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Book Review of Blood Lust & Love and Blood (Blood Ties .5 & 1), by Jessica Gibson

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Jessica GibsonI grabbed the Blood Ties series, by Jessica Gibson, from the Amazon free list. I read them now because the first one, Blood Lust, was the last book in my Blood Lust reading challenge, in which I read four books with that same title.

Description of Blood Lust:
Ronan has lived for hundreds of years. In all of his years there has only been one for him. What will he risk to get back what is his by right?

Review:
The problem here wasn’t so much the writing as that there isn’t anything to it. It’s basically just vampire attacking woman after woman and stalking another woman altogether. As a means of letting you know how little there is to this story let me make examples of frequently used words, which are emblematic of repeated scenes.

Both drop/dropped and ground are used 10 times. As in he dropped her body (14 times) to the ground. That doesn’t count the ones he tossed in trash cans or at his feet, etc. Throat is used 14 times, as in he tore (6 times) her throat out/up/etc. That’s separate from the times he sank his fangs (12 times) into a neck. And his favourite method of getting them alone to callously kill them is to take the women walk/walking. It’s used 19 times. Finally, blood was used 50 times. Yes, I’ll concede that it’s a vampire story, but the darned thing is only 23 pages long!

As a prequel, I suppose it does introduce Ronan, who I assume is the villain in the following novella’s but as a story this is pointless.

16247779Description of Love and Blood:
Bronwyn Fitzgibbons was young and reckless. It was easy for Ronan to steal her human life and make her a vampire. She ran, but she never forgot him–or how he made her feel.

Rider saved Bronwyn from the new life she loathed and the new self she detested. His love restored her sanity. 

Now Ronan is back to claim her. She struggles like hell against him, but she cannot deny the overwhelming power of her maker. Will Bronwyn surrender to the one who could possess her utterly? Or can she find the strength to choose the one who loves her as she is?

Review:
Would it make sense if I said Jessica Gibson knows how to write, but apparently doesn’t know how to write a book? I mean, mechanically the sentences flow fine. Grammatically the work is perfectly readable. But the story, oh fuck, the story is a damned mess.

For one, let me ask how you feel about love triangles. I hate love triangles. This means that a book that is essentially stripped of all plot except a love triangle is not a good thing in my world. The first 50% of this book is absolutely nothing more than Ronan and Rider (yes, their names are that similar) fighting over Wyn and Wyn playing them both. Then at around 50% new characters are introduced and we’re off to fight a werewolf war with a bunch of characters that didn’t exist two pages earlier. What!?

There is absolutely no development of ANYTHING in this book—no plot development, no character development, no world building, no romantic developments or character growth. Nothing. And new characters, that play no part in the book, are introduced all the way up to 85%. (The book ends at 92%, so lets just say up until the end.)

Lastly, (I could rant on and on and on, but I’m going to limit myself here) this book is clearly labeled as book 1. I’ve even read the prequel, useless as it was. But if you handed me this book without a cover, my first question on finishing it would be, “Where are the first three books?” There is so much missing information that I would assume this was several books into a series. All the characters know one another and have 4 years of history. Then there is all of the Ronan drama (20 years worth) and the ‘romance’ with Rider (15 years worth), not to mention the werewolf drama (5 years worth). Heck on that last point, we never even learn the name of the woman they go to war over! Oh, and Fae are in there somewhere too. WTF!

If you want to read an outline of a SERIES, feel free to pick this ‘book’ up. If you’re interested in a book, with a solid, well-paced (or simply paced) story, avoid this thing like the plague. And I hate to say that, because I’ve rated books/authors with similar mechanical skill far higher than 1 star, but man oh man, this book (despite being more readable than some other indies) just doesn’t cut it in the story department.

I actually have the next in the series (Blood and Sacrifice) and, at only 88 pages, I considered just reading it. If I don’t read it now, I never will and it will just turn into detritus on my kindle. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Blood Lust

Book Review of Blood Lust (Lust Trilogy, #1), by Jessica L. Degarmo

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Blood Lust Jessica DegarmoJessica L. Degarmo‘s Blood Lust came from the Amazon free list in Feb. or 2013. That means I’ve had it two years and it qualifies for my TBR reading challenge. It’s also the first Degarmo book I’ve ever read, so it qualifies for my First Reads challenge. I’m also in the middle of a Blood Lust reading challenge and it’s the third book in a row that I’ve read with that same title.

