Unchained by Caris Roane

I am so shallow.  Sucked in not once, but twice by a delicious cover and I have to admit, a cool author name.  I didn't realize before that I ever even pay attention to author names but the interesting font and strange emphasis on the "i" in Caris's first name definitely caught my attention.  (Yes I am boring you with talk of font, cause I'm not gonna talk about what attracted my attention about the half naked man on the cover. My mother raised me better than that, people.)

So Shayna is an incredibly beautiful blond strangely lightly blue eyed 24 year old anthropology grad student who looks 18, which is really annoying to her.  The cover tells you pretty much all you need to know about the strangely powerful vampire hero.

Again, just about any cheesy plot/character set up can still suck me in if it's well written. That is unfortunately not the case here.  I felt like the phrase "stating the obvious" went through my head a lot. And since I am not an English major, and you shouldn't just take my word for good/bad writing, let me give you one plot moment that pretty much brought all my frustration to a head.

Vampires live in caverns underground and conveniently can travel through rock and earth to get there, explaining why they have avoided detection by humans for so many years.  Maurius and Shayna travel to a sealed ice cavern deep under Sweden to find a part of an "extinction weapon" before his evil father can find it, but darn, evil Daniel is already there.  After they defeat Daniel's twenty minions and Daniel runs away, Maurius explains he needs to clean up before they can leave. 'Cause you know, they want to remain unknown to humans.  He pulls out his iphone, calls his friend (who he can also talk to telepathically from any distance) and asks him to send in a clean-up crew. His iphone! Yup, they have a whole group of vampires who volunteer for hazmat duty 'cause even if they're at war, they wanna keep it on the low down.

Oh my aching head.

Fantasy Romance 2014: 1 out of 5 magical new powers I never knew I had.  

Tracy Anne Warren "Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed"

Lady Mallory's fiance is killed in battle in Spain. Adam, the Earl of Gresham has loved her forever but as a penniless lord didn't feel he could court her. And when he finally made some money, she got engaged, curses. But now, he's got money, she's lost her fiance and life is good. Well, aside from the fact that Mallory is in deep morning for this nice guy she truly loved.

Actually this book started well, the description of Mallory's grief that is leading her into actual depression, and Adam's gentle attempts to bring her out of it, worked for me. But then Adam's character began to parallel classic abuser patterns in ways that made me more and more uncomfortable. He's not an alpha that struggles to temper his dominance tendencies because he loves her so much, he's a charming manipulator who reveals his dominant needs more and more as he gets more and more control over her life.

The clincher for me was, she likes it. Mostly. Yuck.

I try not to let my feminist sensibilities get in the way of my enjoyment of fantasy literature but this one saw the line and just jumped head first over it. It's not badly written and the sex is fine, but I just can't like a book where I hate the hero and have no respect for the heroine.

Historical Romance 2010: 1 out of 5 dictates from a distant duke. (Okay Earl)

Olivia Gates "To Tame A Sheikh"

I will admit I am not a habitual Harlequin Desire reader and I have a bias against the shorter romance novel formats. But really, this book was terrible. It wasn't badly written if one isn't too picky about repetitive descriptions. But the reliance on all the hackneyed romance conventions, the magical sex that conveys all the protagonists never need to say to each other, the powerful sheikh and the "I've just been waiting for you to make my life meaningful" female character. These two don't have any relationship issues or personal issues to create a character arch. The heroine just needed to get the hero into bed to make him realize what he was missing.

I liked the cultural window dressing (literally mostly about clothes) but the only interesting character in the book was the brother who hates everyone because his first wife screwed him over. He was stereotypical but at least something was going on there other than unbelievable happiness, wealth and beauty. Geese.

Back to school.

Contempory Romance 2010: 1 of 5 fake jewels of state.

Kimberly Killion "Highland Dragon"

When your favorite reading genres are romance and fantasy how can you possibly resist a book called Highland Dragon. Can't. I had to try it, even if I was opening it with a physical wince ready to be cracked over the head by the silliness of it.

It started so well; Evil neighboring clan leader is holding off abusing his much abused wife only because she's about to give birth and he's waiting to see if its a boy. Nice neighboring clan leader comes to save her but is killed in the process, his son survives him and steals the baby girl (making sure to confirm that she's not his sister). Nice.

