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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.

Veiled

Book Review of Veiled, by Victoria Knight

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Veiled

A representative of Laudanum House Publishing, contacted me about reading and reviewing Victoria Knight‘s PNR, Veiled. When I agree, they sent me a copy. As far as I know it wasn’t an ARC, though I’d be happy to find out I’m wrong about that. 

Description from Goodreads:
Until now Saul relied on the solitude of the forest to hide his true nature from prying eyes. But now a nameless evil has arrived, shaking his world to the foundation. With a trail of death leading right to his doorstep, he must join forces with the most unlikely of allies to save not only his existence, but also the lives of those he holds most dear…

Review:
From time to time, I write a review that turns out to be closer to an essay than any kind of mere critical analysis of a couple hundred page book. This will likely be one of those times.

You see, I don’t always take notes when I read. Usually I can depend on my memory to remember what I want to talk about. However, when I start finding a lot of those kinds of things (good or bad, but honestly usually bad) I start a notes page. It’s not usually a good sign for a book or it’s author…I took a lot of notes while reading this book.

I’ll start, though, by saying that the book does have an interesting premise. And I have to give some serious props to Ms. Knight for creating a heroine who truly wasn’t wimpy or limp-wristed in any manner. She was also a girl who knew what she wanted and went for it. I appreciate this a lot. It’s a little on the rare side and I’m always delighted when I stumble across it.

However, my praise pretty much ends there. To start with, the writing (the actual words chosen, writing) is far too wordy. I know that statement is a little vague, so here’s an example.

Saul was dashing back towards Lester before his better judgement could so much as utter a sound within his head. His rage took the better of him. He didn’t even feel silly running down the street with a bag of groceries in one arm, while intentions of pounding a drunken jerk’s face left him robbed of his good judgement.

Grammatically it’s a passable passage. But there are just too many words in it to allow it to flow smoothly. Over and over this wordiness kept me from really sinking into the story.

Neither was the situation improved by the stiff dialogue that used names far too frequently and felt very staccato; the repetitive use of certain words or phrases, ‘primal’ and ‘he could tell’ come immediately to mind; the giant info-dump at about 25%; or the odd chapter headings.

I don’t usually pay any attention to chapter numberings, but at some point I noticed that I was reading what I thought must be a Chapter 2 for the fourth time. I don’t know. I think each chapter had numerical sections, but it’s never explained so I was just basically confused at all times about it. That’s definitely not standard.

Even these things I probably would have looked over. But the ever-increasing list of contradictions was another matter entirely. Here are a few examples. Saul unlocks a door and when he relocks it, the reader is told it’s the first time the door has been locked in over 100 years. Saul says that he is 106 years old, but also that they (presumably he and his family) lived in Romania for 200 years. Jason’s father is said to have died 5 years earlier of a heart attack and then shows up. Kara gets out of the bathtub and goes to bed, only to be back in the bathtub in the next scene. (At least she’s consistent in liking a drink after her soak though–a beer the first time around and a glass on white wine the second.)

At another point, she shot at someone and is certain she hit them twice, a second person confirms a third hit too. Then later it’s referred to as she hit him once and the second person confirmed a second shot. The numbers aren’t adding up. Later still, she is sitting with a steaming cup of coffee only to get up to go get a bitter cup of coffee. That’s a lot of times for a reader to stop and scratch their head in confusion.

The book was also repetitive, but didn’t always quite line up with itself. For example, we’re told more than once about vampire physiology. At one point, we’re told they can stay out direct sunlight, but after a full day it would alter their DNA (or some such). Then in another passage we’re told much the same information except the vampires will get sick after an hour or so.

Typos, missed words and the occasional homophone can slip through even the most thorough editing regime. I understand that. But these sorts of inconsistencies (especially so many of them) are a fairly clear indication that the book simply wasn’t read and reread often enough or by enough people before going to press. I find this far more unforgivable, further, I’m as inclined to blame the publisher for this as the author.

There were also some basic ‘but, huh?’ kind of questions. For example, Saul can smell Nikki in a car as she pulls into the driveway (it’s long enough to just see the road at the end from the house). The baddie can smell Saul all throughout the woods and smell sex from outside the cabin. So, how come Saul never smelled that baddie who’s been lurking around his land for days?

Then there were the drastic and basically unfollowable leaps of logic. For example, Nikki sees a 20 year old, grainy black and white newspaper article that has a man that looks like Saul in it. Her first thought isn’t that there may be an older relative (brother, cousin, etc) but that it’s Saul and he hasn’t aged. Who thinks that FIRST?

