Tag Archives: werewolf

Blood Moon

Book Review of Blood Moon, by Aimee Ash

Blood Moon Aimee AshI picked up a copy of Blood Moon, by Aimee Ash, from Amazon. It was free at the time.

Description from Goodreads:
Haidee had a bright future ahead of her, that was until she was viciously attacked in the Never North forest. With a single breath of life left in her lungs she is found by a strikingly gorgeous man. With hope in her heart that this mysterious stranger will save her life, she is dumbfounded when she sees his fangs appear. With Haidee buried alive in the forest she fights for freedom, but when the sun burns her skin she fears that her worst thought is true. She has been turned into a vampire. But soon she will realize that she is no ordinary vampire, she is the chosen one and is sent on a mission by her mistress to kill the leader of the only werewolf pack left in existence. But as she finds herself distracted on her journey the fate of everyone’s lives soon rests in the palm of her hands.

Review:
Wow, that was shockingly bad. The book starts out with this TSTL move on the main character’s part.

Following my usual trail, just as I’d done many times before, my basket gently swayed comfortably on my arm. While I walked, I pictured just how beautiful my sisters would look with mauve bellflower weaved through their braids. Drifting into a daydream, I soon found that I’d lost my bearings and had roamed much further into the forest than I’d intended.

In one short paragraph, the author manages to tell us the girl knows her way, but then gets her lost. What’s more, how stupid does she have to be to wander far past the route she’s supposed to KNOW and end up in a part of the forest called the Never North that she and everyone else is afraid of?

The book had a serious case of, oh-so-special for no apparent reason. Haidee was apparently beautiful, smart, strong, alluring, her blood was sweeter than anyone else, and everyone desires her. She was given power and position for no reason and with no effort. She was too perfect.

The book then just basically turns into a list of fed from/had sex with this person and that person and that one too, interspersed with small snippets of story. She went from virgin to having sex several times a day with no time in between. Maybe this was supposed to be erotica. I say maybe because I’m really not sure. It isn’t, but the character had enough sex for it to be. Until she fell in love with a man she literally hadn’t even had a conversation with.

There were also all sorts of oddities, like her being buried overnight to become a vampire, but never needing to bath afterwards. There also wasn’t a point in which it could have happened and the author simply not mentioned it. Or up until 53% the setting was women in long dresses and cloaks, horses, bows/arrows, candles, and prudish women in teashops. I understandably assumed it was a historical setting. Then, suddenly, Haidee’s talking about her car running our of gas and getting a ride from someone. I honestly believe the author wrote it as a historical and then lost track of the story. That’s how it felt!

The whole thing was full amateurish writing. The narrator’s voice damn near killed me. The writing makes me think the author is very young, though I don’t know if that’s true.

There was an overuse and often inappropriate use of adverbs (other words too, but the adverbs really stood out). Plus, everything seemed to be pulsating, throbbing or pounding. Beyond that, the grammar was just a mess in general. Haidee’s name was used too often in conversations. There was no character development, in fact a large number of them never even speak. They were just there to highlight Haidee’s perfect, desirable self.

I’ll be honest. If I hadn’t been reading this for a challenge, I wouldn’t have finished it. I wouldn’t even have made 20%. It was quite frankly horrible. I’m not even going to pull that punch. That had to be the longest 98 pages of my life. I’d never been so happy to have an ebook end at the 80% mark!

Blood Moon

Book Review of Blood Moon (Moonstruck #1), by Silver James

So, there I was, reading the second book in my Blood Moon Challenge (Blood Moon (Moonstruck #1)by Silver James) and I realized I’d read it before. It took 5% for me to be certain, but eventually I was. Oddly, I see no evidence that I posted a review here for it. So, I’m going to go ahead and rectify that, but I don’t suppose it counts as a legitimate challenge read.

Blood Moon, Silver JamesI picked the book up on Amazon, when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
Army Major Hannah Jackson knows where the skeletons are hidden at the Pentagon and now she’s been tasked with keeping the secrets of Army Special Sci Ops Unit 69—the Wolves—and their secret is a doozy. That a civilian corporation wants to exploit the Wolves is a matter of pressing concern.

Sergeant Major Ian McIntire doesn’t trust Hannah as far as he can throw her—and that’s quite a ways considering he’s an alpha werewolf. The woman is a pain in his butt and with the Blood Moon coming, the unit needs to complete their mission and get home before tempers flare. While she might know most of their secrets, the one she doesn’t know about the moonstruck Wolf might just get them all killed.

