. Hawk. (Thanks, S.)

Description from Goodreads:
The Good Guy: Haint-working runs in Dan Miller’s blood. Not everyone can help the restless dead cross over, especially when the haunting threatens the Living. But the death of his parents six years ago forced Dan to give it up in exchange for raising his brother and sister, all the while struggling to keep their rural NC farm afloat.

So when the flamboyantly goth Leif Helsvin shows up on Dan’s doorstep looking for help with an evil necromancer named Runar, Dan’s first instinct is to turn him down. With two teenagers to look after, he’s already got all the trouble he can handle. Besides, the sexy Leif is too much of a temptation, and Dan is firmly in the closet.

The Bad Boy: Pierced, tattooed Leif never has sex with the same guy twice. It keeps things simple, especially since his oath to stop Runar has him constantly drifting from one town to the next.

But this time, it looks like Leif is going to need help, in the form of the very down-to-earth Dan. Since Nice Guys are off the menu, Leif just has to keep his hands to himself for as long as it will take to stop Runar’s latest scheme. But as Leif finds himself drawn deeper into Dan’s life, he quickly realizes he’s not just in danger of breaking the rules, but breaking his heart as well

Review:
I don’t usually use star ratings on the blog. But I think it will help me explain my indecision on this one. If I were to star this book, I would be stuck between a 3 and a 4. It’s not quite a 4, but it’s better than a lot of books I’ve given 3s to. I think my seesaw-opinion comes from it being a fine book, but grating on my personal nerves.

It is well written and well edited; no complaints on that front. I’ll definitely be looking for more of Hawk’s writing, but Dan and Lief just annoyed the living daylights out of me almost every-time one of them opened their mouth.

I did appreciate the twist on the characters, on who’s the strong one and who needs the healing. Well, they both need healing, but the bad-boy character isn’t usually the one written as fey-like and fragile and it gave the book a bit of something different. And I did like both characters. I also thought the side characters were very well done. Taryn was awesome, Bea was stable and dependable, Virgil gave everything a little friction, even Corey and Marlene added a little something to the mix.

However, the book is repetitive. We’re told the same information multiple times, very close together. I think if Dan blamed himself for not saving his mother one more time I might have tossed my kindle over the back of the couch. (This also made his sudden repressed memory and the strength he garnered from it at the end unbelievably convenient.) Similarly, Lief’s constant ‘if he knew the truth’ mantra grew old pretty quickly.

I was also absolutely sickened by the sex=love and instant endearment laden relationship—you know, the way the characters instantly start calling each-other baby and sweetheart and saying things like ‘I’ll love you forever.’ Especially since Dan simultaneously held onto the ‘he’s leaving next week.’ It was pretty clear that had fallen off the table. Plus, if I’m honest, Lief’s ex-prozzie, ‘I’m into toys and plugs and everything else’ attitude didn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the book.

Then there was the fact that I was confused about the haints. They’re supposed to be ghosts, but lets be real, they’re zombies. And I didn’t set out to read a zombie book. This wasn’t help by the fact that I found the action scenes fairly mild and almost always brief.

The whole set up also felt a little wobbly because Runar seemed to discover what he came to Ransom Gap for after he came to Ransom Gap. I can’t really explain this without a spoiler, but once he arrived he discovered something he wanted to find and went about searching it out as Dan and Lief tried to stop him (that’s the non-romance part of the plot). So, what brought him there in the first place?

So, in the end, it was a fine book. It really was. I didn’t even dislike it. I liked a lot of it. But there were just so many small annoyances that they started to reach a bit of a critical mass by the end.

Once Broken

Book Review of Once Broken (Dove Creek Chronicles, #1), by H. Anne Henry

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Once Broken

I picked up a copy of H. Anne Henry‘s Once Broke from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Demon hunter Remington ‘Remi’ Hart likes to think she’s seen a thing or two. That’s what happens when you live in a town like Dove Creek, where the supernatural world abounds and the townsfolk are willfully ignorant of it. But when the Triple Six show up — flesh and blood human beings with powerful, superhuman abilities — Remi and the rest of her allies, the Amasai, are thrown for a loop. Old and new enemies alike come at them head on, forcing the Amasai to recognize that they are outnumbered and outgunned. Before Dove Creek is overrun, they have to find a way to solve the mystery of the new dark power and quell its source. 