Flash forward eighteen years, stolen baby was left with a smaller neighboring clan to be raised, she's quite a hoyden but before our hero can come collect her to marry her she gets kidnapped and almost sold off at a slave market. Okay.

Hero-son saves her but she's pissed because if he had come a bit sooner to marry her she wouldn't have been kidnapped. Hmm.

It just goes downhill from there. Central problem: silly plot? No, unlikable characters. I really didn't like our heroine and therefore had a hard time believing the hero would either, and the plot/secondary characters just seem to writhe all around like a earthworm trying to find it's way back to my garden dirt.

Historical Romance 2009: 1 of 5 so not any dragons in this book.

Photo Note: Now that's a Highland Dragon! Go Draco!

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."

Cheryl Brooks "Warrior:The Cat Star Chronicles Book II"

I started this book a while ago. Got through the descriptions of Tisana, 'ye good witch who heals' but isn't really accepted by her village. Leo gets dumped on her doorstep as an alien slave of the local lord who is in bad shape. Leo recovers quickly and Tisana discovers his unusual penis which not only has a corona that drips snard, orgasm inducing semen, but is controllable with muscles that allow it to move independent of Leo's body. One little lick of snard and Tisana sees stars and passes out.

I put the book down. Really not intending to re-visit it after their second sexual encounter was so unbelievably mind blowing that the third was down right boring. This for me, is the definition of the difference between romance and porn (complete lack o' sexual tension if I had to nutshell it for you.)

A couple of weeks later, I picked up the book again and got caught up in Tisana's journey to save the local lord's children from being kidnapped. And that sums this book up neatly. It's from Tisana's point of view, which exacerbates the problem but even without this filter, Leo is a complete non-entity. He is a walking sword wielding cock machine.

Unfortunately, even if you like your romance novels with no hero, except as a stud service for your heroine, this book becomes annoying in other ways. Tisana has A LOT of internal dialog working through the 'kidnapped sons' plot over and over.

Page 137, opened at random, and Tisana says, "Of course I knew that was what I was doing...... but it made me wonder about Rafe and Leo .....On the other hand....Or Rafe may have been...."

If you can deal with this, the end of the book just sent my snort meter off the charts. Tisana was raised as 'ye good witch who heals' on a decendant planet of earth with a kinder and gentler medieval setting. She misses her home while they are ten miles away saving the kidnapped boys. Then when the plot is resolved they randomly run into a starship captain, her also Cat Star husband, and three kids and decide to join them and roam the galaxy.

I have some tolerance for modern language in 'historical/fantasy' settings, but really: Page 310. "Bending down she herded three pint-sized versions of her husband toward me. "And these guys are Larry, Moe, and Curly. They've got Zetithian names, of course, but they're as unwieldy as Carkdacund; I had to call them something for short! I wanted to name them Larry, Darryl and Darryl, but Cat wouldn't let me - thought it would be too confusing."

They're watchin Bob Newhart re-runs in space?!

Fantasy Paranormal 2008: 1 of 5 points of the corona!

Adele Ashworth 'The Duke's Indiscretion'

Total Spoiler Review

Charlotte is the sister of an Earl, but she is also an extremely talented opera singer. Colin is the Duke of Newark, and he's been madly infatuated with the opera singer Lottie English for three years. She's managed to elude his attempts to meet her at the theater twice, but he comes up with the idea to sneak back stage during a performance. Oh finally, a truly smart hero. Once Lottie finds out how much he wants her, she decides to approach him as Charlotte and propose marriage because she needs money to be able to tour Europe singing opera.

These two marry despite Charlotte's ownership of a priceless piece of music that she could have sold to finance her singing and the rest of her life, for that matter. What a relief to have a smart logical heroine. The real trouble begins on the wedding night. Colin buys her a 'costume' lingerie thingy with super high heels to match. He then proceeds to mistake her attempts to dislodge him (She's sitting on his lap. How is she unable to dislodge him? But I digress) for extreme throws of passion and her cries for climax. Hmmm.

