REVIEW: The Plague Forge by Jason M. Hough

The Plague Forge by Jason M. Hough
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It sucked. Horribly.

+ the writing

The writing didn't improve an inch. It remained excessively detailed. I swear, if a character went to the restroom to take a dump, the scene would have lasted FIVE full pages. Then, in the next chapter the character would still be shitting and it wouldn't be because of constipation. It didn't matter if there was action, which the book had a lot, the pace moved like molasses. I had less patience for book 3 than for book 2 so I skimmed more. I skimmed a lot. You know it's a bad book when you're skimming the action scenes.

+ the characters

I ceased caring for Skyler. He did improve from book 1. He did less angsting and more doing. Nevertheless, the character growth was nowhere enough for me to give a fuck whether the protag lived or died.

Tania, the second protag, improved a lot from the annoying-as-fuck damsel in distress she was in book 1. However, she regressed a bunch in book 3 by obsessing over Skyler. It was annoying enough to watch unrequited love from Skyler's side towards Tania, it was doubly annoying to watch it from Tania's side towards Skyler. The non-communication suffocated me.

Add in Ana, Skyler's current girlfriend, and a stinky love triangle exploded in my face. I felt bad for Ana because she loved Skyler but Skyler didn't love her as much, not as much as he secretly loved Tania. Honestly, the only reason I believe the two women loved Skyler was because he was the hero of the story and it's standard for heroes to have more than one love interest. In other words, the romance was forced and superficial.

The love triangle grated on my nerves. Tania and Ana seemed to be defined by their love for Skyler. At least with Tania, she was a protag of her own and had a life outside of Skyler. Though Ana was promoted from a minor character in book 2 to a major character in book 3, she existed solely as Skyler's sidekick. Without Skyler, she would have faded completely to the background. Thankfully, relief came in the middle of the big book when shit was so important that they couldn't afford the luxury of even a minute to obsess over Skyler. It was also depressing that it took that long and that much.

Samantha, the one major female character who wasn't a love interest of Skyler's, ceased to be my favorite character. I still liked her, which is hugely more than I feel for Skyler, but she wasn't doing anything that I thought was important shit. All she did was run, hide, and fight. It was pretty entertaining in book 1. But as the series progressed, it became boring. She didn't really serve a big role except to be one of the good guys for Skyler to save.

As for the villains, one of them disappointed me greatly. Blackfield broke character by performing a heroic act. After all that animosity and fighting against our good guys, suddenly he decided to help them towards the end because of, ew, altruism? No. I didn't buy it. I didn't buy the reason given that Blackfield was "varying the pattern," his motto of acting unpredictably to win. There's a thick line between acting unpredictably and acting altruistically, forgetting the fact that you're a despicable villain. What he should have done was backstab our good guys and survive like the cockroach of a person that he was.

As for Grillo, the other villain, he frustrated me, but it was in the sense that he was a great villain and he was kicking our good guys' ass. He didn't disappoint me as it was the good guys who disappointed me because they couldn't match him in war. What few victories the good guys gained were by luck in my opinion.

+ the ending

The ending was the worst offender of the book and overall, the series. It was rushed. It had dei ex machina. To add insult to injury, the epilogue was a letter addressed to the reader, telling the reader everything in one fat infodump. By everything, I mean all the things the book withheld from the reader. The reader learned about the reasons behind the apocalypse on Earth, the apocalypse in a galactic empire, the aliens' mission, and the characters' next adventure. The epilogue revealed the entire series as a prelude to the real story where the characters will fight supposedly evil aliens in a galactic war. A FUCKING PRELUDE. Why the fuck was this series not that story?

My feelings were confirmed in a Goodreads review which said that this trilogy was the first of three trilogies. *facepalm* I doubt that will happen if I have learned anything about series, sales, and publishers.

Conclusion

I rate The Plague Forge 1-star for I didn't like it. My only consolation was that I skimmed and the books were free courtesy of the very nice publisher humoring my requests. This series was essentially an unnecessarily expanded-to-the-extreme version of those prequel short stories you often see in Young Adult series.

If you read book 1 and didn't care for it but have a compulsion like me to know what happen at the "end," read book 3's epilogue. It's the only chapter that matters.

---
Review of book 1: The Darwin Elevator
Review of book 2: The Exodus Towers

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REVIEW: Wallflower by Heidi Belleau

Wallflower by Heidi Belleau
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I thought this book would be a fun read. I thought WRONG. It was HORRIBLE. I thought, hey, what could go wrong with a main character who is Asian, an art student, and MMORPG addict, a cross dresser, and more importantly, Asian? Represent! Robert sounded like a cool person. Eeeeecccck. Not if he’s an emo. Oh My Gawd was he such an emo.

+ the main character

Robert Ng sucked. Reason number one, he had a Loser Complex the size of a stinking hill of manure. I would have felt bad for him were it not for the fact that the only reason his life was crappy was because he made it crappy. He had no one to blame but himself. He constantly threw one pity party after another. Rarely did his thoughts ever stray from how much he sucked. Honestly, it would have been a miracle if he spent a few seconds to think that other people might have problems too. It would probably blow his mind if he read the news and learned about all the bad things that happen in the world. Robert used up all my patience by chapter two.

Reason number two, his character development was piss poor. Art student, MMORPG addict, and Chinese descent? These traits were window dressings. The reader only ever see him taking one art class, Introduction to Art Principles. While one art class is enough to make him an art student, he was a poor excuse for an art student. He worked in the video store and moped at home more than he ever did anything as an art student. As for the MMORPG part, playing video game a couple times does not constitute a person an “addict,” especially not someone who played two times in the entire story. As for his Chinese background, the main character could have been switched with a white person and it wouldn’t have made a difference. He may have a Chinese last name and Chinese look but other than that, his character was whitewashed.

Reason number three, and this one pissed me off the most, his character was defined by his transgender status. I understood transgender is a big theme in the story, but it came at the cost of developing Robert as a real person. If Robert wasn’t transgender or decided not to be transgender anymore, he would be a nobody in the sense that the trans part of him, his Bobby identity, was the only thing that mattered and without that he’s nothing. Put it another way, it’s kind of like defining a woman by her fertility status. If she can’t pop out a baby, she’s nothing. People are the sum of their parts, and this was forgotten when Robert was developed as a character. The fact that he was an art student, a MMORPG addict, a Chinese-Canadian, a brother, and a son among other things? It was like these things could matter less because whatever.

+ the transgender theme

Ironically, considering the emphasis of the theme, I thought it could have been executed better. Sometimes it came off as the author’s narration instead of Robert’s narration, and it came off as preachy. It was preachy in the sense that the important messages had to be said point-blank because the reader couldn’t be trusted to learn them from the characters’ action. I felt this diminished the impact of the messages.

I also got the feeling that the one of the reasons Robert became Bobby, his female self, was because he was uncomfortable with his homosexuality and needed a safe way to express it. It seemed like half of the time he became Bobby, he flirted with guys or had lusty thoughts about men. After all, it is hard to be rejected or worse, gay-bashed if one is a pretty girl and not a shy weak gay male. Plus, towards the end he didn’t feel the desire to be excessively effeminate when he tried on an androgynous look and didn’t mind being a man for Dylan.

+ the plot

It wasn’t till the middle of the book that the romance finally started and the emo part was put on a break, if only for a few seconds. One thing that jarred me was the weak sense of time. Where did Robert have the time to play video games, go to college, take yoga with his sister, work in a video store, date Dylan, and most importantly, mope? The answer is he didn’t because some of his roles were window dressing. The one part the plot did get right was Robert working in the video store, Rear Entrance Video, which is the name of the series. I get the feeling that if it wasn’t the name of the series, Robert being a video store worker would have been on the wayside along with the other roles.

My least favorite part of the book was the sexual assault. It felt too much like obligatory external conflict and a very cheap way to push the main character into self-reflection and growth. Yay, another book where rape is used as a plot device. /sarcasm. Well, the bright side was that the bad guy got his comeuppance.

Finally, I didn’t care for the smut. If there was anything that could have redeemed the story for me, a smut freak, it would be the smut. While the sexy times were hot, they were on the low side of hot, even with the sexy dirty talk.

+ what I liked

The only part I liked was Dylan. He had issues but he was likeable and very enjoyable to read about. Not to mention his character development wasn’t whitewashed on an oversight. I would like to say Dylan could do better than Robert but that’s only because I don’t like Robert. I hate to admit it but Robert and Dylan do make a good match.

