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Hell & High Water

Book Review of Hell & High Water, by Charlie Cochet

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Hell & High WaterI bought a copy of Charlie Cochet‘s Hell & High Water.

Description from Goodreads:

When homicide detective Dexter J. Daley’s testimony helps send his partner away for murder, the consequences—and the media frenzy—aren’t far behind. He soon finds himself sans boyfriend, sans friends, and, after an unpleasant encounter in a parking garage after the trial, he’s lucky he doesn’t find himself sans teeth. Dex fears he’ll get transferred from the Human Police Force’s Sixth Precinct, or worse, get dismissed. Instead, his adoptive father—a sergeant at the Therian-Human Intelligence Recon Defense Squadron otherwise known as the THIRDS—pulls a few strings, and Dex gets recruited as a Defense Agent.

Dex is determined to get his life back on track and eager to get started in his new job. But his first meeting with Team Leader Sloane Brodie, who also happens to be his new jaguar Therian partner, turns disastrous. When the team is called to investigate the murders of three HumaniTherian activists, it soon becomes clear to Dex that getting his partner and the rest of the tightknit team to accept him will be a lot harder than catching the killer—and every bit as dangerous.

Review:
Oh, Dissappointment, we meet again. I was let down by this book. Not necessarily because it was a bad book, but because it wasn’t the book I wanted it to be, the book I expected it to be. I was expecting something like Cut & Run orCatch a Ghost. (Heck, Catch a Ghost is even book one of the Hell or High Waterseries, so thinking Hell & High Water would be similar isn’t that much of a stretch.) From the books blurb, I expected to watch two gruff, alpha males manage not to kill one another long enough to have a touch of hot steaming sex and maybe solve a mystery when they have their pants on. 

Nope, what I got was one brooding but fragile, emotionally damaged alpha male and one loud mouthed twink, who basically just talked incessantly and shook his ass at his partner until he gave in and fucked him. Now, I generally like both types of characters, but Dex didn’t start the book all light and airy-like. He just kind of randomly morphed into it about a third of the way in and I had a really hard time fitting the latter into the role of an elite soldier/police officer. (THIRDS is part of the military, but functions as a police force. I don’t know.) It might have worked had Dex not been so ridiculous about it all. He hides nothing. He filters nothing. He ignores all rules (of fraternisation and decorum). And that’s all on his first day.

In a way that was a big part of the problem. Most of us have had at least one first day at a new job. You’re nervous, right? Not good ‘ol Dex. He’s loud, proud and cocky. He joshes his new coworkers with abandon, makes lascivious jokes at and about them, plays pranks, and amazingly manages to garner a complete understanding of team dynamics in mere minutes.

No one gets angry though. He doesn’t get disciplined. He isn’t even seen as the type of employee an employer hustles out the door. He is apparently utterly immune to normal expectations of behaviour. Plus, that first day went on and on, with a lot happening. No day or two of orientation for the THIRDS. Nope, it’s right out into the field and giving orders for Dex, rookieness be damned.

Now, I’ll admit part of this is a personal issue. I hate when authors let some characters get away with disregarding proper respect of the chain of command or aggress on alpha characters without the consequences all other characters would face. It annoys me. It especially annoys me when whole plots are based on this ability. It doesn’t feel legitimate or believable. And the progression ofHell & High Water‘s plot hinges almost entirely on Dex’s ability to ‘charm’ (if that’s what such annoyances are called) his coworkers into accepting him. 

Then there are the murders to be solved. I knew who the bad guy was from practically chapter one. It really wasn’t that hard to figure out. I could have dealt with that if the book didn’t let itself fall into the common trap of not giving the characters the information they needed to figure it out on their own, so eventually the baddie has to stop being the smart, careful villain he’d been up to that point and for no discernible reason start being sloppy and basically announce himself, his past sins and his dastardly plan to the main character. This isn’t uncommon in fiction, but it’s still a pretty weak way to solve a mystery.

