Tag Archives: PNR

The Rogue Hunter

Book Review of The Rogue Hunter, by Lynsay Sands

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The Rogue HunterI picked up a used copy of The Rogue Hunter, by Lynsay Sands, at Goodwill.

Description from Goodreads:
Samantha Willan is a workaholic lawyer. She’s grateful for some rest and relaxation in cottage country, and after a recent breakup she wants to stay as far away from romance as possible. Then she meets her irresistible new neighbor. There’s something strange and mysterious about his eyes. Is it just her imagination, or are they locked on her neck?

Garrett Mortimer is a rogue hunter. His last assignment united Lucian Argeneau with his lifemate, and Mortimer is hoping this one will be less…adventurous. He’s here to track down a reported rogue, but fun in the sun is every bloodsucker’s nightmare. Worse, he can’t seem to get his mind off Samantha, especially when he spies her skinny-dipping in the lake. After eight hundred years as a bachelor, is he ready to turn a volatile attraction into a lasting love affair?

Review:
What nonsense did I just read? I mean really, what was this supposed to be? What it was was boring and basically a failure as both a PNR and a decent mystery.

Let me start with the fact that all of the characters are paper thin—no significant history, no real emotional depth, no obvious beliefs or thoughts outside of the immediate. In fact, for most of the book the side characters just went off by themselves and left the H & h alone. So, why bother with them?

There was also almost no world-building. What little there was, explaining vampires, came at about page 300! This is probably because the book is labeled as “The Rogue Hunter (Argeneau #10) (Rogue Hunter #1).” Someone tell me what that is supposed to mean. Is it the tenth Argeneau book or the first Rogue Hunter book? Because after reading it, I’m 100% certain it can’t be both.  While I could follow the plot, it was always painfully apparent I was missing something. The world-building, as stated, wasn’t there. Probably because it was in the 9 previous books. People were referenced that the reader didn’t know,  I strongly suspect Mort was a side character form another book, etc. So, as a 10th Argeneau book, it might have been successful (I don’t know as I read it as the first Rogue Hunter book), but as a first in a series, it’s a failure.

Now let me address the mystery around the rogue that Mortimer is supposed to be hunting. This investigation literally takes up about 20 pages of this 373-page book and then it’s solved with anti-climatic aplomb. Let’s be honest, Sands didn’t set out to write about a rogue vampire and the hunters who go after it. It is just the device used to get the two characters in the same place at the same time. Disappointing to the extreme. I’d have preferred the man to have just been on vacation and Sands not to even bothered with the half-assed attempt she made at pretending this book is anything other than a romance (which is pretty sad because the romance is pretty weak too).

The romance? CHEESY! There is the cliché immediate recognition of one’s life mate (that somehow turns the tough, broody Mort into a bumbling social throwback), the fragile female in need of assistance with, you know, walking, stupid antics to get around telling the truth, the convenient ability to change people’s mind if they ask inconvenient questions (thereby negating any possible narrative tension), and true immortal love and loyalty developing in a mere two weeks. What’s more, the whole book is essentially a tease. Over and over Sam and Mort almost have sex, but don’t quite manage it. Redundant…and PREDICTABLE!

This book is little more than a collection of weak PNR tropes, and none of them were executed particularly well. But worse than any of that, is the fact that I was bored for 373 pages. This sort of book is the epitome of why I refused to read romance for 30 years of my life. I’m in no hurry to read another Lynsay Sands book. How the heck does dreck like this get published over some of the great indies I’ve read?

Spell Struck

Book Review of Spell Struck (The Witchblood Dossiers, #1), by Nicole J. Fawcett

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Spell StruckIn December of 2012, I downloaded Nicole J. Fawcett‘s Spell Struck from the Amazon free list. I read it as part of me TBR reading challenge (reading books I’ve own 2+ years).

Description from Goodreads:
Rhiannon Grey is a detective in a hectic police headquarters. She’s also a witch, in a society that’s learned not to think too highly of the supernatural, and her boss is a two thousand-year-old vampire. Rian has discovered the hard way that trouble is always just around the corner.

This time, trouble is called Griffin King, a fifteen year old runaway whose strangled corpse is found floating in the river. He’s not the first street-kid to vanish recently, or to turn up later, very dead. When Rian starts to suspect he was a witch, too, and that his magic led to his death, her investigation turns into a personal crusade. 

No one seems terribly concerned about the fate of a few disappeared urchins, though. And when a series of brutal murders starts panicked speculation about a nest of vampires, Rian’s boss has other things on his mind.

But Rian won’t be distracted. Not by bureaucracy, not by murder, and certainly not by her dysfunctional private life. Her family think she’s going to end up dead; her friends think she’s going to end up dead lonely; and her lovers are dead frustrated . . .

Reading:
This is a perfectly passable, but basically uninspiring PNR. Rian wavered between being strong and smart and being the child-like joker of the detective team (certainly never quite as slick, together and leader-like as any of the men who were ostensibly her equals).