Conclusion

I rate Wallflower 1-star for I didn’t like it. The first half was unbearable to read. The second half was barely tolerable. I would have enjoyed the book if Robert wasn’t emo. Had he been like Dylan was, confident and couldn’t care less about what other people think (or pretend not to care), I would have enjoyed the book. A kickass crossdresser, now there’s a main character I can get behind with.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher

The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I picked this book up thinking it was an urban fantasy in the Wild West, and what I read wasn’t far off from that impression. It’s a small town fantasy; not a big difference. Where I went wrong was thinking it would be exciting. It wasn’t — at all. The book was goddamn awful. It was so awful it took me 2-3 months to finish, speaking as a reader who in a motivated mood can finish 2-3 novels in a single day.

One chapter in and I already knew this book wasn’t going to be rated more than 2 stars. Two chapters in and I started to feel the urge to DNF. Three chapters, skim, I chanted to myself, skim in the way a woman giving birth chants to herself to push. To say the beginning was slow is an understatement; the beginning was DAMN FUCKING slow.

+ the plot

The ENTIRE BOOK was DAMN FUCKING slow because the flashbacks would not desist. The plot kept flashbacking all the way up to the middle of the fucking climax! The climax, I say! Every time the plot felt the whim to explain, it did so in flashbacks. Like buy 1 flashback, get 2 flashbacks free! And these were NOT short flashbacks. I get the point was to show, not tell, but this was showing beyond ridiculous. (Funny enough, I later read a book that was all tell and no show.) I swear, one-half to two-third of the book was flashbacks.

The multiple viewpoints exacerbated the problem. There were way too many of them as if it couldn’t be decided who were the main characters and who were the supporting characters; everyone needed their own fucking flashback. Let me tell you who the main characters were: runaway Jim, Deputy Mutt, housewife/assassin Maude, and Mayor Pratt. Everyone else needed to back off from the motherfucking stage, especially the angel dudes.

+ the characters

Every. single. character came with a goddamn sob story and a gold-pan full of secrets. “Look at me! Look at me! I have layers. I am complex.” The book wasn’t as pretentious as it just tried too hard. It was done in the belief that only characters with baggage are interesting and worth analyzing for literary value, e.g. Maude with feminism and domestic violence (domestic violence doesn’t discriminate against kickass immortal woman) or Pratt with religion and homosexuality (Mormon and gay, enough said). Characters couldn’t just be characters; they existed only for points to be made or things to be analyzed. Message heard loud and clear and bluntly smashed to the head for good measure.

Ironically, most of the characters were developed in a superficial manner and with self-defeated purpose. For example, Ch’eng, as a Chinese immigrant, lend the book more diversity and showed racism in a thought-provoking way that wasn’t your usual “white people back then were racists.” He was a Chinese mafia boss of the small town and he showed the reader racism on the Chinese side and how racism played a big role in survival on the American frontier, but in a respectful way that didn’t diminish the racism of the white characters and make it into a “but they did it too” whine. It was too damn bad that he got pigeonholed as the Magical Asian to dispense esoteric wisdom to ignorant white people, or in this case, to a white kid (Jim) like in The Karate Kid (the 1984 version). Bzzzzzz, subversion fail. And Ch’eng was only a supporting character. The main characters were greatly more problematic (this review goes in-depth about it).

Anyway, no surprise for me to say I did not connect with any of the characters and cared very little whether they lived or died. If anything, I wished more would die so there would be one less viewpoint I was forced to read, excuse me, skim through. The only character I had a handful of sympathy for was Jim because he was only an ordinary kid stuck in shitty situation forced upon by irresponsible adults. All right, and because Jim was the first character introduced and thus taking all the servings of my sympathy pie.

+ the world building

Not a big complaint in comparison to what has already been complained about, but it’s worth the discussion. I didn’t mind that the world building was Christian-oriented in the way TV show Supernatural or Sleepy Hollow is Christian-oriented. I was, however, disappointed that non-Christian religions were made subordinate to the Christian belief, token in their references, and that all of it comes back to the almighty G. Well, at least the book challenged the idea of blind faith.

Conclusion

I rate The Six-Gun Tarot 1-star for I didn’t like it. The book was ambitious, I can tell you that. It aimed for the moon; however, it missed and hit the fiery fatal sun instead. It was a total DISASTER and read like an unedited, overwritten self-published work.

The ending sucked. It was dreary and it unnecessarily left some things up in the air. It’s like there was a rule in the book that the characters could not simply be happy that they were still alive or have a fresh start. It’s like... what was the point of stopping the apocalypse? How pointless.

Please note that the book is shelved as steampunk on Goodreads, but there’s nothing that is steampunk or even steampunkish in this book.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: Pandaemonium by Ben Macallan

Pandaemonium by Ben Macallan
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I didn’t care for book 1, but at least it was interesting enough. Book 2, Pandaemonium, was downright horrible. The book was truly its namesake, full of wild confusion.

The book started out fine, picking up immediately where book 1 ended. This time around, however, the story was told from Desi’s viewpoint instead of Jordan’s. I liked Desi and thought she was a good kickass heroine in book 1, but I came to like Jordan a lot at the end of book 1 so I was disappointed that book 2 didn’t continue from his viewpoint. But hey, it was Desi. Kickass heroine. I expected my disappointment to quickly fade. I could not have been more wrong. Things went downhill — fast.

Desi was on the run because bad guys were after her. It was the same thing ALL OVER AGAIN from book 1 except book 2 had her teaming up with her ex-boyfriend Jacey instead of Jordan. I quickly tired of the story. I thought Jordan’s narration in book 1 was long-winded, but Desi’s narration in book 2 was worse. Way WORSE. Her narration was a stream of consciousness, which I abhor. It didn’t take but a New York minute for Desi to turn from one of my favorite characters of the series to one of my least favorite.

Although things were happening, the plot progressed very little. Very little made sense, either. Characters just seemed to do stuff for no rhyme or reason. Many times I would be thinking, “What the fuck are these characters trying to accomplish?” Around a quarter of the book, I skimmed because I couldn’t endure the shitty reading any longer. I couldn’t believe how far in the book it took for Desi to learn who were the bad guys that were after her. I couldn’t believe how much time Desi spent thinking about her romantic drama crap with Jacey and Jordan towards the end when they were about to confront the bad guys. Woman, have some priorities!

Only at the end did I finally stop skimming, and what happened there confirmed my decision to skim as a smart one. Not much was resolved, especially not the love triangle. Though the bad guys were finally dealt with, it was lackluster and not worth reading the entire book to get to there. It was definitely not worth reading the entire series either. Desi’s character growth, the kind that should have started in the beginning of book 2 if not all the way back in the middle of book 1, finally started in the last chapter... of book 2, the end of the series. What a PISSER, and here I thought book 1’s ending was a pisser. I didn’t realize the book 2 was trying to outdo itself in angering me.

Conclusion

I rate Pandaemonium 1-star for I didn’t like it. At All. Stories should be as long as needed, but this one had absolutely no reason being dragged out as a duology. This one was one of those cases where the editor or the publisher should have insisted the story to be a standalone and have the book 1 and 2 just be ONE book.

I do not recommend this series. It’s a waste of time.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: Three by Jay Posey

Three by Jay Posey
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The book was rude. It threw me into the mix with scant explanation. I waited and waited and when answers were finally given I didn’t understand them because the book didn’t explain what they meant. Characters would act shocked upon awareness and I would just go, “So what?”. The writing spent too much time with scene setup and barely any time with world building. I craved exposition.

For example, Weir were roaming zombie-like monsters. A competent warrior can take one down relatively easily, but the true danger lies within their number and their tendency to ambush preys. Bites wouldn’t necessarily turn a person into a Weir, but then again I’m not sure because the book never explained how one became a Weir. Neither did it explain how Wren came to rule the world when there were powerful humans who could take them on, in groups of course, and reclaim the world for humanity.

As far the book was concerned, the world was always apocalyptic, part of the population always had paranormal abilities, and etc. Unless you were paying close attention and noticed certain words, you wouldn’t have known the fictional world was a futuristic Earth.

+ the characters

Characters were a complete cliché. Three was a strong warrior with a sense of honor. Cass was an ex-criminal who aspired for redemption. Wren, Cass’s son, was a boy with peerless but unreliable power. I bristled how the latter two characters were used for emotional manipulation of the reader. When things needed to vomit sad, the book trotted out the desperate mother and her son who was around 5 year old and cried “Mama,” lip quivering and all that shit. Aiy.