I don’t want to make it seem like the book’s all bad. It isn’t. There is a lot of good humor in it. The sex isn’t horrible. There are some fun side characters, with enough hints at depths worth exploring to grab a readers attention. (I was especially interested in seeing more of Cael and Ash’s friendship.) There are also some great lines in it. Like this one:

This isn’t the HPF. You’re in our world now and it’s scary, and ugly, and fucked up. They won’t pat you on the head and tell you how special you are because you have a black daddy and a Therian brother who proudly waves his rainbow flags with you. Here, you’re a freak like the rest of us, so don’t tell me how to do my job.


I think my issue was just that everything was too over the top. Dex’s personality was too big, Sloane and his team’s grief too all-consuming, the antagonist’s instability too obvious to have gone unnoticed. It was all just too much of what could have been a good thing.

Change of Heart

Book Review of Change of Heart, by Mary Calmes

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Change of Heart

I keep hearing about Mary Calmes, so I sent out a call for lendable books. I was lucky enough to receive an ecopy of Change of Heart. (Thank you, A.)

Description from Goodreads:
As a young gay man—and a werepanther—all Jin Rayne yearns for is a normal life. Having fled his past, he wants nothing more than to start over, but Jin’s old life doesn’t want to let him go. When his travels bring him to a new city, he crosses paths with the leader of the local were-tribe. Logan Church is a shock and an enigma, and Jin fears that Logan is both the mate he fears and the love of his life. Jin doesn’t want to go back to the old ways, and mating would irrevocably tie him to them. 

But Jin is the mate Logan needs at his side to help him lead his tribe, and he won’t give Jin up so easily. It will take time and trust for Jin to discover the joy in belonging to Logan and how to love without restraint.

Review:  **spoiler alert**
This is the 2nd Calmes book I’ve read. So, admittedly, I don’t have a lot to judge by. Two is hardly enough to establish a trend, after all. However, I’m hoping that this was one of her earlier works, because it feels much more clumsy than Acrobat, the first of her books I got my hands on.

This book and I had issues from page one, with the whole ‘any woman out alone late at night should obviously expect to be raped (in this case gang raped)’ scene. It would be hard to get any more cliché than that.

I stuck with it, though, expecting it to get better. But I struggled. I was just so confused for so much of the beginning. Seriously, if you’re going to invent a whole new lexicon and then drop the reader in unprepared, the least you could do is include a glossary. I’m practically begging, here.

Then about the time I finally managed to figure out the foreign language of werepanter tribal hierarchies, I was struck practically dumb by the horrid implications of what a reah actually is. Really, ick.

The problem I have with the idea of a reah, or mate, as written here, is that there’s no reciprocity. It (thus, Jin) is equated to a possession, like the perfect dress. Anyone can claim it and own it. It/he has nothing of importance to contribute beyond existing for the sake of being possessed. There is no sense that, “I am your mate and you are mine.” It’s just “You are my mate.” Logan even makes Jin repeat it in an almost infinite variety of ways. “Who do you belong to?” Who owns you?” “Whose reah are you?”

I realise that this isn’t actually uncommon in PNR (m/m or het), but I don’t find it romantic in the least and it felt particularly heavy handed in this book. Here is an example passage:

“You belong to me, reah, and I will put my mark on you.”
He was right. I belonged to him…

I have two complaints here. The ‘belong to’—not belong with, but to—and the use of his title instead of his name. He’s a reah, a possession, not Jin a person. This carries through the whole book.

This is reinforced by the fact that Jin goes on and on to the Semels who turn out not to be his mate about how it’s the reah who recognises and chooses the mate, not the Semel. But when he meets Logan, it’s Logan who recognizes him as a mate before Jin does. (In fact, with a little prompting from Logan, Russ even knows before Jin does.) Because, of course, it must be the Semel/top/seme/MAN who retains the power in the relationship, especially over who is chosen and who chooses.

