Tag Archives: Paranormal romance

Alaskan Fire

Book Review of Sara King’s Alaskan Fire (Guardians of the First Realm #1)

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Alaskan FireI grabbed a copy of Sara King‘s Alaskan Fire from Amazon’s KDP list. 

Description From Goodreads:
Blaze MacKenzie is a freakishly-tall heiress who just discovered that her ‘parents’ actually found her abandoned as an infant in some bizarre human sacrifice in the woods. Along with that nasty little bit of information came a six hundred thousand dollar check, a strange golden feather, and the ability to move to the Alaska Bush and begin her dream-life living off the Grid.

Unfortunately for Blaze, life in rural Alaska isn’t as peaceful as she expected. Among her many startling discoveries is that her sexy new handyman, Jack Thornton, has already ‘claimed’ the territory that her new lodge is sitting on …

Further complicating matters, Jack makes it clear to Blaze that there are a good many things that go bump in the Alaskan night, and when a pack of werewolves goes rogue and starts killing or turning everyone along the Yentna River, Blaze and Jack find themselves in a fight for survival in this magic-soaked Land of the Midnight Sun.

Review:
I generally enjoyed Alaskan Fire. I found Blaze and Jack endearing. I found the two of them together hilarious…vulgar, churlish, and occasionally infuriating, but all in a really funny way. They curse like sailors, call each-other names, sass each-other constantly and basically fight for 400 pages. But they also support and protect each-other at the same time. The bathtub scene was especially sweet, if a little disgusting.

Between Blazes’ size and strength and Jack’s comparable shortness and large swath of helplessness, I found the whole reversal of gender roles a nice addition. So was the fact that Jack was a wereverine instead of a werewolf. It’s interesting that King decided to make her male lead the less glamorised species. I don’t know that I’d read a book about what Blaze is either. (I’m trying not to spoil it.) So it was something different.

I did occasionally want to gag at Blazes’ tendency to revel in being protected when she was so obviously a capable woman. It felt very much like she was choosing helplessness over competence at times. I had similar feelings about the sex scenes (though there really weren’t many of them) and how much she wanted to be dominated…and how often the reader is reminded of how ‘male,’ masculine,’ ‘manly’ Jack is. Surely there are more creative ways to say Blaze thought his strength was attractive.

The book did seem to go on and on…and on and on and on. The book is roughly 550 pages long and there really isn’t any more to the plot than your average PNR, which is usually between 250 and 350 pages. I actually started to laugh toward the end as I passed ending after ending, only to find another chapter leading to what could have (really probably should have) been the conclusion. By which I mean scenes that would traditionally be the end of a PNR book. There are four or five of them consecutively. Plus, after the first appropriate place to wrap up, the book’s feel changes dramatically. It went from angsty and angry to hearts and flowers almost instantly.

The feeling of endlessness was also exacerbated by the fact that throughout the book any and everything took forever and a day to actually happen or happened more than once–the second and third escape attempt, for example. There were large chunks of downtime–the whole Brad and the rain section, almost all of the farming/building scenes, etc. And there was A LOT of ranting on about heritage breeds and such. Now I completely agree with the message in all of it, but it was played just a little heavy handedly…or maybe repeated too frequently.

All-in-all I’m glad to have read it, would happily read the sequel, Alaskan Fury, if it fell in my lap, and will keep my eyes open for more of Sara King’s writing. I think the book could do with a fairly ruthless pair-down to tighten the plot up, but I still enjoyed it.

Addendum: You can see my review of book II here. 

Shifting Shadows

Book Review of Amanda Kelly’s Shifting Shadows

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Shifting ShadowsI downloaded a copy of Amanda Kelly’s Shifting Shadows (Sparks Collide, #1) from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Party boy and werewolf, Jay Dellarson is stunned when his uncle hires a human to be his newest assistant. Kira Franklin is a sheltered girl with a mysterious past who’s finally taking charge of her life. When Jay and his pack begin to spend more time with the new girl in town, things start to unravel. Kira fights to keep her secrets hidden but when she finds out the truth of the town’s inhabitants it puts her in greater danger than ever before. While discovery of the werewolves’ secrets is dangerous, it’s discovery of Kira’s secrets that could place everyone in the middle of a vicious war.

Review:
This was an alright read if you like the kind of thing. It is told in first person, which I generally dislike. To complicate things it is told in first person from the perspective of two people. I found this really distracting and annoying. Now, I did appreciate being able to see both character’s POVs, but I’ve found myself constantly having to double check the chapter headings to remember who was currently narrating.