For the main villain, Asher was power crazy because, well, someone got to be evil. The funny thing was that he and the other important characters had more character development than the eponymous hero. I still didn’t know who the fuck Three was by the end of the book. Equally frustrating was the absence of explanation of his secrets when they were revealed. What the fuck does “wired” mean? Ugh. I don’t care anymore.

+ the plot

The plot was so simple that it was strongly more suited as a novella than a novel. I lost patience with it halfway through and heavily skimmed to the end. The only time I ever bothered to pay close attention again was in chapter 22 of 31 when Cass revealed her past and secrets, answers that put her and her son into their present predicament.

The ending was cliché and bittersweet, redolent of some tragic warrior myth. As a reader with a zealotry for happy endings, I would have been upset but I honestly couldn’t give a shit. I never connected with any of the characters so I felt little sadness with the good guys’ death and little joy with the bad ones’.

In Conclusion

I rate Three 1-star for I didn’t like it. A post-apocalypse setting, a touch of cyberpunk, a galore of chase and battle scenes: all that glitters was not gold.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: Peregrine Harker & The Black Death by Luke Hollands

Peregrine Harker & The Black Death by Luke Hollands
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The book was a head-banging read. It was told in a way where the protagonist was practically mute and so detached that the dialogue was communicated in incredibly stilted summary and events were literally forced upon him. I think the intention behind the inane narration was an immersive reading experience but in practice it was anything but. I felt as if I was held hostage in a dark room that was the protagonist’s mind where I watched the story through a bunch of filters. Halfway through the book I couldn’t take it anymore. It was torture so I skimmed in a rush to end the torture.

And what a shame because the plot was actually enjoyable and the characters were more or less decent. I liked Louisa, the hero’s love interest, but I didn’t like Peregrine, the hero. Louisa was a kickass heroine, and I felt really bad for her for the constant rescuing and guiding of Peregrine.

Peregrine was the embodiment of curiosity kills the cat. He was too much of a dreamer and though he had practical abilities such as knowing how use a gun and how to box, he never really put them to good use. Not until someone or a near-death situation forced to him remember his own abilities that he then put them to use. Furthermore, Peregrine’s background was ambiguously developed. I couldn’t decide if he was poor or rich, why he bothered being a reporter if he didn’t do any actual work. Peregrine had enough money to own his own place, and it didn’t seem at all like he was hurting for money.

Speaking of Peregrine’s place, it was a big plot hole how the villains never once thought to simply stake out Peregrine’s place and personally dispose of him or easier yet, wait until Peregrine was asleep and then bomb his place, killing him in the process. It was ridiculous how the villains went through extravagant means to dispose of the hero. I understood that the plot was supposed to be over the top and the action high-octane but doing away with some logic was not necessary to achieve its purpose.

In Conclusion

I rate Peregrine Harker & The Black Death 1-star for I didn’t like it. The stilted, long-winded, “OMG, please shut up”-inducing dialogue murdered the book.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: The Prince of Galerir by Anna Lee

The Prince of Galerir by Anna Lee
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

With an appealing blurb, I was sure this book would be a shoo-in for an enjoyable read. It was not. By the last third of the book, I skimmed in a rush to get it over with.

I didn’t mind the cheesiness because it caged the angst. I didn’t even mind — much — the ridiculous melodrama that rolled in halfway through the story and flooded it through the ending. What I did mind — strongly — was the preachiness, which became the straw that broke the camel’s back. While I couldn’t agree more about what the story preached, I didn’t appreciate it. The moral messages were anvilicious and unwanted.

I felt uneasy with the fact that the all the bad guys were only bad guys because they were homophobes and, on the opposite end, all the good guys were only good guys because they were not. The story was so troublingly black and white that I couldn’t swallow it. I wanted a fluffy fantasy, not something that was the equivalent of a bible fable. It was the equivalent of a bible fable. *gag*

In Conclusion

I rate The Prince of Galerir 1-star for I didn’t like it. What a shame. Excise the preachiness and there was a great chance I would have liked it.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: Pursued by Joel Gomez-Dossi

Pursued by Joel Gomez-Dossi
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The writing was good, the story was fast-paced, and that’s everything nice I can say about this book because it was crappy. I think it was going for a B-rated-teen-horror-movie thing or a parody of it, but either way the book failed. I didn’t cringe. I didn’t laugh. I just wanted to finish the book already so it would stop annoying me.

The Characters

Jamie, the MC, was stupid and naive beyond belief. I would list all the stupid things he did but I would simply be summarizing the entire story, and I say this with no exaggeration. Honestly, I can’t even give one example because I would be compelled to rant in long paragraphs.

Now I will say this: Jamie did do one smart thing...kinda. That one thing was trying to find evidence against the villain to back up his claim that the villain was a villain. Otherwise, no one would believe him because the villain was a well-connected, respected cop who was actively sabotaging the MC’s credibility. However (and this where the “kinda” comes in), if Jamie was an inch smarter, he and his friends would have hired professionals, i.e. a private detective and a lawyer, instead of amateurishly doing it themselves. It was no surprise to see that they quickly tipped off the villain who then targeted his friends too, escalating the already dangerous situation to the going-to-capture-and-torture-you level.

While Jamie was a moron, the villain was a caricature. His character seemed to me like it was based upon a hodgepodge of traits a serial killer would have.

The other characters were no better. I know everyone has problems of their own, but everyone in this book was screwed up in one way or another. Domestic violence, illegal immigrants, family estrangement, conversion therapy, etc., each issue was slapped onto a character, and wham-bam, there’s your character development.

The Ending

It was more than a case of lazy character development, it was also a lot of unnecessary and superficial drama. I didn’t like the shit-isn’t-over-yet ending, particularly the HIV issue that should have been dealt with early in the story. The obligatory bittersweet ending, recall that the book is a horror/thriller, was a shade of ridiculousness.

In Conclusion

I rate Pursued 1-star for I didn’t like it. I’m thankful that the story limited the POVs to Jamie and the villain. Multiple POVs would have make it insufferable.

Just when you think the stupidity is over, it’s BACK! There is a sequel, Deadly Cult, and I must confess. I am seriously tempted to read the sequel despite rationality. Now that’s scary.

Goodreads | Amazon

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REVIEW: Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review, Spoilers, Rant

"Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well."

And the story sucked. The story was like a trash can full of children’s thrown-away arts and crafts topped with their snotty tissues and moldy, forgotten lunches.

The Writing

The writing was lyrical but it had the tendency to be verbose which induced skimming. I wish the book spent more time telling the story instead of waxing poetic. The writing wasn’t much of an issue for me in book 1 but here in book 2, exacerbated by other bigger issues, the writing quickly became a marsh to wade through.

Worse, the beginning of the story took a couple of chapters before reaching the heroine’s PoV. The plot capriciously alternated between the heroine, the heroine’s ex-boyfriend, the heroine’s best friend, and some random chimaera runaway slaves.

The Characters

+++ chimaera runaway slaves

The chimaeras’ scenes were short, but they still bogged the story. I think they were supposed to show an outsider’s PoV to the moral development of the Misbegotten, the ill-treated seraphim soldiers/bastard children of the seraphim emperor. Whatever the reason, I didn’t want to read about these random chimaeras.

+++ Karou’s human friends

Karou’s best friend, Zuzanna, and tag-along Mik were stupid and pitiful. Mostly stupid. These idiots should have been left in book 1, but instead they decided to chase after Karou, walking into the arms and claws of her monstrous, hostile chimaera compatriots. From the start, it was obvious to me that Karou’s human friends were cannon fodder waiting to happen, and I was half-right when they were later held hostage.

What really frustrated me about these characters was that they didn’t take Karou’s situation seriously or realize their own precarious place. Their attempt to inject levity into the story more than failed; it offended me.

+++ Karou’s ex-boyfriend: Akiva

The plot leaned heavily towards his PoV, and I didn’t like how it took the spotlight away from Karou, the star of the series.

Akiva was emo. For 2/3 of the story, he didn’t seem to do anything but brood, pine, and despair. Karou this, Karou that, Karou is dead again (he believes).

Then in the last third of the story, he suddenly went homicidal and unwittingly prompted another seraphim invasion. Akiva isn’t a megalomaniac dictator but based in book 1 and 2 and the various flashbacks between the two books, his action resulted the same kind of consequences that would be caused by one.

