Tag Archives: urban fantasy

Blood Rights

Book Review of Blood Rights (House of Comarré #1), by Kristen Painter

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Blood RightsI borrowed a copy of Blood Rights, by Kristen Painter, from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Now, Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

Review:
Man I’m in a slump. I haven’t read anything I love lately and the best I can give this book is that I didn’t hate it, like the last two books I read. But I’m certainly not going so far as to say it’s good. I didn’t find anything particularly new or innovative in it; just yet another growly alpha male and a woman in need of rescue and protection. Sure, Painter made sure Chrysabelle said ‘I’m well trained and can take care of myself’ several times (often enough it got repetitive), but I didn’t really notice her doing much successful defending of herself. Add to that the fact that I didn’t even like either main character and you have a fail in the making.

What I did find was about a million ways to sexualize Chrysabelle to make the whole thing artificially more titillating, something that annoys me to no end. I mean she let herself get ‘blood drunk’ in a dangerous environment from a condition she’s had her whole life (so no surprise it was going to happen), stripped down to her smalls and sexily prowled around offering herself to the man. None of which was actually necessary or even remotely like her personality to date. Or lets not miss the fact that, despite being a 115-year-old virgin she was called a whore about a dozen times (as are most the women). The giving of blood was pretty clearly equated to sex and she was constantly either offering it up or having some random male laying claim to it. Ugh.

Then there was the identity of the villain….show of hands. How many readers saw that twist coming? Come on now, hands up. Let’s see, one, two, seven, ten, four hundred….Oh, I see, everyone. I guess we can call it predictable then. Plus, the use of the loss of a child to drive her insane was clichéd. Probably the second most common reason women in fiction go bad, just behind being scorned by a man. And the fact that she was prostituting herself for power (or maybe agreeing to regular gang rapes, not sure how to categorize that one, unpleasant as it was)? Oh, I see, one more way to make sure readers know women are just whores and only have one path to power, that just happens to start at the apex of their legs. Got it. Side-eyes hard.

Then there was the whole ‘pure’ thing and the ‘patron’ thing, neither of which are actually defined in any way. What makes her pure? Being a virgin? No, I don’t think so, though sex does apparently muddy the purity. Eating well, not taking drugs, some characteristic of birth, etc? No idea. What about the owning of blood rights and the patron thing? Was that a physical attachment or just a legal arrangement? Still no idea.

All in all, if you like this sort of Urban Fantasy, moving into Paranormal Romance you’ll likely enjoy this. It kept me busy for an evening, but I didn’t love it and I’m not interested in continuing the series. In fact, writing this review brought out how many ways I disliked it and I realize I liked it even less than I thought.

Shiv Crew

Book Review of Shiv Crew (Rune Alexander #1), by Laken Cane

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Shiv crewI picked up a copy of Laken Cane‘s Shiv Crew when it was free on Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Rune Alexander wants to get through her days doing her job, which is protecting the humans against the myriad of supernatural creatures, known as Others, who exist uneasily in a human’s world. 

But she is unstable and damaged. She realizes how broken she is even as she continues to submit to the unspeakable things her lover does to her, craving desperately the strange peace she finds in the aftermath.

When she discovers things are not as they seem and a faceless human is torturing the supernatural groups in her city, she and her crew must break the rules and begin to protect the Others from the humans. 

But as the darkness inside her becomes stronger and she ends up on the wrong side of a battle she must not lose, who will save Rune from herself?

Review:
This is one of those middle of the road books that has a decent plot idea and the writing isn’t bad, so it tricks some readers into thinking the book is good. It isn’t. Now, before anyone accuses me of cruelly trashing the book, I’ll reiterate, It’s not bad either. It’s just ok. But it could have been so much better.

My main issue is that the book is a bit of a one trick pony. Rune Alexander (not be to confused with Lex, which is so expected a nick name that it belonging to another character is confusing) is an angry woman…that’s about it. That anger makes her strong, makes her stupid, makes her friends, makes her enemies, makes her weak. It’s pretty much the core of what she is and that’s just not enough character development to make her relatable. And if she’s undeveloped, the others are paper cut outs. What’s more, it’s this anger that moves the plot and saves the day. That’s not really enough to carry a believable story either.

