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Book Review of Knight Errant & His Faithful Squire, by K. D. Sarge

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I purchased e-copies of Knight Errant and His Faithful Squire, by K. D. Sarge. At the time of posting, they were both on sale for 0.99 each.

Knight ErrantDescription of Knight Errant:
From pickpocket and con artist to little brother and trusted comrade is a tough transition, but Taro is making it. His new sister, former Marine Eve Marcori, promised his dead mother she’d look after him. To her that means family, home–her interstellar freighter–and a solid future. In four years she has trained Taro extensively; the next step is college. Taro would rather be shot, but he never forgets his debt to Eve, so he means to honor her plans or die in the attempt.

When Eve rescues former joy-boy and current layabout Rafe Ballard, death seems the likely outcome. Rafe is so apparently useless that Eve calls him ‘the baggage’ and appoints Taro his custodian. Irritated into disobedience by his carefree charge, Taro tries to get rid of Rafe. Instead he gets them both kidnapped by the jealous husband Rafe was fleeing. Though they are off-planet before Taro can act, his training may be enough to bring them safely through–but now he has bigger problems. Forced into partnership–and freedom–with Rafe, Taro begins to see him differently. Kind, funny, and caring, Rafe is everything Taro never knew he wanted. And all he can’t have. Eve’s plans leave no room for a playboy boyfriend who can never measure up, and Taro can’t let her down.

Caught between the sister he’d die for and the man he’s beginning to live for, Taro decides it’s time to start making his own plans. And if the new skills aren’t enough, he’ll give the old ones a try.

Review:
This was very cute in a shounen ai/Boy’s Love kind of way. (An impression that is, no doubt, helped along by the cover.) It’s a well loved plot, really—eminently capable and serious man is burdened with the care of an inept but goodhearted partner who eventually brings joy and levity to his otherwise dark life. But it’s one of my favourite, and Taro and Rafe fill the roles well.

I have to say the lack of sex was disappointing. Not just because I like a little summin’-summin’ in my reading but also because Rafe is a trained companion (prostitute, for lack of a better description), and the characters are having lots and lots of sex. Knowing it’s happening so often, but seeing none of it felt unnatural and forced.

Now I understand that to include it would take the book from a m/m YA genre to a m/m erotic novel, which is quite the jump, and I imagine there are people who would take issue with the graphic depiction of sex involving a 15-year-old, especially since Rafe is in his early twenties somewhere. But the truth is that I think the book needed some sex, and I really don’t think Taro’s age worked on the whole anyhow, so he could have been old enough to make it work.

He acts older, for sure, but he’s also supposed to be an accomplished brawler. He wins fight after fight. The thing about a 15-year-old boy is that they’re often not fully grown, and his character is on the small side anyway, so I can’t actually imagine him being so dangerous. What’s more, he’s treated as older, often invited to poker games and hanging out with ship captains and other marines. Being 15 just doesn’t fit. He desperately needed a few more years on him.

Having said all that, I adored both Taro and Rafe. I also loved that Eve, Taro’s sister, is so completely badass. I love me a strong bitch-queen. All the side characters, though not well fleshed, were fun too. The writing was witty, and the editing was good. An all-around satisfying read.

His Faithful SquireDescription of His Faithful Squire:
Former joy-boy Rafe Ballard likes living on the freighter Pendragon’s Dream. Under the watchful eye of Captain Eve Marcori, Marine veteran, no one beats him. He eats well, his life is rarely in danger, and – most important by far – he spends much of his days and all the glorious nights with his beloved Taro.

Energetic Taro, on the other hand, is eager to take on the galaxy without his sister the captain standing by. Rafe doesn’t mind – he’ll follow Taro anywhere. He’s learned enough to get a real job so he won’t be holding Taro back. Taro is beyond capable of keeping him safe. What could go wrong?

With a Marcori in the picture, lots.

