Category: 3 1/2 Stars

ARC Review: The Saint Who Stole My Heart: by Stefanie Sloane

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | 3 1/2 Stars> book reviews> Marlene> Originally published at Book Lovers, Inc.

Format read: egalley from NetGalley
Release Date: April 24, 2012
Number of Pages: 304
Genre: regency romance, historical romance
Series: Regency Rogues #4
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Formats Available: paperback, ebook
Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon , Barnes & Noble,

Blurb:

Desire, danger, intrigue, and steamy seduction unite a sexy spymaster and an intrepid bluestocking as Stefanie Sloane’s luscious new series continues.

Possessed of a brilliant mind and a love for puzzles, Dashiell Matthews, Viscount Carrington, is a crucial member of the elite Young Corinthians spy league. Assuming the façade of an addle-brained Adonis, he hunts for a notorious London murderer known as the Bishop. When fate causes him to cross paths with Miss Elena Barnes, Dash discovers an enigma that will prove delightfully intoxicating to unravel: a voluptuous beauty as intelligent as she is fearless.

Only the lure of a collection of rare books bequeathed to her family by Dash’s late father could tempt Elena from her cozy rural life to the crush and vanity of London. But if Elena finds his lordship to be the most impossibly beautiful man she’s ever seen, he also seems to be the stupidest. Which made her body’s shameless response to his masterful seduction all the more unfathomable. Yet when she discovers Dash’s mission to track the dangerous Bishop, she willingly risks everything—her trust, her heart, her very life—to join him.

My thoughts:

I think Elena fell in love with Carrington’s library. And she was certainly consumed with lust for Carrington’s person.

Based on the descriptions of both the library and the Viscount, I’m not saying I blame her for either reaction.

Elena Barnes is a bluestocking. She had one season, and she didn’t, well, as one of Carrington’s friends put it, she didn’t take. Elena is also somewhat of a tomboy, and her widowed father gave up on governesses after she drove the fourth one away. With a frog.

Carrington’s late father willed his library to Elena’s father. He’s not quite well enough to see to the cataloging and packing himself. Carrington’s library is, of course, full of rare and wondrous volumes.

The new Viscount has the looks of an Adonis, one who pretends to have the brains of a cabbage. Of course, he’s not an idiot. He’s really a kind of spy, a member of the Young Corinthians.

Poor Elena can’t quite figure out why her body is sending her one signal, and her brain is sending quite another. After all, she’s certain she couldn’t possibly be interested in a man who isn’t actually, well, interesting.

But Carrington finds Elena much, much too interesting. And the longer she’s around the less he is able to keep up the pretense of being a total dim-wit.

I kept looking for a courtship, and there really isn’t one in the usual sense. It’s more of a reveal. The more he drops his mask of stupidity, the closer they get.

What makes Dash stop pretending he’s an idiot? Elena finds a puzzle box in his father’s library. Not just any puzzle, but the key to a mystery that Dash and his friends have been hunting for over a decade, the reason they all joined the Young Corinthians in the first place.

It’s his father’s notes on the murder of his best friend’s mother, Lady Alford. Notes that lead to the leader of a spy ring. Notes that make his enemies, Elena’s enemies. and put her directly into the line of fire.

Once this suspense line of the story got going, I couldn’t put the darn thing down. However, and it’s a big however, too many of the issues it raised were left unresolved. I smell a set up for the next books in the series. And I never did figure out who or what the “Saint” in the title referred to. Hearts definitely got stolen, but no saints were involved in their theft.

I give The Saint Who Stole My Heart 3 1/2 Stars.

ARC Review: The MineFields by Steven C. Eisner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | 3 1/2 Stars> book reviews> Marlene> Originally published at Book Lovers, Inc.

Format read: hardcover from publicist
Release Date: January 25, 2012
Number of Pages: 311
Genre: business fiction, autobiographical fiction
Publisher: When Words Count Press, LLC
Formats Available: hardcover, ebook

Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon , Barnes & Noble,

Blurb:

From an early age, Sam Spiegel single-mindedly pursued an entrepreneurial path that prepared him to transform a small-time ad agency into a regional powerhouse with national ambitions. A couple decades later, Sam had achieved almost everything he ever dreamed possible as the ad agency’s rainmaker, fountainhead, and unflappable pursuer of success. One final goal remained: To consolidate his gains by attracting an international advertising conglomerate and cash out. That’s when the nation is hit with the most unthinkable tragedy, and Sam begins to take stock of his own life, finding that he is growing weary of the relentless hunt. Unsatisfied in his marriage and embroiled in a mind-boggling professional crisis, everything Sam had achieved is put at risk.

My thoughts:

There seemed to be a really thin line between the fiction and the autobiographical in this book. So thin that it was impossible to tell where the character of Sam Spiegel left off, and the author’s real life filled in the blanks.

Which made reading this book a lot like watching the proverbial train wreck; you know it’s going to be a bloody, gory mess, and you’re still fascinated. You can’t turn your eyes away. The author’s blurb is a spoiler for the big event in the book, the real, or is it the fictional, story is in the details.