That plot too is thin. The villain is obvious from the very beginning and there are no real unexpected twists. Rune defeats enemies she really shouldn’t be able to. She intimidates others for no apparent reason. She is pathologically loyal to her assistant for a reason we’re never given. Followers of the enemy defect and come to her, with no explanation. There is some weird sadism/masochism thing going on that just felt like the author trying to give the book some edge. A romance of sorts sparks at the very end out of nowhere. There’s a bit of a deus ex machina ending.

The thing is, a lot of these same points have potential to make for interesting contributions, but instead they’re like dough balls falling to the floor. Just kind of landing with a resounding splat and laying there. Present and accounted for, but of no use. For example, big men being loyal to and taking orders from a woman they’re protective of is a sexy button for me. I love big dangerous men submitting to a woman. I just do. This book has several of them, one even literally presenting himself at her feet. I should be thrilled. But we get no history. We see no reason these men are so dedicated to Rune (and visa versa). It’s flat. Rune is basically the Trump of the book, talking a big game about how awesome she and her team is, but not really giving anything to back the statement up.

Again, not bad. It’s an enjoyable read. But it’s full of holes and doesn’t withstand scrutiny of any sort.

Book Review of The Temptation of Dragons (Penny White), by Chrys Cymri

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The Temptation of DragonsAuthor, Chrys Cymri sent me an e-copy of her urban fantasy Penny White and the Temptation of Dragons. At this, the time of posting, there is also a giveaway running to win a paperback copy. If it wouldn’t be greedy to try and win a copy of a book I already read, I’d so be entering that. You should too.

Description from Goodreads:
Bishop Nigel smiled at me. ‘Holy water doesn’t harm vampires. Which is just as well, as it would make it impossible to baptise them.’

When I was asked by a dragon to give him the last rites, I never dreamed it would lead to negotiating with his cannibalistic family or running from snail sharks. Life as the priest of a small English village is quite tame in comparision. At least I have Morey, a gryphon with sarcasm management issues, to help me. And if all else fails, there’s always red wine and single malt whisky.

As if my life weren’t complicated enough, a darkly beautiful dragon named Raven keeps appearing where I least expect him, I’ve met a handsome police inspector who loves science fiction as much as I do, and my younger brother is getting into trouble for trying to pick up vampires.

That’s what happens when you’re dealing with an incredible and dangerous parallel world full of mythical creatures. And I have to learn to navigate it all without losing myself, or my brother…

Review:
Oh, I really quite loved this. It was fresh and light-hearted, even with the occupational heavy topic. It had an unusual heroine, being that she was a 36-year-old, ultra geeky, Whovian, widowed vicar. I just adored her. There were interesting side characters. There was a mystery that was interesting enough to engage me and leave room for other things. There was a very mild romantic sub-plot that never came to a head or eclipsed the rest of the story and involved two very different males (though not as a love triangle, as neither relationship progressed far enough). There were grammar jokes and Bechdel test reverences and the book wraps up, while allowing for future adventures. All good things.

I only have two real complaints. The first is that I was very distracted by the logistics of inter-species relationships and marriage.  There was no sex in this book and I don’t really anticipate there being any in any future books. It’s just not that kind of book. But if you’re going to posit marriage between dragons and humans or elves and unicorn, I would like to know how biology is worked around or what compromises are made in the relationship. While I got the sense you were supposed to suspend disbelief on the subject, I found the hanging question quite distracting. Secondly, I did not feel that the brother and his guilt excused his very poor, almost cruel behavior. Perhaps I just don’t have enough Christian forgiveness in me, but I finished the book still feeling cheated and indignant on Penny’s behalf.

I should also mention the faith aspect of this book. Since the main character was a vicar, her faith was obviously important to her and there is quite a lot of it in the book. This is a sharp edge for me to walk with books. I don’t consider myself Christian and I hate, HATE being preached to in my fiction. But this book managed to portray Penny’s faith, integrate it into the story, and even cause me to tear up over it at one point, without it ever feeling didactic. I cannot tell you how refreshing that is.