Tag Archives: Pippa DaCosta

betrayal

Book Review: Betrayal, by Pippa DaCosta

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I borrowed an audio copy of Pippa DaCosta‘s Betrayal through Hoopla.

betrayal p dacosta

“My name is #1001, and I am not ready to die.” I’d only just begun to live.

When Captain Caleb Shepperd is released from prison, all he wants to do is keep his head down and earn a living smuggling illegal cargo through the nine systems. So when a synth stows away on his ship, and brings with her a crap-ton of problems, including guilt-ridden secrets he thought he’d escaped, he’d prefer to toss her out the airlock. The problem is, she’s priceless tech, and he’s fresh out of credit.

#1001 is not meant to exist. Created for a single purpose, she has one simple order: to kill. But not everything is as it seems. Buried deep inside, she remembers… Remembers when she was human. And she remembers what Shepperd did to her. She’s not ready to die, but she is ready to kill.

my review

This is a competently written book, but that’s about all the positives I have to say. It feels very pieced together of things an author thinks readers want. It’s got an anti-hero who’s supposed to be secretly noble, smart-mouthed female pilots, big-eyed innocent damsel who doesn’t need rescue, but still fill the role, etc. etc. etc.

The problem is that none of them are even a little likeable. The ‘hero’ is constantly checking out his employee who has been very clear she wants things to stay platonic. He bemoans how she has sex with everyone but him several times. This male idea that ‘if a woman is sexually available to anyone they should be available to me’ needs to be shot into the sun to die and I 100% never want to see it in my heroes! He also goes literally brainless if a woman pays him any attention, agrees to anything, etc. I get that the author was trying to play up his tragic past and how desperate he is (sex being a retreat from his problems), but he literally just felt obsessively controlled by his dick. If there had been enough depth in the book to address sex addiction or something, I might not have minded. But it was just sloppy writing and he just felt like a douchebag.

The syth was bland and the pilot a cardboard cutout (that’s it for the female cast, other than a whore with a heart of gold). If there is going to be a romance angle to the overarching plot with one of them, I still can’t tell you who the female partner will be (or if it’ll be a poly relationship), which is annoying.

All in all, not a winner for me. I’ve like others of DaCosta’s series. But I’ll pass on more of this one. The narrator did a fine job though.

betrayal

the messenger chronicles

Series Review: The Messenger Chronicles, by Pippa DaCosta

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I picked up the first book in Pippa DaCosta’s Messenger Chronicles, Shoot the Messenger, as a freebie on Amazon. I then borrowed book 2, 3, and 4 of the series (Game of Lies, Nightshade’s Touch, and Prince of Dreams) in audio through Hoopla. Lastly, I purchased an ecopy of book 5, Her Dark Legion.

I wrote a review when I finished Shoot the Messenger, but I simply flew through the rest of them all together. There’s no good way to go back and pick through the story for individual reviews. So, I just wrote one review to stand for them all.

But, if I’m honest, that works for me. I usually want to know how a series starts (is it worth picking up) and ends. Because if I like the beginning I’ll keep going, but like to know if it has an actual ending. The middle is….well, it’s the middle, isn’t it?

So, here goes.

Shoot the MessengerAbout the book:

“Lies aren’t her only weapons against the fae…”

In the Halow system, one of Earth’s three sister star systems, tek and magic—humans and the fae—are at war.

Kesh Lasota is a ghost in the machine. Invisible to tek, she’s hired by the criminal underworld to carry illegal messages through the Halow system. But when one of those messages kills its recipient, Kesh finds herself on the run with a bounty on her head and a quick-witted marshal on her tail.

Proving her innocence should be straightforward—until a warfae steals the evidence she needs. The fae haven’t been seen in Halow in over a thousand years. And this one—a brutally efficient killer able to wield tek—should not exist. But neither should Kesh.

As Kesh’s carefully crafted lie of a life crumbles around her, she knows remaining invisible is no longer an option. To hunt the fae, to stop him from destroying a thousand-year-long fragile peace, she must resurrect the horrors of her past.

Kesh Lasota was a ghost. Now she’s back, and there’s only one thing she knows for certain. Nobody shoots the messenger and gets away with it.

A new space fantasy series where the guys are hot, the perils are many, and one rebel messenger holds the key to the survival of the human race.

Review:

Ha, you have to admire the audacity of this mash-up, it’s old-school, all powerful fae…in space! And to my complete surprise, it works. I truly enjoyed DaCosta’s “Paranormal Space Fantasy.” My enjoyment was helped along by the fact that I liked both Kesh and Kellee, and was intrigued by the possibility of Talen. I’ll definitely be continuing the series.