The description teases that this is based on or similar to Mad Men. I haven’t had that pleasure. What it is definitely about, much more than advertising, is the rise and inevitable fall of a closely-held family business, and the stresses and strains of trying to patch together a none-too-solid marital partnership by substituting a business partnership that only works if everyone stays at the top of their game indefinitely.

Which doesn’t happen in real life, and wouldn’t make very good fiction either.

Family golden boy goes through meteoric rise (relatively) and catastrophic fall (absolutely) does make good fiction. What I kept wondering was how much of the author’s life was fictionalized to make the story?

It’s hard to get past the temptation to do a Google search and find out.

But as fiction, The MineFields reads like Sam Spiegel, the main character, is telling you his life story over drinks. It’s his perspective, first-person point-of-view, with all the strengths and weakness of first person POV.

Sam knows how to tell a good story, but it’s pretty clear that he’s the star of his own show. Always has been, always will be. Even when he’s hit rock-bottom.

And because Sam is an ad man after all, his story is reads like he’s trying to sell us his version. Or maybe he’s trying to sell himself.

He sold me enough that I couldn’t put the book down. But I can’t stop myself from wondering whether a few things at the end are true or wish-fulfillment on the author’s part.

I give The MineFields 3 and 1/2 stars.

Review: Haevyn: Humanotica, Book 2 by Darcy Abriel

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | 3 1/2 Stars> book reviews> Guest Bloggers> Guest Review> Marlene> Originally published at Book Lovers, Inc.

Format read: ebook provided by the author

Release Date: 20 March 2012

Number of Pages: 285

Publisher: Samhain

Genre: science fiction romance, cyberpunk, erotica, BDSM

Series: Humanotica, Book 2

Formats Available: ebook

Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon, Samhain Publishing, Barnes & Noble

Blurb:

Duty and honor demand the ultimate sacrifice.

Humanotica, Book 2

Everyone has their poison. For Haevyn Briena, it’s her inability to resist a dare. This time it’s a challenge from her friend and lover, Grisha, to sneak into the popular, illegal cage fights that always end in all-male orgies. Eagerly she snaps up the gauntlet, unaware that she will end the night forever changed.

When expatriate humanotic warrior Entreus locks eyes with Haevyn at the sex-fueled event, he is instantly captivated. Despite a duty that binds him to an exiled malevolent sorcerer, he seeks her out in a shattering, illuminating encounter.

Grisha’s plan is in motion—to bring both his warrior lovers together and heal their scarred souls with a combined passion that he alone cannot provide. But Haevyn’s tormented past refuses to die. And Entreus will not rest until the Core that ruined his life is destroyed.

Amid ever-tangling emotions and a brutal plot to take over the city, the three lovers walk a tightrope that could be cut at any moment. Fighting for justice, bound by duty…and a love that could alter the foundations of their world.

Warning: Watch out for oiled-up, naked trinespined warriors battling for top position, feisty tracer females that fit oh-so-snugly in between, and sexy nights that segue into complex relationships. Beware of tebitcheckers wielding those nasty little contulators at illegal, testosterone-drenched cage confrontations.

My thoughts:

I liked Haevyn a whole lot better than I did Silver.

Come to think of it, that applies as much to the two characters as it does to the two books.

Silver was a character who got “done to” much more than she did. She wasn’t the prime mover of her story. She doesn’t have a lot of what’s often called “agency”; meaning that she doesn’t move events directly.

Haevyn Briena has a lot of agency. It’s part of her nature. Even though the society of Quentopolis limits the roles that women are supposed to play, Haevyn continually challenges those roles, often pushing the limits to the extreme. She’s even been diagnosed with a psychological profile that translates to “extreme risk-taker”. We’d call her an adrenaline junkie.

Haevyn has to take risks, to move events, to be an agent, in order to keep herself half-sane.

When we meet her, she is attending something called a Cockrage, in disguise because women of her class aren’t supposed to attend such events.

A Cockrage is essentially a cock-fight, between men. The winner mounts the victor, in public, in the fighting ring. That’s part of the point. Dominance and submission, in every way. The men fight nude, just to make it more obvious. The fighters are always humanotics.

Haevyn is fascinated, revolted and aroused at the same time. Her “introduction” to sex was to be raped by a humanotic supervisor in return for food on her family’s table. That’s the way life worked in the dock neighborhood she grew up in. She’s worked her way up from there, but the emotional scars linger.

This society has incredibly limited roles for women. And it seems to have refined sexual politics to a fine art, or that’s the way the author has drawn it. Haevyn is an “officer” of the branch of the military that assigns personal assistants, i.e. sex workers, to high-ranking military officers and monitors and records their sexual activities, no matter what they might be. Haevyn’s assigned officer can order her to service him in any way he sees fit, as long as he does her no permanent damage, or she must record his brain activity while he performs with someone who is paid to specialize in the kind of pain she cannot be required to take.

And on top of being a highly paid military-grade prostitute, she finds herself becoming an undercover operative. Haevyn has almost more to do than she can handle.

