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Book Review: Demon’s Wish, by Xenia Melzer

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I accepted a copy of Xenia Melzer‘s Demon’s Wish (Demon Mates, #1) for review during it’s Totally Entwined Release Book Blitz. It was also over on Sadie’s Spotlight.

about the book

Finding love is hard—especially when you’re a demon and your potential mate is your sacrifice…

Sammy is content with running his bookshop and leading a book club consisting solely of paranormal creatures. Despite the persistence of his friends, he has resolved himself to a life without romance, since he doesn’t think anybody could find him and his tendency to spill useless knowledge whenever he gets nervous attractive.

Dresalantion is a demon prince and slightly—make that majorly—annoyed when somebody persistently tries to summon him. He finally decides to show up and put the fear of Dresalantion into his summoners but finds himself rescuing their sacrifice instead.

Sammy intrigues him from the get-go, and when Dre realizes that Sammy can get him the manga he’s been hunting for months—not to mention that he refuses a wish he offered him—the sexy demon decides to get to know this fascinating man better. Much better.

Reader advisory: This book contans scenes of kidnapping and an attempted human sacrifice.

my review

The Good:

This is a seriously sweet, low angst story. Two men meet, are instantly attracted, fall in love quickly, and spend the whole book making each other happy, with no drama. Both characters are likeable. And the big, hulking demon just wanting to find his one special love breaks the alpha-asshole cliche. There’s also some appreciable diversity in the side characters. It’s an enjoyable read and is quite well edited.

The Meh:

The book got quite a few chuckles out of me. But some of that humor ran on the juvenile side. I think I cringed or rolled my eyes as often as I laughed. No demon should ever ask, “Do you have to go number one or two” if the author wants him to be taken seriously. just sayin’

Some of the dialogue was clunky, especially around saying names too often to feel natural. And I got bored with all the recitations of random facts and, even more so, with the lengthy book club discussions. They slowed the plot down.

The bad:

Let’s talk sex. The sex in this book is fairly graphic (if not particularly impassioned), with quite a lot of emphasis on penetrative sex and what’s going to go where and do what. Now, I have no problem with sex. I love me a raunchy sex scene. But I have a couple complaints here.

First, and probably most importantly, the books reads as if it’s written for and about teens. Sammy is in his mid-twenties and Dre is 800 years old, but you’d never know it from the writing. So, to read a book that feels quite young and then have sex scenes focused heavily on accommodating a monster cock (both in the sense that it belongs to a demon and is monster-huge) felt out of place. This book would have done better with fade-to-black sex, sweet sex, or simply to have brought the tone of the rest of the book up a few years, IMO.

Secondly, the author made a point to include an asexual character, so they’re aware not everyone loves sex or the same sort of sex. But then wrote a story that reinforced the myth that penetrative sex is the only real sex. It had to be had to for the plot and love to progress, whether the characters wanted it or not. And considering one character has a penis that is physically too large to be accommodated by the human body (and that’s not at all cliched, *eyeroll*), not wanting it would have made sense. Plus, it’s would have been a significantly more interesting exploration of the compromises mixed species relationships have to face. Instead the “special moment” was all about the mechanics of how to get one character’s cock inside another. *boring*

I could probably also address here how the smaller, more feminized character had to endure a painful physical transformation to be with the larger, more manly one. As well as how there was never any doubt or discussion about what role both would play in bed (though I’ll grant it was at least mentioned that the larger one was grudgingly willing to try switching in the future). And probably too that the mechanics of claiming a mate leaves no room for female demons to claim theirs, only to be claimed (not that that is at all addressed, there are no female demons in the book).

I feel like I had one more point to add here, but I’ve forgotten it apparently. All in all, I’d say that this is a sweet book let down by it’s sex. In fact, I feel like the sex was written by someone who’d either never had it or had been told they had to include it to get published and did so reluctantly. It feels that silted and focused on the least important parts of the sex act. But outside of that, it’s a fun little book.

 

Giveaway

Enter to win signed/personalized copies of books 1 & 2 in the Club Whisper series and a $5.00 First For Romance Gift Code!

Xenia Melzer’s Demon’s Wish Giveaway

XENIA MELZER IS GIVING AWAY THIS FABULOUS PRIZE TO ONE LUCKY WINNER. ENTER HERE FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN SIGNED/PERSONALIZED COPIES OF BOOKS 1 & 2 IN THE CLUB WHISPER SERIES AND A $5.00 FIRST FOR ROMANCE GIFT CODE! Notice: This competition ends on 13th January 2021 at 5pm GMT. Competition hosted by Totally Entwined Group.


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Series Review: The Messenger Chronicles, by Pippa DaCosta

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I picked up the first book in Pippa DaCosta’s Messenger Chronicles, Shoot the Messenger, as a freebie on Amazon. I then borrowed book 2, 3, and 4 of the series (Game of Lies, Nightshade’s Touch, and Prince of Dreams) in audio through Hoopla. Lastly, I purchased an ecopy of book 5, Her Dark Legion.

