Tag Archives: romance

Into the Darkness

Book Review of Into the Darkness, by K. F. Breene

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Into the Darkness

I grabbed K. F. Breene‘s Into the Darkness from the Amazon Free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
I’d always been different. I saw objects in the night where others saw emptiness. Large, human shaped shadows, fierce yet beautiful, melting into the darkness. I collected secrets like other women collected bells; afraid to fully trust lest my oddities be exposed.

Until I saw him. He’d been gliding down the street, unshakable confidence in every step. It wasn’t just that he was breathtakingly handsome with perfect features. Something about him drew me. Sucked my focus to him and then tugged at my body. As his eyes met mine, I was entrapped.

No one had noticed him. He’d been right there, just beyond the light, but only I had perceived.

I had to know if he was real. Or maybe I really was crazy. And even when my secret box was blasted wide open, dangers hurled at me like throwing knives, I couldn’t stop until I unraveled his true identity.

I just had to know.

Review:
I quite enjoyed Into the Darkness. Despite it’s humour, it will likely only appeal to a certain few, though. A number of other reviewers have pointed out that it isn’t a book for the faint of heart. It does include a little guy on guy action, but I think the problem is more the issue of  consensuality. What qualifies as consensual could be a whole sub-theme of this book. There is only one fully, unquestionably consensual sex act in it (and there’s plenty of sex). But there aren’t any flat out rapes either. It’s all a little muddled by manipulated emotions and falsified wants. If you’re sensitive about such things I imagine it would creepy you out. Neither the M/M aspect nor the questionable consent issues bothered me. But they are certainly there.

I should probably say a bit more about sex. Sex is graffiti in this novel. It’s everywhere and largely pointless after a while. If the book had been longer I wouldn’t’ have had an issue with this. But as it’s so short, the redundant sex cut into the time for plot and character development. IMO, the book either needed to be longer or the sex needed to be pared down once the Vampires’ Pheromonal effect was established.

I quite liked Sasha. Often when heroines are mouthy it comes off as forced and/or almost suicidal in their insistence on verbal sparring. Shasha pulls it off though. I enjoyed her defiance. Charles was hilarious and Stefan was a true hardass. I loved the fact that he never went all soft and gooey eyed.

My only true complaints are that the whole thing does get a little ridiculous at times and it’s a serious case of ‘girl with magical power that she doesn’t know she has or how to use, but it still mysteriously manifests itself whenever she needs.’ Well, isn’t that convenient? It’s not particularly believable, even in fantasy, and is also a bit of a personal pet peeve.

On finishing the book I immediately went looking for a sequel. One’s apparently due out in March. I’ll be looking for it. I will note that it’s not a stand alone book. It’s not a super cliffhanger, as are so common now. It ends at a logical point, but none of the threads wrap up. None. If I had realised this ahead of time I probably wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place.

Immortal Becoming

Book Review of Immortal Becoming (The Enlightened Species, #1), by Wendy S. Hales

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Immortal BecommingI grabbed Wendy S. Hales‘ Immortal Becoming (The Enlightened Species, #1) from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Shane Einar is a five hundred year old Volaticus Elven warrior, sworn to duty and honor. His species has inhabited the earth since the beginning of time. The sources of vampire, elf and fairy myths, Volaticus are in reality something altogether different. He never expected to meet Jess Reed. A female living amongst humanity completely unaware that she is Hulven, a human/Elven hybrid race of Volaticus, or that she is on the cusp of Becoming into her Elven traits.

Shane should turn Jess over to the Symbiosis of Species Council, SOSC. His attraction to her along with her ability to enrapture him with a smile bars him from it. He rightly suspects that this female is his bloodmate. 
Jess had always been psychic, a painful and confusing fact of her life. With Shane’s loving support she learns to control her abilities and discovers the psychically enlightened species that share this world. 

Together they sacrifice the power of their bloodmating in the battle to save females from breeding cages under the control of an Elven rogue.

