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Into the Darkness

Book Review of Into the Darkness, by K. F. Breene

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Into the Darkness

I grabbed K. F. Breene‘s Into the Darkness from the Amazon Free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
I’d always been different. I saw objects in the night where others saw emptiness. Large, human shaped shadows, fierce yet beautiful, melting into the darkness. I collected secrets like other women collected bells; afraid to fully trust lest my oddities be exposed.

Until I saw him. He’d been gliding down the street, unshakable confidence in every step. It wasn’t just that he was breathtakingly handsome with perfect features. Something about him drew me. Sucked my focus to him and then tugged at my body. As his eyes met mine, I was entrapped.

No one had noticed him. He’d been right there, just beyond the light, but only I had perceived.

I had to know if he was real. Or maybe I really was crazy. And even when my secret box was blasted wide open, dangers hurled at me like throwing knives, I couldn’t stop until I unraveled his true identity.

I just had to know.

Review:
I quite enjoyed Into the Darkness. Despite it’s humour, it will likely only appeal to a certain few, though. A number of other reviewers have pointed out that it isn’t a book for the faint of heart. It does include a little guy on guy action, but I think the problem is more the issue of  consensuality. What qualifies as consensual could be a whole sub-theme of this book. There is only one fully, unquestionably consensual sex act in it (and there’s plenty of sex). But there aren’t any flat out rapes either. It’s all a little muddled by manipulated emotions and falsified wants. If you’re sensitive about such things I imagine it would creepy you out. Neither the M/M aspect nor the questionable consent issues bothered me. But they are certainly there.

I should probably say a bit more about sex. Sex is graffiti in this novel. It’s everywhere and largely pointless after a while. If the book had been longer I wouldn’t’ have had an issue with this. But as it’s so short, the redundant sex cut into the time for plot and character development. IMO, the book either needed to be longer or the sex needed to be pared down once the Vampires’ Pheromonal effect was established.

I quite liked Sasha. Often when heroines are mouthy it comes off as forced and/or almost suicidal in their insistence on verbal sparring. Shasha pulls it off though. I enjoyed her defiance. Charles was hilarious and Stefan was a true hardass. I loved the fact that he never went all soft and gooey eyed.

My only true complaints are that the whole thing does get a little ridiculous at times and it’s a serious case of ‘girl with magical power that she doesn’t know she has or how to use, but it still mysteriously manifests itself whenever she needs.’ Well, isn’t that convenient? It’s not particularly believable, even in fantasy, and is also a bit of a personal pet peeve.

On finishing the book I immediately went looking for a sequel. One’s apparently due out in March. I’ll be looking for it. I will note that it’s not a stand alone book. It’s not a super cliffhanger, as are so common now. It ends at a logical point, but none of the threads wrap up. None. If I had realised this ahead of time I probably wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place.

Immortal Becoming

Book Review of Immortal Becoming (The Enlightened Species, #1), by Wendy S. Hales

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Immortal BecommingI grabbed Wendy S. Hales‘ Immortal Becoming (The Enlightened Species, #1) from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Shane Einar is a five hundred year old Volaticus Elven warrior, sworn to duty and honor. His species has inhabited the earth since the beginning of time. The sources of vampire, elf and fairy myths, Volaticus are in reality something altogether different. He never expected to meet Jess Reed. A female living amongst humanity completely unaware that she is Hulven, a human/Elven hybrid race of Volaticus, or that she is on the cusp of Becoming into her Elven traits.

Shane should turn Jess over to the Symbiosis of Species Council, SOSC. His attraction to her along with her ability to enrapture him with a smile bars him from it. He rightly suspects that this female is his bloodmate. 
Jess had always been psychic, a painful and confusing fact of her life. With Shane’s loving support she learns to control her abilities and discovers the psychically enlightened species that share this world. 

Together they sacrifice the power of their bloodmating in the battle to save females from breeding cages under the control of an Elven rogue.

Review:

**mild spoiler**
This book has a ton of great reviews and very few bad ones. I guess I’m in the minority, but I found myself constantly annoyed at with it. The writing was simplistic, but passable. So, that wasn’t the issue. It was the characters and some aspects of the plot that made me alternatively scoff, roll my eyes, groan, growl and cringe and almost never laugh, smile, or blush. I just didn’t particularly enjoy reading it.

Important things, like the kidnapping of a relatively major character and the fight around it were glossed over quickly while other, less important things (Jorie’s low iron level drama, for example) were described in excruciating and never-ending detail.