Then there’s the one sided marking thing. Logan has, just has to mark Jin over and over. But despite both being men, Jin never feels the need to mark Logan. And apparently semels are strong enough to live on if their reah dies, but reahs aren’t if their semel dies. I think you get my point. The whole dehumanisation/love your mate as a possession shtick rubbed me the wrong way. It just wasn’t sexy, which is kind of a cardinal sin of romantic, borderline erotic fiction.

On that note, it’s probably worth mentioning that I didn’t find the sex sexy either. There was no finesse to it. It was all pounding and throwing and slamming. It felt much more like Logan was trying to beat the snot out of Jin than make love to him. meh

On top of my basic dislike of the semel and reah relationship, I just found a lot of bits about the plot that threw me for a loop. For example, there is a large infodrop that felt unnatural. If Crane’s been Jin’s friend since they were kids and was willing to go into exile with him, I find it hard to believe he knows none of the semel/reah stuff Jin explains to him and the reader. In fact, wouldn’t ALL werecats know this stuff, since it’s about their leaders?

Or the time a werepanter was marking Jin’s home and no one noticed. What? I mean, I can understand not seeing paw prints in the snow, but isn’t the whole point of cats urine-marking things to be smelled? So how did Jin or Crane not get a whiff of that?

Or am I really supposed to believe that Logan, a good, smart alpha would A) not know the specifics of their own laws, B) agree to something he didn’t first ensure he understood? Or here’s another, if you had been kidnapped and woke up half naked and chained in an S&M chamber, then escaped the back room to find yourself in a dance club. Would you stop and dance with some random coworkers in that same club? Seriously? WTF? Keep going idiot.

Or how about this: given that reahs have ALWAYS been female and the male-centic “it’s the place of all men to protect women” (and by extension the place of women to be protected by men) stance of the shifter packs, the Law of Bast declaring the reah the semel’s protector makes no sense at all. To call it a convenient plot device is an understatement.

Then there was the time that two individuals challenged eachother to a duel, of sorts. All very formal, with lots of official rules and named laws relating to it, etc. So, I’m still lost about why noone was upset or why Logan wasn’t forced to forfeit the match when Jin very clearly broke the rules. (The rules Logan had already broken, if I’m being pedantic.)

One of the biggest issues for me though was that the author seemed to want to have her cake and eat it too. Jin is almost universally worshipped by every shifter he meets (really, it’s surreal). A reah is a blessing and everyone is just praying their semel finds his one DESTINED, UNDENIABLE mate (when only ~1/1000 actually do). But then he is also reviled, exiled and hated for being a man and both Jin and Logan’s family try to deny him and their union. Surely, it can’t go both ways.

There’s all this overlap between characters and opinions, so it all comes across as all flippy-floppy. One minute Calmes is going on about how awe inspiring meeting a reah is and how much stronger a semel and a tribe will be for finding one. Then next characters are swearing him off as an abomination again. Back and forwards. I imagine this was supposed to create a bit of tension as inherent prejudices are confronted, but it just felt really, really inconsistent instead.

So I was confused by a number of smallish things, no real big deal. But causing me to almost choke on all of the love and good intentions toward then end was just too much for me. I’m not a big hearts and flowers fan to start with. But when it’s done with super cheesy dialogue…seriously, I’m dying over here.

The whole ‘turn your enemy to your alley via mercy in defeat’ was A) gagworthy and B) unrealistic, considering how egotistical and evil Domin had been previously. Am I honestly supposed to believe he’d instantly give up his pride and birthright to become an honorable man and servant?

Oh god, then all the praise and begging started:

“You are a Blessing, reah!” (Again, reah, not Jin…It is a blessing, not he is a blessing.)

“You saved your mate…but then helped those that tried to kill him. You are a gift, reah!”

Stay, stay, stay. Like he’s the freakin’ Messiah or something. gag, gag, gag. Seriously, GAG! Plus, super cheesy…and it went on forever.