I disliked Akiva in book 1, and I continue to dislike him some more in book 2.

+++ the heroine: Karou

As if Akiva wasn’t bad enough, Karou was worse. Head-repeatedly-banging-on-desk worse. The biggest reason that kept me from hating book 1 was because of Karou. She was quirky, she was assertive, she was...kind of violent to be honest and I loved it. The girl didn’t hesitate to threaten and spill blood to get her way — not when her loved ones were on the line.

In book 2, there was none of that willfulness. She was weak, she was vacuous, she was irresolute and I hated it. I could understand Karou having weak moments after being blasted with multiple bombshells of revelation and memory-gain at the end of book 1, but this wasn’t a series of weak moment. It was a severe character regression, and it contributed to a hurricane-sized disaster of a book.

Moreover, when did Karou became a Resurrectionist? How was resurrection done? Were souls a physical object or something? I don’t recall the magical explanation in book 1 and none was rehashed in book 2. For a magical story, there was little talk about magic. Book 2 made me feel that there were logic holes in the story’s magic system.

+++ the 2nd Ex-boyfriend: Thiago

Karou threw her resurrection service and trust to Thiago, another suitor of hers. Whereas Akiva was emo, Thiago was a bastard and gave no semblance of a good reason to be trusted. Thus, it was no surprise that he betrayed her.

Throughout book 2, Thiago betrayed Karou many times but the twit kept residing at his place and didn’t do anything to fight back. Oh sure, she did make a few attempts but they were half-assed. I could understand being caught off-guard after he betrayed her for the first time (in book 2, present plot), but there was no excuse for Karou to keep falling for his betrayals — one predictable betrayal after another.

After the event of book 1 ending with Akiva’s confession of genocide (along with other instances of betrayal against her), Karou should have lost her capacity to trust. It was unnatural for Karou to remain trusting in book 2.

Karou danced to Thiago’s overt manipulations, and it was awful to watch. If she couldn’t come up with a good plan and actually fight back, the least she could have done was leave and stop resurrecting his allies/her haters. The story exemplified many times that Thiago needed her more than she needed him; Karou was the only living resurrectionist.

I kept waiting for Karou to end Thiago already because the Karou in book 1 would have done so the instant the bastard crossed her.

The Plot

+++ the rape

Lo and behold, towards the end Thiago attempted to rape Karou. Thank goodness she prevailed and finally, fucking finally, ended the bastard’s life. But holy fuck! The rape attempt astounded me. After the moment of shock, I got angry fast.

I expected better from the series. I expected the series to avoid and disdain rape as a plot device. Book 2 could have stopped there with the fuckity. But noooo. It fucking did not.

+++ the fuckity continues

At a later scene of the ending, Karou resurrected Ziri in Thiago’s body, her rapist’s body. Wait, what?! Enters a fucking ridiculous chapter of a flashback to explain why. The reasons given were abysmally contrived, as if they were pulled out at the last minute out of some godforsaken shithole.

Ziri was Karou’s third suitor, which officially made Karou in my eyes a Mary Sue. Ziri was the story’s one and only decent romantic interest, and the story fucked his character beyond comprehension!

Beyond comprehension!

In Conclusion

I rate Days of Blood and Starlight 1-star for I didn’t like. 2/3 of the story was dull and confusing; the last 1/3 was confusing, infuriating, and exasperating. There didn’t seem to be any sense in the story, and towards the ending twists and turns were thrown out haphazardly like mud. The rape part buried the book.

The series started off as a different, intriguing way to do angels and demons YA; I do like the dark fairy tale vibe. However, like most of its brethren this YA series became a Disaster with a capital D.

If you loved the first book, you’ll likely love this second book. If you’re tired of disastrous angels and demons YA, avoid.

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REVIEW: Guttersnipe by Isa K.

Guttersnipe by Isa K.
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review

Guttersnipe is a speculative master-slave M/M fiction about a rebel turned sex slave named Derek who learns that he has been a pawn between feuding masters.To make matters worse, he learns that the feud has risen to a conspiracy which threatens the foundation of a society where sex is heavily regulated. With twists and turns and mind games, I expected the book to be full of excitement.

That expectation was not met.

The Characters

+++ Derek

He was the protagonist. Barring 1 or 2 instances, the story was told from his side in 1st PoV.

I didn't like Derek from the start. His cockiness annoyed me, and his sexcapades disturbed me. Only after Derek got captured and raped that he then endeared himself to me.

Unwilling to accept his enslavement, Derek remained calm, kept his wits, and — this is the most important part — attempted escapes. Not one escape, but multiple escapes. Derek was defiant, confident, and resilient. His perseverance impressed me.

Unfortunately, Derek was the about the only character I liked.

+++ Marco

He was the guy who captured and raped Derek and became Derek's master. I didn't care much for him. I found his backstory contemptible and the reason for his fear of love absurd. I had a hard time believing he was a great schemer because he acted so glum and seemed like he moped all day long.

+++ Zach

Marco's servant was annoying. His cliché sob story of a past as an abused ex-sex slave got eyerolls from me. When Derek tricked and punched Zach to escape from Marco again, I had a hard time feeling pity for Zach.

+++ Evelyn

Marco's evil rival was exasperating. His characterization as this maniacal sexual sadist was shallow and devoid of imagination.

+++ Nick

I found Evelyn's sex slave almost as exasperating as Evelyn. I really wished Nick remained a forgettable side character instead of having an important role as Derek's love interest.

+++ Helios

He was the Derek's shadow sponsor, the master/society-elite who wanted to throw the city into turmoil. He had great potential to be an awesome villain but the plot botched it. The revelation of Helios's identity was anticlimactic, disappointing, and too predictable to be believed.

The Plot

+++ the plot forgot

The confrontation at the sex club between Marco and Evelyn baffled me. I didn't understand why Derek was forced into non-con sex with Nick. I thought trip to the sex club was to discover the identity of Helios, not to get sidetracked with Evelyn.

The couple chapters spanning that clumsy confrontation scene were dreadful. The plot forgot about Helios, a character who played such a huge role in the story that it was just mind-boggling how he could be forgotten. The plot also forgot that Derek was supposed to continue planning his escape, which put a dent in Derek's characterization.

+++ twists and turns

The story didn't consistently deliver twists and turns. Most of them were crammed near the end, and they were hardly good. The worst twist was the quasi-Romeo and Juliet one; I felt the urge to gag.

+++ the mind games

There were very few of them. The mind games between Derek and Marco were amusing, but sputtered after the middle of the story.

The mind games against Helios never happened, but instead was a simple contention. The story drove the expectation of cloak and dagger off the cliff. Worse, the core conflict (the Helios issue) wasn't steadily maintained but was pushed in uneven bursts. It made me questioned whether some scenes were necessary to the story.

The Romance

Derek fell in love with Nick after meeting him two times, qualifying the romance as insta-love. The romance with Nick was utterly passionless and senseless, most noticeable in their sex scenes. Marco raping Derek was somehow more love-filled than Derek making love to Nick.

I get that Derek was developing into the sex slave with a heart of gold but the story pushed that act too far. Honestly, every time Derek had a scene with Nick I skimmed.

In Conclusion

The world building was believable. The writing was good. The non-con sex scenes between Derek and Marco were hot. But these few good things about the story were barely half way enough to save the story from mediocrity.

I rate the book 1 star for I didn't like it. The half-hearted happy ending ultimately kicked the preliminary rating of 1.5 star down to a 1-star level. There were still a few issues left unresolved. The story tried to be something different but failed on many levels, at least for me.

I do not recommend this book for readers looking for a master-slave romance because Derek does not end up with Marco, for readers looking for erotica because the story does not have many sex scenes and some are dreadful, or for readers looking for a dystopian fiction because the story does not deeply dissect the social issues and the society does not change.

I probably recommend this book for readers who are tired of the same old BDSM story and want something new and challenging, even if it is simply to get out the rut.

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REVIEW: The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby

The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Spoilers

This book bored me. It was off to a good start, exactly as how the blurb described, but then it got kinda confusing and then boring. By 1/3 of the book, I skimmed because the plot was going nowhere. By 1/2 of the book, I skimmed some more and faster with the goal to reach the end as fast possible while still getting the gist of the plot. That's how boring the book was.

When all the protagonist does is run and run futilely far away from his problems (in both the figurative and literal sense of the phrase), what interest in the plot is there to be had?