Besides, she’d only ever seen him twice before. Once when she passed him in a grocery story months earlier (and she didn’t even know who he was until later) and then she’d recently caught a glimpse of him in a passing car window. It’s not like she’s intimately familiar with his appearance to start with.

There is also no real world-building or character development. Everything and everyone is fairly unidimensional. As an example, Saul is easily able to walk around with a human face, only transforming to his frightening vampire appearance when fighting.  But the baddie (who presumably also could remain in human guise, no reason is given that he couldn’t) never did. He spent all of his time wearing the transformed face of a monster…you know, so he’s easily identifiable as evil. He had no other character traits.

What made the matter worse was that the characters really needed some backstory and depth. None of Saul’s years were felt by the reader. He could have been any other man in his mid-thirties. Nikki, even more, she seemed to possess no fear. Seriously, she seemed to lack any sort of instinct for self-preservation and this oddity is never explained. Yeah, there’s a little hint that she’s supposed to have had a bit of a tragic past, but it doesn’t really explain her complete disregard for her own personal safety.

I really needed to know what made her that way, because lacking any explanatory information, I just have to assume she’s too dense to know better. And a lack of willingness or ability to keep oneself alive is my number one qualification for Too Stupid To Live. Plus, it’s 100% unbelievable in a character. Seeing her waltz into Saul’s home and basically offer herself up was laughably…just wrong basically.

I especially needed this character depth in the face of the fact that she’s a rebellious 19-year-old. 19! (Though, whom she and all her cliché piercing are rebelling against is a mystery, since her mom is dead and her dad is locked up for offences unrevealed.)

The story would have been far more believable if Nikki was older. At 19 she barely scrapes by as a YA heroine, but there is too much sex for this to be a YA or even an NA book. So I ask, why is she 19 or why is all the sex there? It didn’t contribute anything to the story. She’s also very forward and experienced for an unpopular 19-year-old, with just the one friend, who she’s pointedly not attracted to. All-in-all, I was left feeling that the genre was muddled and the book could have done with either choosing to go YA to match its heroine or ageing it’s heroine to match it’s parental advisory rating.

Honestly, I could go on. I could get into the nitty-gritty of little things like “only a few minutes after Nikki left Saul finally got out of bed.” Well, if it’s only been a few minutes it doesn’t rise to a finally type scenarios, now does it? But I won’t. I think I’ve made my points. This could have been a good read, but it just wasn’t. And I really hate having to say that kind of thing.

Her Perfect Mate

Book Review: Her Perfect Mate, by Paige Tyler

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Her Perfect Mate

I received a copy of Her Perfect Mate, by Paige Tyler, from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Their attraction is more dangerous than any weapon of mass destruction.

When Special Forces Captain Landon Donovan is chosen for an assignment with the Department of Covert Operations, he’s stunned to find his new partner is a beautiful woman who looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly, much less take down a terrorist.

Ivy Halliwell isn’t your average covert op. Her feline DNA means she can literally bring out the claws when things get dicey. She isn’t thrilled to be paired with yet another military grunt, but Landon is different. He doesn’t think she’s a freak-and he’s smokin’ hot. Soon they’re facing a threat even greater than anyone imagines… and an animal magnetism impossible to ignore.

Review:

Reading is subjective and what one person likes another won’t. Thank goodness we all know this, because I have to admit that, despite generally good reviews, I pretty much hated this book. More accurately, I hated the character portrayals, Ivy especially.

The short version is that weak, teary, insecure heroines who are supposed to be top agents but spend all their time jumping to ridiculous, self-effacing conclusions and whinging, make me want to scratch my own eyes out with a dulled lemon zester.

Pair them with a man, described as practically god-like and allowed to makes all the decisions for himself and, said, pretend strong female lead and I’m ready to throw my head in an electric mixer instead. I’m just totally baffled how anyone could think this is the type of pairing self-assured women would want to relate to.

I considered casting the book on the DNF pile at ~35%. At this point Ivy had made what she perceived to be a mistake on a mission. When her partner appears angry she got teary, emotional and evasive. The reader was then subjected to pages of her weepy self-recriminations and ridiculously jumping to conclusions. All this followed by giving in to her passion for Landon.