Then the Too Stupid to Live Sh*t started, wherein Jin ran away because Logan betrayed him by incapacitating him in order to protect him. Jin even managed to compare this well-intended “betrayal” to his family trying to beat him to death and abandoning him for dead. Um…really not the same thing and the kind of TSTL logic that only makes sense in novels. I was not pleased

So, I’ve ranted a bit. I wasn’t captivated by this novel. I think I could have been if things had been a bit different. I can definitely see the formula other readers have comments on about Calmes books (even only reading the two so far) but this one was a fail for me, largely based on personal preferences. Part of me says, ‘Let it go. You’re taking it all too seriously.’ But another part of me just plain doesn’t like what it doesn’t like.

Soul of a Warrior

Book Review of Soul of a Warrior, by Denna Holm

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Soul of a WarriorAuthor, Denna Holm sent me an ecopy of what she called a sci-fi romance, titled Soul of a Warrior.

Description from Goodreads:
Hours before she is torn away from everything she knows, Kimi Wicker comes face to face with a tall blond-haired stranger who claims to be her mate. But he also claims to come from another world. Thinking the guy a crazy psychopath, Kimi tries to run with her two best friends and a feisty tabby-cat in tow. No one anticipates a second stranger showing up, one with a completely different agenda. 

Kimi and her friends don’t know who to trust when they find themselves abandoned on the hostile alien world. They are given no reason for why they are being left behind and no weapons to defend themselves against the predators of this strange new world.

One man will do anything to see Kimi brought back safely, even sacrifice his own life. The second wants them both to suffer, alive, but forever out of reach of each other

Review:
I read a lot. It’s my primary hobby. As a result, I write a lot of reviews. As anyone who’s read them regularly knows, it’s almost never a good sign when I start taking notes on a book. Occasionally I’ll jot down something I loved enough to want to ensure I remember to mention it. But more often than not, I start a notes page when the irritants start to pile up. I’m afraid Soul of a Warrior had a fairly long list of notes by the time I finished. This is generally not a good sign.

Now, I want to say, before I get into what will likely be an extensive list of reasons I didn’t like the book, that the writing and copy editing was pretty good. The idea for the book also seems to be an interesting one. Prior to sitting down to write this review I checked other readers’ reviews on both Goodreads and Amazon and the book seems to have only 4 & 5 star reviews with a few lower ratings thrown in without explanation. So, maybe it’s just me. I’d encourage people to pick it up and decide for themselves.

So, to start with my biggest issue, this isn’t one book, it’s two. And I don’t mean one book that should have been broken into a first and second in a series. I mean two separate books, one sci-fi/action adventure and one Urban fantasy/Paranormal romance. If you combined the first 15% with the last 25 % of this book into one story and then renamed the characters of the remains of this book you would have two complete, better stories as a result.

The plot of Soul of a Warrior, as it stands, simply wanders all over the place, with very little to hold it into a nice tight story…ok, nothing to hold it together. It’s just plain not a nice tight story at all. It starts out as urban fantasy/PNR (with cowboys, oddly enough), then drops the PNR completely for a while and falls into sci-fi/fantasy for the vast majority of the book, before throwing the paranormal and romantic elements back in at the end. (Additionally, I also felt it didn’t know if those sci-fi/fantasy parts wanted to primarily sci-fi or fantasy. There were a lot of elements of both. The genre title makes this easy to combine and disguise the disquieting effect of a book that combines too many dragons and mystical creatures with stun guns and transporter beams.) It’s jarring and very obviously different in tone and subject matter.

Further, the H/h (both sets, and there shouldn’t be two sets because one gets very little attention and it’s just a distraction from the already barely linked together plotline) are rarely in the story together. This means it doesn’t feel like their story. It feels like Kimi, Amanda & Keith’s Lost In Space (or on an alien world) adventure with the occasional discordant chapters dedicated to the strange guy Neyvarre thrown in on occasion.