Review:

**mild spoiler**
This book has a ton of great reviews and very few bad ones. I guess I’m in the minority, but I found myself constantly annoyed at with it. The writing was simplistic, but passable. So, that wasn’t the issue. It was the characters and some aspects of the plot that made me alternatively scoff, roll my eyes, groan, growl and cringe and almost never laugh, smile, or blush. I just didn’t particularly enjoy reading it.

Important things, like the kidnapping of a relatively major character and the fight around it were glossed over quickly while other, less important things (Jorie’s low iron level drama, for example) were described in excruciating and never-ending detail.

I’m also fairly sure it’s meant to be PNR, not erotica, which means that the focus shouldn’t be more heavily centred on the characters’ sexual relationship than the rest of the plot. But, as much as I love a steamy sex scene or two (dozen), here the amount of time dedicated to the Jess and Shane’s sexual attraction (not necessarily actual sex, but thoughts, actions, words, etc related to their attraction to one another) eclipsed the story.

Plus, it had one of the most ridiculous virginal sex scenes ever. Please! So unrealistic. I don’t demand realism in my fantasy, but I do expect not to spend the whole time so distracted by the lack of realistic emotions, actions, reactions, etc. that it ruins the experience. The sex didn’t really improve after that, either. As example, at one point Jess gets two swats on the butt and is then said to be ‘close to orgasm.’ Really two slaps on the bum (15 seconds worth) is all she needs? She then literally orgasmed on entry (another 15 seconds). Ugh.

I was further infuriated by Jess’ version of post-coital pillow talk. The cliché sexually molested foster child disclosure…seriously, can authors not think of any other history for female characters? I swear I’ve read this same scene, or some slight variation of it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. I’m so sick of it. Both because of the repetitive nature of encountering it so regularly and because it’s often irrelevant to the rest of the plot. I consider it a cheap attempt at character development by giving the girl a tragic past and generally think poorly of most authors who use it. Not always, sometimes it’s important. This wasn’t one of those times though. It contributed nothing of importance to the story, so why include it?

Plus, Jess chose to disclose this little gem of history right in the middle of an otherwise happy scene with a man she’d known for mere hours. As if this wouldn’t be a total downer, or she wouldn’t worry about it being too heavy for their infantile relationship, or she wouldn’t be embarrassed. As if this was a perfectly natural thing to bring up at that point in time, with that person. It was not! It was ridiculous. Predictable. Unnecessary. It didn’t even flow naturally. She wasn’t supposed to have been having a flashback or have been reminded of it by the sex. She just blurted it out of nowhere. Again, why?

Shane, predictably, wasn’t put off by any of this. He just went on thinking how amazing/strong/etc she was. This was a theme for him. Love will do that to a guy, I guess. But the thing is, for most of the book, I didn’t see Jess do anything noteworthy to earn this respect. She cried at the drop of a hat, was too stubborn, and had a tendency to just accept anything put in front of her with little to no critical thought.

As I mentioned, most of the writing is fine. There are some editing issues, but they aren’t too distracting. What was though were the thousand-year-old immortals who talked like teenagers. I don’t just mean using modern slang. That would be bad enough, but things like referring to another as Mom (even though the point was made elsewhere that due to their long lives they generally call their parents by name). Hearing a 3000+ year old man call, ‘The yard is clear, Mom.’ was just WRONG on so many fronts.

The book has an interesting idea. If the world-building had been a little more robust it could have been really good. Ms. Hales obviously has done a lot of thinking about the different species, the political system, the biology etc. The outline is there. But it’s fairly complex and since not enough time is dedicated to explaining it, the reading is left confused by it. But it would be unfair to not point out that there is a really interesting world being developed here.

I have the rest of the series and I imagine I’ll read them at some point, but not right not. According to the blurbs, the heroine in book 2 has been used for a blood/breeding slave for decades (repeatedly raped and impregnated), the heroine in book 2.5 is saved from a gang rape by the hero and in book three we’re back to the breeding slaves (rape, rape, rape, anyone else see a theme in here?) Since, as I’ve mentioned, rape as an easy plot device isn’t something I enjoy, I can only take so many books BASED on female victimhood in a row. I guess I’m just odd like that. So, I need a break from the series before I can finish it out. (Though I have to admit the temptation of Gil and Innanna…)

Colour Wielders

Book Review of Colour Wielders (Colour Wielders, #1), by Dawna Raver

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Colour Wielders

I received an ecopy of Dawna Raver‘s novel, Colour Wielders from the Story Cartel.