During all of this, Remi is still coming to grips with the death of her husband three years ago, dealing with her barely understood feelings for the werewolf who saved her life, and flirting with the smoking hot cowboy of the Amasai who is currently pursuing her. Remi will set her personal feelings aside, though, when the bodies start piling up and her own family is threatened. What started out as a quest for vengeance soon becomes a fight for survival.

Review:   **spoilerish**
A dud, this one never really went off for me. It has plenty of good reviews, so maybe it’s just me. But I couldn’t connect with any of the characters (and there were so darned many of them, most of whom played little role), didn’t find myself invested in the outcome of the mystery, and floated unconcerned through the fight and sex scenes. (The fight scenes resolve themselves effortlessly, especially the last one, and the sex scenes are so cluttered with detail I never noticed the main event.) Nothing made much of an impression on me except for a few annoyances.

First off, the book is written in the first person. I loathe first person narratives. Now, this would have just been a matter of personal preference if I left this comment at ‘I dislike the style the author chose.’ But the primary problem here is that the main character doesn’t have enough of a personality to pull off the first person POV.

She’s emotionally distant, has no notable quirks, isn’t funny, or sarcastic, or unusually acerbic, etc. There is nothing to make her narrative pop. As a result, it all just comes across as exceedingly flat. And when we’re talking demon battles, sex with hotties, sleazy vampires, slimy witches, and broody werewolves the one word I should not be able to use is flat. But it really, really is. 

On top of that, no one has any emotional depth. Seriously, at one point a character see’s his father kill himself while possessed by a demon (having just learned that all the paranormals exist) and he doesn’t even say, “oh,” let alone OMG, Holly Shit, butt fucker, shut the hell up and get outta damn town—no freakout for him. It’s literally  just a perfectly calm, “thanks for saving my bacon.” 

Now, to be fair, I think the author tried to give the characters some je ne sais quoi when she chose to make them all so obviously Texan. And I don’t usually mind if a character has a regional accent. It does give a book character. However, and this is a big however, it can’t be too overdone or it just becomes a distractions. Here, in this book, almost everyone has a Texan accent. I couldn’t stop tripping over the apostrophies, baby girls, darlin’s, lil’ ladies, etc. The whole book was chocked full of passages like this:

“Don’tchya dare move, girly.” The gruff voice of the farmer came from behind me. “I done called the sheriff. Saw ye parkin’ in m’ bar ditch . . . Sick ‘n’ damn tired of you kids makin’ mischief ‘round here.”

Granted, not all of it is quite that uninterpretable (What’s a bar ditch, anyhow?), but it’s still too much. Far, far, far too much. If everyone’s to have the speech pattern, just tell me they do, write normally and let me imagine it. 

This was only exacerbated by the fact that a couple characters seemed incapable of using normal contractions (one was very old and one an immigrant, so maybe this was purposeful). They felt very stiff and names were used at the beginning of dialogue too often to feel natural. 

All of that was then cluttered further with a myriad of unnecessary details. Every outfit (down to the colour of nail polish sometimes), every shot in a game of pool, meals, what was passed when driving down the road (again), etc was listed ad infinitum. It was endless. 

Last there was the romance. Remi literally went from mourning her husband one moment to kissing a man in the next, only to then take up with another man a few pages later. I don’t mind bed hopping, but it all went from 0-60 in seconds.

Does anyone else talk to their kindle? I literally looked at my little rectangular BFF and said, “Where did that come from?” Out of nowhere, that’s where and it ended just as fast, with just as little warning. No time and nothing to make me care one-way or the other about the relationship, which made the fact that for a little while the book just degenerated into a series of sex scenes all that much more annoying. 

Now, the book isn’t meritless. The idea is an interesting one. There is a little spiritualism at the end that I image some readers will really connect with. It was fairly well edited and the mechanical aspect of the writing is pretty good. I just think the whole thing needed to be a little more fleshed out so that it didn’t read like a laundry list.