I’m also fairly sure it’s meant to be PNR, not erotica, which means that the focus shouldn’t be more heavily centred on the characters’ sexual relationship than the rest of the plot. But, as much as I love a steamy sex scene or two (dozen), here the amount of time dedicated to the Jess and Shane’s sexual attraction (not necessarily actual sex, but thoughts, actions, words, etc related to their attraction to one another) eclipsed the story.

Plus, it had one of the most ridiculous virginal sex scenes ever. Please! So unrealistic. I don’t demand realism in my fantasy, but I do expect not to spend the whole time so distracted by the lack of realistic emotions, actions, reactions, etc. that it ruins the experience. The sex didn’t really improve after that, either. As example, at one point Jess gets two swats on the butt and is then said to be ‘close to orgasm.’ Really two slaps on the bum (15 seconds worth) is all she needs? She then literally orgasmed on entry (another 15 seconds). Ugh.

I was further infuriated by Jess’ version of post-coital pillow talk. The cliché sexually molested foster child disclosure…seriously, can authors not think of any other history for female characters? I swear I’ve read this same scene, or some slight variation of it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. I’m so sick of it. Both because of the repetitive nature of encountering it so regularly and because it’s often irrelevant to the rest of the plot. I consider it a cheap attempt at character development by giving the girl a tragic past and generally think poorly of most authors who use it. Not always, sometimes it’s important. This wasn’t one of those times though. It contributed nothing of importance to the story, so why include it?

Plus, Jess chose to disclose this little gem of history right in the middle of an otherwise happy scene with a man she’d known for mere hours. As if this wouldn’t be a total downer, or she wouldn’t worry about it being too heavy for their infantile relationship, or she wouldn’t be embarrassed. As if this was a perfectly natural thing to bring up at that point in time, with that person. It was not! It was ridiculous. Predictable. Unnecessary. It didn’t even flow naturally. She wasn’t supposed to have been having a flashback or have been reminded of it by the sex. She just blurted it out of nowhere. Again, why?

Shane, predictably, wasn’t put off by any of this. He just went on thinking how amazing/strong/etc she was. This was a theme for him. Love will do that to a guy, I guess. But the thing is, for most of the book, I didn’t see Jess do anything noteworthy to earn this respect. She cried at the drop of a hat, was too stubborn, and had a tendency to just accept anything put in front of her with little to no critical thought.

As I mentioned, most of the writing is fine. There are some editing issues, but they aren’t too distracting. What was though were the thousand-year-old immortals who talked like teenagers. I don’t just mean using modern slang. That would be bad enough, but things like referring to another as Mom (even though the point was made elsewhere that due to their long lives they generally call their parents by name). Hearing a 3000+ year old man call, ‘The yard is clear, Mom.’ was just WRONG on so many fronts.

The book has an interesting idea. If the world-building had been a little more robust it could have been really good. Ms. Hales obviously has done a lot of thinking about the different species, the political system, the biology etc. The outline is there. But it’s fairly complex and since not enough time is dedicated to explaining it, the reading is left confused by it. But it would be unfair to not point out that there is a really interesting world being developed here.

I have the rest of the series and I imagine I’ll read them at some point, but not right not. According to the blurbs, the heroine in book 2 has been used for a blood/breeding slave for decades (repeatedly raped and impregnated), the heroine in book 2.5 is saved from a gang rape by the hero and in book three we’re back to the breeding slaves (rape, rape, rape, anyone else see a theme in here?) Since, as I’ve mentioned, rape as an easy plot device isn’t something I enjoy, I can only take so many books BASED on female victimhood in a row. I guess I’m just odd like that. So, I need a break from the series before I can finish it out. (Though I have to admit the temptation of Gil and Innanna…)

Take Me

Book Review of T. A. Grey’s Take Me (The Untouchables, #1)

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Take MeI grabbed T. A. Grey‘s PNR novel, Take Me from the KDP free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:

SHE MAKES HIS BLOOD BURN

Dominic Blackmoore meets the woman who captures his mind and body with a look and he’s instantly taken with her. When he was ordered to take another mate quickly after separating from his ex, he loathed the idea. However, after catching sight of his bruid he quickly changes his mind. He finds her utterly captivating, sensually erotic, and yearns to learn everything about her. 

BUT SHE’S NOT HIS BRUID

The woman he’s mistaken as his bruid is none other than the event planner, Felicity Shaw, for his mating ceremony. Now Dominic will do everything it takes, even lie to the woman he craves, to keep her at his side. He needs to mate with his bruid in order to win his political campaign but he finds himself falling in love with Felicity Shaw. In the end he must choose between work or love. He may make the right decision, but is it too late to save his lies from hurting Felicity?

