Tag Archives: fantasy

Shadow Love Stalkers

Book Review of Claudy Conn’s Shadow Love: Stalkers (Shadow Vampires, #1)

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Shadow LoveQuite some time ago, I grabbed a copy of Claudy Conn‘s Shadow Love: Stalkers (Shadow Vampires, #1) from the KDP free list.

Description from Goodreads:
What do you do when your father wants to turn you into a vampire and the man who offers you protection has his own, dark agenda?

Shawna Rawley has no choice but to run. Pentim Rawley, one of the most evil vampires who has ever lived, has just discovered that she is his daughter. Now he’s obsessed with finding and turning her. She doesn’t want Pentim to find the people she loves and use them to get to her. She doesn’t want him to find and turn her. She has only one ace up her sleeve. The human in her may be at risk, but in addition to being half vamp, Shawna is also a white witch!

Chad MacFare has an offer for Shawna he thinks she can’t afford to refuse: he’ll protect her from Pentim and his minions. But Shawna doesn’t trust the sexy immortal. She knows he has his own agenda-he wants to kill her father, and he wants to set her up as bait…

Review:
This book was OK. I thought it started off quite rough, but did eventually smooth itself out. I enjoyed the H & h (though I did want to slap Shawna on more than one occasion). Oddly, my favourite character was Dammon. He was just a side character (and apparently the H of the next book in the series), but I quite enjoyed his calm demeanour.

Though I generally enjoyed the book, I am not without complaints. I hate making this criticism, because I think it is horribly over used, but a lot of the book is told instead of shown. I think a full 10% goes by in the beginning before the reader gets a single sentence of dialogue that isn’t in someone’s memory. The reader is also told repeatedly how skilled Shawna is, but we don’t really see her fight or defend herself at all. We’re also treated to quite a lot of internal dialogue as both Shawna and Chad tell themselves how sexy the other is.

Though I imagine it comes into play in future books I also didn’t see the importance of the Dracula connection. It is set up in the prologue and he shows up once in the book, but doesn’t seem to have an active role in the plot. I was left wondering, ‘what’s that all about?’

I also felt that the two dangers to Shawna didn’t seem to line up. She’s supposed to be running for her father and that’s the basic framework of the story, but a good 75% of the book goes by before there is any real threat present to her by him. Most of the action centres around a demon she randomly encounters when she moves to Scotland (and amazingly and coincidentally moves in next door to Chad). This demon has nothing to do with the whole father situation and really felt very out of left field to me.

I also never understood Chad’s attitude toward Shawna. If you were meeting a woman for the first time (and all subsequent encounters with her) and needed to convince her to trust you to protect her while she endangered herself for the greater good, would you’re chosen method be antagonism and smug arrogance? He keeps trying to get her agree to his dangerous plan, but never gives her a straight answer to anything and purposefully goads her at every turn. Yes, it made for some amusing verbal sparing, but compromised his own goal repeatedly.

I will happily say this isn’t a case of insta-love. At least not on Shawna’s part. It is however a stunning example of sex = love. Shawna doesn’t trust Chad and he only admits to lusting after her. Then they have sex and voila, sudden boundless, eternal love exists. I got a little whiplash I think.

Then, after 250+ pages of supposedly running from her sociopath father (that we almost never see) the whole book wraps up in about a page and a half. The climax was a little underwhelming I have to admit. Despite all of the above, I did enjoy most of the book. It took a little while for me to settle into the story. But once I did it rolled along well enough and it presented an interesting new birth of vampires myth.

Book Review: Nette, by Barbara Rayne

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nette

In a world where gender was distinguished by the eye color, blue for female and brown for male, she had the misfortune of being born as brown eyed girl. Being ugly and a freak to everyone was the least of her troubles. Immortal and destined to be a queen, her mere existence was a threat to the king. After everyone she loved was brutally murdered, she had no choice but to pursue the path she was destined. In a world that made it obvious there was no place in it for her, immortal Nette will have to make room even if it means killing them all.