I wrote a review when I finished Shoot the Messenger, but I simply flew through the rest of them all together. There’s no good way to go back and pick through the story for individual reviews. So, I just wrote one review to stand for them all.

But, if I’m honest, that works for me. I usually want to know how a series starts (is it worth picking up) and ends. Because if I like the beginning I’ll keep going, but like to know if it has an actual ending. The middle is….well, it’s the middle, isn’t it?

So, here goes.

Shoot the MessengerAbout the book:

“Lies aren’t her only weapons against the fae…”

In the Halow system, one of Earth’s three sister star systems, tek and magic—humans and the fae—are at war.

Kesh Lasota is a ghost in the machine. Invisible to tek, she’s hired by the criminal underworld to carry illegal messages through the Halow system. But when one of those messages kills its recipient, Kesh finds herself on the run with a bounty on her head and a quick-witted marshal on her tail.

Proving her innocence should be straightforward—until a warfae steals the evidence she needs. The fae haven’t been seen in Halow in over a thousand years. And this one—a brutally efficient killer able to wield tek—should not exist. But neither should Kesh.

As Kesh’s carefully crafted lie of a life crumbles around her, she knows remaining invisible is no longer an option. To hunt the fae, to stop him from destroying a thousand-year-long fragile peace, she must resurrect the horrors of her past.

Kesh Lasota was a ghost. Now she’s back, and there’s only one thing she knows for certain. Nobody shoots the messenger and gets away with it.

A new space fantasy series where the guys are hot, the perils are many, and one rebel messenger holds the key to the survival of the human race.

Review:

Ha, you have to admire the audacity of this mash-up, it’s old-school, all powerful fae…in space! And to my complete surprise, it works. I truly enjoyed DaCosta’s “Paranormal Space Fantasy.” My enjoyment was helped along by the fact that I liked both Kesh and Kellee, and was intrigued by the possibility of Talen. I’ll definitely be continuing the series.

However, I also thought it suffered from plot-drift a bit. A twist to Kesh’s character appears toward the end of the book that doesn’t feel believable, since the reader was in HER head for the whole book. That she might have tricked the other characters was certainly conceivable, but how it’s supposed to have escaped the notice of the reader who was in her head is a huge question. Thus, if felt as if the author simply changed directions in the plot.

Regardless, I want more.

Messenger Chronicles 2-5

And here’s what I said about the rest of them.

Review:

Prior to this series, I’d read one Pippa DaCosta book and, while I didn’t dislike it, I wasn’t particularly impressed either. So, I was startled to dive into this series and want to stay for a while. I really enjoyed it. It’s not perfect, but it’s fun and everything wraps around itself and comes to a satisfying conclusion (something I feel like happens more and more rarely these days). I liked Kesh as a character. I loved Sota as a comedic side-kick and I appreciated that, even though this is a reverse harem, it isn’t drowning in sex. It strikes a nice balance. All in all, a true success for me.

 

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Book Review: Lava Red Feather Blue, by Molly Ringle

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I didn’t think I’d squeeze one more book into 2020. But I did…just barely. In fact, I’m cheating a little. I read ~75% of this in 2020 and the last ~25% (roughly 2 hours worth) past the midnight deadline. (I’m sure it was still 2020 somewhere though, right?)

lava red feather blueI received a copy of Lava Red Feather Blue, by Molly Ringle, through Netgalley. I’ve actually held on to it a surprisingly long time, waiting to review it a little closer to the 2021 publication date. It felt like a good book to end the year on.

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Blurb:
Awakening the handsome prince is supposed to end the fairy tale, not begin it. But the Highvalley witches have rarely done things the way they’re supposed to. On the north Pacific island of Eidolonia, hidden from the world by enchantments, Prince Larkin has lain in a magical sleep since 1799 as one side of a truce between humans and fae. That is, until Merrick Highvalley, a modern-day witch, discovers an old box of magic charms and cryptic notes hidden inside a garden statue.

Experimenting with the charms, Merrick finds himself inside the bower where Larkin lies, and accidentally awakens him. Worse still, releasing Larkin from the spell also releases Ula Kana, a faery bent on eradicating humans from the island. With the truce collapsing and hostilities escalating throughout the country, Merrick and Larkin form an unlikely alliance and become even unlikelier heroes as they flee into the perilous fae realm on a quest to stop Ula Kana and restore harmony to their island.

lavea red feather blueReview:
On the whole, I enjoyed this. I thought it was a sweet story with several important themes and moral quandaries to consider. I very much liked both Larkin and Merrick (as well as Merrick’s family). There was admirable representation and little angst about any of it, letting human/fae relations stand allegorically in place of some important human/human biases. It worked and was a pleasure to read.

I did think the whole thing too long and the Hero’s Quest plotting a little too apparent. There is a certain plodding, first we do this, then we do this next thing, and then we do the next thing, each progressively harder; the villain only showing up at the beginning or end of each stage, such that they never felt truly threatening, etc.

I did read a per-publication ARC, which means the book hadn’t had it’s final edit. So, I can’t speak to editing. All in all, however, I’d be more than happy read more of Ringle’s writing.