Said another way, the author took a supposedly strong female character, broke her down and proved her to in fact be extremely fragile (as all women apparently should be) then threw her in the arms of a man. All this as if to suggest that given a stressful situation Ivy couldn’t be expected to control her emotions too and that the man’s sexual appreciation would prove her self-worth and, as Landon seemed to find it all so darned attractive, it must really be OK in the end anyway. Gag, I say. GAG!

When I pick up a book with a purported strong, skilled heroine, that’s what I want, not some weepy pseudo-damsel in distress whose only evidence of inner strength comes from the compliments of the hero.

Speaking of our hero, Landon, he can apparently do no wrong. Perfect hardly scratches his surface. He is utterly and unbelievably unflappable. Come on, finding out that your new partner is a shifter, when you didn’t even know they existed, requires at least one expletive. It just does! But he never even cocked an eyebrow. Plus, he’s gorgeous, ripped, polite, loyal, trustworthy, good in bed, tough, dangerous, sexy, etc. He needs a flaw…at least one.

But the thing that pushed me over the top, that made me go from grumbling discontent to flat out hostile dislike was seeing the two of them interact. Landon joined the DOC in the beginning of the book. Ivy however had worked for them for a number of years. So, even though he’s plenty experienced in the military, he’s the newbie to the DOC and what they do. HOWEVER, not once (pay attention, NOT ONCE) does she make a plan, give an instruction or take the decision-making role in one of their missions.

They are supposed to be partners, but behaviourally she’s his subordinate…DESPITE HER SENIORITY. I guess that vagina negates it, because he’s definitely in charge and she’s just barely hanging on as a sidekick. Plus, in addition to all her internal insecurities (that she really shouldn’t have if she’s a valued, experienced field agent and has been a shifter since birth) she’s shown to be inept repeatedly while Landon makes no such mistakes. There is a definite sense that the woman in this situation really needs a man to take care of her and her job because she obviously can’t cut it on her own. What kind of Bologna is that? The kind that’s been dogging women for generations. Dare I say it again…GAG!

And it only got worse. Not only was Ivy inept, insecure, prone to jumping to conclusions and endlessly second guessing herself, she also wasn’t even competent enough to control HERSELF. It was amazing how many times the phrase “she couldn’t help herself,” or something similar was used in reference to her. (But almost never for Landon, I might add.)

Then there was the sorry excuse for sexual control. The whole idea of being ‘in heat'(which was never established to be a sure thing, just an excuse really) felt a whole lot like the recurring ‘women can’t control their urges’ BS that backdoors permission for a whole hell of a lot of problematic behaviour.

So, she can’t control her animal side, she can’t control her self-emulating thoughts, she can’t control her own sexual urges, she doesn’t control their mission…what can she control? **That’s the sound of silence, yeah?**

Moving past the painful gender disparities of this book, the fact that she is a natural-born shifter is also problematic, since there is no world building. There’s no indication that shifters are kept super secret in general, Ivy’s sister is living a normal life and other shifters have normal jobs, for example. But it is inferred that no one knows about them.  The DOC doesn’t want her blood work (DNA) seen by the CDC, for example. Certainly, Landon didn’t seem to have known shifters exist. Um, how does that work then? I needed a lot more to situate shifters into the contemporary world.

Lastly, there is the romance. *shakes head* It’s pretty much a case of insta-lust. I could live with that. We’re dealing with shifters and finding and pairing with ‘mates’ is a fairly common trope in the genre. But honestly, within less than a month he’s offering to give up his career to make her happy and asking her to marry him. Really? Is that believable?

Plus, the book is contradictory, as an example (thought I suppose the not hidden secret shifters is already an example) Ivy goes on and on about how freeing it is to finally find and be with a man who knows what she is so she can let it loose in bed. But she has a shifter-friend who’s been fairly aggressive in pursuing her romantically. So, even if she chooses not to accept his affections it’s obvious that she hasn’t been without opportunities to let her shifter free in the sexual sense. How can the book simultaneously say some opportunity doesn’t exist and use the same as a side challenge for one of the characters? Am I supposed to not notice?

So, final thoughts? Mechanically, structurally and editorially this book is fine. Ms. Tyler can write…it’s just too darned bad I hated what she wrote so much. I’d be willing to selectively give her work another shot to see if it’s just this book that rubbed me wrong. Certainly, her prose are perfectly readable. But if I had a physical copy of this book I would be tempted to burn it. As it is, I’ll have to satisfy myself with the delete button.