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Book Review: Free Dive, by Emma Shelford

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I won an e-copy of Free Dive, by Emma Shelford.

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Marine biologist Corrie Duval saw something as a child, something she could never forget. To her colleagues at the university, she is a research scientist collecting ocean data. But Corrie’s experience as a young girl led her to a secret online life consumed with finding evidence of mythical sea creatures.

Forgiveness is something Zeballos Artino can’t grant his recently deceased father. George Artino withheld crucial information about Zeb’s heritage, information that may explain Zeb’s extraordinary abilities. Now, Zeb must search for answers while concealing his hidden talents.

Together, they navigate dangerous waters, dodge ruthless fishermen, and dive into uncharted knowledge. They may find the answers they desire, but what other questions will emerge from the depths of the ocean?


This was fine. But I have to admit my disappointment that it turns out to be YA (maybe NA). I thought being a marine biologist/research scientist with colleagues would mean Corrie is an adult. But she’s a STUDENT marine biologist and the book’s plot reflects her age. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being YA/NA, other than not being what I expected or prefer.

All in all, I thought the characters were interesting and the possible world below the waves intriguing. But I also spent an awful lot of the book bored, waiting for something significant to happen. And it just doesn’t until pretty late in the game. What’s more, the book ends with very little concluded. It’s obviously only the start to a longer series.

If I came across the sequel as a freebie or at the library, I’d probably read it. But I’m not running out to buy it.

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Other Reviews:

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Book Review: Weep, Woman, Weep – by Maria DeBlassie

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I agreed to review Maria DeBlassie‘s Weep, Woman, Weep as part of its Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour. The book has also previously been featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight. So, you can nip on over there for author information and an excerpt.

BookCover_WeepWomanWeep

The women of Sueño, New Mexico don’t know how to live a life without sorrows. That’s La Llorona’s doing. She roams the waterways looking for the next generation of girls to baptize, filling them with more tears than any woman should have to hold. And there’s not much they can do about the Weeping Woman except to avoid walking along the riverbank at night and to try to keep their sadness in check. That’s what attracts her to them: the pain and heartache that gets passed down from one generation of women to the next.

Mercy knows this, probably better than anyone. She lost her best friend to La Llorona and almost found a watery grave herself. But she survived. Only she didn’t come back quite right and she knows La Llorona won’t be satisfied until she drags the one soul that got away back to the bottom of the river.

In a battle for her life, Mercy fights to break the chains of generational trauma and reclaim her soul free from ancestral hauntings by turning to the only things that she knows can save her: plant medicine, pulp books, and the promise of a love so strong not even La Llorona can stop it from happening. What unfolds is a stunning tale of one woman’s journey into magic, healing, and rebirth.

my review
I admit that I am not really a raver. I tend to be fairly reserved in my praise. Regardless, I have to say that Weep, Woman, Weep is a truly exceptional story of surviving and escaping generational trauma (sometimes over generations, by virtue of dilution as much as individual grit). Through Mercy the reader is able to see the struggles and challenges of the endeavor—as well as the failures— and feel the exuberance of growth, revelation, freedom, and rejuvenation.

The writing is haunting and lyrical (quite gothic) and DeBlassie manages to relay the despair and dangers to Mercy’s (and the other young women of her town) without forcing the reader to sit through anything graphic for the shock factor. (It wasn’t needed.) The characters are likeable and distinct. The editing is clean and the cover is gorgeous. Whether you call it gothic horror, fairy-tales, or magical realism, I’ll be well up for more of DeBlassie’s writing.

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Other Reviews:

Coffee and Wander Books – Review: Weep, Woman, Weep

Review: Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie (2021)

Weep, Woman, Weep

Book Review: An Emperor for the Eclipse, by Eris Adderly

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I bought a second-hand paperback copy of Eris Adderly‘s An Emperor for the Eclipse at Savers. (Though the spine looked like it’d never been cracked, if I’m honest.)

an emperor for the eclipse cover

He was expendable. He was a sacrifice. He was the emperor.

Raothan Ga’ardahn wants to take his own life. Twelve years in exile have a way of beating a man down, and the shameful secrets of his past, no matter how far buried, weigh enough to keep him that way. The last thing standing between him and oblivion is a sign from the gods. That, and a unit of Imperial Guard trooping onto his farm one late summer’s afternoon.

Across the continent, the Taunai heed the warnings of their dead: act to correct an unforeseen fracture in the Pattern of events, or face annihilation. Niquel, their bravest Questioner, accepts the challenge to descend into the dangerous lowlander capital for the good of her people. A journey alone away from her snowy mountain home awaits. Any worry about the strange man in her dreams will have to come later.

When the paths of the two outsiders cross on the steps of the imperial palace at Protreo, the fate of the empire shifts. One the Novamneans call ‘exile’, the other they call ‘witch’. Neither will ever be the same.

my review

Ho, I found this book beyond frustrating. Because I almost loved it. I would have loved it, except the sex! Now, before anyone calls me a prude and asks me why I’m reading sexy fantasy if I don’t like sex in my books, let me say I have no problem with sex. I read quite a lot of it. Outside of the rapes (which I do generally try to avoid in the books I read for fun and sometimes get pissy about), I don’t even have a problem with any single element of the sex in this book. It’s just that the sex the book contains doesn’t AT ALL fit the story the book is telling.

The first one is full on m/f master/slave kink play with spanking, anal pegging and anal sex. Involving a character we’d just met long enough to have a work conversation going home to have sex with his wife, who is only introduced for the purposes of him having sex with her (and she basically isn’t in the book in any meaningful way after). Nothing in the book, up until that point, was even remotely erotic. The scene literally came out of nowhere. I spent that whole VERY LONG sex scene (12 pages) wondering what the point of it was. The characters were not important ones. The reader wasn’t invested in them or their relationship. The sex wasn’t stitched into the plot. The whole thing was jarring and out of place.

The second scene was a m/f gang rape. The third was coerced f/f sex, in which one was straight and the other basically owned her. The fourth was (m/f) forced fellatio, so rape. The fifth was another f/f scene, in which the previously straight woman ostensibly entered willingly, but only because she was told someone would kill her nieces if she didn’t seduce the other woman—so, basically another coerced scene. And the last was finally a sweet, gently love scene between the main characters (the only sex scene between the main characters).

The point I’m making is that the main couple basically have a very sweet VERY LOW STEAM romance and then the author shoved all this jarring, unpleasant sex into the plot with other characters. They didn’t fit together even a little bit. It’s not even that they were badly written. They weren’t. It just felt like the author took the sex scenes she wrote for an entirely different book and shoehorned them into this one in order to make it steamier and IT RUINED THE BOOK.

I can’t even reason that maybe she was trying to create a purposeful contradiction because nothing in the story or plot supports it. So, I’m just left scratching my head and super frustrated.

Outside of the ruinous sex, I really enjoyed this book. I liked the characters. The world is complex and multilayered. There’s some humor. The writing and editing is good. I would have 5 stared this book if the author hadn’t forced it from fantasy romance into erotic fantasy. (Not erotica necessarily. The sex isn’t the point of the plot. But definitely a higher erotic rating that the story needed or, more importantly, supported.)

an emperor for the eclipse photo

Other reviews:

https://andypeloquin.com/book-review-emperor-for-an-eclipse-by-eris-adderly/