Honestly, the sci-fi adventure would have been enough of a story without the PNR that’s tacked onto the beginning and end of this book, especially since I felt it was given a lot more attention than the PNR element. The PNR bits felt like a whole string of vampire/werewolf tropes strung together, instead of an original story. I know it’s hard to write anything new these days, but just about every aspect of that part of the book I’ve seen somewhere else (even the vampires from space). Again, as written this is essentially two stories. Trying to merge the two, as Holm has, only weakened both.

I very rarely say a book needs further editing. I think it’s arrogant. Who am I to make such a declaration? And when I do, it’s usually in reference to copy edits, which to be fair I found very few of. But here I’m going out on the limb. This book needs further content editing. It needs someone impartial to pull all the disparate parts into two readable books. If done well, Holm could have two eminently exciting stories on her hands.

Ok, that took a long time to explain and is the main issue I had with reading it. But it’s not the only thing that bothered me. There were also some pet peeves that I alternatively rolled my eyes or ground my teeth at.

Here is one: In PNR, having women letting their sexual inhibitions go by virtue of being half asleep is a fairly common (and for my part, HATED) trope. Here it was used to neatly sidestep any sort of getting to know each-other between the main H & h (the secondary ones didn’t even get this small courtesy). It was also used to allow Kimi to beg for ‘it’ without compromising her apparently all-important innocent virgin status. Because, of course, a ‘good girl’ wouldn’t beg…or even accept ‘it’ and our H only deserves the best, i.e. a virgin, who isn’t supposed to have any sexual desire of her own. And unless she’s begging for ‘it’ our ‘honorable’ H would never give ‘it’ to her. So obviously, the only way for Kimi to be allowed sexual expression and for Neyvarre to take her is to completely remove her own volition from the equation. grrr Why? Why can’t she be adult enough to have and express desires, both for Neyvarre and/or at any point in her twenty-something years on Earth?

Another is the way women/mates are handled in the text in general. Again, this isn’t uncommon in PNR, but it still annoys me to encounter it (and, as I said, string of tropes). Mates, i.e. women, really seem like possessions. Men are driven to crazy revenge plots by loosing them or driven to crazy rescue attempts to save them or to crazy protective actions to, well, protect them. They are elements that drive men to action, but there doesn’t seem to be much need to engage with them…or, you know, seek their consent for anything, not even moving across the galaxy to their ‘new home.’

This idea is reinforced by their repeatedly being referred to as “the females”— impersonal almost inanimate individuals, instead of as Kimi and Amanda…you know, people. They’d been claimed as surely as if a caveman whacked them over the head with a club and dragged them back to the cave or a clan raiding party stole them away in the night. Their feelings on the matter were just expected to fall in line eventually. And they did.

Similarly, I was annoyed to discover that men finding their mates seemed to be the only dynamic that mattered, even though there are obviously female vampires. Again, this isn’t a first. It’s always been an irritant of mine that in PNRs in which supernatural beings search out their mates, it’s almost always just the men. The whole mating process often doesn’t even have a female equivalent. It’s so common it’s hardly worth commenting on. But here I got excited when I was momentarily thrilled to find that this book allowed a female to speak about the possibility of finding her mate. Then, two or so pages later this was said, “Slight though the odds may be, other of our males might have a chance to find unclaimed mates on Earth.” Really? The female population was completely left out again, then?

Characters also display knowledge or assumptions they shouldn’t be able to. Maybe the reader could, but the reader has access to information the characters don’t. For example, at 94% Amanda says, “I know you think you love Neyvarre, and I’m happy for you, really I am.” The problem is that there had been no discussion about Neyvarre between Amanda and Kimi and, had there been, Kimi would not have spoken of love, as she hadn’t seen him in weeks and distrusted him at that time. So, what does Amanda base this sudden proclamation on?

Even worse, Amanda expresses hesitancy at being a werewolf’s mate and possibly a werewolf herself, when as far as I can see she was never even told she was Tallyn’s mate. (This is also an example of what I meant when I said having a second romantic pair cheated that second couple of needed or deserved screentime.)