The science fiction aspects of the story, well, some worked and some didn’t. I still don’t know whether travel from other planets is by space ship, faster-than-light travel, or something else. Haevyn does get taken to one of the “Border Towns”. Her travel is by ship, but she doesn’t leave Quentopolis’ dimension. The people they meet, their travel is left vague. Haevyn dreams of ships to other places, but she doesn’t know.

Likewise, not enough is explained about the political backstory to understand completely who should end up in charge. The readers are absolutely positive who the bad guys are. That’s plenty clear. But the political shenanigans in general are murkier than the sexual positions, even in the threesomes.

Speaking of which, there are two triangles going in this story. One is a sex triangle, and the other is a love triangle. Both have to be resolved somehow not just to get to the happy ending, but also to keep Quentopolis in one piece.

Summing it up, Haevyn is a much better story than Silver, because Haevyn is the star of her own show. She never waits for someone else to act. She acts. Sometimes she jumps in where she shouldn’t, but that’s what made her story so intense.

I give Haevyn: Humanotica, Book 2 3.5 stars.

Review: Past Tense by Nick Marsh

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | 3 1/2 Stars> Guest Review> Marlene> Originally published at Book Lovers, Inc.

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Release Date: October 28, 2010
Number of Pages 238
Publisher Immanion Press
Formats Available: paperback, ebook
Purchasing Info:Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon, Immanion Press, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords

Book Blurb:

Alan Reece, an unassuming animal doctor from the West Country, was surprised to discover that he had become the link between reality and the strange world beyond. Unfortunately, ripples from his unwitting transformation have freed a dark and terrible creature from its improbable prison.

My Thoughts:

This was originally posted at Book Lovers Inc.

Past Tense reminded me of the old “Doublemint Gum” commercial. Because it was two, two, two books in one.
And you might think that’s a terrible joke, but it fits with the snarky tone of the first part of the book. Fully realizing that everyone’s taste in both humor and snark varies widely. And wildly.

The beginning of the book takes off about a year after Marsh’s first book, Soul Purpose, left off. It’s not necessary to read Soul Purpose in order to enjoy Past Tense, but if you like British humor of the Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy school, you’ll enjoy Soul Purpose.
(If Ford Prefect had picked up Tristan Farnon from All Creatures Great and Small instead of Arthur Dent, he might have sounded something like Alan Reece, except that I remember Tristan as being lazier, but I digress)
The point is that Alan Reece hopes that he’s going crazy. Because the alternative is that he’s got to save the world again. He keeps slipping sideways into an alternate world where large purple tentacled creatures like something out of H.P. Lovecraft are running things. Alan’s already saved the world once, he thought he could go back to his normal, boring life as a small animal vet.

If Past Tense were only about Alan saving the world from the latest incarnation of the Cthulhu Mythos, it would have been an okay book. But that isn’t the heart of the story.
When Alan saved the world the first time, he stirred up something. And its bad. And it wants the Earth. Of course it does, or we wouldn’t have a story.
In order to save the day, Alan has to go back in time, to the frontier of Roman Britain at the end of the Empire. Actually around 177 A.D.
How does he do it? He gets some help. Alan is special. He’s a Conduit. He’s responsible for the Soul, capital S, of the Earth. Earth isn’t supposed to have one yet. It figures.
Conduits from two other Soul Plains have come to Earth to help him stop the big evil, by teaching him how to send his soul back into the past to stop that big evil. The mechanics really didn’t matter.
What made the story for me was life in Roman Britain. Oh did that part ever work! Alan got dropped into the body of a medicus, a surgeon, just as the poor bloke was about to perform surgery on someone. Alan got the language and the skills, and working on a human turned out to be not that much different from a large animal, without anethesia!
But wow! Figuring out what he needed to do to stop history from going wrong, while living a life he really enjoyed. This part was terrific.

Meanwhile, Alan’s friend Kate got sent back too. By accident. And got to see Roman life from the bottom. As a slave.
Alan and Kate have a mission to complete in the past. They have to make sure history stays on the right course. It takes them a while to figure out what they’re supposed to do. And when they do figure it out, they almost blow the whole thing.
The Emperor’s son is touring Britain. The young man in question is Commodus. Yes, that Commodus, from the movie Gladiator, which hasn’t happened yet. At this point, he’s still a vain young man who hasn’t become emperor. But he has to. He has to become emperor and dictator and general all-around asshat so that the Roman Empire falls when it’s supposed to.
But if he dies in Britain too soon, the result will be that the Empire lives and becomes a world-wide theocracy with the Cthulhu-type monsters in charge. Can’t let that happen.
Alan and Kate decide to trust Alan’s best friend, the Roman Centurion Lucius. Of course, Lucius isn’t Alan’s best friend, he’s the medicus Anicius’ best friend. Alan’s trust is almost misplaced. But after the evil creature masquerading as a Roman Praetor attempts to arrest this loyal Centurion, Lucius throws his lot in with them after all.

I wish I could give Past Tense two separate ratings. The second half of the book, from the second they get to the past, is 4 stars or better. The ending is a tear-jerker for Kate. The first third is 3 stars.

PhotobucketI give Past Tense 3.5 stars because the finish is so good.

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