Tag Archives: PNR

Book Review: The Dragon of New Orleans, by Genevieve Jack

I picked up a copy of The Dragon of New Orleans, by Genevieve Jack from Amazon, during one of it’s freebie days.

New Orleans: city of intrigue, supernatural secrets, and one enigmatic dragon.

A deadly curse….
For 300 years, Gabriel Blakemore has survived in New Orleans after a coup in his native realm of Paragon scattered him and his dragon siblings across the globe. Now a jealous suitor’s voodoo curse threatens to end his immortal existence. His only hope is to find an antidote, one that may rest in a mortal woman.

A lifesaving gift…
After five years of unsuccessful treatment for her brain cancer, death is a welcome end for Raven Tanglewood. Her illness has become a prison her adventurous spirit cannot abide. Salvation comes in the form of Gabriel, who uses dragon magic to save her.

A harrowing price…
To Raven, the bond that results from Gabriel’s gift is another kind of captivity. Can Gabriel win Raven’s love and trust in time to awaken the life-saving magic within her? Or will his fiery personality and possessive ways drive her from his side and seal his fate?

*Le Sigh* It’s not that this was bad, it was competently written and edited. But it’s just that everything in it has been done before…better in other places. This felt like nothing more than a cobbled together collection of tropes and often-read PNR scenes. At 10 percent into the book I made the following comment on Goodreads.

I have to ask AGAIN, is attempted rape really the ONLY plot point authors can come up with? At this point I’ve read essentially the same scene in SO MANY BOOKS that I consider it nothing but laziness on authors’ part & THINK LESS OF THEM FOR IT.

It’s not just that I don’t want to read ANOTHER rape scene, it’s that it’s been done so many times. Writing the SAME THING AS EVERYONE ELSE is boring & lacks creativity.

While this comment was directed particularly at the attempted rape—because I am SO sick of authors reaching for this low hanging fruit to endanger their heroines so that the hero can step in—the point is also that I’m so bored with reading the same scenes in book after book after book. And Jack even sexually imperiled her heroine, not once but twice. Then even hinted at a third at the bar in Paragon. Geeze, get some new material, please.

But it wasn’t just the attempted rapes, the whole book gave me déjà vu, like I’d read it before. And I have, every scene, in about a thousand other books. There was nothing new here.

I appreciate that Jack made Raven fiercely independent and Gabriel weaker than most PNR heroes. But it wasn’t enough to rescue what was a structurally passable, but contextually blasé read. Plus, Raven became too strong too easily and I never really felt the romance develop.

Book Review: My Blood Runs Blue, by Stacy Eaton

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I’ve had Stacy Eaton‘s My Blood Runs Blue floating around in my Kindle Cloud since 2012. I’d basically forgotten about it, being burried in my TBR as it was. However, the audio versions of the series have apparently just come out and they were promoed on Sadie’s Spotlight. So, having been reminded the exist, and since I’ve been making a concerted effort to read some of my older ebooks lately, I dug this one out to try.

“I’m still a cop, and my blood runs blue.”

Officer Kristin Greene has always felt that something was missing from her life. Even though her job with the Fawn Hollow Township Police Department keeps her busy, she continues to feel as if there is something else out there she is meant to be doing. Kristin finds herself investigating a homicide where a young woman has had her throat ripped brutally out. As she begins to dig for the answers, she finds herself thrown into a world she never knew existed. When Julian and Alexander crash into her life, she finds herself being pulled into a love triangle that has been going on longer than she has been alive. Kristin in determine to figure out who they are and why they keep calling her Calista. Join Kristin as she fights to learn the truth about the recent murder, the two seductive men who have entered into her life and the real truth about herself in a suspenseful tale that weaves paranormal into to the realistic world of law enforcement.

This wasn’t horrible, but it didn’t particularly resonate with me. Some of what bothered me was objectively problematic, like some sloppy editing*. I noticed a couple word-order issues (such as “It had been a small gift to myself after had Trevor died.”) and missing letter mishaps (like ‘she’ being ‘he), and a lot of repeat words that just made for awkward reading. Things like:

When we were done talking, it was decided that Gabriel would stay at the house with the Taylors in case Damon came to the house after Gina Marie.

Hopefully the meeting tonight with Julian would give me some answers. Julian. Sigh…The thought of seeing Julian…

I walked into the restaurant and told them I was meeting someone. I told them I would wait by the bar until he arrived.

None of it was atrocious, but I noticed. I also thought names were used too often in dialogue, making it feel stiff.

A lot of what bothered me was subjectively problematic though—things I personally disliked, but might not bother others. One of my least favorite writing critiques is the dictate to show not tell. It’s not that it’s bad advice, I just hate it because it’s so often quoted that it’s lost any real meaning, IMO. But in this case I really felt it. This book is told, not shown and it meant I didn’t really connect with any of the characters.

What’s worse, a lot of the story is told in lengthy, disruptive flashbacks. So, I was never able to settle into the flow of the narrative. This was extremely exacerbated by the fact that almost every scene is seen from AT LEAST two POVs. So, you’d read scene from, say, Kristan’s POV and then go back in time and read the same scene from Alex and/or Julian’s POV. Notice the and/or. Yes, there were times you’d read it from all three. This made the narrative stutter painfully and I did not enjoy it. But it might not irritate others as badly.

I had a similar feeling about the romance aspect. The two men were in love with an idea and it had nothing to do with who Kristan actually was. They might as well have been fighting over a watch, for all the importance her, as a person, held. And the way she threw herself at whichever was in front of her meant I never formed an attachment to either man. I simply didn’t care who she chose. I might have been a little more interested if she’d chosen both. But that was clearly not on the table.

Lastly, I appreciated that Kristan really was strong and independent. But I hate author’s tenancy to make even the strongest female character fall unconscious repeatedly. Despite being an experienced cop, Kristan manages to trip over her own feet and knock herself out AND get knocked over and unconscious by a dog. This is a ‘frail female’ trope that can die as far as i am concerned.

I do actually have the next book in the series. (Well, it’s book 3, as 2 is a short story that I don’t have.) But I don’t plan to read it. I’ll keep it, in case I change my mind at some point. But right now, I’m not interested.

*Note/edit: Goodreads has a note that states, “My Blood Runs Blue was originally released in 2011. This 2014 version has been revised and re-edited.” My version predates 2014, but Amazon doesn’t show an update available to me, which would infer that I already have the updated version. So, I don’t know what that means for the editing comments. Make of it what you will.