The Characters

+++ the protagonist

Marius is an admitted coward, which wasn't a big problem for me. A problem but not a big problem. No, the big problem was that he had no redeemable trait. He wasn't clever as he thought. His past wasn't tragic as he thought; if anything he was a spoiled rich kid in that flashback. There wasn't anything that made me like Marius, pity Marius, or really give a shit about Marius.

The character growth he showed late in the book was just that, too late. Too late and too small for me to give a shit. In any other book, Marius would be that side character whose purpose is to be killed off.

+++ the sidekick

Gerd was Marius's slow-witted apprentice. The blurb did directly say Gerd would die and I thought was well prepared to handle it. I wasn't. I got upset at how Gerd died at the beginning. As if that wasn't bad enough, I got more upset when I learned how he got pulled into Marius's crapfest. I felt more for Gerd the sidekick than I ever did for Marius the protagonist.

I got upset at Marius and the book and this dampened any little enjoyment I may have derived from reading the book. I felt emotionally manipulated in a bad way. Gerd may have a dull life, but at least he had a life in every definition of the word.

I did not like how things were resolved at the end with Gerd. Gerd may have forgiven Marius, but I sure didn't. This was the bumbling sidekick trope at its worst and a classic example of an abusive relationship.

The World Building

It was heavily lacking. Heavily. I couldn't tell if magic was something everyone is aware of or only those superstitious and real magicians are aware of. I couldn't tell if dead people walking around was normal or not either.

Places were thrown at me and I couldn't get a grasp on the geography.

The Writing

It dragged. Too much superfluous details that confounded me, too little relevant details that starved me of elucidation. I saw passages here and there that could be tightened. The prose encourages skimming.

The Plot Holes

As I mentioned before, I skimmed but I did get the gist of the plot. Got enough that I spotted plot holes.

+++ the love interest

Middle of the story, Bob realized Keth's unrequited love for him and promised himself that he'll return to resolve the matter.

He had a real mission now, one that sank into his bones with an urgency he had never before experienced. Getting back to the dead was only the first part. After that, he had to get to Keth.
—chapter 17

Yeaaaaah, he never did. In the last third of the book, Keth was completely forgotten about.

+++ alive again

At the end when Marius completed the dead people's demand for a king, we learned they couldn't returned him back to life. Turns out he was never dead to begin with and that he had the magic of disguise (or something like that, the book wasn't clear). Marius deluded into thinking he was dead because the dead people tricked him into thinking he was dead which made no sense at all.

Basically, the book's resolution of Marius's dead-state problem was a deus ex machina.

In Conclusion

The premise of the book was attractive, but its execution was awful. I was detached from the protagonist, detached from the prose, and detached from the plot. I may have skim a lot but I didn't need to read every passage to see that the plot didn't make much sense. I believed if I did read every passage, I would have spotted more plot holes.

I rate TCRK 1-star for I didn't like it. I do not recommend this book for readers who best prefer urban fantasy and occasionally venture into traditional fantasy. Readers who like traditional fantasy, I suggest giving TCRK a try but to borrow from library.

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REVIEW: Panda Heart by James Brock

Panda Heart by James Brock
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Panda Heart has a word count of less than 52,000. The novel was short, but I felt it should have been shorter. The story is told in 1st PoV from Artie's side, in a manner in which Artie was telling the story directly to reader. Artie started the story with him being shagged by some guy. I was in the mood for smut so I was happy to receive instant smut. Woot!

In the same chapter — chapter 1, Artie quickly told the reader in a flashback of how he met the blonde Adonis at a gym Artie frequent. The drawn-out flashback then merged back to present time where Artie was being shagged by the blonde Adonis. I thought this was going to be a case of instant love, definitely instant lust considering how Artie only met the blonde Adonis for the first time in Artie's life where moments later the guy shagged Artie. I was quickly proven wrong when chapter 1 ended with Artie's boyfriend Randy walking in on the two.

Artie is a cheater. But that wasn't what made me detest the story. Nor was the fact that Artie confessed to cheating many times on his past lovers beside just Randy, some of whom he cheated with were taken men. Some of his past lovers were taken men, too. What made me detest the story was how Artie narrated the story.

In chapter 2, Artie took the reader back to his childhood where he always knew he was gay and to his college years where he meet his two best friends Corey and Vivian who both were equally if not more of a screw-up than Artie. The flashback then reached the time where Artie met Randy, then dated Randy, then fought with Randy till chapter 5 where Randy walked in on Artie committing infidelity at the present. The long flashback was a horrible way for Artie to tell the story.

The flashbacks were already unbearable, Artie made the novel more unbearable by telling the entire story in tangents. Artie would tell the story, digress for a paragraph or a couple, and then get back to what was happening at the present. His tangents were not relevant, nor were they appreciated. His tangents made reading the novel a chore.

I got fed up by 1/3 of the novel and started skimming thereon. There was angst, there was cheating, there was Artie making poor choices after another. Panda Heart was about how much of a screw-up Artie was. I wasn't upset at Artie for what a douchebag he was. His awful narration make it incredibly easy for me to stay detached from him.

Blah blah blah. Lotta angst happened and at the end Randy and Artie got back together. Panda Heart was a romance novel after all. The final two chapters were contemptibly sweet.

I rate Panda Heart 1-star for I didn't like it. I recommend readers to sample before purchase to see if the narration is groovy with them.

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REVIEW: First Watch by Peter Hansen

First Watch by Peter Hansen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Spoilers

First Watch is really more of a horror story than a romance because the romance was slim. I felt little chemistry between Edouard and Ruiz. Actually, even the horror part failed to horrify me. FW tried to retain an air of mystery, but instead retained a fog of confusion.

It wasn't the writing that confused me — the writing was decent, it was the plot that confused me. At the end, I was left thinking "What? Is this all there is? Bummer."

FW is told in the 3rd POV from Edouard's perspective. The story starts with Edouard writing a letter to Ruiz before Edouard meets the Captain with the tentacles for some dubious consented sex. The story ended at best a HFN, and overall left me baffled. I don't recommend FW for readers who like their stories straightforward or have a HEA.

If you're hoping to read this for sex scenes with the tentacles, there's none. Well, there is foreplay, but for the actual sex, it's fade to black. As for the sex between Edouard and Ruiz, it's near the end but only the BJ part is in graphic detail. My point? Freaky erotica, this story is definitely not. Yeah, bummer, I know. Not recommending FW for the hot sex either.

BTW, it's Edouard that is on the cover-art. On the bright side, the cover-art looks awesome (even though my friend think it's horrible). He he he. =P

I had a hard time deciding whether it was rape or dubcon-sex that was going on between Edouard and Captain Tentacle (this is what I'm going to call him from here on out, we never knows his name because he was always referred to as "the captain"). Ultimately I decide it was dubcon-sex and not rape because Edouard could have escape or said no or whatever, instead Edouard came to Captain Tentacle for the sex without being psychically forced and psychologically abused — at least none that I could see or read between the lines.

I'm still confused as to why Edouard couldn't just leave the cursed submarine. Was there a spell or would Captain Tentacle just stalk and kidnap him back? It seem like Edouard could easily leave the submarine as he did when he went to meet Ruiz. I don't know why Edouard couldn't just leave, if only temporarily, to find a magician or some sort of supernatural expert to help him deal with his Captain Tentacle problem.

Actually, near the end Captain Tentacle did allowed Edouard to leave.

"Go ashore at Sardinia. No more promises of staying under the water with me."
"No more," Edouard agree. "But I'll come back to you."

But Edouard didn't... Well, Ruiz was imprisoned, but I think Edouard could have pleaded for Ruiz. Hell, Edouard could have asked to leave at the start of the story. >.>"

I was sorely disappointed when I read Ruiz trying stab Captain Tentacle to dispel the "curse" was the gay couple's plan. Really? I expected some scheming and subterfuge to be involved, you know, like an actual plan. But no no, all they (or Ruiz actually) did was got a knife and try to go stabby-stabby on the Captain.

Figures that the plan would failed and they had to go with plan B, i.e. bombing the place. Don't ask me why they didn't just bomb the place in the first place. Ugg.

Actually, I ended up sympathizing the "villain," i.e. Captain Tentacle. Poor guy just wanted some freaky-tentacley sex from the hot French man that he saved from the battlefield. Sure, the Captain did it in a way that wasn't morally right but, dude, Edouard got a spell on his body *points to the green letters on Edouard's body on the cover-art* that makes him near immortal. And I'll say it again, the Captain did allowed Edouard to leave. I got the impression that Captain Tentacle sincerely did love Edouard.

