I received a copy of Olivia Riley’s Heart’s Prisoner and Dark’s Savior in this month’s Renegade Romance Book Box. As an unrelated sidenote: since these are special edition covers, I’ll mention that I like them a lot less than the original covers. They are significantly (and disappointingly) less nuanced and detailed, and basically look like a cheap knock-off of the original.
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He’s not like anything Lana has ever encountered.
Asset X: Massive, deadly, a little terrifying to say the least. A devilish warrior. And a killer. Captured on a hellish world after attacking a military campsite and now imprisoned in a state-of-the-art cell inside one of the military’s top bases–Lazris.
And Lana has been assigned to “study” him. To learn his secrets and gain his trust, if he is ever allowed to set foot out of his cell. As a top behaviorist, it is the biggest hurdle of her career.
Asset X–or Xerus as he is called–won’t give up his secrets easily. He is difficult, elusive, and–dare she say–unfathomably alluring…despite his seething demeanor and hard, frightening physique.
Something subconsciously draws her to him. Something wildly irresistible. Even if his wicked smile and needful gaze could just be a ploy to win her trust and escape his cell.
She shouldn’t think of him like that. He is an alien after all. And possibly their enemy.
For Xerus claims he is on a mission. A mission to destroy. And he cannot afford to fail. If he dares let Lana get close, dares open his cold heart to her, she could compromise everything.
I generally enjoyed this, so long as I don’t think too deeply about it. If I did, I’d have to admit that there are a lot of plot holes, and the editing is pretty shoddy. But, so long as I’m determined to overlook these facts for the escapism, I think this is a sweet, low-spice, fairly low-angst read. Lana is smart and shows a backbone when she needs to. Xerus is a paint-by-numbers alien romantic lead, but I liked him all the same.
I did struggle a little with two things that could be covered under plot holes, but I feel compelled to mention them since they especially annoyed me. One, Lana sends Xerus out to essentially run errands for her in the middle of what should be dangerous and frightening times. This very effectively undermined Riley’s attempt to build tension in the plot. Second, Lana’s willingness to give up her own culture and completely take on Xerus’ slaps of toxic patriarchy’s insistence that women, when they marry, give up who they are and become of-their-husband. Sure, I’m not reading Alien Romance for exemplary feminist takes. But I still call out our culture’s BS when it stands out so starkly in my entertainment.
A chance encounter can change everything.
When Aly joined the Grayhart mission to find advanced civilizations within deep space, she didn’t expect to be captured far from home and taken to Xolis–a galactic empire like none ever seen, ruled by the nillium–a powerful race with a serious god complex.
Now outsiders, Aly and her team of explorers are sent to the darkest place within Xolis: Lethe Maws. A mining city on a planet home to outcasts, slaves, and monstrous creatures lurking in the deep dark.
And home to the Dark One, a dangerous exile even the nillium fear, living at the bottom of the mines where all are warned never to go.
When Aly runs into the legendary alien in a very unlikely place, what she finds is no monster but a large, mysterious, nillium male with fierce silver eyes, who makes her heart race.
But though the nillium outcast had reached for her, desiring to touch her, fascinated by her as she was of him, Aly soon learns he’s not looking to be friends or possibly something more.
For what Aly doesn’t know is the Dark One–known by his kind as Ryziel, son of the nillium’s now dead ruler–isn’t looking for love or a mate. He’s looking to get off Lethe Maws for good and return home to his brother, the only family who accepts him for who he is, the only one who matters.
But the human woman brings out a darker part of him that he can’t control–something he never thought possible. As he is determined to escape, he struggles to understand his need for her. A need to protect her. A need to claim her. But determined not to let her get too close lest she be his undoing.
Try as he might to keep her at a distance, Aly will become the one thing Ryziel needs to be free.
Meh, this was fine, I suppose. It was structurally almost exactly the same as book one. The same 
“I’m pushing you away for your own good,” the same skeevy male attention, the same cardboard male romantic lead, the same sort of plot that keeps the two apart for most of the book, etc. This probably wouldn’t have made the books feel so generic if I hadn’t read them back to back. But I did, so…
I like Aly well enough. I thought the world interesting-ish. I like the shadow Ryziel casts. But that’s all I can call it. I don’t feel like the reader gets to know him well, and, honestly, I never really felt the spark between the two of them. All in all, this was a pretty middle-of-the-road read. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t remember it next week either.
Other Reviews:
Bookishly Nomes: Dark World Mates Series Reviews
reader to believe Adam (and supposedly future berserker heroes) truly loves and value their omega mates (can see them as equals) and that omegas are rare and valuable. But she also placed them in a world that treats omega (which correlatively is a stand-in for women, even ifthere are two token male omegas—the mechanics of their omega-ness never addressed) where omegas are considered worthless trash to be caught and thoughtlessly raped to death. This is both displayed and explicitly voiced in the book. It’s one or the other. Maybe other authors can pull it off, but it definitely didn’t gel here.