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Bonds of Attraction and Livia Royce’s EMMAncipation

Book Review of Alana Davis’ Bonds of Attraction and Livia Royce’s EMMAncipation

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Since neither of these books really rang my bell I thought I might combine them into one post. Both came from the Amazon KDP list. You can find Alana Davis’ Bonds of Attraction (still free) here, but Livia Royce‘s EMMAncipation seems to have been removed from Amazon.

Bonds of AttractionDescription from Goodreads:
“It was always strictly business. I had never slept with a client. I wasn’t about to start now.”

Julie Facet runs the hottest matchmaking agency in Los Angeles, but she doesn’t quite believe in happily ever afters. Despite the file cabinets full of clients she has found matches for, she isn’t interested in anything beyond simply satisfying her own physical needs. When Julie meets the wealthy Leon Christensen, her professionalism is pushed to the brink. Leon is charismatic and cocky, and does everything he can to get under Julie’s skin. Not to mention that he owns the Poison Ivy, a nightclub that’s designed for every sexual proclivity and uses his own sexuality to push women away.

Will she able to find a suitable partner for Leon, who prides himself in his no-strings-attached relationships?

And what will Julie do when she discovers that her feelings for Leon extend beyond the professional?

Review:
I really like this book’s cover but there are probably readers out there that will enjoy the book itself a lot more than me. Me, I couldn’t figure out where Julie’s attraction came from. Leon was a dick to her from the first moment they met, and that’s really putting it lightly. Then she spends most of the book building elaborate sexual fantasies about him that have nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the reality of the man she’d met. (By the end I was skimming, if not skipping them.)

Suddenly she ‘has feelings.’ What? She may have fallen in love with her fantasy, but the real deal (who she’d spoken to 3, maybe 4 times) was still calling her a whore and propositioning her in increasingly horrific ways. Unattractive doesn’t start to cover it. I imagine we’re supposed to understand he’s wounded and emotionally damaged. Our soft feminine urges to heal the injured male should be kicking in. Um…no. Just no. And when I thought Julie was finally gonna wise up and walk away he suddenly decided to bear his soul and the hearts and flowers start popping out all over the place. I think I got whiplash from trying to follow his sudden change of heart!

Now, I’ll credit the book with having a lead female that is comfortable with her body, even though it’s curvy and not a stick and with portraying a woman who is unashamed of her own sexuality. That really was refreshing, as was the fact that she wasn’t gagging to give up her control and cater to all of his BDSM fetishes. In fact, the subtext seemed to be that Leon craved the bondage because of his unhealthy self-image and within the confines of a safe, loving relationship a rather more vanilla scene still filled the bill. There are so many Shades Of Grey clones out there that it was nice to see female sexuality as something other than the weak-willed desire to submit and male sexuality as predatory. Don’t get me wrong, there is a little of this but it’s nowhere near as strong as it often is.

I’ll also admit that I might not have hated Leon as much if we were given any of his thoughts, feeling, opinions, etc. But the book is in first person, from the perspective of Julie and the reader isn’t given a single insight into Leon that isn’t mitigated through her. He feels very much like the creepy, life-sized cardboard cutout that she hangs in the corner and dreams about. He has no depth at all.

Add writing like this, “When my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness of the, shock stabbed my heart.” Or instances like the time I counted the word ‘car’ used 8 times in two brief paragraphs and I start to loose the will to read on. These latter matters I really could and would overlook. But I found the interactions between Julie and Leon really quite repulsive. Nope, there wasn’t a lot in this book that attracted me. I expect others to like it and fully acknowledge my opinion to be nothing more than that, but this was definitely not for me.
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Book Review of K.T. Swartz’s Juliet Harrison Novels

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I grabbed K.T. Swartz‘s first Juliet Harrison novel, These Chains That Bind, off of the KDP free list. (It’s still free, BTW.) I then bought the second two, Debtors Remorse and Carry Me Home.

These Chains That BindDescription from Goodreads:
Juliet Harrison can whip up one mean protection spell; Ezra Jacobs can snipe a man from a mile away. They might just be Columbus’ best detective duo… if only they’d stop arguing.

What do FBI agents, a bad-ass ex-marine, and a Mob Errand Boy have in common?

They’re all after one very annoyed Juliet Harrison.

Add to that a friend with an unrelenting ghost problem and a dangerous necromancer on the loose, and Juliet may not survive long enough to help the one person she can’t live without.

Review
I’m gonna start with a little OCD rant that I’ve made before. But it bothers me every single time, so I’m just gonna get it off of my chest. That cover is the wrong damned shape. There I said it. This is a book, not a CD. It needs a vertical rectangular cover so that it fits the standard and looks right when stacked with the rest of my digital books. Doesn’t it bother anyone else? It looks completely unprofessional to me, or at least very homemade (and not in a good way.) OK, moving on to the book.

I spent almost all of this book convinced that I wasn’t actually reading the first of the series. All my googling couldn’t come up with any prequel, so I suppose it must be number one. But there are a lot of rather important events referenced more than once that felt very much like the subject matter of a previous book. Carol’s death, for example, or whatever happened with Eli and his ex-wife, which is apparently how he and Juliet met.

