Tag Archives: Indie

Book Review of Nicky Charles’ The Mating

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My acquisition of Nicky Charles’ The Mating (Law of the Lycans, #1) is a bit of a mystery to me. I found it on my desktop one day. Almost certainly I downloaded it. I mean, who else would be downloading books to my desktop, right?  I can’t find any emails from the author in my inbox to suggest to she actually sent it to me and it’s free on Smashwords, so I’m fairly sure that’s where it’s from, but I have NO memory of it. It feels like it just magically appeared one day. (Sorry Ms. Charles if I’ve just forgotten communicating with you, but I suspect that I didn’t. I put it in my review pile just in case though.)

Description from Goodreads:
Elise had no idea when she came home that day that she’d end up mated to a complete stranger. A new Alpha and the need for an alliance between packs have made her a pawn.

Review:

I thought this was a good werewolf story. It was well written, well edited, and had characters I could connect with. I really enjoyed reading it. I found bits of it really frustrating though. Some parts were exceedingly predictable. I mean, who didn’t see Marla coming? Who didn’t want to absolutely wring Elise’s neck for trusting her even a little bit? I think this was also a little unrealistic. I’m fairly sure most women wouldn’t have after their first initial meetings. Same thing goes for Elise’s frequent Scarlet O’hara moments. If you have something THAT important to say, let alone multiple important things to say you find a time, you don’t wait for tomorrow over and over again. There were an unreasonable number of interruptions. But these are just gripes really, part of the overall story, not any sort of comment on the value of the book. It was well worth reading. I’ve got the sequel (The Keeping) and will be reading it too.

 

Hellbound

Book Review of Tim Hawken’s Hellbound

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I grabbed Tim Hawken‘s novel, Hellbound, off of the KDP list.

Description from Amazon
“You look very confused when I say I’m just trying to help these lost souls make their way to Heaven,” he said. “The reason you’re confused is that you think I’m speaking metaphorically. Well, my dear friend, take it very literally. You see, I may have introduced myself as Asmodeus, but let me run off a few of my more well known aliases. Now, let’s see, we have Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Bafomet, Iblis, The Fallen One, Lucifer, The Morning Star, Lord of the Dark, The Devil, oh and my favorite; Satan.”

Face to face with Satan, Michael has awoken in the bowels of Hell with no memory of who he is, or why he has been damned.

Hell, however, isn’t what he expected. Rather than the fires of torment, he finds a hedonistic city of gambling, sex, murder and revenge.

With the Devil as his guide, Michael embarks on a quest of self-discovery and self redemption. But will he get a second chance at salvation? And why is Satan helping him?

Review:
Well that was interesting. I didn’t really know what to expect when I got into Hellbound. I’m happy to say it isn’t a proselytical text. In fact I imagine hard-core Christians would set up picket lines outside of Hawken’s home if the book ever gained any traction. But then that’s probably why I like it. It presents an interesting take on the relationship of God and the Devil, the purpose of Hell, and the existence of the afterlife. I won’t call it groundbreaking, but it made me think.

I did find both God and Satan’s characters to be a bit trite at times, Satan the Joker and God the bumbling omnipotent. Michael came up with some convenient help on more than one occasion, like a parade passing and practically giving him the answer to a riddle he needed to solve. Though I suppose I could read divine intervention into this. And I kind of wonder where all of the women in Hell were. Surely they couldn’t all be prostates, right?

All in all it was an entertaining, thought provoking read. It is published by a small press called Dangerous Little Books who claim to publish 6 “dangerous, contentious, thought-provoking and controversial non-fiction books each year on topics we think are important and interesting to our readers.” I might question whether this one was non-fiction, but it’s an interesting premise and I’ll be keeping my eyes open. I also look forward to seeing what Hawken’s comes up with next. There is a sequel, I am Satan. Maybe I’ll pick it up. 

Book Review of Stephanie Rowe’s Darkness Seduced & Darkness Surrendered

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I bought Stephanie Rowe’s Darkness Seduced and Darkness Surrendered after reading Darkness Awakened (which I reviewed here). They are the second and third books in the Order of the Blade series. 

