Sherrilyn Kenyon "Born of Ice"

Um, well the world building in this sci fi is decent. Captain Kell is a smuggler, running medical supplies and food stuffs to planets that need them. He's surrounded by testosterone laden important friends and testosterone laden evil enemies. Alix is the slave daughter of a small time smuggler and abusive father who gets himself executed by some of Kell's evil enemies. When the enemy notices that she looks almost exactly like Kell's former fiancee, she is put into service to spy on Kell as his new ship's engineer, or her sister and mother will be brutally killed.

So, these two fall into bed with each other and Alix feels really bad about having to betray him, and he defends her to his friends because he can tell she's a good person, until he finally finds out she's a spy. After confronting her, and hearing about her mom and sister, she calls herself worthless property and , well, I'll give you the quote:

He saw the humiliation in her eyes as she said that, and while he might be mad at her for what she had done, he didn't want her to hear those haunting voices. "You're not worthless, Alix. But right now, I have to say that I don't like you as much as I did before I found all of this out. I don't appreciate being toyed with or betrayed."

Wow. What a bad-ass.

I actually enjoyed the repartee between the male characters, call me shallow if you want. But when the secondary characters are more enjoyable and interesting than the protagonists, something ain't right. If most of the main character's soul searching were completely removed from the book, it might actually be fun.

Science Fiction Futuristic Romance 2009: 1 out of 5 "balls to the wall."

Sherrilyn Kenyon 'Devil May Cry'

I'm here to prove you don't need a fully functioning brain to read romance novels. My first Sherrilyn Kenyon book was Upon the Midnight Clear, a shorter book that she wrote for Christmas publication. I liked the heroine but the emotional state of the hero and the relationship between these two were not engaging, probably due to the short length and quick writing. But since this writer is everywhere I figured I needed to give her another try.

I picked up Devil May Cry at the grocery store. Since this is book 21 in this series, I kid you not, I can live with the world/character quick downloads so as not to bore the people who've read, well, 20 of these books. And really the first half of the book, I liked. Ex-Sumerian fertility god had his godhood taken by Artemis, she's worried that he's plotting against her so she sends her daughter to check on him. Daughter Katra falls for him of course, but before they can attend to that they need to save the human race from the Sumerian demons who every thousand years need to be re-sealed into their prison by a Sumerian god. What's not to like.

Right around page 200 they start interacting with the bad guys, not fighting, but talking trash at each other for the most part. At which point Katra, who I've liked up until now, starts saying sarcastic things like, "Ooo, I'm the big evil. I'm gonna kill you all.....I'm just a demon windbag who likes to hear himself speak and I'm trying to intimidate you." Insert 'na na na', here. Then not too much later she and Sin are reviewing their plan of action and when he questions himself she tells him, '"I do know, Sin. I believe in you and your judgement." Sin was stunned by her conviction, and it meant more to him than he could even begin to put into words.' But on the next page the author gives voice to Katra thoughts as, 'Kat wanted to believe that, but in spite of what she'd said a minute ago, she wasn't sure.' I'm supposed to believe that these two are soul mates, that this relationship is the penultimate love relationship there is, that this is what I could someday experience if I'm lucky?? Seems to me I've had a couple relationships like this one and I do not want to read books about them!

I lost interest in the heroine when her voice changed from surprisingly honorable and truthful for a god, to trash talking sarcasm; and I lost interest in these two as a couple when the author allowed the plot development to get in the way of the relationship development. I didn't finish the last 150 pages, so it's possible that the book is amazing at the end but my life is too short.

Paranormal Romance 2007: 2 out of 5 demons.