Review: Thrill-Kinky by Teresa Noelle Roberts

Review: Thrill-Kinky by Teresa Noelle RobertsThrill-Kinky by Teresa Noelle Roberts
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Chronicles of the Malcolm #1
Pages: 216
Published by Samhain Publishing on May 12th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Sexual freefall is like a game of chicken: except the first one to let go wins.
"Chronicles of the Malcolm, Book 1"
Humans may have expanded to the stars, but they still have the annoying need to work for a living. Which is why Rita, crew member of the space freighter "Malcolm," is stuck collecting recyclable slag rather than attending her favorite festival celebrating love and sexuality.
Things go from boring to interesting when she discovers a badly injured man who s been thrown into a recycling bin to die. The catch, he s gorgeous, winged, and "naked."
Drax Jalricki, reformed (mostly) art thief and reluctant covert operative, is on an undercover mission to protect three planets when someone in his own government brands him a traitor. By virtue of association, Rita and her crew are going down with him.
From their first, hide-in-plain-sight quickie, the erotic spark between Rita and Drax is fueled by danger and adrenaline. But their growing suspicion that there s more to their connection than lust may not matter if they don t live through the night.
Warning: Hero and heroine who straddle the line of criminal behavior and definitely violate public indecency statutes. Exhibitionist, dangerous sex. Dark, sordid pasts. Wild risk-taking. Giggly cat-girl sidekick who s not just another pretty tail. And the greatest risk of all: true love."

My Review:

For a TV show that ran for 14 episodes (plus one movie) Firefly is a show that is turning out to have a very “long tail” when it comes to influencing SF, particularly science fiction romance. And that the show’s influence seems to show most strongly in SFR rather than hard SF or space opera probably says something about its appeal and what fans see as its underlying strengths.

Getting down off soapbox now. Well, sort of.

Thrill-Kinky is the first book in at least two that the author has set in the future world of the tramp space freighter Malcolm. Malcolm, like the Firefly-class ship Serenity, is crewed by a bunch of verging-on-criminal misfits who mostly do good while occasionally carrying enough freight to barely pay the bills and docking fees.

bad kitty by teresa noelle robertsHowever, unlike in Firefly, the crew of the Malcolm is made up of multiple species, a polyglot that only gets more poly as the story continues through Thrill-Kinky and into Bad Kitty.

The captain Mik is human, but his first-mate/business partner/husband Gan is not. The mechanic (and star of Thrill-Kinky) is the very human Rita, but her best friend Xia is definitely felinoid. And the final member of the crew is Buck, an ex-soldier with a few mechanical body parts and a whole lot of PTSD.

The story begins with Rita out picking up garbage on a planet that sounds like Risa on steroids, during the planet’s annual festival celebrating sex and love. The entire crew of the Malcolm is partying except Rita, and Buck. Buck’s PTSD doesn’t like crowds.

Rita likes them just fine, but the slag she is picking up is a cash crop on a planet famous for its neuro relays. Supposedly they are paying extra to get the crap picked up during the multi-day festival. Of course, anything too good to be true, like the payoff they will get for this surprisingly simple and totally legit job, turns out to be not true.

Rita finds a Banjali tied up and severely bruised inside one of the dumpsters she’s supposed to, well, dump. Drax is an agent for his planet of flyers, and he’s on planet to prevent an interplanetary incident between his people and the local government. Obviously, he’s been betrayed.

Fortunately for Drax, the crew of the Malcolm and especially Rita are exactly what he needs to thwart the bad guys (and girls, and others) and protect the cultural artifact on loan from his planet. He was planning to catch the thieves in the museum red-handed (or pawed, or whatever) by flying in through the skylight and waiting for the baddies to show up.

Instead, Rita climbs through the skylight, and the cat-girl goes all predator on the assassin who is out to take Drax (or pieces of Drax) in. And while everyone chases down the baddies and tries to stay alive, Drax discovers that it is possible to fall in love in just a couple of days – if the person you fall for is wired to the same thrill-kinky strain that you are.

Will true love conquer all, or will Drax return to his planet, his people, and his suddenly boring life as a secret agent?