If the author was trying to villanize the tentacle people, he failed. Seems to me that the tentacle people was just trying to become human or human-like to live on land. (I think.) Not sure why the tentacle-people used such an unethical way to do so, but they didn't seem evil to me.

Overall, I was mostly indifferent to Edouard and Ruiz, and I pitied Captain Tentacle.

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REVIEW: Enduring Instincts by S.J. Frost

Enduring Instincts by S.J. Frost
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Spoilers, Long Review

I like fluff, I like vampire story, but this fluffy vampire story just didn't work for me. I couldn't connect to Daniel and Ryunosuke's romance. With that, the whole story felt apart in front of me.

In book 1 Natural Instincts, I managed to like the story because it had some action and suspense that I'm fond of despite some flaws. In book 2 Enduring Instincts, the action and suspense were lacking and the flaws were woefully apparent. If Daniel was a girl and if there were no graphic sex scenes, Enduring Instincts could have been a Twilight wanna-be. The only advantages the Instincts series has over the Twilight series are stronger writing and graphic sex scenes (because I'm pervert).

Instincts' vampires didn't sparkle, but they acted juvenile...like teenagers.

The story proceed in 3rd POV, mostly from Daniel's. 90% of the story was focus on developing the romance between Daniel and Ryu, while the other 10% was on the unfinished business of the villains from book 1.

Vampires, or Just Misunderstood Maybe-Mutated Humans

The vampire mythos was contradictory. We learn Ancient vampires, vampires who reached the thousand years age mark, are major bad-asses. But later we learn Ancient vampires and the lesser-rank Lord vampires can easily be overtaken by a bunch of newbie vamps through sheer number. If this is so, how are the older vamps major bad-asses?

"Vampires might be stronger than humans, but so are countless species in the world. The legends make it seem like you're practically indestructible, when really, you're just as fragile as any or the world's creatures."

In term of pure physical strength, yes, there are species stronger than humans and vamps. In term of power? No. Humans got machine guns and nuclear weapons...which vampires can use as well along with their inherent powers.

"Very true. We're a litte more durable than humans and certainly our quicker healing abilities are a nice benefit, but yes, we can be more easily killed than the legends make us appear. In all the ways a human can be killed, really. Except for disease, of course. We haven't found any of those that affect us. Yet."

"A little more durable?" Seriously? What? Immortality and regeneration and disease-resistancy aren't good enough for you vamps? Sure, vamps can be killed...but they sure hella lot harder to kill than your average human. And they don't even need healthcare.

And then there is this...

"I guess that helps explain why Ancient vampires like Tirus are so revered. When you think about it, it's pretty incredible for any vampires is able to survive for hundreds of years and doesn't get killed in accidental mishaps, like getting hit a by a bus."

So the old-as-dirt vampires are revered because they survive life's mishaps...like geting hit by a bus. Really? Oy.

Weak-Ass Villains

So 10% of the story was about finishing the conflict left unfinished in book 1. In Natural Instincts, the villains had some evil momentum going on with the whole let's-take-over-the-vampire-world. In book 2, their plan frizzle out and I began to pity them like they were just misguided teenagers. What a huge disappointment watching these big evil-doers becoming like contrite teenage pranksters.

"We thought we could take over the city. Then we thought we could take over vampire society. It probably wouldn't have been long before we got power drunk we thought we could take over the world. But what would we have done with any of that? What would've been the point? Just to sit there and say, 'Look at me, I rule the world.' So what. It was all just stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid."

So many wrong things in this paragraph that Troy said.

1) The villains assumed too much they would be successful in their let's-take-over-the-world endeavor considering they lack the resources and knowledge. I got a good imagination, but I was wondering how in the nine-hells could these villains think they could accomplish that. So far, all they have been doing are just thug-works. The LA gangs are more dangerous than these vamps...

2) They weren't power drunk already? Dude, y'all were planning to take over the city and kill all the old vampires just because y'all wanted power. How is that not power drunk?

3) "What would've been the point?" I don't know but if the villains were imaginative or psychopath enough they would have known their ultimate goal for dominating the world. Just taking over the world for power's sake would have been good enough point. That's why villains are so...villainy, because they're willing any thing and everything to attain power. People do desire what they cannot have or cannot have easily. It's not stupidity, it's psychopathy. =)

4) What's with Troy being a weeping Wilma? Where's the anger from Daniel deceiving and pushing him off of a roof? What happened to the maniacal vampire from book 1? Talk about a 180 degrees change. Maybe the concussion did more than I thought...

So at the beginning the story, I learn the villains have some sort of revenge plan going on against Daniel. Understandable considering what Daniel did in book 1. But what I don't understand is why the crux of their evil plan focused so much on Daniel. Why not Andreas? If these "villains" really wanted to hurt Titus, Andreas would have been the easier way to go. It's really easy since Andreas, not yet fully vampire, wasn't protected when he's working at his zookeeping job.

I assume their evil plan is taking over the city while ridding and revenging on their enemies. I felt like these villains have no idea what they were doing and were just bumbling along a quasi-evil path. I don't know why they don't just kidnap the weak-links of our heroes and start delivering body parts to Titus and Ryu.

Hell, they didn't even need a strategy or intimidation considering all it actually took for Titus and companies to be defeated are many many many newbie vamps. Why don't the villains just gather some and do it already?

"Life and death," Titus said. "He could be that one extra ally they need to overpower us."

Hell, the villains could just have the same number of newbie vamps and equip them with guns and bombs. It would have been good enough power to overtake our heroes I believe.

The villain minions were rather pathetic. Vance changed loyalty too easily and too conveniently. But at least with Vance, it was understandable since our heroes spared his life after he and his friend tried off-ing Daniel.

Niven, I don't understand. Daniel tried to run over him with a car, not once, but twice...and oh yeah, head-slam him after Daniel flirted-to-deceive Niven in a intimidation scene. And it's not like Daniel haven't done this flirt-to-deceive deal to other vamps, I don't know why Niven thought Daniel wouldn't do that to him. Yet in the end, Niven chose to help Daniel...sincerely, and not as an act for a later backstabbing. Wow, mind-boggling. @_@

Troy and Issac loves each other...okay, so our villains have feelings. Then Troy "mercy-kill?" Isaac...after Isaac nursed Troy to health and all of that cripple circumstance. What? Makes no sense.

I don't understand why the villains captured only Daniel when the thug-vamps surrounded Daniel and Andreas at Andreas' workplace and left Andreas wholesomely alive. I don't know why the villains just didn't kill Daniel once their boss Isaac saw him.

I assumed Isaac and Troy are Turning their vampire minions, but who Turned Isaac and Troy? What masters would allow their vampiric children to be rogue?

I don't understand these villains. They're either weak-ass or schizo...or both. T_T

Miscellaneous Gripes

Like I said before, I couldn't connect to Daniel and Ryu's love for each other. I couldn't empathize either of them too. Daniel got the "I was sexually abused and now I got PTSD" angsty-deal, Ryu got the "My dad was a violent drunk who beats his family which influenced me to live a violent life" angsty-deal. The couple came off as emo to me. LOL, vampire emos. XD

Renart manage a vampire restaurant/lounge, Andreas is zookeeper of some sort, and the villains have their let's-take-over-the-world deal. What does Titus, Daniel, and Ryu do? Apparently, all I learned is that they live a life of leisure. That itself isn't a bad thing but I felt this background type made them under-developed as characters because they got to do something when they're not with their lovers or escaping dangers.

For example, I had a hard time imagining what Titus would be doing when Andreas is at work (assuming no villainy danger is present). Does he read or watch TV or something? Seems like he just disappear as a character, just re-appear once Andreas is back home again to maintain the character role that is Andreas' lover.

I don't know why our heroes didn't alert the Tribunal that the villains they thought rid of survived and is re-attempting their villainy plan.

I don't understand why other vampires except Titus and companies don't believe Ryu being Turned by a demon. If werewolves and vampires exist, why not demons? Is there some sort of vampire lore that said only vampires can be Turned by other vampires. And if so, how did vampires came to be?

I was playing around the idea that maybe it was demons who originally birthed the vampire race. Eventually the vampires find out they too can Turn humans, and after many years of this, the vampires long forgotten their demonic origin because demons were showing up less and less. So much less that demons later became a myth to the vampires. I think...

