Tag Archives: Omegaverse

Dragons Treasure

Book Review of Dragon’s Treasure, by C.J. Starkey

Dragon's TreasureI picked up a copy of Dragon’s Treasure (by C. J. Starkey) when it was free on Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Sean has a type, he’s not ashamed to admit, and Jack fits the bill to a tee.  

Sean 
My life was a blur of work, sleep and the occasional night out. Despite my friends’ best efforts to get me laid on a regular basis I just couldn’t make anything stick. 
It didn’t seem like Jack was going to be any different. I made a complete and utter fool of myself more than once and then our first intimate encounter was a threesome with a werewolf shifter. Finding out he was a dragon shifter should have been more surprising than it was but after that first time, I think I knew I wanted him for keeps. 
I should have known our relationship would happen on it’s own timeline, completely out of our control. 

Jack 
Sean was fascinating from the very beginning. He was a contradiction in every sense of the word – I never knew whether to be blown away by his surprising intelligence or by how deep he could stick his foot in his mouth. 
I’d had too many flings go sour to be willing to risk it, even in spite of the animal attraction I felt towards him. An old friend not-so-gently encouraged me into it and well, I always did tend to plunge headfirst into things. 
Why should this be any different? 

A Dragon’s Treasure is a standalone MM story, with steamy love scenes, Mpreg and a HEA ending! 

Review:
#DNF at 19%, which is the end of A Dragon’s Treasure. The rest being “bonus stories.” Um, No. I’m pretty sure this is just a collection of short stories, despite what the cover and title say. What’s more, I’m pretty sure this is one of those authors you hear about who is cranking out misleading books for the buck they might make, not for the art or love of writing. Starkey just made my Do Not Buy List. I don’t usually review books I don’t finish, but when I think readers are being scammed an author I feel obligated to highlight it.

To discuss the one short story I read, that was sold as a 200+ page book, it was BAD. It read like a court report. I could almost imagine someone standing there saying, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” There was one rushed sex scene and then a whole rushed romance/pregnancy. No development. No world-building. No indentations or hard returns between paragraphs. No consistency in tense. Reading this was in no way an enjoyable experience, even without factoring in the feeling of being manipulated and tricked by it’s inaccurate presentation.

I’m starting to feel like you have to swim with sharks to trust a book purchase these days.

Book Review of The Omega Prince (The Kingdom of Pacchia #1), by Lia Cooper

The Omega Prince

I picked up a copy of The Omega Prince (by Lia Cooper) when it was free on Amazon. It was still free at the time of posting.

Description from Goodreads:
The Tri-fete, an opportunity for the alphas in Pacchia to show off their strength, stamina, and martial prowess, comes once every three years. This is the first time the competition has been held since the Crown Prince Aubrey of Lyle and Wescott presented as an omega and there is much speculation he may take a mate from one of the alphas competing. 

But there is more than friendly competition underway as the mysterious Lord Riven returns to court for the first time in nearly a decade and assassins plot against the King. 

Prince Aubrey must find a way to balance expectation and personal desire in THE OMEGA PRINCE, the first story set in Pacchia, a mythical kingdom based on the a/b/o gender structure. 

Review:
I really quite enjoyed this, though I’m annoyed at it (the series that should be the book, IMO) being broken into so many small pieces and ending on a cliffhanger. Why do authors insist on breaking books into serials? I hate this with a burning passion.

Outside of that issue, I enjoyed the authors voice. I liked Aubrey and Riven as characters. I liked the plotline. I liked that the alpha/beta/omega universe is explained, or at least addressed. So often it’s just presented and not explored and I’m left wondering why pairing have to work the way they do. I also liked that alpha (as well as betas and omegas) could be both male and female.

There was a lot to enjoy here. Granted, the editing is a disaster and, again, it’s pointlessly incomplete. At just over 100 page, it could easily have been expanded into a COMPLETE work. But I’d read the next installment if it crossed my path.

Alpha's Surprise Baby

Book Review of Alpha’s Surprise Baby, by Kellan Larkin

Alpha's Surprise BabyI picked up a copy of Alpha’s Surprise Baby (by Kellan Larkin) from Amazon, when it was free. It was still free at the time of posting.

I’m currently reading all the books on my shelves that have Alpha in the title. I did all the Omegas a couple weeks ago and it didn’t feel complete, so I tagged this second phase onto the challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
His blonde hair, the colorful tattoos on his porcelain skin, and his sparkling amber eyes were all intoxicating, conspiring to create a man who I couldn’t get enough of.

Kade’s an Omega wolf who just happens to be a rock star. But when his second album is released to terrible reviews, he loses all his enthusiasm for going on tour. That changes when his newly hired bodyguard turns out to be his fated mate.

Alpha Xander is thrilled to have found the man he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. But he’s still healing from the pain caused by a cheating ex. When Kade gets pregnant, he has to step up and become the father his new baby needs.

Through a stressful tour, a heartrending kidnapping, and a thrilling rescue, Kade and Xander find that their love is tested beyond belief. Will the bond of the fated mates stay true?

Find out if they’ll find their happiness in this standalone novella with a HEA. No cheating, no cliffhangers. Inside, you’ll find a precious shifter baby and plenty of sugar and spice.

Review:
Wow, you guys, that was bad. I mean really, really bad. The mechanical writing is surprisingly good. There’s the occational editing error, but it’s much better than a lot of the indie books I’ve read. But man, it has the excitement, tension and grit of a fluffy, tutu wearing, 12-year-old ballerina. I found it almost impossible to stay invested in. If it had been longer I wouldn’t have been able to finish it. The writing is just incredibly flat. I mean like no excitement anywhere.

Here’s an example:

“Kade, you’re pregnant.”
“Damn. OK.”

And I didn’t even leave anything out. That’s it. Man finds out he’s accidentally pregnant and that’s it. That’s the response. Talk about a missed opportunity to build tension.

The whole book is like this. Found your fated mate? ‘Ok, I’ll get around to talking to him sometime next week, after I have some tacos and practice with the band a bit.’ Daughter gets kidnapped? ‘Oh well, might as well get on with life like normal the very next day.’ Rescued your daughter? ‘Oh, that’s nice. Want some grilled cheese?’ No buildup, no tension, no emotion. DULL!

And that sex scene! No foreplay at all. An anal passage that apparently self-lubricates somehow, a total shift in characters’ personalities during sex and a climax as thrilling as that pregnancy announcement was all a major let down.

There was no world-building at all, nothing to explain shifters, shifter society, shifters’ exposure or not, shifter biology (which in an Mpreg is kind of important), what makes an alpha and alpha and an omega an omega (despite inferring that these were somehow very different, with different expectations and abilities, and apparently they mate only alpha to omega and omega to alpha. What about all the other wolves? No idea.)

The characters were no more developed than the world. I have no idea what their ages were supposed to be, but they read like very juvenile young adults….that, you know, have really unexceptional sex. They had no history, no depth, no verve.

On a side note, this is very much the Omega’s Surprise Baby, not the Alpha’s. But whatever. All in all, this one is worth missing.