Description from Goodreads:
Warning: This book is not your mother’s fantasy. It’s a modern story with a sexy alpha male who’s tired of waiting for what he wants. Once he gets her, he’s not afraid to take on the Universe to keep her. Don’t let the cover fool you. This book is hot!

Behind the Faerying Mysts, hidden from Mortal eyes, is a land where gods and creatures of myth and legend dwell. And in the Mortal Realm, their Princess is hidden away.

Quinn Sinclair lives an ordinary life with her less-than-loving mother in Conifer, Colorado, clueless of her true nature. On the night of her birthday, a staggering betrayal sends her life spinning out-of-control. As she struggles to pick up the pieces, a vision of a man with haunting tourmaline-blue eyes begs her for help, and she is transported into a Magykal battle-forever changing her life.

Arik Morgaine-Demigod bad boy and outcast of the Magykal Realm-tried to avoid contact with Princess Quinn for eighteen years, not wanting to make good on an old threat. But the fates have other plans. Arik can no longer deny his growing desire for Quinn, or the need to protect her from those wanting to control her burgeoning powers. Can the two of them come together and save the Magykal Realm from being destroyed by the Darkest of Magyks?

Review:

I have to be honest; I didn’t care for this book. Having finished it, I feel like the whole thing could be condensed into a discourse on who’d had sex with Quinn and who retained the rights to have sex with her in the future. Honestly, who cares? How could it possibly be such a big deal?

Now, maybe I’m just not the right demographic for this book. But I’m not sure who is. Some parts of it felt very YA and then other parts not at all. Quinn was supposed to be 22, but a HUGE deal was made of  losing her virginity (seriously it happened in chapter one and was still being harped on about in the last chapter), she constantly said effin’ instead of the F-word and she just basically she felt like a stroppy teenager (crying, storming around, slamming doors, etc) Many of the other characters however felt much more adult, as did those parts of the book not dedicated to Quinn. The end result is that sometimes I felt like I was reading a Harry Potter wannabe and then language like, “Nothing like a tight fuck. Know what I mean?” would be thrown in. It was really disconcerting. 

None if it was helped by the weird mishmash of modern English slang and mythical words. Not to mention the relentless and largely unnatural pop references—Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Disney, Rambo, The Simpsons, South Park, The Exorcist, Spider Man, and many more.

Those aren’t my main complaints, however. My primary gripe was what a pitiful heroine Quinn made. She was ostensibly the main character, but she didn’t DO anything.  She took no initiative. NONE! She spent most of the book either crying or lying in bed. The very few times she was even active was in reaction to something, not because she engaged her mind, made a decision and chose to do something, but because she was being chased or kidnapped. Other than occasionally reacting in a childish manner and storming out a door, I don’t think she perpetrated a single purposeful action. She was nothing more than the Maypole the men danced around—limp, passive and wimpy. She did less than nothing for me. 

There were some good parts. Like the time Quinn and her brother insisted people stop calling her ‘The Princess,’ because it depersonalised her. It made me want to pump my fist in the air and say, “Thank you, at least someone gets it.” But such moments were buried in the painfully repetitive narrative, too frequent use of names, annoying italicisations and my constant confusion (especially in the beginning). I spent a lot of time being confused by the racing pace of events interspersed with molasses slow sappy scenes.

So, while I know no book can be for everyone, I also know I have no real desire to continue this series. Or more accurately, I wouldn’t mind knowing how the whole thing concludes, but I’m not willing to sit through any more of Quinn’s whiney, limp-wristed, lacklustre reactions to find out. Any character who can be told, ‘Oh, BTW your mom is a Goddess, your dad’s the fairy king and a big bad sorcerer wants to use you to take over the world’ without even an eyebrow twitch, let alone a serious WTF response isn’t enough of a character to interest me.