Conclusion

This vampire story wasn't my kind of story because frankly, these vampires, though they don't sparkle, weren't the kind of vampires I like to read about. I was expecting more brutality, more raw emotions, but I didn't get that. Since I wasn't enamored by the romance, the story had little to offer to me.

It's not a bad thing to romanticize vampires, but these vampires were romanticize to a point further than I'd like. That is these vampires were similar to those from Twilight which I dislike. To each their own.

I think the way the series can be improved is if the the vampire society and lores were flesh out more and all the characters, no matter how minor, to have clear and concise and consistent goals.

So what kind of vampire mm-rom stories do I like? The Enthralled series have a good combination of fluffity, brutality, and sexuality. They're short stories but they're impactful.

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REVIEW: Dark Edge of Honor by Aleksandr Voinov & Rhianon Etzweiler

Dark Edge of Honor by Aleksandr Voinov & Rhianon Etzweiler
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Long Review, Spoilers

Dark Edge of Honor is about a soldier and a spy on opposite side who, somehow against years of training and some brainwashing, quickly fall in love and give up everything to grab their HEA. There's war, rape, blackmail, torture, betrayal, vindication, and ultimately redemption—all excellent ingredients for a thriller of a story. Alas, I was confused, bored, frustrated, and bored by the story.

Bored. =/

The first chapter was written horribly. I had no idea what was happening except that there were two characters named Mike and Pat. It was not until the end of chapter four when Mike was speaking with his handler that I finally understood chapter 1 was about Mike and Pat doing a reconnaissance mission. I got that the authors were trying to avoid the "show not tell" pithole, but they did it to such an extreme that it left me wondering what was going on most of the time. And when I get confused, boredom quickly follows.

Sentences of Little Sense

Dark Edge of Honor (DEoH) suffered lumps of short sentences that caused the story to be choppy. The following piece of paragraph was starving for transitional words:

He knew better than to mention it. The brother general wasn’t stupid. He would have voiced objections to the methods, but the decisions were made by the Committee back home on Liberty. The general merely made it happen. His career depended on it. Sergei’s too.

I had no idea what "it" was. I know the first "it" was about not mentioning Cirokko being the worst planet to war against because of the preceding paragraph in the chapter. The last two "it"-s, however, I don't know what they are. That quoted piece needed clarification of its pronouns.

Beside short sentences, DEoH also suffered incomplete sentences. I do not mind incomplete sentences because their use can quickly push the plot. However when they are overused, the opposite happens—the plot drags like a limp foot. Here's an example:

But it was impossible to think “Cirokko” without remembering other powers that had tried to take a bite out of it. The Alliance, about a hundred years ago, before it joined the Intergalactic Peace League and became non-expansionist. The League of Seven just twenty years ago. Unable to cut its losses, the League had bled itself dry in a way that it couldn’t have won anyway. But the Seven had then been swept up in the Doctrine, desperate to rebuild its morale and sense of purpose.

The two quoted pieces above formed a single paragraph, the third paragraph of chapter 3 to be specific. This paragraph was overall a mishmash of incomplete thoughts, and to a larger extend represented how the story was written.

Somewhere To Somewhere Else

Due to the writing, I had a hard time transitioning from one scene to another. The authors were not specific nor straightforward about the where and when. For in example, in chapter 4, I had no idea where Mike was. Was he was on a spaceship or a building or something? And the people he was spying on, were they Sergei and his General? If so, was this taking place while Sergei was about be raped?

Another example is chapter 5 where Sergei was taking off his uniform while reflecting back his recent past. There, in a bunch of paragraphs, we learn that his General has been raping him and that it has been going on for a while. But readers are never told how long of a while. For all we know, it could have been for a couple of days, weeks, or even months. Suddenly we found ourselves seeing Sergei having a massage. What?

While re-reading to write this review, I suddenly realized the first two sentences of Sergei taking off his uniform were supposed to let the reader know that Sergei was preparing for his massage. These sentences failed to do so because I got distracted by the bunch of paragraphs telling me Sergei has been raped for an unknown period of time in the recent past. For chapter 5, I never learn where the couple was, just that the place has massage and sauna facilities. I do not know if they were at a high-classed gym, a hot spa, or a spaceship.

The first couple of chapters were prety much like this. The characters would be doing something somewhere but we forget what they were doing because the authors went off a tangent. It's not that those tangent of paragraphs were irrevelant, but they were so horribly placed in the story that they interrupted the flow of the story. And the authors not being specific about the character's location, coupled with horrible sentence structures, made me confused and impatient.

Barely Any World-Building and Backstory

Since the authors rarely and vaguely tell the me the where and when, I had a hard time imagining DEoH's world. For the first couple of chapters, I did not know where Sergei and Mike were. I know they were on a primitive planet called Cirokko, but I do not know whether they were in a city, a docked spaceship, a spaceport, a shanty-town, or the jungle. What happened to imagery?

The story was so poorly set up that for a while, I thought that the CovOps and the Doctrine were different forces of the Alliance, parts of the greater whole like the U.N. I didn't realize till late in the story that CovOps were part of the Alliance but the Doctrine wasn't, that the Alliance and Doctrine were two different galactic powers.

I still don't know what the frell is Doctrine. Are they a galactic government, a military group of a galactic government, or some sort of philosophy/religion/training? The way the author used the term, I think it was a combination of them all.

Why was the Alliance's CovOps spying on the Doctrine? Were the two galactic powers at war against each other? Or was it like the Cold War between the democratic West and communist East from real-life history?

I really wished the authors straight-out told me the races that inhabit Cirokko. I'm still unsure if humans were the native inhabitants or if it was different species altogether, like the flying lizards. Were the flying lizards really just smart animals or were they a sentient race of people?

Characters I Cared Little For

Sergei as a character was wholesomely unrealistic. I find it mind-boggling that a rape victim, with barely any issues, could be so easily seduced to bed by a stranger on a hostile world. In chapter 5, readers learn how Sergei's superior has been using him as a sextoy against his will. Suddenly in chapter 6, Sergei was doing it with Mike. WTF? And it was not like Sergei's superior was gone and Sergei was not being raped anymore. No, just the opposite; Sergei's superior was still there, still raping Sergei.

Thus, I had a hard time believing that Sergei could develop love for Mike while he was still being raped. Where's the trust issue? Intimacy issue? Hello! You're being raped, where's the mental trauma?

I felt strange reading Mike and Sergei shagging in one chapter, Sergei being raped in the next chapter, and back to the couple shagging each other again in the chapter after the next. Wow. O.o

Mike sucks as a CovOps agent.

He never publicized his sexual preferences. That aspect had never influenced the execution of his duties, his professional ethics or his employment. He refused to give that part of himself enough power to influence anything. It had no bearing on any of it, and anyone who thought otherwise would be proven wrong.

Right. *rolls eyes* Let's see, he created a plan to seduce a rape victim for intel. He ended up falling with the rape-victim/enemy Sergei. He risked his cover to protect Sergei. Upon rescuing Sergei, he got captured by the enemy. Afterwards, he was tortured and imprisoned until Sergei rescued him. Yeah, right, Mike was soooo believable as a competent spy. /sarcasm

Pat, the spy partnered to Mike, was also unbelievable as a character. How could Pat plead with Sergei to find Mike when Pat recently tortured Sergei? Someone who has the capability to freely torture another person would not plead their victim to find their missing friend. I expected some manipulation, bargaining, threats, or some combination thereof from Pat. It was hard watching Sergei and Pat suddenly got all buddy-like as if one had never tortured the other and weren't on the opposite side of a war.

Wasn't All Bad

All the beginning chapters until chapter 16 were slow. Sure, there some spying, raping, and fighting but the writing made the story dreary to read. Come chapter 16 when Sergei was being tortured by Pat, the writing got slightly better and was more cohesive. After Sergei got rescued, I was back to being bored until chapter 23 when Sergei sat with Nikishin and everything was revealed. Sergei confronting his rapist was a WOOT moment. A point for the authors writing an excellent confrontation scene.

After Sergei rescued Mike, I got bored again. Then I got frustrated at Sergei for making some stupid decisions and then had to be rescued by Mike...again. Finally, at the end they quit their jobs and got their HEA.

I rate DEoH 1-star for didn't-like-it.

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Soft sci-fi set on Earth, like maybe 100-200 years in the future. Easy to read, easy to engage. I rate that story 2-stars because the author gave a HFN when I really wanted a HEA.

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Soft sci-fi set on post-apocalyptic Earth. It's free, it's super-long, and it's the first of a series. I gave it 4-stars.