Truthfully this in and of itself would not have put me off of this book entirely. But she tells him the next morning how painful it was, he gets drunk (I assume feeling guilty) but he has to confront her again and ask if she climaxed. She further clarifies how yucky this was for her. Okay, I'm thinking from his "I am a god damned idiot." that he's now got the picture. So of course, a couple days later he pins her in a carriage, kisses her senseless, demands that she admit she wants him or he will make love to her right there and then. (They are now stopped in front of their home and he's slammed the door on the door-opening servant.) Hmm. Colin talks to his friends who tell him he's a total loser, he put a get-up on a virgin, hello! This is yet another revelation to him so he finally decides he needs to seduce her.

You get the picture. But what astounds me is the author continues to have this guy pursue his seduction with commands and coercive physical measures. Um, is this supposed to be sexy? And if that's not enough, after he's gotten her to the magical climax, he thinks to himself, maybe coming on to another woman would move this along a little. I'm soooo in love with this guy. And he gets all excited about telling her about his secret life as a master forger but decides he'll wait to tell her that he does it for the government until she truly trusts him by letting him penetrate her. Wow.

Okay, fine, I didn't like the book. Not only did I not like either character but their development was inconsistent on top of it all. And the plot feels completely contrived because of the lack of logic to her needing to marry him, etc. Skip it.

Historical Romance 2007: 1 out of 5 dastardly girl friends.

image from clip art of dot com

Talia Gryphon 'Key to Conflict'

Picked this up from the library, our heroine is a US Marine Corp Captain and a paramortal psychologist (she treats the mental illnesses of non-humans.) Our hero, well that's not entirely clear, but we know at least that he is a Romanian vampire. Gillian goes to Romania to help a vampire lord deal with his unresolved feelings over his fiance's betrayal and his rebirth as a vampire 400 years ago. She gets caught in the crossfire when Dracula picks this moment to decide to take over the world, because Count Aleksei is on the top of Dracula's hit list.

The set up is fine, world building is decent and I liked the book for a while. Gillian spends the first two thirds of the book being protected by Aleksei and his family. During this section it is pounded into us that vampires are out of human league as fighters, Gillian couldn't possibly defend herself, etc. When she finally runs away from Alexsei's protection (is this a smart move) she assembles her old comrades in arms, and heads off to rescue Aleksei's brother from Dracula. They have a ridiculously easy time doing the rescue, and so Aleksei has to admit that she's extremely competent. What?

Throughout the book we are told over and over and over about how great she is as an operative, as an empath and as a psychologist, but she keeps losing her temper and yelling at everyone, wandering off into the forest and the pyramids and barely surviving, generally having to be rescued by someone. I couldn't help comparing her to Patricia Briggs' tough girl characters who know their limits, and use that knowledge to survive and even win in tough situations.

Ugh, this book is 150 pages too long and runs out of ways to describe each successive male character's beyond amazing physique and looks. Boring. I believe this is a first book for this author. I wouldn't buy her second book, but maybe a fourth or a fifth. There were some reasons to hold out hope.

Paranormal Urban Romance 2007: 1 out of 5 tawdry togs for tasty trollops.

Hannah Howell 'Highland Wolf'

I have a five year old in my house that I've mentioned before. She talks non-stop and has a habit, when I murmur Uh huh, to repeat herself, apparently guessing that I'm not really listening. Today the resemblance between living with a very talkative five year old and this book struck me full force. Ugh. "James suspected that when she felt she or some one she cared about was in danger, Annora could tell a complete lie without blinking, not just one of those ones where she just did not tell the whole truth or even failed to actually answer the question."

James has been on the run for three years after being accused of killing his wife and being declared an outlaw. His wife's cousin has taken over his keep and lands and is claiming James' small daughter as his own. Annora has been brought to the keep to take care of Meggie, James' daughter. She suspects all is not as it seems at Dunncraig and then falls for the mysterious woodcarver who has recently come to the keep to work.

Besides the scene where they run into each other in the ledger room, and Annora never thinks to question why this wood carver is sneaking around the laird's chamber, the plot is fine. The sex scenes are decent, other than James grabbing her in a dark hallway hours after he saves her from being raped in another dark hallway. I would assume that would be a slight turn-off. But it's the writer's verbose redundant style that drove me insane.

Okay, okay, other than being set in Scotland, this book is terrible. I read an earlier book by Howell and this one was an improvement, but that ain't saying much.