Description from Goodreads:
In the heart of Chicago, two street gangs battle for control of the city.

Nexess was once a young girl named Elizabeth. Now she’s the private property of gang leader Antonio Bianchi, sex slave and assassin for his gang, Nuove Leve. Night after night, Antonio sends her out to do his bidding, and when she returns, she must bow to his every desire.

When a chance encounter introduces her to one of her own kind, Nexess must decide between good and evil. Or maybe the lesser of two evils.

Will Jace convince Nexess to leave Antonio, or will she stay with the man who may be her salvation … or her damnation? Love, lust and loyalty all come into question as Nexess struggles to overcome, or to accept, her own blood lust.

Review:
Christ almighty did I hate this book! It’s not that it’s a badly written book. The editing could use a little attention and the writings a bit stiff and repetative, but on the whole, it’s not bad. I just plain hated the story, the characters, the plot, everything.

The whole thing was essentially one woman being psychologically, emotionally, sexually, physically and domestically abused. I suppose the author might have intended her to seem strong to have survived it, but I never made it to the strong part.

At one point I posted a reading update along the lines of ‘I don’t care if she was only a teenager when all of this happened to her. I don’t care if she was abused. I don’t care if she supposed to have been conditioned like a Pavlovian dog. I don’t care if she’s supposed to have Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. Right now she is TSTL and I kind of hate her.’ (Though in actuality, I’m fairly sure Pavlov used positive conditioning, which is the opposite of Nexus’ but we’ll let it stand.) Having finished the book, I find that that is still my strongest reaction to the book as a whole. Thank goodness for Alphonso. He was the only redeemable feature of the whole thing.

Now, I’m not oblivious to the correlation the author made to addiction and she actually did a good job likening Nexuses dedication to her ‘Master’ as an addiction and highlighting the very real and complicated reasons that abused women stay with their abusers. But again, I did not at all enjoy the journey of this book.

What’s more, Nexus was always begging to be fucked (that’s the language used in the book) and fell into insta-lust with the first male vampire she met. This felt so very much like the old, ‘women can’t control their own sexual urges’ trope that I was pretty much sickened by it.

This book has great reviews. People must have very different taste than me, because I can’t imagine what those reviews are based on. I hated it. But to each their own. I am only one of many differing opinions.

Servant of Steel

Book Review of Servant of Steel (Chaos Awakens #1), by Heath Pfaff

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Servant of SteelI snagged a copy of Heath Pfaff‘s Servan of Steel from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Having two of his fingers cut off at an early age hadn’t done much to make Xandrith an agreeable fellow. Besides marking him as a pariah and having him shunned by even his own family, it had also hurt. A lot. Being stripped of a few of his fingers and cast out of the Order of Mages had left him bitter and angry, but if there was any consolation to be had it was that he was doing rather well in his new line of work. While perforating people for money might not have been the most noble of callings, it was quite lucrative. Well, it had been quite lucrative.

In a conspiracy of fate seemingly beyond his control, Xan soon finds himself facing a dilemma of conscience, and that isn’t something he’s familiar with. One dilemma leads to another, and before long the mage-turned-assassin finds himself performing more and more honorable deeds. Worse yet, without even attempting to do so he manages to acquire friends and to develop a sense of compassion.

As Xan struggles with his burgeoning humanity, a terrible darkness begins to wake in the world. The Order of Mages, once an overbearing power of control, seems to be losing its grip as a terrifying doom of their own creation rises in the north. As if that wasn’t enough, the horror brought upon the world by the folly of the mages may only be the precursor to something far more sinister.

Review:
This is one of those books that is difficult to review, because I ended it thinking, ‘what a great book,’ but then thought way back to the beginning and realised how much terrane had been traversed between the beginning and the end. Suddenly the book felt gangly and somewhat unfocused.

It has some great characters. Xan has a dry, fatalistic (though he doesn’t believe in fate) sense of humour that I really appreciated. In fact, it carried the book for me. The world-building is fairly rich and other than editing (which is honestly in need of a little more attention) the writing is pretty good. But the whole book is a series of tasks, set one on top of the other and, in the end, any attempted climax just felt like one more hill on a long journey. It tends to sap the tension out of a story.

Also, there are a couple questionable coincidences that, unless later explained to have been arranged, are beyond believable. So much, in fact, that even the book comments on how lucky one in particular is.

My final say is that the book is worth reading, though, and I’ll be looking for the sequels.