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Book Review: Fractured Stars, by Lindsay Buroker

I purchased a copy of Lindsay Buroker‘s Fractured Stars.

McCall Richter finds criminals, con men, and deadbeats better than anyone else in the empire.

She’s proud of her success and that she owns her own spaceship, especially since she struggles to understand human motivations, can’t tell when people are lying to her, and is horrible at recognizing faces. Being autistic in the empire is frowned upon—and there’s a handy normalization surgery to correct it—but she’s managed to prove her worth and avoid irking the tyrannical regime.

Except for one thing.

Two years ago, she liberated the android, Scipio, from an imperial research facility where he was treated worse than a slave. He’s become her business partner and best friend, but if the empire finds out she has him, a “normalization” surgery will be the least of her worries.

When her ship is confiscated by a cyborg law enforcer needing to transport prisoners, McCall knows she and Scipio are in trouble. Worse, the enforcer’s pilot is a former bounty hunter and business competitor she beat to the prize many times in the past.

Soon, he’s snooping all over her ship and questioning her about her past.

And there’s something strange about him. He knows far more about what she’s thinking than any human should.

It’ll only be a matter of time before he discovers her secret. And then what?

This was fine, I suppose. I’m really torn. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Buroker a lot more than I liked this. On paper, I should have loved this. Late 30s/early 40s, autistic hero and heroine in space… heck yeah. Fashionista android…I’m on board. Rescue dog…yes! I should have loved this. Instead, it kind of fizzled for me. I didn’t hate it. I don’t think it was bad. But it didn’t light me up as I expected, either.

Part of the reason is that I bought and read this after reading the prequel short story Junkyard, where the heroine and her trusty android solve a mystery and save a pooch. I wanted more of the heroine/android (and dog) antics. Instead, the android and dog are basically not in the book. They make cameos, but that is all. So, the very thing I read the book for wasn’t there. Instead, we were given a pretty bland escape-the-prison-planet plot. Meh.

The writing and editing are perfectly readable. I just didn’t love it.

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Book Review: Courting Her Monsters, by Erin Bedford

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I picked up a freebie copy of Erin Bedford‘s Courting Her Monsters during the Stuff Your Kindle event (along with about a million other books).

Unable to hear, I live my life in silence.
Unable to argue with my father, I live my life in service, married off to the highest bidder.

Now, to save myself and my kingdom, I will have to play the part of their prisoner.
But I’m not playing anymore, and my new betrothed is more than happy to push the limits of my body and mind. He’s a monster with a handsome face…

But truer monsters wait for me, and they’re ready to give me so much more than I was prepared for.
What makes a monster and what makes a man? Only I can find that out…
And my life isn’t so silent anymore.

God, what a disappointment. This was a Stuff Your Kindle freebie, and I wanted to love it. I honestly enjoyed aspects of it. Yes, it’s got some pretty significant plot holes. Yes, the heroine does some too-stupid-to-live things. Yes, it’s completely unbelievable that if the abuse she was suffering was so severe, no one noticed (and she was up and moving around with ease). Yes, it’s unbelievable that the mind-reading drake didn’t know exactly what she was up to. All true. But it was still silly, fluffy fun. I would have happily said it was a three-star, nothing serious read. But good lord, the editing. I can’t figure out how more people haven’t mentioned it in previous reviews. Maybe they were all pre-publication and thought the problems would get fixed before it went to print. Maybe they’re fake, IDK. But the fact that it’s not been mentioned by more people is…odd because it’s a significant issue.

Look, it’s one thing to not pick up on the occasional homophone, missing word, or if the spellcheck didn’t catch the use of ‘up’ instead of ‘us.’ But this book has characters who speak telepathically. This is indicated by italics, with no quotation marks or dialogue tag. But in the last 1/4 of the book, the italics just stop. So, you have dialogue with nothing to indicate it as so. In the first 3/4 of the book, there are several instances of dialogue being italicized, along with the next 3 or 4 paragraphs of the narrative. It’s clear the author simply forgot to turn italics off.

Now, I’m usually pretty forgiving about editing. It’s easy enough to miss the small stuff, even repeatedly. But if no one is noticing multiple instances of several paragraphs of erroneous italicization, then no one read this book after the first draft, not even the author, and that’s unforgivable. Thank god it was free. I’d be incensed if I’d paid for it.

The thing is, I liked the story (as ridiculous as it was). I liked that the heroine was deaf. I liked her snark and that she refused to be a perpetual victim. I liked that one of the important men is visibly marred. I liked the dragon-men and world. I might have even read the next one. But I’m not willing to pay for someone’s drafts.

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Book Review: Chosen by Villains, by Eva Chase

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I believe I purchased my copy of Eva Chase‘s Chosen by Villains during a signed book author event.

Three brutal monsters came to my rescue. Now who’s going to save me from them?

Every beat of my heart is the tick of a time bomb, reminding me to squeeze as many thrills out of life as I can. Still, the last thing I expect is a horde of nightmarish monsters descending on me in the night, eager to tear me apart.

So when three more demonic figures leap out of the shadows to defend me, my choices are trust my unexpected champions… or die. Not exactly a tough decision.

The beastly men wrench me away from my home, claiming they’ll keep me safe. They say there’s something special about me—something the others want to devour and they mean to protect.

My monstrous saviors are just as brutal as the creatures they fought off, damaged in ways I’ll never understand. I can tell they’re hiding things from me. But the more we dig into the mysteries surrounding my existence, the more I catch glimpses of tenderness beneath their vicious exteriors.

And the touch of their fangs and tentacles makes me feel so shockingly alive, it’s hard to remember why I ever feared them…

Until I discover the real reason they’re protecting me.

Meh. This was a pretty bland read for me. To start with, I didn’t know beforehand that it is set in the same world as the Flirting With Monsters series. Maybe it’s a spinoff (the characters from that series make an appearance). I don’t know the specifics. I do know that there is so little worldbuilding in this book that if I hadn’t read the Flirting With Monsters series in the past, I would have been lost.

I do not feel that I got to know the characters. (Not that I really needed to. The men are clones of the men from Flirting With Monsters.) I did not feel any chemistry between the lovers. I don’t honestly think there was enough time for any to develop. The plot is simple and predictable. Mostly, it all simply coasted along at just good enough. Never did the book get good and grab my attention. But never did it ever get quite so bad that I decided to DNF. I was mostly just kind of bored with it. Meh, bland.

The writing and editing are fine. The cover is pretty (though I don’t think it matches the tone of the book at all), and I did appreciate all of the disability rep. Honestly, this is probably a case of just not the book for me. I’ve liked other Chase books a lot more.