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Mea Lupus Series covers

Book Review: Mea Lupus Series, by Kahaula

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I purchased copies of Kahaula’s Smuggler’s Contubernium, Smuggler’s Run, and Smuggler’s Pack.

Mea Lupus Series covers

I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve built in my life. Thriving was my victory against all those who wanted to see me as ash on the solar winds. Now, I’m one of the most feared and respected smugglers in the known galaxy.

The Ferryman.

I’ve lived successfully in the shadows for years because of two rules: transport nothing living, and I’ll kill you if you betray me. I always knew this life would be a short one, but I thought that maybe I’d have a chance. Only a few people know the Ferryman is a woman—much less what I or my ship look like.

But all good things come to an end. I just won’t let it be mine.

Seems the Imperial Union got tired of their regular police force constantly failing to catch me. The Mea Lupus, the wolf shifters created by the gods Menrva & Caesar, have stepped in and are coming for me. They’ve sent their best bloodhound pack. If that wasn’t bad enough this pack is a Contubernium—how am I supposed to evade EIGHT elite wolves?!

I have one advantage: me. They seem to be intrigued by the simple transport captain they think I am. It doesn’t matter that they’re just doing their jobs. It doesn’t matter that they’re decent and kind. I’ll manipulate, lie, and use them because losing my freedom would mean the end of me. I’ll do whatever I have to do to be free once and for all. Even set myself up for a nice long retirement while I’m at it.

Easy, right? Yeah, I don’t believe me either.

my review

I really liked the first book ( Smuggler’s Contubernium) a lot, then liked each subsequent book in the series after that less and less (Smuggler’s Run and then Smuggler’s Pack). I liked all the characters individually. I liked that there was a pre-existing m/m couple in the grouping, and no one even considered that the new relationship with Kara needed to alter that. I liked that the men showed emotion. They cried and mourned and feared. I liked that Kara was in charge. It takes a little while for the men to come around to the realization, but there is actually a little fem-domness to the book. I liked that the men wanted (desperately) to be fathers and have a family. I thought the book dealt with some interesting issues in intelligent ways. The world is interesting, and the writing is very good—the editing is utter crap, but the writing is good.

But as the series progressed, I thought it became exceedingly predictable. Which I think is largely because it’s actually a very simplistic plot. The first book set the rest up for SO MUCH, and then the author seemed to plateau at the bare minimum. Kara was so ultra-powerful that she faced no true challenge. Every accolade, power, or position available seemed to be rightfully hers, and the relationship with the men was reduced to nuanceless worship.

I absolutely hate when an author sets up a villain, spends time building up how villainous a villain is, and then the reader meets said villain and discovers that they are actually just misunderstood or have been duped but aren’t really a villain at all. This series did this not once, but twice…three times, if you count that the heroine is initially set up as the dangerous, dastardly Ferryman but is actually moral and upstanding. If I’m being generous, I could call these situations red herrings. But they felt a hell of a lot more like inconsistencies or plot drift to me.

If you don’t like pregnancy and baby tropes, avoid this series. (If you like them, snap it up.) This book is a surprise baby trope times ten. And honestly, I didn’t hate that getting pregnant was the direction the story went. It made sense, in context (even if I normally hate all the baby tropes). What bothered me was that once Kara met her men, and especially once she got pregnant, a lot of her dynamism as a character was put on a back burner in favor of babies, babies, babies, babies, babies…And for all that, the children remain in the background, never being characters of their own.

Then I found the ending a little too deus ex machina, rushed and anti-climactic. All in all, I really liked book one. I didn’t hate the second and third books. But I feel kind of meh about them. I am definitely going to try more of Kahaula’s books, though.

Mea Lupus Series photos

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Book Review: Bonded to the Alien Warrior, by Kyla Quinn

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I picked up a copy of Kyla Quinn‘s Bonded to the Alien Warrior as an Amazon freebie.
bonded to the alien warrior cover

An abducted human female. An alien warrior on a secret mission. A bond created by the stars.

I have a sneaking suspicion aliens abducted me last night. My first clue? The muscular blue guys with horns and tails. My second? I’m locked in a room, and I can see two suns in the sky outside the window.

I’ve no memory of how I reached this planet, and neither have the women with me. One thing’s sure—we’re stuck. Nobody tells us why we’re here, or what happens to the women who are taken by the guards and never return.

The guards are sleazy assholes, and I’m glad I can’t understand what they say to me when they leer. Apart from one. There’s something strange about the way he protects me from the other guards but pretends he doesn’t. When this fierce alien touches me my blood runs hot, and the physical effect I have on him is um… obvious.

But instead of taking what he wants, this guard offers me something I never dreamed of—a way out.

Will escaping with my alien warrior save me, or am I walking into a worse situation? Because this domineering blue guy tells me I’m his mate and that if I want to stay alive, I must do exactly what he says.

Exactly what he says? This should be interesting.

my review

This was a failure for me. I’ll grant it is competently written, even if it was a competently written story that I did not at all enjoy. For one, it’s written in the first-person PRESENT tense. No judgment to those who might enjoy this, but I HATE it. Honestly, I read this book as part of an author alphabet challenge and needed a Q. I might have DNFed very early otherwise.

But outside of the first-person present tense issue, I also make a concerted effort to avoid rape in the books I read for enjoyment. And while there is no on-page rape here, the WHOLE BOOK is basically just having to read the disgusting comments of rapists about the women they are going to rape (the game of it), the groping and torment of the women, the women’s fear of being raped, and the complete discord of an author trying to convince readers that some of these men are honorable while allowing this to happen around them. That’s it. That’s the plot…all of it. There is NOTHING in that for me to enjoy, sadly, not even the romance.