This book is suitable for any age or gender, because it’s a story about a girl that has been stigmatized in a society just because she was different. To make it more absurd, the first reason was the color of her eyes. Her immortality just added to the fire!
Be it the color of the skin or worshiping a different God; I see hatred in our present society as equally absurd. I wanted to show how different people are treated, how our noble deeds can be overpowered by hate, and I spiced it up with a bit of romance.

My Review:

This is a book about a girl who was never given the chance to be happy. What little happiness she does find is hard-earned and well-deserved. I’ve always liked this type of storyline. Life is hard, and I like it when characters work for their word count. It makes me root for them all the harder, and you defiantly sympathise with Nette in this book. She is good-natured, strong-willed, and likable. Though from a very different genre, she reminded me a lot of Scarlett O’Hara in her ability to face disappointment head-on, straighten her back, and get on with the difficult task of getting on-to hell with society’s (or the nobility’s) opinion. I found myself really hoping that the next chapter would bring a lasting happiness, and this kept the pages turning.

It is very easy to fall into pace with Nette, since the story is told in the first person from her point of view. You are never left wondering what she is thinking, as you are in her head every step of the way. The story starts when she is very young. Too young, in fact, to understand what is happening around her. The reader, like Nette, must face the unknown assailants and figure it out. It then follows her amazing and prophecied life.

The story is fast-paced and engaging, and there is a colourful cast of supporting characters. I particularly loved Raul. The only thing that kept it from being a 5-stars (other than that I am very chincy with my 5-stars) is that it felt a little rushed at times—I would have liked a little more explanation of the whos, hows, and whys-and Rayne has a habit of dropping particles that takes some getting used to. This should in no way discourage readers. It is a fun and imaginative book that is well worth the read. I’ll definitely be up for reading another of Rayne’s books in the future.

Book Review: Flag of Bones, by Elle Pepper

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flag of bones

Twice brought to hang at “Pirate’s Cove” Captain Jalen Shenn, Captain of the Free Boards Dragon Wynd, finds himself driven by a promise made twenty years before to take a figure to a place where even those who fly the black flag fear to go.

With the Empire chasing him from every friendly port, his most trusted crewman turned traitor to his boards, and the mystery of his wife’s location still plaguing him, Jalen must find the truth of why the Shenn name is so feared that they would wage war for the very mention of it.

With nothing left and no place left to turn but Deep Waters, Jalen is faced with a choice, Defy the Empire and fly the black flag, becoming the man the Empire fears him to be, or hide under the Blue flag of Freehold and never find the reason for this war that has plagued him all his life.

And when everything is on the line Jalen will make a choice that will shape history for hundreds of years to come.

My Review:

There is sooo much potential in this book. The writing is beautiful. It has a lilting musical quality to it that makes it a pleasure to read. It also makes the layered meanings of the phrases believable. I really liked the way that a single phrase or gesture could have both a surface meaning and a secondary meaning, enabling the speaker to relay two messages at once. It is a testament to Pepper that she is able to relay both meaning in an easily followable manner.

Pepper has obviously put a lot of thought into the peoples of her world. The men in this novel (there isn’t a single woman) are men of loyalty and honor-bound by strong codes of conduct. These codes, tied as they are to real spiritual consequences, are so strong that people are often willing to die for them. The problem is that these codes/beliefs/religions aren’t adequately explained to the reader. Nor is the social structure of the world or the nature of the species that people it. As an example, I’m still not certain if the ‘dragons’ are actual dragons or simply a tribe that has some special skill and claims the totem of the dragon.

As much as this novel has to offer (and it is a lot), reading it is like reading every third page of the second book in a series without having read the first. I kept flipping back to see if I had missed pages. It is roughly 120 pages long, but I think it should be closer to 320 long to accomplish its task. So much preceded the start of the book and is left unexplained at the end. It would be a pleasant 320 pages to read, though. Pepper really is a talented writer. I’d be interested in reading the rest of the books in the series, but I would be more interested in reading the rest of this one first.