Review:
Like Knight Errant, this was really quite cute, but it wasn’t as good (in a purely subjective way). I wasn’t a fan of Rafe’s first-person narrative style. I’m never really a fan of first-person narratives to start with, but I’m especially annoyed at them when the narrator makes a habit of addressing the reader. And that’s what it is, annoying. Plus, while I adore both Taro and Rafe, Rafe was always the less interesting of the two.

To be fair, one of this book’s primary themes was Rafe’s attempt to find himself outside of his dedication to another and become more interesting. Or rather, Taro’s attempt to force Rafe to do so, or even just notice that he needs to be making an effort in that direction. And that makes Taro about the most loveable man in the galaxy. He’s wonderful. So is Rafe for that matter, as is their indomitable love for one another. It’s all very, very sweet. It’s just not very exciting.

The book also isn’t as focused as the first one. Since Taro and Rafe’s love is the primary plot point, the book is essentially about them running around, encountering a variety of unrelated challenges and overcoming them. There is no overarching plot beyond how much they love each other. By the end it eventually just degenerated into sketching out events for the reader.

I do have to stress again, as I did for the first book, that for two characters said to be having soooo much sex, it’s annoying to see none of it. Yes, I understand that would drastically change the genre classification of the series, but both characters are over 18 now, and the book is full of references to sex, sexual innuendo, and plain old ‘we had lots and lots of sex’ type comments, so it feels like a glaring omission to see none of it.

Having said all that, the fact that I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first book isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it at all. I really did. Again, Taro and Rafe’s love is full of amazing ‘awww’ moments, and though I’m not a big fan of the hearts and flowers sort of romances, and they’re pretty thick here, even I melted a little. There is something about stiff reticent men speaking about love that does that to me. I also like Keen, the new addition to the crew, and still adore the cast of the Dream, though they play a reduced role here.

All in all, mildly disappointing simply because it didn’t stand up to its predecessor, but still a fun cute read full of humour, emotion, and good writing. I’ll definitely be up for more of Sarge’s books.

Review of The Circus of the Damned, by Cornelia Grey

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Circus of the DamnedI received an ARC of Cornelia Grey‘s The Circus of the Damned from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Magician Gilbert Blake has spent his entire life conning drunkards in the seediest pubs in the darkest towns, careful to hide the true depths of his power. But when he spends a little too much time in Shadowsea and the infamous slumlord Count Reuben gets wind of his abilities, hiding within the Circus of the Damned may be Gilbert’s only chance at survival.

But there’s more to the Circus than meets the eye. Every time a performer dies, a new one must take his place, or the entire circus suffers the consequences. And while the handsome ringmaster Jesse isn’t one to coerce unwilling performers into giving up their souls to the devil, a recent death in their ranks makes Gilbert exactly what they need.

Yet the longer Gilbert stays with the Circus, the more danger he seems to bring them. Being with Jesse is more than Gilbert could have hoped for, but as Count Reuben’s men continue to search for Gilbert and the Circus loses another performer, they all face running out of time long before the Devil claims his due.

Review:
CUTE! Just so stinking cute. This is the first Cornelia Grey book I’ve had the pleasure of reading, but you can bet your last flimsy dollar I’ll be on the lookout for more. Thumbs up.

Gilbert’s open appreciation of Jesse was a pleasure to read and Jesse wasn’t anything like I expected. I expected him to be the heavy, creepy circus master, but none of it worked out quite like I expected and I’m not complaining. Actually, I expected the whole thing to be dark, but it isn’t. It’s almost light and fluffy in a YA sort of way if you overlook the cursing and sex. But again, I’m not complaining. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

There was a quietly bisexual lead falling in love with a beautiful man, a cast containing a satisfying variety of age, gender, color, even species (I think), a few yummy, but in no way smutty sex scenes, some evocative writing, interesting side characters (though there are a lot of them), some light steampunk elements and a HEA ending. Plenty to recommend this novel to any number of readers.

My only complaint is that I never really felt like I got to know the characters in any depth. I got to know what was happening around them and what they did, but not them and I really wanted to. But that’s a relatively small criticism for something I enjoyed as much as I did this one.

