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Book Review: Dark and Otherworldly, by Kristen Brand

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Author, Kristen Brand sent me an ecopy of the Omnibus of Dark and Otherworldly for review.
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Leigh Morgan has one mission: to stop the fae who abducted her sister from ever kidnapping another human again.

Dredarion Rath wants one thing: to disgrace his older brother and prove himself the worthier heir to Otherworld’s throne.

When their paths cross, it changes everything, and neither Otherworld nor the human realm will ever be the same.

Three romantic urban fantasy novels; one darkly enchanting volume. The Dark and Otherworldly Omnibus includes:

dark and otherworldly individual covers

Poison and Honey
She hunts the fae. The last man she should fall for is a cunning fae prince.

Sting of Thorns
She’s been cursed by the queen of Otherworld. Now the only one who can save her is the man she betrayed.

The Cruelest Curse
When dark forces threaten Otherworld, she’ll have to join forces with her enemies to save the kingdom… and the prince.

my review

I wrote brief individual reviews as I finished each of these novellas. But I’ll make a few quick general statements before I get to them. First I liked this quite a lot. I loved the way Leigh and Dredarion grated on one another, but also came to respect aspects of the other.

Second, I know that my hatred of serials is a personal issue that not everyone shares. Many people will have no issue with this story being broken into 3 volumes. And at 519 pages it is too long to feasibly be published as a single book. But it is 100% a single story. While the author finds acceptable stopping points, none of it stands alone and I think it could have been edited down to fit into a single longish book. I just see no reason that it needed to be broken into 3 pieces. I wouldn’t have even chanced reading it if I hadn’t been offered the Omnibus and that would have been a shame because, as I said, I liked it quite a lot.

Third, I can’t write this review and not mention the giant elephant that is Leigh falling in love with her en-slaver and, because of that love, being willing to return and fight for the peoples who were still actively enslaving her own. By the end Dredarion may have changed his views, but no one else had. So, even by the end she loved and worked for the betterment of people who were enslaving her people. It’s hugely problematic and if it wasn’t in a fantasy setting it would have been wholly intolerable.

Since it is a fantasy I was able to suspend my disbelief enough to put up with it. But even then I noticed that the issue of slavery was more and more often euphemistically referred to as servitude as the series went on.

Now, moving on to my thoughts each individual novella.

Poison and Honey
I liked this a lot. I liked both Leigh and Dredarion and I liked what they appreciated about each other. I thought the world was interesting and both Leigh’s determination and Dredarion’s obvious blind spot around the enslavement of humans interesting. I did think the romance aspect moved too quickly and disliked that it ended on a cliffhanger, such that it’s not a complete story. And at only 136 pages, it had room to be. It did feel like it was a spin-off of something, with quite a lot of named, but otherwise unknown, characters showing up right at the end as if we should know who they are. But as far as I can tell it isn’t.

Sting of Thorns
In a way I think I enjoyed this second installment more than the first. All those unknown characters who showed up out of the blue at the end of Poison and Honey are finally introduced and I liked them all. Leigh and Dredarion are forced to get to know the real versions of each other and I enjoyed that, though I still feel their ‘love’ is unsupported. I just decided to roll with it like any other fantasy element. I did see the twist coming and it, of course, explains so much.

The Cruelest Curse
Honestly, this was my least favorite of the three. It brings the story to a satisfactory conclusion, but it lost the tension and delicious banter between Leigh and Dredarion. They became love-sick saps instead. Plus, while I was always bothered by the way the humans’ enslavement is glossed over as servitude, you really feel it here. I don’t think the word slave is even used. And when Leigh negotiated for better conditions for the humans, it included pay and the ability to leave a position, but not that humans wouldn’t be kidnapped anymore. Perhaps this is inferred, but I use it as an example of how the slavery aspect weakened as the series progressed. Despite all that, when I look at the series as a whole, I’m happy to have read it and will happily pick up another of Brand’s Books.

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Whiskey & Wit Book Reviews

 

 

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Book Review: Bleacke’s Geek, by Lesli Richardson

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I picked up a copy of Bleacke’s Geek (by Lesli Richardson) as an Amazon freebie, after seeing it recommended in a fantasy readers’ group I’m in. It was still free when I posted this review.
bleacke's geek

When girl meets geek, the fur’s gonna fly.

Dewi Bleacke is a no-nonsense Prime Alpha wolf. As head Enforcer of the Targhee pack, she’s in charge of Florida. Her assignment is to kill a dirtbag who sold his daughter. She doesn’t expect to find her handsome, albeit geeky, soulmate in the process.

Dr. Heathcliff McKenzie Ethelbert lives a quiet, boring life. A professor at USF, he has no girlfriend, no car, and is a devout vegetarian. So when a mysterious woman with mocha eyes literally drags him out of his booth and then proceeds to have her way with him, it’s not his average night out. When she follows their sexy interlude by abducting him after killing a man, he suspects life has just taken a drastically odd turn.

Now Dewi, her partner Beck, and her surrogate father Badger, have to educate her new “grazer” mate on the ways of the Targhee wolves. “Ken” does his best to fit in. But an old killer lurks in the shadows–the wolf who murdered Dewi’s parents. Can she keep Ken safe, or will her mate prove to everyone that he’s a lot more than just Dewi Bleacke’s geek?

my review

This was recommended by someone in a fantasy readers’ group because a member had asked for books in which strong women protect nerdier guys. I loved the idea and when I saw it was free on Amazon I picked it up and read it soon after. The problem is that, while it fits the description of strong woman protecting nerdier guy, it doesn’t actually subvert the patriarchal, women as the weaker sex script and suffers greatly for it.