However, I also thought it suffered from plot-drift a bit. A twist to Kesh’s character appears toward the end of the book that doesn’t feel believable, since the reader was in HER head for the whole book. That she might have tricked the other characters was certainly conceivable, but how it’s supposed to have escaped the notice of the reader who was in her head is a huge question. Thus, if felt as if the author simply changed directions in the plot.

Regardless, I want more.

Messenger Chronicles 2-5

And here’s what I said about the rest of them.

Review:

Prior to this series, I’d read one Pippa DaCosta book and, while I didn’t dislike it, I wasn’t particularly impressed either. So, I was startled to dive into this series and want to stay for a while. I really enjoyed it. It’s not perfect, but it’s fun and everything wraps around itself and comes to a satisfying conclusion (something I feel like happens more and more rarely these days). I liked Kesh as a character. I loved Sota as a comedic side-kick and I appreciated that, even though this is a reverse harem, it isn’t drowning in sex. It strikes a nice balance. All in all, a true success for me.

 

Beyond the veil

Book Review of Beyond The Veil (The Veil Series, #1), by Pippa Dacosta

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Beyond the VeilAuthor, Pippa Dacosta sent me a paperback copy of her newest novel, Beyond the Veil.

Description from Goodreads:
“They say I’m half demon, but I like to think of myself as half human, especially as the demons want me dead.” 

Charlie Henderson is living a lie. Her real name is Muse and her attempt at a normal life is about to go up in smoke. 

When a half-demon assassin walks into her life, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, Muse must return to the one man she hoped never to see again and ask for help. The Prince of Greed isn’t known for his charity. The price is high, but the cost could tear her apart. 

Trapped between the malevolent intentions of a Prince of Hell, an assassin with ulterior motives, and all of demon-kind, Muse must embrace the lure of chaos at her core; the demon inside her, in order to survive.

When your ex is the Prince of Greed, you’d better be ready to raise hell.

Review:
If I was inclined to use stars on this blog, I would call this a solid 3, maybe a 3.5. It was a pleasant distraction. I enjoyed reading it, but it left me wanting in a lot of aspects.

First, there is very little character development. The book jumps right into the action. While this is fun, it didn’t give me any time to get to know Muse or anyone else. Plus, a lot of Muse’s history is referenced as the book progresses. I mean, like, a whole book’s worth is hinted at—major drama. This left me feeling like I couldn’t possibly be reading the first book in the series or that this is actually the first in a spin-off series. It isn’t, as far as I know, but it sure felt like it. So much is skimmed over, or the reader is just told it happened. I was duly informed that Muse had a tragic past, but that wasn’t enough to make me feel for her or that history. 

This was all complicated by her tendency to have whiplash changes of opinion with no evidence of an impetus for change. As an example, she spent much of the beginning of the book telling herself she can’t/won’t go back to Akil, that he’s dangerous and she has to keep her distance because he can get under skin easily. She’s very adamant about this. Then he shows up and says, ‘Come to a party with me,’ and she not only goes, she tells herself she deserves to have fun and relax. It was a very abrupt change of attitude toward him and nothing seemed to have happened to give her a reason to suddenly be less wary around him.

The same tendency toward thinness could be claimed for world-building. There isn’t much. We’re told demons exist and live on the other side of a ‘veil,’ that’s about it. I’m assuming the universe is otherwise the same as ours, but I don’t know. Nor do I know the time frame. It could be years in the future or today. I’m not sure. 

I also thought the sex was out of place. It wasn’t at all graphic. It just popped up regularly at inopportune moments. It left me feeling like Muse had no control over herself. It didn’t matter whom she was with, she was lusting after him. As she’s a woman with a history of slavery, including sexual slavery, I developed the surely erroneous impression that her body responded to any powerful man available with no regard for her own wishes. I’m afraid she felt a little like a whore in this respect (and I’ve purposefully used the more inflammatory word here) as if she was so accustomed to servicing men that she did it without conscious effort or even apparent knowledge that she was following an established pattern. I’m fairly sure this wasn’t the author’s intent, but it’s still the impression I garnered. 

Lastly, it had a bit of a deus ex machina ending (pet peeve, grrr), and a lot of important information was skipped over between the final chapter and the epilogue. I needed more details to believe it…actually, that’s true of the whole book, but especially the ending. 

All-in-all, the author has a really interesting idea here. A lot could be made out of Muse’s slavery, subsequent strengths, and appreciation of the mundane. But I think the book felt rushed. Too much was only sketched out or simply leaped over. I was never able to get enough of a feel for the characters to understand their motives and actions, leaving everything feeling random and unpredictable. 

It is well written and, other than a few missing words, well edited. Plus (and I know this is a strange thing to mention), I like the size of the book. At 8×5 inches, it’s bigger than a mass-market paperback but not as big as the ~9×6 I’ve come to associate with self-published books. While it wasn’t a faultless read, it’s worth picking up. As I said, I had complaints, but I also enjoyed the ride.