Bound By Blood

kinda/sorta a Review of Bound By Blood, by Tara Manderino

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Bound By BloodI downloaded a copy of Tara Manderino‘s Bound By Blood from the Amazon free list. I read it as the final book in my Bound By Blood reading challenge, in which I set out to read 5 books titled Bound By Blood.

Description from Goodreads:
In his two-hundred and fifty years as a vampire, Alex only observed, never intervened with any of his progeny, yet what else can he do when a little girl of his lineage is kidnapped? When he meets Lisa, the child’s nanny, his protective instincts kick into gear, yet he finds he must expose her to ever increasing danger as they search for the missing child. To protect Lisa from perils she is unaware of, he harbors her in his own home.

With Lisa’s help, Alex is able to determine who has the child. Learning why she was abducted rocks him on his heels and sets off a transcontinental search that leads to ancient myths of the Cardinal’s Ruby; the stone in Alex’s ring.

Alex and Lisa have one shot to save the child, but will they be able to stop the impending destruction raining down?

Review:
I’m afraid I gave up on this at 40%. I just wasn’t going to be able to make it any farther. (And I hate not finishing a book.) It’s like Manderino went out and read the 50 most popular PNR novel and then took the 50 most common scenes and crammed them into a novel. As a literary experiment, it might have been interesting, but as an attempt at a readable novel it failed.

For example, how many PNR books have you read in which a man can’t get a woman to be quiet so he kisses her? Yep, that’s in here, except it makes even less sense than normal (and lets be honest, it almost never makes sense anyway). Here they’re running down a sidewalk, in a hurry, both mad and he actually even has a free hand he could cover her mouth with if just stressing the importance of quiet didn’t work for him. Plus, it REALLY came out of nowhere.

Or how about the ‘the only way I can keep you safe is if you come to my house’ trope? Yep, that’s here too. But it shows up after the characters have known eachother for less than 24 hours, only in professional capacity and there has been no credible build-up of…well, of anything (friendship, lust, love, trust, anything). The two had hardly even spoken. The reason these scenes are familiar is that they pop up a lot, but to see one book with so many of them (even at only 40% through) makes the whole thing feel horribly unimaginative.

Everything is flat. There is no emotional resonance in anything. Alex tells Lisa he’s a vampire…no reaction. He flies with her across the room…”nice trick,” she says. But even worse than that, is the whole attempt at a romance. The book pulls all the expected shticks. He can’t stop thinking of her. He’s enamoured, but doesn’t know why. Bla Bla Bla. But the thing is that their meeting is dull. There is no build-up in their attraction, but neither is there any dun dun dunn big deal meeting. So, Alex’s attraction to her (or love or lust or whatever, it’s not even clear because it’s so poorly executed) feels completely out of left field, unsupported and hollow…FLAT, like everything else in the first 40% of the novel.

Alex is supposed to care so much that his great-great…granddaughter has been kidnapped, but he doesn’t seem to actually be all that concerned. She’s referred to as ‘the child’ throughout the book, he walks away even after discovering where she is, he never asks what she’s like, etc. Again, it’s just FLAT.

The heroine is Too Stupid To Live and does all the expected stupid things that heroines do in such books. She runs off on her own after being told how dangerous it is because she didn’t get her way. She disbelieves everything she’s told loooong after her disbelief is no longer believable (come on, the man picked her up and levitated across the room and she didn’t bat an eyelash and still didn’t believe he was a vampire when he told her). She makes rescue attempts on her own instead of calling anyone for help, etc. Honestly, it’s the TSTL aspect of the book that finally made me give up. When she ignored all reasonable warnings about the danger and AGAIN ran out on her own to try and rescue Sandy I gave up.

But nothing was helped by the fact that there are no transitions between events, no character development, no world-building, and names are used too often in dialogue. The book needs a copy edit and I just can’t take anymore.

I normally wouldn’t review the book since I didn’t finish it. But since it was the fifth book in my Bound By Blood challenge, not reviewing it would leave my challenge incomplete and that would have haunted me.