Tag Archives: PNR

Blood Moon

Book Review of Blood Moon (Moonstruck #1), by Silver James

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So, there I was, reading the second book in my Blood Moon Challenge (Blood Moon (Moonstruck #1), by Silver James) and I realized I’d read it before. It took 5% for me to be certain, but eventually I was. Oddly, I see no evidence that I posted a review here for it. So, I’m going to go ahead and rectify that, but I don’t suppose it counts as a legitimate challenge read.

Blood Moon, Silver JamesI picked the book up on Amazon, when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
Army Major Hannah Jackson knows where the skeletons are hidden at the Pentagon and now she’s been tasked with keeping the secrets of Army Special Sci Ops Unit 69—the Wolves—and their secret is a doozy. That a civilian corporation wants to exploit the Wolves is a matter of pressing concern.

Sergeant Major Ian McIntire doesn’t trust Hannah as far as he can throw her—and that’s quite a ways considering he’s an alpha werewolf. The woman is a pain in his butt and with the Blood Moon coming, the unit needs to complete their mission and get home before tempers flare. While she might know most of their secrets, the one she doesn’t know about the moonstruck Wolf might just get them all killed.

When a covert operation goes wrong, Mac must trust Hannah to save his men—and his heart. Secrets, lies, and betrayals are more personal under the full moon, but when a Wolf loves a woman, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Review:
This novella started off so well…and then went to total shit. In the beginning we’re introduced to sexy Alpha among Alphas, Mac and the sexy, capable, strong-willed Hannah. Everything was looking good. I was loving the narrative predominantly from Mac’s POV and thrilled to be reading about a heroine who was competing on par and impressing all the type A, military men. You go girl!

Then about 25% through the book the sexual tension cranked up and Hannah’s IQ dropped by about 50 points, as did her sense of balance and calm. All of a sudden she was scared and crying every 10 minutes, stumbling over tree roots (where before Mac had been impressed with her ability to soldier on unaided), and bordering on hysterics for all of the rest of the story. And no, for the record, just because he tells her repeatedly that she’s strong and resilient doesn’t actually make her so. It’s condescending and pat.

I get that she had a bit of a shock. Totally get that. But why did she have to become so very weak in order for his masculinity to come through? He would still have been plenty manly even if she didn’t fall to pieces. I sure didn’t see any of the men crying over a little gun fight.

The story also felt very much like the middle of a longer piece. There is obvious history with Hannah and her job with the military and the Wolves’ need to rescue Torjak. Then there is a lot left unexplored on the return to Virginia. Not once did Mac and Hannah manage a normal, rational conversation about their future. I would have liked to know how that was addressed.

I had a hard time looking past Hannah’s crumbling facade. It ruined the story for me. But I did find that I liked the writing style a lot. The POVs shifted a bit too quickly at times, but that was easily looked over. I also thought the basic structure of the world Silver James created was interesting. It was only thinly sketched out, but I saw the possibility of some entertaining future books in it. I’d be willing to give another one of her stories a shot.

Blood Moons

Book Review of Blood Moons (The Blood Series #1), by Alianne Donnelly

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Blood MoonsI picked up a copy of Blood Moons, by Alianne Donnelly, from Amazon when it was free. I read it as the first in my Blood Moon Reading Challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
They say no good deed ever goes unpunished, a sentiment Dara understands fully now that she is paying for a crime she didn’t commit. It was stupid to call in a murder she didn’t really see. But how could Dara have kept silent? Now a stunning—scratch that, a dangerous—man with a frightening secret of his own is telling her he can help. Yeah, right. A telepath knows better than to trust mere words. 

The last decade of Tristan’s life has been penance. All that time spent among the worst dregs of society might have made him begin to question his humanity, but he’s never felt so much like an animal as he does around this timid, delicate female. Her very presence stirs the beast within him; Tristan can feel it growing stronger every day. Any more time with Dara, and it might overpower him completely. But without her, he stands no chance at all…

Review:
I had problems with this book. It wasn’t the writing. That was fine. It wasn’t the idea behind the plot. That was fine. It wasn’t the dialogue. That too was fine. It was the fact that the first third is basically just ‘let’s protect the fragile heroine from being raped in this unbelievably vile, but oddly sterile prison with a gender ration of 4 women to 200 evil, evil men that the reader never sees or feels the threat of’ and the last two-thirds rambles on and on forever. This book needed an editor. Not for typos and grammar mistakes, I never noticed any, but for someone to tell the author to cut a third of the length and tighten the plot a lot.

I also thought the characters, Dara especially, were very shallow and did things that were not only too stupid to believe, but often out of character. Like volunteering for maximum security prison with the most violent offenders (because you usually get to choose your level, apparently) despite being innocent and as fragile as glass or leaving the person you are so protective of that you literally guard her from passer-bys on the street alone when there have been legitimate threats against her.

Close, but no cigar for me.

Blood Rights

Book Review of Blood Rights (House of Comarré #1), by Kristen Painter

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Blood RightsI borrowed a copy of Blood Rights, by Kristen Painter, from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Now, Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

Review:
Man I’m in a slump. I haven’t read anything I love lately and the best I can give this book is that I didn’t hate it, like the last two books I read. But I’m certainly not going so far as to say it’s good. I didn’t find anything particularly new or innovative in it; just yet another growly alpha male and a woman in need of rescue and protection. Sure, Painter made sure Chrysabelle said ‘I’m well trained and can take care of myself’ several times (often enough it got repetitive), but I didn’t really notice her doing much successful defending of herself. Add to that the fact that I didn’t even like either main character and you have a fail in the making.

What I did find was about a million ways to sexualize Chrysabelle to make the whole thing artificially more titillating, something that annoys me to no end. I mean she let herself get ‘blood drunk’ in a dangerous environment from a condition she’s had her whole life (so no surprise it was going to happen), stripped down to her smalls and sexily prowled around offering herself to the man. None of which was actually necessary or even remotely like her personality to date. Or lets not miss the fact that, despite being a 115-year-old virgin she was called a whore about a dozen times (as are most the women). The giving of blood was pretty clearly equated to sex and she was constantly either offering it up or having some random male laying claim to it. Ugh.

Then there was the identity of the villain….show of hands. How many readers saw that twist coming? Come on now, hands up. Let’s see, one, two, seven, ten, four hundred….Oh, I see, everyone. I guess we can call it predictable then. Plus, the use of the loss of a child to drive her insane was clichéd. Probably the second most common reason women in fiction go bad, just behind being scorned by a man. And the fact that she was prostituting herself for power (or maybe agreeing to regular gang rapes, not sure how to categorize that one, unpleasant as it was)? Oh, I see, one more way to make sure readers know women are just whores and only have one path to power, that just happens to start at the apex of their legs. Got it. Side-eyes hard.

Then there was the whole ‘pure’ thing and the ‘patron’ thing, neither of which are actually defined in any way. What makes her pure? Being a virgin? No, I don’t think so, though sex does apparently muddy the purity. Eating well, not taking drugs, some characteristic of birth, etc? No idea. What about the owning of blood rights and the patron thing? Was that a physical attachment or just a legal arrangement? Still no idea.

All in all, if you like this sort of Urban Fantasy, moving into Paranormal Romance you’ll likely enjoy this. It kept me busy for an evening, but I didn’t love it and I’m not interested in continuing the series. In fact, writing this review brought out how many ways I disliked it and I realize I liked it even less than I thought.