Description from Goodreads:
Immortal warrior Gideon Roarke made an oath five hundred years ago to the woman who died for him. The ancient Calydon is ruthless in his quest to honor that promise, even if it means risking everything by teaming up with the one woman who will either destroy him, or finally bring redemption to his blackened, hardened soul.

After escaping from a two-year imprisonment at the hands of a madman, the only thing Lily Davenport wants is to go home and reclaim her life. Unfortunately for Lily, standing between her and that goal is a sensual, demanding protector whose dangerous seduction threatens to claim her life…and her soul.

Review:
This is the second book in the Order of the Blade series, and it was a fun little read. It picked up where the first left off and, as expected, followed the soul mates Gideon and Lily. I liked Lily. She was a strong survivor, which is good since she also seemed like a perpetual victim. I also like Gideon. He was a strong, honorable man, and anyone who has read many of my reviews knows that I like that character type a lot. Unfortunately, I didn’t like Lily and Gideon together very much. 

I could get over the insta-love. It’s really to be expected in this genre. I even accepted that they had an extra strong attraction to one another due to her magic and his whole Sheva thing. What I had trouble with was that she essentially condemned him for doing what he was supposed to. Yes, she accepted him eventually, but she still made him grieve his previous actions, grovel and apologize. I don’t mean that she forced him to do it, but she made him feel like he needed to.

No doubt this was meant to be read as her bringing the ice-king to life and teaching him to feel again. In fact, we’re essentially told so. However, to me, it just felt wrong. Soldiers do horrible things during times of war, and the Order is at war. Why should he have to apologize for difficult but honorable actions? His personal need to atone undermined the unavoidable necessity of those situations. It felt like it weakened his commitment to the cause, and I simply didn’t like it. This is, of course, a completely personal opinion and nothing more. 

The ultra baddie that they were up against kept me interested, though his minions seemed awfully easy to beat. I thought the ending was a little sappy for my taste, but the threads left open for Elijah and Ana’s story is really tempting. I’m torn because I like the characters and would like to know more about the rest of the Order members, but I already kind of feel like I’ve had enough of the series. Maybe there just wasn’t enough of a difference between the first and the second books. I don’t know. I’m still undecided. 

As an interesting (probably just to me) aside, I wonder if Ms. Rowe has something against cunnilingus. I’ve read a lot of PNR lately, and there is almost always at least one scene in which it occurs. It’s a PNR/Erotica staple, but not once in either book one or two did it happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bemoaning the lack of oral sex or anything. It just seemed notably absent, like an expected step had been skipped. I wonder if I should be embarrassed to have noticed it.

darkness surrenderedDescription from Goodreads:
Six hundred years ago, Elijah Ross was tortured into insanity and thrust into a mental hell that no living creature has ever survived…except him. Now, that same evil is back, and Elijah is all that stands between it and the destruction of all of humanity, but each step he takes drags him further back into the nightmare that once consumed him. Elijah’s only chance is Ana Matthews, whose sensual kisses and passionate fire thrust hope and light into his blackened heart and fragmented mind, but her deadly past could be the final trigger for his descent into irretrievable madness and the destruction of his soul…and humanity.

Review:
Once you get a couple of books into a series, it gets harder and harder to review them. What can you say beyond I liked it more or less than the previous ones? Book 3 of the Order of the Blade series falls right in the middle for me. I liked it more than the second and less than the first. Rowe still manages to hit all of the right emotional notes with her überprotective males but still overplays the hand a bit by telling the reader repeatedly how desperate they are to actually protect their mates. Ana and Elijah are a good pairing. Well, actually, they’re a horrible pairing, and they know it, but they work.

I have to admit I really felt sorry for ultra-baddie Ezekiel in this one. He was a psycho and all, and I certainly didn’t want him to triumph, but I did sympathize with him a little bit. It made for a nice emotional conflict. The whole double-branding thing (you’ll know what I mean if you read it) didn’t sit well with me. I felt like it undermined the sacredness of the soulmate bond, but I kind of got the point too. As the series progresses, I keep waiting for some sort of divine architect to come into play. I guess I’ll just have to keep at it to see if that happens.