When a covert operation goes wrong, Mac must trust Hannah to save his men—and his heart. Secrets, lies, and betrayals are more personal under the full moon, but when a Wolf loves a woman, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Review:
This novella started off so well…and then went to total shit. In the beginning we’re introduced to sexy Alpha among Alphas, Mac and the sexy, capable, strong-willed Hannah. Everything was looking good. I was loving the narrative predominantly from Mac’s POV and thrilled to be reading about a heroine who was competing on par and impressing all the type A, military men. You go girl!

Then about 25% through the book the sexual tension cranked up and Hannah’s IQ dropped by about 50 points, as did her sense of balance and calm. All of a sudden she was scared and crying every 10 minutes, stumbling over tree roots (where before Mac had been impressed with her ability to soldier on unaided), and bordering on hysterics for all of the rest of the story. And no, for the record, just because he tells her repeatedly that she’s strong and resilient doesn’t actually make her so. It’s condescending and pat.

I get that she had a bit of a shock. Totally get that. But why did she have to become so very weak in order for his masculinity to come through? He would still have been plenty manly even if she didn’t fall to pieces. I sure didn’t see any of the men crying over a little gun fight.

The story also felt very much like the middle of a longer piece. There is obvious history with Hannah and her job with the military and the Wolves’ need to rescue Torjak. Then there is a lot left unexplored on the return to Virginia. Not once did Mac and Hannah manage a normal, rational conversation about their future. I would have liked to know how that was addressed.

I had a hard time looking past Hannah’s crumbling facade. It ruined the story for me. But I did find that I liked the writing style a lot. The POVs shifted a bit too quickly at times, but that was easily looked over. I also thought the basic structure of the world Silver James created was interesting. It was only thinly sketched out, but I saw the possibility of some entertaining future books in it. I’d be willing to give another one of her stories a shot.

Apollo Rising

Book Review of Apollo Rising (The Apollo Saga #1), by Sage Arroway

Apollo RisingI’ve had a copy of Apollo Rising, by Sage Arroway, since Dec 2012. I’m pretty sure I picked it up when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
Allison Graves just wanted a simple life – a decent job, a nice apartment, and the occasional refuge from Apollo City, a harbor city on the eastern seaboard whose secrets are as dark as its impending winter storm. Allie’s weekend retreat to the Adirondacks should’ve have been relaxing. But when an accident on a treacherous mountain road results in caring for a strange man while snowed in at her grandmother’s cabin, her life takes an unexpected turn.

Miles from civilization, Allie and her new guest, Tyler, must learn to trust one another as she tries to unravel the mystery of his past, and he makes a startling confession—he’s a werewolf. Until now, Tyler had never met anyone who accepted him for what he was, and the undeniable attraction growing between them only makes dealing with his condition more challenging. Will his uncontrollable nature rip them apart before the storm passes, or will this new relationship lead them down a road that Allie has been resisting for years?

Apollo Rising is the first book in The Apollo Saga – a deeply suspenseful, contemporary story set in the fantasy world of Apollo City, filled with romance, real life and werewolves.

Review:
This took what could have been an interesting idea and wasted it with complete lack of development and rushed…well, everything else. The two characters meet and within a day or so are madly, irrevocably in love. And those romantic feelings come out of nowhere. There is no slow growth or development. They have sex and they are in love. Period. What’s worse, one character uses sex to magically cure another. (Though I have to admit it’s a bit of a twist on the trope to have a magic vagina instead of a magic penis.)

Annoyingly, the author seems to pretend a character not knowing something is the same thing as a character choosing not mentioning something. Because we’re in both characters’ heads and [spolier] if you are yourself a werewolf and you run into a naked man in the middle of a snowy forest on the night of a full moon it’s going to occur to you that the man might be a werewolf and this does not occur to Allison. We are told what she thinks and that’s not among her thoughts then or at any other point. You can’t write 80% of the books AS IF she doesn’t know something and then suddenly tell the reader she does and expect it to fly. That is not the same as adding a twist to a plot, it’s falsifying your story and expecting the reader to just roll with it. Ummm, no.

The baddy is a cliche scorned woman with no depth or development what so ever. And the book basically ends where I would expect the real story to begin.

The writing and editing is fine, other than a few missing words. Maybe I’ll give Arroway another shot, but this book was not a winner for me.