Escape Rating B: Thrill-Kinky is fun and surprisingly fluffy for a romance about two people who like to have sex while threatened with death and dismemberment. Rita and Drax both get off on being in danger, and the high that comes from surviving it. This is actually fairly normal for Drax, after all, his people have sex while flying. Both because they can and because it aids conception. But sex is distracting and flying is dangerous and the combination is definitely a thrill if your heart can take it.

The romance here is of the lust at first sight persuasion. Drax and Rita set each other off from the moment that they meet. That they are being chased by bad guys in a speeding (and shooting) vehicle just adds spice to their first encounter.

The plot device of the Malcolm crew needing to handle Drax’s assignment without his skillset or his high-end tech toys is a great way for readers to get to know the crew and just what they are capable of.

While the action, and therefore the thrills, never let up, Rita and Drax discover that they are made for each other in every possible way, except one. Rita is a spacer, and Drax is an agent for his planet and people, willing to give his life (which he very nearly does) to protect his home. Also the Malcolm is definitely on the low-end of space freighters, and Drax is very used to a high-living, “smoothstyle” life. Rita is pretty much from the wrong side of the tracks. And Rita is all too aware that whatever they have can’t last, and probably can’t even be real, because there isn’t enough time, and there isn’t going to be enough time, to make it real.

Unless Drax is willing to gamble his whole life for the ultimate thrill – with Rita.

SFRQ-button-vsmallOriginally published at Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly

Review: Atrophy by Jess Anastasi

Review: Atrophy by Jess AnastasiAtrophy by Jess Anastasi
Formats available: ebook
Pages: 329
Published by Entangled: Select Otherworld on December 7th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKobo
Goodreads


No one on Erebus escapes alive...

Twelve years on the prison planet Erebus makes a man long for death. The worst part for Tannin Everette is that he was framed for murder. He's innocent. When the ship Imojenna lands for emergency repairs, Tannin risks everything to escape...only to find himself face to face with the captain's undeniably gorgeous sister.
Zahli Sherron isn't planning on turning Tannin in. In fact, she actually believes him. Sure, he's sexy as every kind of sin, but he's no criminal—so she hides him. But no one escapes from Erebus and lives to tell about it. With every day that passes, Zahli further risks the lives of the entire crew...even as she falls in love with a man she can never have for herself.

My Review:

If Mal Reynolds went really, really dark, and if the Reavers were shapeshifting aliens who had infiltrated the government (wait, that sort of happened) then you’d get something like Atrophy.

Or at least, that’s the way it feels. So for those of you who have never gotten over the loss of Firefly (like moi), Atrophy is a great place to get a Firefly-type fix.

The crew of the barely profitable frieghter Imojenna is every bit as oddly assorted as the crew of Serenity. Rian Sherron is the captain, and he’s a man with a lot of demons left over from the last war. So many demons that he is on a one-man crusade to eradicate the universe’s true enemy – the shapeshifting Reidar. Rian suffered years as a lab-rat in a Reidar torture chamber, watching as his crew died in agony, and he lived on in mental and physical anguish.

The man that came back from the war became a hero – taking out the ostensible enemy of the IPC in one successful but should have been suicidal maneuver. It’s probable that Rian wanted to go out, whether in a blaze of glory or not, as long as he went. But that’s not the way things worked.

Instead, he survived to become a living legend. And now he is spending his post-war years hunting down any and all information on the shapeshifting aliens who tortured him – the Reidar. The job is all that much more difficult, as the Reidar don’t shift into animals or anything easily recognizable. Instead, the take on the face and characteristics of trusted friends and planetary leaders. They hide in plain sight and wreck havoc with human controlled space.

Rian has gathered a crew on the Imojenna that all believe the Reidar must be stopped at any cost. But that crew includes Rian’s younger sister Zahli, and Rian often finds himself torn between a desire to product the young woman and his obsession with finding the Reidar.