Historical Romance 2008: 1 out of 5 loose braes.

Bonnie Vanak 'The Sword and The Sheath'

Oh How do I hate thee, let me count the ways! Let's not even mention the title, why discuss the obvious. I think the reason I really hated this book was because I so wanted to like it. I really did. I ignored the title, I ignored my misgivings about the whole desert sheik thing. Has anyone read The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley? I loved that book so much, and I've been waiting my whole life for a romance even remotely similar.

Fatima is a twin born to a Bedouin tribe in Egypt. Her twin brother is a by birth a Guardian of the Ages, born to protect the sheik of their tribe and his heirs. But Fatima is the better fighter of the two (so we are told), and has visions that seem to help her predict danger to the sheik's son, Tarik. As a woman, Fatima can never be a warrior of the wind, much less a Guardian of the Ages. But when she switches places with her twin and ends up in battle, and saves Tarik's life, things get re-evaluated.

Fatima manages to break thousands of years of tradition and become a warrior, even though she doesn't seem to do too well at her warrior tests. OK. Then she swears a warrior's oath and a maiden's oath, you can imagine what that is, and when she breaks it with Tarik, she can't really understand why she has to marry him. Hmm. Tarik never truly accepts that she might be a decent warrior, despite her saving his life left and right, and when he makes little effort to hide the fact that they are sleeping together, he says, 'Well, yes, I did intend to stop you from being a warrior by taking your maidenhood, but not quite yet. Sorry. Can't you just be happy being married to me?' Excuse me? And after about a week, she's cool with that. WTF?

In general I try not to get too worked up about the inherent 'marriage and babies are what's truly good for a girl' theme of most (all) romances, BUT when the story uses the conflict between being a wife and mother and being something incompatible as THE CONFLICT of the novel, I tend to pay attention. Some still manage to squeak by my feminist radar, but this one? Not so much. And really that's just the beginning of the storyline problems here. The writing itself wasn't terrible, but the storyline, the characterization, the inconsistencies, oy vay!

Historical Desert Romance 2007: 1 out of 5 blood oaths.

Jude Deveraux 'Someone To Love'

Ms Deveraux will be looking hard for someone to love this book. Yuck. I haven't read this author in a few years and after this one I have no reason to try again.

Jace's fiancee apparently committed suicide three years ago just before their wedding. He still can't move on so he buys an ugly English estate, that seems to be involved, to solve the mystery. He gets help from the two resident ghosts, and the heroine who is a local journalist.

There are so many ridiculous moments in this book, like when Nightingale, our heroine, who is a foreign correspondent at home on leave in Margate, writes a completely inflammatory ludicrous article about our hero in the local paper. Supposedly she is tricked into writing it by some local yahoos who snow her about what Jace has been doing in little Margate. First of all, how did she manage to be a war zone journalist, by never fact checking? And secondly I'm supposed to believe that Jace forgets all about this event once he meets her and finds out she's nice? Hmmm.

The book isn't worth any more description. If you love Jude Deveraux, go ahead, waste your time. If you've never read her before, avoid this like the plague.

Contemporary Romance: 1 out of 5 ghostly encounters.

Image is portrait from 1790 by Vigee le Brun.

Erin McCarthy ' My Immortal'

It wasn't completely horrible, but nearly so. Marley is a school teacher who spends two months in retreat at a monastery then leaves for New Orleans to find her ne're do well sister whose disappeared. Damien is a selfish arrogant 18th Century plantation owner who struck a deal with a demon to live forever. He regretted that decision pretty quickly but is required to encourage sin in humans as his price of his bondage.

So the scene is set for sex parties that nice little Marley gets to wander through while she looks for her sister and gets to know Damien. I haven't really read any erotica, a growing expansion of the romance genre, but I find this author's use of it's settings, at the same time painting female characters who like sex as bad, rather heavy handed. The overt morality as well as the use of the sexual deviance as titillation are to me, disingenuous. And let's not even get into the set up of Damien's punishment by his demon master. This plot device is so weak when Damien was freed from servitude, I could only think, WTF?

I guess I should have figured out that this wasn't going to be stellar when I felt the incredible urge to peek ahead a couple hundred pages.

Paranormal Contemporary Romance 2007: 1 out of 5 swampy plantations.