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REVIEW: Bar Back by J.J. Massa

Bar Back by J.J. Massa
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Spoilers

Bar Back is a short story of a bartender (possibly the bar's owner) wooing his fellow worker. The story is told from the bartender's perspective in 1st POV.

The story was weird in not naming the characters. Obviously, the story propose itself as erotica...but even erotica should have their characters named. So in my mind I set the bartender as Person A and his co-worker as Person B.

The reason I did not like Bar Back was because Person B was committing infidelity with Person A. I didn't hold bad feeling against Person A because he just wanted sex. I do hold it against Person B for not breaking up with his boyfriend because both preferred to be the bottom. Instead, Person B decide to satisfy his sexual predilection through infidelity. And infidelity to me is not sexy. Thus the sex scene of Person A topping Person B failed to excite me.

Moreover, I didn't get why Person B looked afraid of Person B after the sex. Whatever Person A got, i.e. understood, I did not.

Bar Back held no appeals to me. Despite the no naming thing, the writing seem solid.

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REVIEW: Shadowflame by Dianne Sylvan

Shadowflame by Dianne Sylvan
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Spoilers

I have mixed feelings for this book. I liked that the book wasn't predictable, that a mainstream UF have LGBT characters that actually play a big role instead of being a gal-pal's BFF, that the author had no qualm killing off characters. Yet I was totally pissed off about David's infidelity.

You think Miranda would dump his ass but it's too bad she can't—she would die. Seriously. Because of the stupid soulmate bond, if she even spend three days without close physical contact with David, both of them will suffer anguish. And three days is stretching it. I guess the moral of the story is: just because you're soulmates doesn't mean he can't still cheat on you. Poor Miranda.

However unlike other reviewers, I do not believe the author plotted this hugely distasteful subplot to piss off the readers. In short life is unfair, even if you're undead. The author beat down the message that the vampire world is a harsh world. Being a vamp may makes you immortal, but it doesn't stop your ass from being staked...or poverty in one paragraph where it was stressed any sensible vampire should learn the stock-trade. And when you got an eternity to live, it's not within the realm of impossibility to find other people you might love, regardless of the "soulmate" bond. Vampires are not humans, not anymore. This isn't happy-vampy Twilight.

The only redeeming thing about David's infidelity is that it was very realistic for him to still have feelings for Devin. It always seem so hugely convenient in some soulmates-themed romance for the lovers to forget about their past partners as if they never happened. No way am I excusing him for his infidelity, let's call it for what he is: he's an asswipe. Nonetheless, I'm still pissed off. Even as I understand what the author is plotting and why she's plotting it, it doesn't necessarily mean I have to like it—I don't. =( It's always a huge gamble for an author to deal with a touchy subject such as infidelity.

Even with all the crap Miranda has been dealt with, it's amazing she's still not a Debbie-downer. I'm loving how Miranda has little problem using her power to deal what needs to be done, unlike LKH's Anita Blake who bitches and moans every time she uses her succubus power (even in self-defense!).

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REVIEW: His Slave by J-Time

His Slave by J-Time
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTON: Spoilers

For the first and second chapters, I was ecstatic for the story to begin. I was expecting with glee for Trent to defy his circumstance and the Prince and escape from slavery. Sadly that never happened. The chapters were mostly about Trent and his slow, really slow blossoming love for the Prince despite the slavery issue. In short, Stockholm Syndrome.

We never learn why it was a tradition for the Prince on his 20th birthday to own his very first slave. Nor do we learn why all the boys chosen for the slave selection were happy to become the Prince's slave (except for Trent of course). WTF? Were all the boys except Trent crazy? My guess is that the tradition allows the Prince to have his first sexual experience without the danger of illegitimate pregnancy. But then why slavery? Wouldn't it just be easier, cheaper, and more merciful to pay some boy for a quick ride in the shack than to pay his his family with land and title to give up their son for slavery? It was never explained why Scott would have a better reputation if he chose a "challenging" slave or how Trent got into the slave selection mess.

I became disgusted with Trent when he deluded himself that he'll still have Scott's love after Scott's marriage. Even if that was so, Scott's future wife will definitely do something about it. And when Trent asked Scott not to marry, did Trent not realize Scott was a Prince and needed an heir? Though good for Trent for confronting Scott on the marriage issue, it was possibly the only sensible thing I thought Trent did. At the end when Trent and Scott reunited, Scott's wedding to a princess would take place the very next day! How is it a romance when one of the lover is marrying someone else? Nothing was really resolved. Even if Scott was King and pish-posh the wedding, he still needed an heir!

There was absolutely no world building in this story whatsoever. It was entirely centered on Trent and Prince Scott in Prince Scott's room. Seriously, just the two of them in Scott's room. No character development either. All I know is Trent is something-teen slave with greedy SOB for parents and Scott is a 20 years old Prince with princely duties. There was no mention of their history, their likes, their dislikes, nothing. All I got was that Trent didn't like being a slave (no duh!) and Trent didn't like being a prince despite the privileges.

The pacing was slow. I had a hard time time staying interested. There was no action in the story. No hot erotica. It was all napping, eating, and bathing. Even the raping in the first few chapters seemed tamed. The story lacked energy.

Also, who was Sebastian anyway? The King's adviser? The Prince's adviser? The minister?

The only good thing I can say about this story was that it wasn't badly edited.

Read For Free

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REVIEW: Spoils of War by Aleksandr Voinov & Raev Gray

Spoils of War by Aleksandr Voinov and Raev Gray
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I didn't like this short story because I couldn't find myself to care for Achilleus. I see alot of talk about how he really love Patroklos, even to forsake Ares's offer of granting Achilleus a godhead. Good for Achilleus for sticking with his true love, but I never emotionally connected to this love. For a mm-romance between two characters, one of them—Patroklos—was only mentioned by name and never seen in a scene.

Another thing about Achilleus I didn't like is his wanting to kill and enslave every Ilion, including women and children. I read stories with hateful protagonists, but they always have a reason for their hate, even if such a reason is simply sociopathy. But considering Achilleus actually loves someone, sociopathy isn't that reason. I don't know, it just seem to be anti-characteristic of an honorable warrior. Maybe I'm just reading in it too much and that Achilleus was just saying that to placate Ares. *shrug*

I didn't really understand why Ares would offer Achilleus a godhead. Wouldn't making more gods make more competition? Especially among worshippers, which would lead to religious wars. I know, I know, Ares, god of *wars*. But even god of wars need worshippers or else there's no point in being a god. You can't be a leader without followers, a god without worshippers.

I believe if the short story had a scene where Achilleus and Patroklos reuniting and then making love, then I would have rated the story higher.

Goodreads | Smashwords

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REVIEW: Private Scandal by Jenna Bayley-Burke

Private Scandal by Jenna Bayley-Burke
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

CAUTION: Spoilers

I originally rated it as 3 stars, but downgraded to 1 star upon retrospect. Like the other reviewers, the story had a wonderful premise but there were *alot* of issues left unresolved which irked me.

- Genma and her inheritance and the marriage she needs to keep her inheritance.

- Danny's friendship with Brandon upon finding out Genma kissed Brandon.

- Meagan's parents' disappearance. The crux of the story and they never showed up.

- The Carlton House. Sure they had a fundraising, but was it successful? Was the charity saved?

Moreover, there were alot of personality issues with Megan.

- Her insistence on taking Cash with her. She can't even support herself, how the hell will she support the dog?

- The non-communication with her sisters...doesn't the Carlton House have a phone she can borrow to call her sisters?

- She had no problem telling Brandon all the crap he inflicted upon her, but she consistently forgot to yell at him for his supposed infidelity?

- Her insistence to return back to her apartment after it's been trashed by some unruly males. Doesn't she work in a battered women's shelter and knows how dangerous men can be? Hate Brandon all she want, but at least he never physically threatened her.

- Once she found out about her sisters and planned to move in with one of them, why doesn't she? What with the delay?

For all Megan's self-proclaimed independence and common sense, I'm not see any. Accepting help, even from someone you hate, doesn't necessarily mean you're losing your independence. It means you're doing what needs to be done to survive. Pride before food, shelter, and clothes. Megan seem to have a bigger problem accepting Brandon's help than having sex with him (which she did on multiple time when she still hate him).

Moreover, the ending was too abrupt. There was absolutely no way Megan could have forgiven Brandon that quickly after years of holding a grudge, but yet she did. The HEA was executed very poorly.

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