After one of many encounters with the Reidar, the good ship Imojenna is forced to stop at the nearest planet for emergency repairs. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that nearest planet is the prison planet Erebus. When their supply run goes slightly awry, Zahli returns to the ship after killing a prison officer who attempted to add her to his count of rapes and murders. And the ship has one extra passenger – Tannin Everette, the prisoner who helped Zahli cover up the body.

As Zahli’s relationship with Tannin becomes more emotional (as well as explosively physical) than either of them bargained for, the young lovers run directly into Rian’s twin goals of protecting Zahli and revenge on the Reidar. Because it turns out that Tannin has run into Rian’s enemies before – the trumped up charge that got him sent to Erebus was part of a plot to put a Reidar operative into his planet’s government. And it worked.

When Rian’s obsession causes him to pick up a woman who is either a political prisoner or a telepathic weapon (or both), and keep her from the agents of the Reidar, the Immojenna becomes a primary target of Reidar agents all over the galaxy.

And Rian has his hands more than full trying to keep everyone safe. But when it comes to keeping Zahli safe from Tannin – Rian takes on a force that no one, and certainly no interfering and even homicidal big brother, could ever possibly stop.

Even in a galaxy that is this messed up, love still conquers all.

Escape Rating B+:The Imojenna is a ship on a mission. And it’s a ship where the captain is one slip away from being a homicidal maniac, and the crew never knows who is out to get them, but they are always aware that someone is.

When things go to hell in a handbasket, people cuss. A lot. Especially when bullets and plasma bolts are flying at them. I understand the impulse to create cuss words – the ones we use now may not survive the centuries. Howsomever, while “frak” worked as a substitute for “fuck” in Battlestar Galactica, “freck” just doesn’t do it. At least not for this reader. I cringed every time I saw “freck” or “frecking” and it whacked with my willing suspension of disbelief.

But the story in Atrophy definitely does work.

There’s a romance here, between ex-prisoner Tannin and Rian’s sister Zahli. While their romance contains a high quotient of insta-love, they do bond under very stressful circumstances. And there are other elements – Zahli is the first person who has ever given Tannin a hope of redemption, and for Zahli, Tannin is the first man in her life who isn’t completely under big brother Rian’s whacked-out thumb.

The wild card on the crew isn’t Tannin, it’s actually the telepathic priestess Mirella. She seems to be a pawn between the Reidar, their agents, and Rian. However, her telepathy gives her insights into Rian’s character and his horrible experiences that he finds both soothing and irritating at the same time. He needs help, but he’d need to let down his guard to get it. And he’s afraid that if he does, he’ll lose control and kill someone before the healer can put the genie back in the bottle. So Rian is afraid of Mirella, because he needs her and can’t accept it. I hope that their relationship gets some resolution in later books in the series, because the depths of Rian that Ella is plumbing are dark and scary and need to be brought out into the light. As a reader, I found myself more intriqued by the hints of Rian’s and Ella’s crazy possible relationship than the obvious hot spark of Tannin and Zahli.

I’ve been trying to figure out how the title “Atrophy” fits. On the surface, there isn’t anything atrophying, or wasting away. However, a deeper dive reveals that it might be Rian’s humanity that is atrophying – his thin edge of control is all that is keeping him from going permanently postal – or so he fears.

But the human controlled universe is also atrophying, at least in a way. One of the causes of atrophy, at least according to Wikipedia, is mutations. Part of the ongoing war with the Reider is their infiltration of human space by replacing human leaders with Reidar operatives. In other words, mutations.

Food for thought as the series progresses, anyway.

And speaking of that progression, the series continues (thank goodness) with Quantum and Diffraction, hopefully next year. And they look awesome.