HE TAKES HER BREATH AWAY

Felicity Shaw wants more in life. She’ll even lie to get it, which is exactly how she lands a job with the illustrious Blackmoore family. However, it’s the head of the vampire household, Dominic Blackmoore, that has her heart racing and breath catching. The man consumes her unlike anyone ever has before. She can’t resist him though she tries. As she’s forced to work with Dominic she tries to keep away from him but he doesn’t make things easy. 

She may want him with a passion she’s never experienced before, but she will not be with him when he’s mating to another woman. It’s either her or no one. But one terrible lies seals their fates together in ways neither of them imagined, threatening their love and the very fabric of their relationship.

Review:

OK, so I’m not claiming this isn’t a quality book but there was very little in it that appealed to me. I simply didn’t like it. More often than not, the characters reacted to stimuli in ways that made me cringe and/or ignored the things I thought would be important in those same circumstances. My frustration level remained high for almost all of it.

To start with, Dom was a straight up dick. He kept spouting off about how he loved Felicity and would do anything for her, when he very clearly wouldn’t…didn’t. Even the change of circumstances that finally allowed them to be together wasn’t at his impetus and it’s pretty obvious that he would never have done it if things were left to him. Then when that change did occur it wasn’t at all clear that it wasn’t just another political machination. (What it was however was predictable.)

Further, he spoke disparagingly of his father’s tendency to keep mistresses while SIMULTANEOUSLY trying make the same arrangement with Felicity. He gave not one thought to the fact that if he got his way he would be selfishly consigning his mate to an eternity married to a man who refused her even the barest emotional (let alone physical) connection. Asshat! Asshat. Asshat. Asshat. And if I can’t bring myself to like, let alone sympathise with the hero there isn’t much chance of me liking the book.

Felicity wasn’t much better. I found her to be a weak-willed pushover. But even worse, she said repeatedly that she wouldn’t be with Dom until he was no longer with Julianna. Note, not I won’t be with you BECAUSE you’re with Jasmine, but until you’re not, which substantively isn’t much of a moral improvement over just being the mistress. It’s still destroying someone else’s relationship. The only real difference would be to HER pride and if in the long run, she has to play first or second fiddle. Bitch! Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. And if I can’t bring myself to like, let alone sympathise with the heroine there isn’t much chance of me liking the book.

I’m afraid my dislike began on page one, when it started with a dubiously consensual sex scene between two unknown characters (and I mean paragraph one, page one starting). I almost didn’t make it past that first chapter before tossing this on the DNF pile. I just didn’t care about the characters yet. Heck, I didn’t know the characters, circumstance, history, etc. So how exactly was I supposed to care? This was also problematic because since it was stated in this anchorless sex scene that it was their first time having sex together, in all of the subsequent almost sex scenes I knew it wouldn’t come to fruition. Totally ruined the sense of suspense.

I also had trouble with the writing. Again, I’m not saying it was bad, just didn’t appeal to me. I found the onomatopoeias (thump, boom, thwack) annoying, even more so since they were sometimes italicised and sometime capitalised. Either way I found they broke the flow of the narrative.

There were a lot of editing mistakes—typo-type/grammar mistakes, but also the more annoying content errors. For example, Felicity was said at one point to be 75 years old, at another she was said to be 118. She’s said to be short at one point and then tall for a woman at another, etc.

I also found it repetitive, in terms of using the same phrases again and again (I thought I might gag if I read “the look” one more time), using the same word more than once is a short amount of time (often in the same sentence) and telling the reader the same information numerous times.

Lastly, and I’m not sure how to make this make any more sense here than it did in the book, I had a lot of trouble with the use of the word ‘were’ as an abbreviation for werewolf. The problem was that when stranded in a sentence it was read as were (like were you there). Which means I often read it as the past subjunctive of the word be, then finished the sentence only to then have to go back and read it again once I realised it was supposed to be werewolf. Even after that I was stricken to hear it pronounced in my head as were instead of where, as if said by some strongly accented person. IMO, it would have worked better if the author had used the full term, werewolf, or if an abbreviation was necessary, wolf, thereby avoiding the confusion of terms.

I know people like this book. I’ve seen all the good reviews. I’ll even admit that the world it presented was an interesting one and I did appreciate that the author broke away from the norm by letting her hero fail on occasion  Unfortunately, I found myself procrastinating about picking up my kindle, while normally I’m picking up my kindle to procrastinate about other things. Almost nothing about the story or the characters made me happy. It’s mostly all personal preferences, but I’m happy to be finished with it.