Let me be clear. If I pick up a book about an female alpha werewolf falling in love with a nerdy, vegetarian university professor, I want her to be the stronger party. I want it to actually subvert, not just flip the gender dynamic. Bleacke’s Geek doesn’t even try.

Dewi is the only ever female Prime Alpha (the alphas’ alpha), stronger than even normal alphas and even more unable to submit to others. Excerpt…she’s really not. Dewi, sweet special Dewi, really just wants to submit to her weaker human husband (something no male prime would ever do, even to another alpha), cries a lot, and ALL the men in her life coddle and protect her. They keep information from her to keep her safe and unstressed. Information they tell Ken immediately so that he too can protect her from it.

I found the whole thing worse that being given a weak heroine. Here we were promised a strong one and then it was taken away. But I’m not supposed to notice.

Then there is the abuse problem. One of the things I complain about most in reviews is the easy use of abuse of women as a plot device. Here we have Dewi’s parents murdered, her mother raped in front of her first. Dewi almost killed as a child. Dewi kills a man who has sold his daughter into sexual slavery and has plans to do the same with the other two, she saves a woman whose husband has tied her up and is beating her, Ken’s mother is murdered in a bout of domestic abuse, and the man who killed Dewi’s parents shows up to rape and murder her. That’s a lot of unrelated cases of abused women in less than 200 pages. I think I’m justified in wondering if Richardson simply can’t think of a single other plot device to use, because that is some pretty weak storytelling.

Additionally, the ONLY other women in the book are faceless waitresses and the co-ed students in Ken’s class who go slutty and throw themselves at him as soon as he mates a werewolf. One of whom he can’t remember her name, but remembers masturbating to the memory of her triple Ds several times. (And this is a man I’m supposed to like?) So, every woman but Dewi is either a victim or sexually disposable, or a sexually disposable victim. This I can do without, especially from female authors. I simply expect more and better.

The writing and editing is competent, even if the author makes some odd stylistic choices. The first sentence of the book has no verb, for example. But if this is the authors idea of a good story I have no desire to read anything else they every write.

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Review: Bleake’s Geek

 

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Book Review: Wolf Marked, by Harper A. Brooks

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Here we are at last, reviewing the last Wolf Marked book in my Wolf Marked reading challenge. As a reminder, three different books titled Wolf Marked were promoed on Sadie’s Spotlight fairly close together.

wolf marked calendar

I was so amused by this that I decided to read and review all three. The whole thing took a little longer than I usually like challenges to, because I had to wait for the last Wolf Marked (this one by Harper A. Brooks) to actually become available. In fact, it doesn’t actually comes out until the end of this week. I got to it a little early as a for-review ARC through Lady Amber’s Reviews & PR.

Wolf-Marked harper brooks

The cycle of the moon can bring love… or death.

Time is running out for Astrid. If the wolf-shifter doesn’t find her soul’s mate before her twenty-fifth Blue Moon rises, the consequences will be fatal. With only three weeks left, things aren’t looking good… until Erec, a smooth-talking rogue wolf, lands at her feet.

The strange spark between them leaves Astrid wondering if this mysterious man could be the one meant to break her curse. But can she trust him?

From the moment Jerrick killed the only man Erec ever looked up to, Erec vowed to stop the crazed wolf. Partnering with the west-side pack seemed the logical move to accomplish that goal. But he never expected to fall for the alpha’s beautiful daughter, and now this lone wolf is wondering if she could be the one to save him from the curse.

With imminent dangers looming and the swirling patterns on their skin marking them for death, can Astrid and Erec save the west-side pack from the encroaching pack before their last Blue Moon rises in the sky?

my review

This wasn’t bad, if you like the kind of thing. I acknowledge that it’s competently written and edited and has a great cover. But I was only so-so on the book for personal preferences kind of reasons. Mostly, I consider a lot of the plot components low-hanging fruit in the storytelling department.

If you’re going to design a whole new fantasy world, but populate it with all the same mores, biases, and social norms as the real world, I consider it kind of lazy. And that’s what Brooks does here. One of primary tensions of the book is a woman who is always struggling to exist outside of men’s protective shadows. She’s considered amazing because she excels at some skills considered male. She (and other women eventually) want to prove themselves, so she convinces leadership to let women participate in some previously male-only activities and show themselves to be competent and useful. (There is no acknowledgement of the importance of female skills, only that women are equal because they too can do the things men do. But that’s another issue all together.)

Similarly, you see the big reveal (twist) coming about a mile off. It’s another plot device that’s frequently used. Having said all of that, both are tied into Brooks’ plot nicely and aren’t even overly ham-fisted. So, if you like this sort of story, I imagine you’ll like this one. It’s not badly done. It’s just been done and done and done again.

I will grant that Brooks’ claim “each book in the Shifters Unleashed series can be read as a standalone,” is proved true. I always distrust being told a book in a series can be read as a stand-alone. I’ve been burned so many times. But here it is 100% true. Other than sharing one origin myth, Wolf Marked and Tiger Claimed (which I also reviewed) have zero cross-over. They truly can be read as stand-alone books. I think whether you choose to and how much you’ll enjoy them will truly come down to a matter personal preferences.

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