She went back and forward between kicking butt in a fight and tripping over her own feet, especially when scantily dressed such that the UST was artificially amped up. (Because she forgot to put a robe over her panties and crop top pyjamas while self-consciously sharing a hotel suite with a man she’s attracted to. Sure, that kind of thing happens all the time, right?)

She also oddly needed a two thousand-year-old vampire to teach her how to use magic, despite coming from and being raised in a long-standing, powerful family of witches with Fae connections, had a tendency to run off and do TSL stuff when she was unhappy, suffered a minor mental break-down out of nowhere and instigated what will obviously be a love-triangle in future books. So, there were definitely parts of this book I distinctly disliked but for the most part, I enjoyed it. I was especially fond of Cato, Safi and Marco.

The writing and editing was fine. Though there was a habit of putting a space between the beginning quotation mark and the first word of a quote (like this, ” bla, bla, bla”). I’ve seen people do that before, so maybe it’s a standard somewhere but it drove me crazy. Otherwise, I have no real complaints about the writing/editing. (Oh, except that the title makes no sense when, not once in the whole book, did ANYONE sling, craft, chant, speak or even get struck by a spell. In fact, we’re kind of told magic doesn’t work like that. Maybe I missed something.)

I enjoyed the book enough to pick up a sequel if I saw it on sale, but not enough to buy it at full price. (That’s a legitimate way to rank a book right?)

Book Review of Blood Lust & Love and Blood (Blood Ties .5 & 1), by Jessica Gibson

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Jessica GibsonI grabbed the Blood Ties series, by Jessica Gibson, from the Amazon free list. I read them now because the first one, Blood Lust, was the last book in my Blood Lust reading challenge, in which I read four books with that same title.

Description of Blood Lust:
Ronan has lived for hundreds of years. In all of his years there has only been one for him. What will he risk to get back what is his by right?

Review:
The problem here wasn’t so much the writing as that there isn’t anything to it. It’s basically just vampire attacking woman after woman and stalking another woman altogether. As a means of letting you know how little there is to this story let me make examples of frequently used words, which are emblematic of repeated scenes.

Both drop/dropped and ground are used 10 times. As in he dropped her body (14 times) to the ground. That doesn’t count the ones he tossed in trash cans or at his feet, etc. Throat is used 14 times, as in he tore (6 times) her throat out/up/etc. That’s separate from the times he sank his fangs (12 times) into a neck. And his favourite method of getting them alone to callously kill them is to take the women walk/walking. It’s used 19 times. Finally, blood was used 50 times. Yes, I’ll concede that it’s a vampire story, but the darned thing is only 23 pages long!

As a prequel, I suppose it does introduce Ronan, who I assume is the villain in the following novella’s but as a story this is pointless.

16247779Description of Love and Blood:
Bronwyn Fitzgibbons was young and reckless. It was easy for Ronan to steal her human life and make her a vampire. She ran, but she never forgot him–or how he made her feel.

Rider saved Bronwyn from the new life she loathed and the new self she detested. His love restored her sanity. 

Now Ronan is back to claim her. She struggles like hell against him, but she cannot deny the overwhelming power of her maker. Will Bronwyn surrender to the one who could possess her utterly? Or can she find the strength to choose the one who loves her as she is?

Review:
Would it make sense if I said Jessica Gibson knows how to write, but apparently doesn’t know how to write a book? I mean, mechanically the sentences flow fine. Grammatically the work is perfectly readable. But the story, oh fuck, the story is a damned mess.

For one, let me ask how you feel about love triangles. I hate love triangles. This means that a book that is essentially stripped of all plot except a love triangle is not a good thing in my world. The first 50% of this book is absolutely nothing more than Ronan and Rider (yes, their names are that similar) fighting over Wyn and Wyn playing them both. Then at around 50% new characters are introduced and we’re off to fight a werewolf war with a bunch of characters that didn’t exist two pages earlier. What!?

There is absolutely no development of ANYTHING in this book—no plot development, no character development, no world building, no romantic developments or character growth. Nothing. And new characters, that play no part in the book, are introduced all the way up to 85%. (The book ends at 92%, so lets just say up until the end.)

Lastly, (I could rant on and on and on, but I’m going to limit myself here) this book is clearly labeled as book 1. I’ve even read the prequel, useless as it was. But if you handed me this book without a cover, my first question on finishing it would be, “Where are the first three books?” There is so much missing information that I would assume this was several books into a series. All the characters know one another and have 4 years of history. Then there is all of the Ronan drama (20 years worth) and the ‘romance’ with Rider (15 years worth), not to mention the werewolf drama (5 years worth). Heck on that last point, we never even learn the name of the woman they go to war over! Oh, and Fae are in there somewhere too. WTF!

If you want to read an outline of a SERIES, feel free to pick this ‘book’ up. If you’re interested in a book, with a solid, well-paced (or simply paced) story, avoid this thing like the plague. And I hate to say that, because I’ve rated books/authors with similar mechanical skill far higher than 1 star, but man oh man, this book (despite being more readable than some other indies) just doesn’t cut it in the story department.

I actually have the next in the series (Blood and Sacrifice) and, at only 88 pages, I considered just reading it. If I don’t read it now, I never will and it will just turn into detritus on my kindle. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.