Atrophy banner

Review: Hell Squad: Reed, Roth, Noah by Anna Hackett

reed by anna hackettTitle: Reed by Anna Hackett
Format read: eARC provided by the author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: science fiction romance, post apocalyptic
Series: Hell Squad #4
Length: 204 pages
Publisher: Anna Hackett
Date Released: August 10, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

As part of Hell Squad, former Coalition Navy SEAL Reed MacKinnon fights for humanity’s freedom from the alien invaders. He also fights for his brown-eyed girl-the woman he rescued from the aliens’ secret laboratory. He admires her quiet strength and will to survive, not to mention her elfin looks and curvy body…but he knows he has to keep his distance. She’s nowhere near ready for what he has to offer and he’ll protect her from everything, even his own powerful desires. Energy scientist Natalya Vasin has lived through hell. Still struggling after her captivity, scarred by the aliens’ experimentation, all she wants is to be normal again…and she wants Reed MacKinnon. But the rugged soldier is holding back, treating her like glass, and she won’t accept that from anybody. As Reed and Natalya wage a sensual battle of desires, they also work together to decipher a mysterious alien energy cube. Hell Squad needs Natalya’s expertise and they need her to go back into alien territory to use it. But on a mission to destroy an alien outpost, secrets are uncovered-of what the raptors really did to Natalya. Secrets that mean the future she wants with Reed is just an impossible dream.

 

roth by anna hackett
Title: Roth by Anna Hackett
Format read: eARC provided by the author
Formats available: ebook
Genre: science fiction romance, post apocalyptic
Series: Hell Squad #5
Length: 204 pages
Publisher: Anna Hackett
Date Released: August 10, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon

In the aftermath of a deadly alien invasion, a band of survivors fights on…

Roth Masters is a protector to the bone. Driven by the losses of his past, he fights side-by-side with Hell Squad to protect the human survivors of the alien invasion. As leader of Squad Nine, he and his team are known for their perfect timing in a firefight. But Roth knows they need more intel on the raptor invaders—something to turn the tide of the battle. And he knows the woman he rescued from an alien facility is hiding secrets he desperately wants to uncover.

Former Coalition Central Intelligence Agent Avery Stillman is still adjusting to her new life. Left with terrible gaps in her memory, she has vague recollections of failed negotiations with the aliens, the invasion, and after that…nothing. Until a hard-bodied soldier pulled her from a tank in an alien lab. Now she’s trying desperately to remember, to help fight back, and also battling the crazy attraction to the man who keeps pushing her for things she can’t remember.

Soon Roth finds himself torn between his duty and keeping the strong woman he’s falling for safe. As the pair head into alien territory to investigate, they are attacked and crash land alone, far from base. They have to work together to survive the aliens, but when Avery finally remembers everything…her secrets could annihilate all they hold dear.

 

noah by anna hackettTitle: Noah by Anna Hackett
Format read: eARC provided by the author
Formats available: ebook
Genre: science fiction romance, post apocalyptic
Series: Hell Squad #6
Length: 204 pages
Publisher: Anna Hackett
Date Released: August 10, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon

The battle of survival against the invading aliens heats up…but Hell Squad never quits.

Tech genius Noah Kim works day and night to keep the survivors at Blue Mountain Base with lights, power and hot water. He’s also working on a top secret project to help keep them safe. He’s tired, stressed and under pressure—and one woman adds to it all. An annoying, infuriating redhead he calls Captain Dragon.

Captain Laura Bladon lost everything she cared for in the alien invasion: her loving family, her Navy SEAL fiancé and her military career. Since then, she’s been numb, her feelings encased in ice, and she’s dedicated herself to her job as chief interrogator and running the base’s prison. But one person can get under her skin in an instant—arrogant, brilliant Noah. He’s the one thing that makes her feel—and that makes her very afraid.

But as Laura helps Noah on his project, the two are drawn irresistibly together. As they head into the desert with Hell Squad on a mission to a hidden alien outpost, sparks fly and a passionate desire is uncovered. Both are holding onto past hurts, scared to take the risk of loving again…but when the unthinkable happens, it changes everything…and Laura and Noah must find the power to save themselves, their friends and their love.

My Review:

Because I read these in one lovely distracting bunch, I’m going to review them the same way. If you like either science fiction romance or post-apocalyptic romance (or both), Anna Hackett’s Hell Squad series is a wonderful way to spend some time in a setting where you absolutely would not want to live. No matter how much fun it is to peek over the characters’ shoulders and see their lives!

gabe by anna hackettOne of the fun things about this series is that the ending of each story gives readers a sneak preview of who the main couple will be in the next book. So at the end of Gabe (reviewed here) we all knew Reed was next. Likewise, Reed foreshadows Roth a bit, and Roth foreshadows Noah. And for those of us who are awaiting the next book with the proverbial bated breath, events at the end of Noah tell us that the next hero is Shaw, who looks like he is finally about to get his head out of his ass – if it doesn’t get handed to him first.