These are not small matters. Carol was apparently Juliet’s long-term girlfriend, who was shot, possibly protecting Juliet. That’s a big deal. That’s important. That was still greatly affecting Juliet in this book, but never fully explored. Then Juliet spent roughly a third of this book helping Eli overcome the aftereffects of whatever transpired in the mysterious past event. That’s a lot of time to spend wondering what exactly it was that transpired.

I was really, really bothered by this. Either fully explore it or leave it out, but to just throw it out with no background and no follow-up is painful to read. Honestly, about 15% through the book, when I was so completely confused by these previous events and just realising they were never going to be explained, I almost gave up. I almost thought that if the author was such a poor storyteller that she didn’t recognise this as a GIANT plot hole, I shouldn’t hold out much hope for the book. I persevered, though, and I’m glad I did, because eventually the book moved away from its own history and developed a story of its own. It’s a darned good story too.

It’s the characters that make it I think. Juliet and Ezra have a wonderfully strained relationship. (Again, wish I knew the history of it. There is apparently 6 years worth.) He doesn’t speak much, but he’s a man of action. Juliet’s normal life would give most of us grey hair and it was a lot of fun to watch her navigate a world full of ghosts and poltergeists. I rather enjoyed the FBI agents as well. There was a lot of humour in Charlie and Juliet’s exchanges.

The plot itself seemed to be split into thirds: helping Ray and his friends, helping Eli, and trying to avoid GW. The whole Ray situation wraps up nicely. The Eli situation kind of wrapped up but really had no beginning, and I suspect it will crop up again in future books, and the GW situation had no end since it’s carrying over into book two. You can maybe see why I was never wholly convinced I really was reading book one.

On the whole, however, I found the writing quite refreshing, and there was a good amount of humour in it. I especially liked Juliet and Ezra’s constant jibes and insults. It was a bit of a running gag. I did notice a couple of repeat phrases, though. I think about a hundred people must have had the corner of their lip twitch, for example. I liked it enough to buy books two and three, so that should tell you something.
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Book Review of S.K. Hart’s Swordmaster Dasan

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swordmaster dasan 1

Swordmaster dasan 2

swordmaster dasan short
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Some time ago I grabbed free copies of S. Hart‘s Swordmaster Dasan short stories. Being the manga addict I am, I adore the covers. I tend to avoid posting about short stories/novellas/novelettes (whatever you want to call them), but these deserve a little attention so I’m making an exception. All three are currently free on  Smashwords and the first is also free on Amazon.

Deciding how to structure this was a little awkward, so just try to bear with me. 

Descriptions:

Book One:
Swordmaster Kyo Dasan is known for both his abilities and bitterness regarding visitors throughout the territory, seemingly comfortable only when alone.

Localem Arada, nicknamed Loki for his tendency to find trouble wherever he goes, finds himself at the mercy of the man he needs totrain him. Despite his reluctance, he agrees to the Swordmaster’soffer regarding alternative means of payment.

Book Two:
It has been three years since Kyo has seen his student when an opportunity to cross paths with him presents itself. He immediatelydiscovers that Loki has gotten into trouble again, and intervenes.

Reviews:

Book One:
I find that I really like Hart’s writing and characters. Granted there is little to this story except A LOT of sex, but hey that’s what I picked it up for so it’s not really anything to complain about. The world building felt a little week, but especially so since there appeared to be some quite detailed races/peoples/societies involved. This book is apparently set in the same universe as Hart’s Playing with Tigers series, which I haven’t read yet. I get the feeling that a lot of the lacking social details are set out in those Tigers books, because the author has obviously taken the time to develop them even if not seen here. Either way I still found the story easily followable and I adored Loki and Kyo.

I had to drop a star because some of the earlier sex scenes felt almost like rapes even if Loki had consented. I had a hard time relaxing into that. That’s just me though. Hart even warns in the introduction that the Swordmaster Dasan books arn’t “meant to display safe or proper bondage practices,” so I can’t claim to have been unprepared. It’s fiction afterall. I can appreciate that. But like everyone, I have my own personal limits.

A fun, well-written read.

(As an aside I actually couldn’t help by imagine Kyo as the Onime-no-Kyo from Samurai Deeper Kyo. They really look nothing alike, but between the name and the constant cruelties my mind made the leap and wouldn’t let it go.)

Book Two:
Yep, it just keeps getting better. Kyo and Loki are wonderful characters. Hart seems to excel at creating situational tension that tugs at the readers heart strings without ever feeling sappy or over played. Often I’m not even certain where it comes from, only that it’s there. Here you really feel both Kyo and Loki’s frustration, even as they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it. They simply drive each-other to distraction…and are very very hot together.

Loki does seem to have accomplished A LOT in the three years he was separated from Kyo. He seems to have accrued too much experience in so little time. But he also grew up and returned very much a man…very much the man Kyo needs. If only Kyo would get out of his own way on the subject. I love their dynamic.

The writing here is just as crisp and wonderful as in the previous book. I did notice a minor tendency to reuse stock phrases, but nothing off putting or technically incorrect in any manner. The plot thickens up a bit in this volume too, which is nice. The books ends at a fairly natural point, but there is obviously going to be a third book. (There better be a book three and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen mention of it somewhere.) I can’t wait.

Yunan Holliday:

At barely 20 pages there isn’t much to it, but it’s a fun little short to tide us over until book three comes out. Plus, I think we should all start celebrating Divainya Rekeshna.