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Book Review: Den of Vipers, by K.A. Knight

I purchased an e-copy of K.A. Knight’s Den of Vipers.
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Ryder, Garrett, Kenzo, and Diesel—The Vipers.

They run this town and everyone in it. Their deals are as sordid as their business, and their reputation is enough to bring a grown man to his knees, forcing him to beg for mercy. They are not people you mess with, yet my dad did. The old man ran up a debt with them and then sold me to cover his losses.

Yes, sold me.

They own me now.

I’m theirs in every sense of the word. But I’ve never been meek and compliant. These men, they look at me with longing. Their scarred, blood-stained hands holding me tight. They want everything I am, everything I have to give, and won’t stop until they get just that. They can own my body, but they will never have my heart.

The Vipers? I’m going to make them regret the day they took me.

This girl? She bites too.

my review

I read A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor recently, and I said in my review of it, “I have no general problem with Porn Without Plot…or without much plot. It can be a lot of fun…But I think I can officially now say that almost 400 pages of it is just too much.” Well, Den of Vipers is over 650 pages and, yes, I still feel that is too much for me. It just went on and on and on and on.

I liked Roxy in the most general sense, same for the Vipers. But past the halfway mark, I was simply done with all of them. I didn’t expect a lot of plot (which is good since I didn’t get one). But I did expect the book not to become so repetitive that I simply got bored. And OMG, all the Roxy worship just made me cringe.

To take something someone said a little out of context, as I believe they were talking specifically about fantasy, fiction doesn’t have to be realistic, but it does have to be believable. Meaning den of vipers photobelievable in the context of the world the author creates. Nothing in this was. While I appreciate that Roxy met crazy with crazy, and that worked out for her and the Vipers. It just felt like there were no limits, no constraints, no borders to the story. Which just leaves a book feeling random and sloppy.

All in all, if it were half as long, I probably would have liked it twice as much. But as it is, I’ll call this a meh, middle-of-the-road read.


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Den of Vipers Book Review

Review: ‘Den of Vipers’ by K.A. Knight

 

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Book Review: Doves & Demons, by Clio Evans

I purchased a copy of Clio EvansDoves & Demons as part of my Mothman Challenge.
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Welcome to London, where the roaring twenties are filled with fangs and freaks.

When Irene is kidnapped by a gang of monsters, she is shoved straight into a world of magic and murder.

A Mothman. An Unseelie. A Demonic Plague Doctor.

The Freaks are a terrifying group ready to wreak havoc on the world that destroyed their humanity. But as these creatures drag Irene into the dark— they crave her soul, mind, and body.

The longer these four are together, the faster they fall into a terrifying type of love.

Will the demons take the wings from their caged dove, or will they set her free before their world devours her?

my review

I enjoyed the author’s commitment to going all out on Doves & Demons. The love interests are bad guys, remain bad guys throughout, and all indications suggest will be bad guys in the future. Their love is obsessive, all-encompassing, and murderous. The heroine is perfectly willing to welcome them as they are and accept the changes within herself. No one’s love makes them become better people. They all remain villains, but now they are villains together. I enjoyed that. I also liked that people tried to protect one another and failed. No aspect of the plot twisted around to give success where it shouldn’t have been.

I was always a little uncertain if what the men were attracted to was actually Irene or the entity/element that Irene housed, and that was a bit of a niggle for me. Maybe this will be further explored in the second book of the duet; I don’t know. I also thought some of the spicy scenes got a little redundant (though I enjoyed most of them). But that’s a smaller matter of taste.

All in all, I enjoyed this and look forward to book two.

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Book Review: The Monsters & Miseries series, by A.K. Koonce

I picked up a freebie copy of A.K. Koonce‘s the Monsters & Miseries series omnibus (Hellish Fae, Sinless Demons, and Spiteful Creatures) from Amazon.

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There’s a dark secret inside of me. A monster clawing to get out.

I was thrown out of the fae world because of it. But I’m back now. Three brooding demons and a sinful incubus returned me to my sweet little homeland. And I’ll finish what I started all those years ago.

Sure, maybe my delicate fae features are twisting into spiraling horns and demonic eyes, but that won’t stop me from righting my wrongs.

The Queen of Hell might possess my body but the deadly vengeance in my blood is my own. The Prince will die by my hand for what he’s done.

All I have to do is make sure the creature at the back of my mind doesn’t kill me first.

my review

This was a bit of a whimpering fizzle for me; so much potential utterly wasted. The series started out well enough but then seemed to start spinning its wheels and repeating itself. It felt very unfocused.  Whole elements of the plot disappeared and then reappeared with no explanation (I’m thinking Catherine); the characters were caricatures rather than characters; the editing needs another pass; the ending was a cop-out, and all the “fuckings” drove me nuts.

Let me address this last one first, before anyone mistakes me for a pearl-clutcher. I curse like a sailor. I have no problem with foul language in books. But the use of fucking in this book is overwhelming. It barrelled right the fuck into redundant territory and kept fucking going. I got monsters and miseries photoso tired of reading it. It just became a stutter in the narrative. But worse, every fucking character used it in exactly the same fucking way, which meant it did nothing to differentiate characters. They all sounded exactly the fucking same.

Lastly, and most importantly, there isn’t enough story here to carry 500+ pages and nowhere near enough sex to be called porn-without-plot. So, I was bored. Others’ experiences may vary.


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