Back to our current three installments, Reed, Roth and Noah. This series so far has shown us two different romantic patterns. In Reed and Noah, just like in Gabe and Marcus (reviewed here) we have a couple where the romantic leads are in an opposites attract mode – or at least surface opposites. In these stories, one party is a soldier, and the other is what passes for a civilian in this brave new world. Marcus’ Elle is a former society child turned communications officer, Gabe’s Emerson is the Base’s Chief Medical Officer. With Reed, the woman of his dreams is a scientist and former POW – one that he rescued from the alien’s experimental labs. The couple in Noah still maintains the pattern, but refreshingly reversed. Noah is Blue Mountain Base’s Chief Technologist, and his would-be lady is the Head of Security.

In all of these stories, we have two people who are absolutely certain that they must be wrong for each other, only to discover that they are absolutely right. Who they would have been before the invasion no longer matters. With the remnants of humanity barely holding their own against the reptilian Gizzida, the strength to survive and the need to find joy in the midst of insanity pretty much conquer all superficial differences. Eventually.

Watching these couples who would probably never even have met before the world ended find out they belong together is marvelous.

cruz by anna hackettThe story in Roth is similar to the romance in Cruz (reviewed here). Both of the people in the couple are warriors of one stripe or another. In Cruz, Santha is a warrior and a scout. In the case of Roth, the woman who haunts his dreams (in more ways than one) is Avery, who is not just a soldier but was also a member of the team that first negotiated with the Gizzida. As Avery finally recovers from her time as an alien test subject, her newly awakened memories reveal that it wasn’t just the Gizzida who were negotiating in bad faith – the humans were too. Or at least one human – the head honcho of the Human Coalition. The pressure is on Avery to remember everything she can about the traitor and his plans, because Blue Mountain Base is closely threatened by the aliens, and they need a Plan B – a safe place to retreat with all their people, both military and civilian. When Roth and Avery investigate potential bolt holes, they find one hell of a surprise, and a whole lot of hope.

Escape Rating A-: The deeper I get into this series, the more I see it as a science fiction romance/post-apocalyptic crossover. This is a near future Earth, but it is definitely a future. Before everything went to hell in the alien invasion handbasket, this was an Earth where we had finally created a peaceful world Coalition government. That’s an achievement that seems pretty far from where we sit today, on the heels of the terrorist attacks on Paris, Baghdad and Beirut last week.

Hell Squad is also post-apocalyptic without being ‘prepper’ fiction. No one expected an alien invasion. This isn’t about some group that finally had their paranoia justified. Blue Mountain Base was a military base that a lot of Coalition military knew existed. Once the squads start getting together, they go out to rescue other survivors. And of course there is a lot of word of mouth about a safe place that spreads virally among the remaining human population. People still trickle in, and survivors still get found, but fewer and fewer all the time. While I don’t generally like prepper fiction, I like Hell Squad because it focuses on the survival and not the paranoia.

The romances in this series drive the characters, and yet they don’t drive the story. The story is the different things that individuals do (and don’t do) in order to keep humanity alive. We keep learning more and more about the alien invasion, the aliens’ motivations, and finally, what went wrong. The chief characters in each book, the ones who find love amidst the chaos, do some things differently because they have found their own personal reason to live life to the fullest, but the story is about them all fighting the good and necessary fight against terrible odds.

One of the things in this part of the series that is now driving the action forward is that Plan B and the reason it exists in the first place. There has not been much in the series until now of humans acting evilly for evil’s sake or for self-aggrandizing, or even self-preservation, purposes. We finally get a glimpse of the dark side of humanity in Roth, as the Blue Mountain Base discovers that humanity was betrayed in return for a safe haven for a select few. Unlike the betrayal of the human race to the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, our evildoer in the Hell Squad series knows exactly what he’s doing when he sells out 99% of the human race to save himself and his selected elite.