Jex is complicit in the whole rape situation and would have remained so, except that he found his fated mate among the victims. But he makes it VERY CLEAR over and over again that he only cares about protecting her (not the other women) because she’s his mate. This leaves the reader painfully aware that, if not for this mystical connection, he’d leave her to be raped and bred, just like every other woman. There is nothing romantic about that! There’s also no build-up or getting to know one another. So, the whole thing hinges solely on the instant mate bond. Again, nothing to go “aww” about. But there also is very little sex (and only at the end), so there’s also nothing satisfyingly steamy either.

All in all, I pretty much hated this. Do you know what it felt like? It felt like it was written by a man. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. It was 100% the wrong book for my bonded to the alien warrior phototaste.

On a side note: The cover says book 1, and I read it as such. But according to GR and Amazon (and the fact that we meet the previous couple in this book), this is actually book 2 in the Fated Star Mates series. This annoys me because I apparently even have the previous book, but being labeled book 1, I didn’t even search my shelves to check if I had a previous book. So, now I’ve read it out of order.

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Book Reviews: Draekon Warrior & Draekon Conqueror, by Lili Zander & Lee Savino

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In December of last year, I picked up a free copy of Draekon Conqueror (by Lee Savino and Lili Zander), only to later discover it’s book two in a series. (Yeah, I don’t always pay enough attention. I know.) In March of this year, book one, Draekon Warrior, popped up in my feed as a freebie, so I grabbed it, too.

I chose to read them now as a little bit of a cheat. You see, I need a Z for my yearly alphabet challenge—where I read at least one book by an author with a last name for each letter of the alphabet. I’m swapping the order of Savino and Zander and calling this my Z…or at least a Z.

draekon Warrior cover

About the Book:

Captured in space. Imprisoned. Sold to the highest bidder.
But my biggest problem is the bossy, aggravating, impossible, alien who’s supposed to rescue me.

The bossy alien I kissed.

That might have been a mistake.

Kadir is dangerous. I’ve seen him fight and his body is littered with scars. He’s a soldier. A warrior. And when he loses control, he turns into a big scary dragon and breathes fire.

Everyone’s terrified of him. I’m not. No, call me the biggest fool in the galaxy, because I’m attracted to the big jerk.

When I first met the small human I was sent to rescue, she punched me in the jaw.

And broke her wrist in the process. Irrational woman.

Then she insists that the two of us set out immediately to find her missing friend.

No, what I have to do is get Alice Hernandez to safety.

She’s soft, yet she’s strong.

Fragile, yet so brave.

She’s everything I’ve never known I wanted.

Everything I can’t let myself have.

When the scientists tortured me, they broke me. And when Alice finds out the truth about the fearsome, raging dragon inside me, I will lose her.

You know, I’ve seen quite a lot of discourse lately on why people enjoy monster romance/smut. And a lot of it comes down to how monsters in such books are often bigger, scarier, and more powerful than the female main character. But they are also almost always very obviously conscious of this fact and go to great lengths and courtesies to reduce themselves as perceived threats…to mitigate any risk they pose. They’re often super conscientious about consent and big ol’ cinnamon rolls underneath the scary exterior. (And how many parallels are there to real world men and their perceived threats in that paragraph, hmmm?)

Kadir is honestly too humanoid to qualify as a ‘monster,’ but he shares many of those same qualities. Not least of which is seeing himself and feeling himself perceived as a monster. And he is every bit as careful and considerate of Alice as any monster, even before he sees her as mate material and the real romance starts. It’s sweet.

The story isn’t complicated. There’s no more to it than any number of other alien romances. But it’s well done and sweet enough that I’m happy to have book two on my Kindle.

drakon warrior photoI did, at some point, realize that this must be a spin-off series, as characters started showing up that were obviously pairings from another book. Turns out it’s a spin-off of the Dragons In Exile series. However, as much as this normally annoys me, I have to say this one stood alone well enough that I noticed but wasn’t too bothered. I didn’t feel like I was missing too much information, having not read the previous series. There were also a couple of minor consistency mishaps. But all in all, I enjoyed this.

Draekon Conqueror cover

About the book:

I’ve lived an eternity. I’ve killed thousands. Destroyed worlds. I thought I’d seen everything. I didn’t think there was anything left in the galaxy that could surprise me.

Then I met her. Lani Dennison. A human woman. My mate.

My mission was simple. Find Lani Dennison.

Zorahan scientists tortured her. I killed them, of course.
Okaki pirates abducted her. I tracked them down and infiltrated their ship. Routine stuff. Nothing that presented a problem to a trained soldier that could shift into a fire-breathing dragon.

I expected her to be smart. You’d have to be, to survive the Okaki pirates.

I didn’t expect her to be lovely.
I didn’t expect her to make me laugh.
And I definitely didn’t expect her to be the one woman I was destined to be with, the missing piece of my soul. My mate.

Now what?


I enjoyed this for many of the same reasons I enjoyed the first book. The Draekon is marvelously solicitous to the human mate. Everyone is careful about consent. There aren’t any needless misunderstandings or mind games. Everyone is delightedly straightforward.

But I admit that I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as book one. I didn’t find Ruhan quite as charismatic a lead male. Sure, he’s cocky and cock-sure to cover his brokenness, which hits you in the feels. But I just didn’t like draekon conqueror photohim as much as I did Kadir from the previous book. That’s not to say I didn’t like him, just not as much. Similarly, I didn’t find Lani as multifaceted as Alice. I liked her. But I didn’t think she had quite the depth.

But the real question is whether I would read another book in the series, and I would. In fact, book three, which involves pirates, looks especially tempting. I don’t have it on my Kindle yet, but I look forward to reading it in the future.

Other Reviews:

In Between the Pages: Draekon Series Reviews

Scary Mary Hamster Lady: Book Review: Draekon Conqueror