I really, really liked that this was not a case of insta-love. I found the romance a lot more realistic for the time it took to develop. But this was definately one of those books where the heroine manages to charm everyone effortlessly and by the end it starts to feel just a little too kumbaya for my taste–with everyone throwing wonderful affirmations around. This always strikes me as an underdevelopment.

The book seemed to throw the magic in all of a sudden. One moment Kira is going along as a normal girl unknowingly hanging out with the werewolves, the next she is suddenly off doing her thing. (I don’t want to give a spoiler, but suffice it to say there is no build up and so the reveal seems very abrupt.) I also didn’t quite grasp the seriousness of her situation. I understood she was in hiding because of the war. But she wasn’t anyone special to it, not a princess or the daughter of a leader or an active participant. She was just one girl so I saw no reason for her to be any more hunted than anyone else. Therefore all of her and her family’s precautions seemed really over the top.

It also ended without ending. I know that this is the first of a series, but my absolute, number one, literary pet peeve is…I would call it a cliffhanger, but that’s not right. A cliffhanger infers an actual conclusion of some sort while leaving some thread open for continuation. Nothing in this book concludes. There is one red herring event that substitutes an ending, but that’s just a cheat. The perpetrator of the mysterious attacks that plaque the whole book is not only not revealed it isn’t even addressed because it is still open and in the air.

I think this probably counts as New Adult as opposed to YA since the characters are all in their mid-twenties, but there isn’t any sex. I’m still figuring out what falls into that genre. I enjoyed the read.

Book Review of Rachel Francis’ Life on Fire

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Life on FireYesterday, as I was trolling my TBR list, muttering to myself about how I could have so very, very many books and still not pick anything to read, my daughter reached over and said, “How about that one? It looks interesting.” Well there you go, decision made (and proof positive that covers matter).

Rachel Francis‘ PNR novel, Life on Fire, was downloaded from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Anna grew up in the peace of Caroline, a small East coast town barely warranting its own school district. When that serenity is shattered by murder, no one feels safe. One, two, three attacks and no end in sight, Anna falls into a deep depression, spurred onward by the sudden departure of her best friend.

It’s then she notices the strangers around town. Anna enters a world of magic when she comes face to face with two of the newcomers, leaving her changed forever. Saving her hometown may be second only to keeping a centuries old war from boiling over.

Review:
Life on Fire takes the same old, same old and spruces it up enough to be interesting. Anna is a regular, small town girl until her life is endangered and she awakens to her inherent, and previously unknown, paranormal powers. These powers are of course the most powerful there can be. But not to worry, there is an emotionally damaged hotty available to fall in love with her and help her through the transition. She in turn will of course sooth his injured soul in a way no one has been able to before. As well as effortlessly help and earn the admiration of everyone around her.

I’m being trite I know. I did say the same old plot was livened up a little bit though. It’s the characters that add the spice. Wendrick is a wonderfully conflicted character, by far the best in the book IMO. He carries his own heavy burden of ability, responsibility and basic guilt for what he is. David and Rosalyn have an interestingly tempestuous relationship, and Anna has a strong, loving family. Anna was my least favourite of the bunch. In a book that walked the standard genre line so unwaveringly it was the small divergences that kept it from being boring and Anna didn’t stray too far from the standard PNR heroine. She therefore didn’t hold my interest very well. I didn’t hate her or anything. She was just kind of a null for me.

Her and Wendrick together were pretty good however. This isn’t exactly a case of instant-love, or rather I think the author tried to pull it back from insta-love. It’s pretty quick though. And even if not quite instant, the love between Anna and Wendrick solidifies with very little outside influence. He is inexplicably drawn to her and she pretty much goes on a systematic campaign to make him her own. There isn’t really any falling in love as much as finally accepting the love.

Though the main character is 22, this reads like a YA book. Anna still lives at home with her parents. Wendrick is several hundred years old, but acts like a stroppy teenager. David sulks through the whole first half of the story and Anna has dealt with one of her best friend’s crushes for years. There is one mild, largely inexplicit sex scene. It’s the only reason I hesitate to call this YA.

My main complaint is that the dialogue is incorrectly formatted throughout the book, such that a spoken sentence is often on the same line as the response of the person spoken to. Creating confusion about who is actually speaking after all. A made-up example (cause I’m too lazy to go find my kindle and pick out a real one): ”Sit there.’ John sighed, but sat.’ In this case John would be the person spoken to, not the speaker. It’s obvious on a second glance, but it takes that second glance and disrupts the flow.

For an easy, mindless couple hours of entertainment Life on Firefits the bill.