Not only do the characters, as a group, come to decisions only a single one (or even just the reader) should be privy to, they also have mysterious changes in disposition. The characters meet BRIEFLY about 15% into the book, at which point Kimi doesn’t trust Neyvarre at all, and then they are separated until about 90%. At which point they meet again and are instantly all lovey-dovey and trusting of one another.

Now, this holds a certain emotional resonance for the reader, as he/she has seen both parties’ struggles (though mostly Kimi’s), but if you think about it, the characters haven’t seen or really communicated in that time, so there is no reason for there to have been such a drastic shift in attitude.

There were also a number of subtle ways Kimi was disempowered, even while doing things that should have made her a strong female lead. For example, allowing a man to take over her body in order to accomplish a task and thereby denying her, not only her own victory, but responsibility for it as well, as she was, “relieved not to be in control”. This is a theme that was echoed two or pages later: “In fact, she rather liked being able to press up against his strong body, lean on him and let someone else control the reins for a while.” ‘Cause, of course, no woman would ever really want to be in real control.

Last of the fairly major irritants were the long rambling passages that broke up any action at inopportune times. For example: Kimi being talked through the mechanics of riding a dragon (very much like a horse apparently), which killed any anticipation of the actual dragon race. Or long descriptions of the Hunter’s clothing, including the animal it comes from (even though this is a spacefaring/ transporter using species they still wear basic leathers), it’s uses, protections, etc at 84% through the book. This despite the fact that they’ve been wearing the same clothes since the beginning. 84% through seems an odd time to decide to describe them.

Ok, so those are my biggies. Here are my minor ones (in no particular order), many of them are just basic ‘but, huh?’ type issues.

  • How come, if no one would believe Elias when he claimed to have found his mate in a human, does everyone unquestioningly believe Neyvarre? Without him ever saying so even?
  • The classic, “Hi, I’m the villain. Let me introduce myself and my evil plans to you.”
  • Unknown side characters that are introduced, only to die. It clutters the narrative.
  • Endearments: the Hs that always call their mates ‘Little One,’ ‘Princess,’ or worst of all ‘Child.’ (I don’t care how much longer the vampire or werewolf has been alive than the human, if they’re gonna have sex, ‘Child’ is not an appropriate pet name.) Plus, Amanda, Kimi and Keith are always calling each-other ‘babe,’ ‘Sweety,’ ‘Baby.’ I’m from The South and this still annoys me.
  • Huge infodumps
  • occasionally stiff dialogue, especially from the vampires and werewolves
  • flat, underdeveloped characters & little world-building outside of the dangers of Lavina.
  • an unexplained religious undercurrent
  • Kimi was once able to telepathically contact Neyvarre. He tries to help her. So, why does she never try it again? Conversely, why can’t he contact her?
  • The odd language disparities, like riding a dragon and talking about ‘powering up’ one’s ability. Again, is it sci-fi or fantasy?
  • Decisions that make no sense at all, beyond convenience to the plot progression. Example: after fighting to survive for weeks on a hostile world Kimi follows a werewolf she just met and within minutes agrees to gamble his, her, Amanda and Keith’s lives in a race she has no reasonable expectation to win for a man she hasn’t yet met. And everyone just goes along with it.
  • All the hugging at the end. I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that anytime a book and it’s character degenerates into copious amounts of hugging then it’s lost it’s way somehow. I’m not just being snarky. I find it often accompanies a failed attempt to symbolise everyone’s happy ending and just comes across as sappy and overused instead.
  • Passages like this: “It shocked her to see teaSoul of a Warriorrs shining in her friend’s eyes.” (That’s how it’s written too, just like that, with the missing space and extra Rs. I left it that way because I don’t know if it’s supposed to be that way or if it was an editorial error). But as this is, what I assume to be, the title passage it’s obviously important. But it shows up at 98% with no explanation. What the hell does it mean?

So, to wrap up, this book has great reviews. I remind potential readers of that. But I, personally, couldn’t find that shining example of literary genius others did. It’s mechanically fine, but basically just annoyed the hell out of me repeatedly for 200+ pages.