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Book Review: Of Dragons and Cruelty, by Catherine Banks

I purchased a copy of Catherine BanksOf Dragons and Cruelty through Etst.

of dragons and cruelty cover

She’s no avenging angel; she’s a Vengeance and she’s out for blood.

Fighting, sex, comradery, food, and drink; these are the things that the warrior women known as Vengeances enjoy.

While locked away for a minor crime, Jenecca’s kin are attacked and slaughtered before she can break free to rescue them.

She’s the last living Vengeance.

The only thing on her mind – in her very being – is revenge upon the man who murdered her sisters, but to enact her plan, she must travel to an entirely different dimension.

Turns out, she’s not so great at landings and finds herself right in the middle of a dragon shifter den.

Now, Jenecca must battle not only against the slayer of her kin, but against her heart and the ticking clock on her revenge.

Throw in the difficulties surrounding her when the men from her past rise up to seek revenge alongside her and seek her heart, and Jenneca might have more than she can handle.

Can she maintain her sanity? Or will it be too late for the last Vengeance?

my review

This honestly just isn’t good. It is neither plot nor character-driven. Nor is it something like erotica that would acceptably be void of plot and character growth. It just plops the reader down in a random world with random characters who are never truly introduced and then sets the main female character off doing random things and collecting random men (who happen to of dragons and cruelty photobasically be the only people she meets).

The reader gets no sense that there are any rules to the world or their magics. It’s inconsistent, and things often don’t make sense. The men are bland cardboard cutouts who fall in love on sight. The heroine feels like author-insert and is the prettiest, strongest, wittiest, etc., that every male wants. And she is, frankly, intolerable. I mean, really spoiled and unlikable. Overall, I only finished it because it was short, and I wanted to count it toward my reading goal.


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Book Review: Fire’s Daughter, by India Arden

I received a free Audible code for a copy of India Arden‘s Fire’s Daughter.

fires daughter cover

Confronting a gang of dangerous rebels is one thing. Falling for them is another.

You can’t turn on the news nowadays without getting bombarded by stories about the Rebels. They look so scary on TV – blowing things up, knocking things down, terrorizing the declining city of Corona, and making sure even the rubble doesn’t go unscathed.

My father is the reigning Arcane Master of Fire. Since he’s a prominent figure in both politics and magic, it only makes sense that my family is a target.

Still, I never expected to encounter a Rebel leader in person. I never imagined I’d be drawn to him, either. And I most definitely never dreamed I could lose my heart to them all.

The Rebels:

Ember: The leader

Sterling: The healer

Zephyr: The thinker

Rain: The dreamer

And Aurora is the heart of the group, pitted against her own family in this enthralling series.

my review

I actually DNFed this and then later came back and finished it because I was short on my yearly reading goal. (That is the only reason, not because I was enjoying it.) Look, I might have liked this when I was too young to read critically. But now, I am pretty disgusted by it. I’d call this Fundamentalist fiction. You have a smart, capable woman who has all the power in her own hands, but she happily (because it’s inferred to be the right thing) hands it all off to men who will take care of her but have no power to do so without the sacrifice of her power to them. And she turned pretty useless once they came into the picture. Plus, the whole thing is just so ridiculously ham-fisted. I have the rest of the series, but I will not be finishing it.

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Book review: Bound to the Dark, by Sadie Moss

I picked up an Amazon copy of the compilation of Claimed by Monsters by Sadie Moss. Here I read book one, Bound to the Dark.

bound to the dark cover

Monstrous. Dangerous. Broken. And completely devoted to me.

In a world where fae are hunted by vampires, disguising my true nature is a matter of survival. That’s why I’ve spent the past several years pretending to be human, even dating a human guy.

But after finding out that Mr. Jerkwad is cheating on me, I do the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I go to a bar and leave with three stunning, mysterious men.

We spend one wild night together, and the chemistry between us is like an electric storm.

Maybe that’s because to them, this isn’t just a one-night stand.

All of these men are part fae, and they claim I’m their fated mate.

That should terrify me, especially since I can tell they’re each harboring dark secrets behind their gorgeous features. They’re part fae, but they’re part something else, too. Something wild, feral, and untamed.

But when a vampire mobster sets his sights on me, it may be that the only ones who can protect me…

Are my three monstrous mates.

my review

Honestly, just not very good. I technically read this as part of the compilation, so I have all the books. But, despite it ending on a cliffhanger, I am not going to bother with the rest of the series. The characters are cardboard. The plot is uninteresting. There is almost no worldbuilding. The fated mates’ romance is instant and unappealing. It’s all show and little tell. It’s incredibly linear. This happens, and then that happens, and then this thing. Problems arise and are instantly quashed, and the next one pops up.

Plus, it’s repetitive. Chapter 13 begins with a paragraph that recaps everything that has happened in the book up until that point. It can comfortably be covered in a single paragraph! I don’t think covering what happens in 14-25 would take a whole paragraph. All in all, this was a failure for me.
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