We’ve seen the remnant of humanity at Blue Mountain Base survive. Now that they know what they are doing and why they are doing it, they know they have to do more to throw the Gizzida off our planet. As Emily St. John Mandel repeated in the awesome Station Eleven, quoting the Star Trek Voyager episode Survival Instinct, “Because survival is insufficient.”

It looks like that sentiment is going to drive the rest of the series. And I can’t wait.

Review: Game of the Red King by Jael Wye

Review: Game of the Red King by Jael WyeGame Of The Red King (Once Upon a Red World, #3) by Jael Wye
Formats available: ebook
Series: Once Upon a Red World #3
Pages: 139
Published by Capricorn Press on June 21st 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

On a ship sailing to undreamed shores...
Martian doctor Sita Chandra left her rich and powerful lover Max Ross years ago to protect their child from his enemies, never thinking she'd see him again. But now she and Max are stuck together on a space ship traveling from Earth back home to Mars, and the passion between them is as hot as ever before--and just as dangerous.
Max has never forgotten Sita, or forgiven her for breaking his heart. Now that the beautiful, infuriating woman is back in his life, he can't lose her and his family again. But the shadows that darkened their past together may yet destroy their future.
When a madman targets Max for a diabolical experiment, threatening the lives of everyone on the ship, It will take all the skill and all the heart Sita and Max possess to survive his deadly game.

My Review:

ice red by jael wyeGame of the Red King is the short but slightly epic conclusion to the author’s Once Upon a Red World series. The series begins with Ice Red (previously reviewed on SFRQ and also here) and continues with Ladder to the Red Star (reviewed  here).

The setting is a future solar system, where Earth is overburdened and under-funded, and the future of humanity looks like it will happen on the advanced tech Mars colonies. Earth is dying, slowly but probably inevitably, and Mars is in the ascendant.

Earth has exploited all of her resources, where Mars and the asteroids are still untapped. Earth is also extremely polluted and at the bottom of deep gravity well, where Mars scientists have developed gene therapy to keep them from dying of radiation poisoning, and incidentally cure every disease from the common cold to old age.

The colonists may not be immortal, but they can be pretty sure of seeing their second century, and possibly even their third, if they keep up their “Correction” treatments. Correction has the added benefit of functioning as a Fountain of Youth, keeping their appearance in their late 20s to early 30s, no matter how many extra decades they’ve experienced.

In the first two books of this series we met Max Ross and his incredible daughters, Bianca and Devi. Max is the genius behind the Earth Space Elevator, but is possibly the worst father in the universe. In Ice Red, Bianca is nearly murdered by her stepmother’s goons, and in Ladder to the Red Star Devi is nearly murdered by her dad’s psychopathic ex-partner.

Dad is not very good at picking business associates. He’s been much too busy looking for new projects to conquer. His daughters seem to love him anyway.

So it is fitting in Game of the Red King when all of his past mistakes come back to haunt him, possibly to the point of death. It’s about time that he is threatened directly, after all the times his associates have tried using his daughters to reach his heart or his wallet. It’s been a good thing that his daughters have rescued themselves, because Max Ross’ possession of a functioning heart is certainly questionable.

When Devi brings herself to her dad’s attention, he had no idea that she existed. And now that he does know, it’s time for him to settle things with her mother, possibly his first and biggest mistake.

At the time Devi was conceived, Max was too busy courting partners for his proposed space elevator to recognize that Devi’s mother Sita was the best thing that had ever, or possibly would ever, happen to him. And he threw her away on the altar of his ambition. Now he’s angry that she hid his daughter from him for over 30 years, and she’s still angry that he doesn’t see that his own actions precipitated the break.

But even after 30 years, the fire between them is still burning. So is all the anger. And so is Sita’s fear that Max will love her and leave her again, without seeming to even look back.

Instead, the last vestige of one of Max’ ill-considered partnerships rises up from the past to finally put Max in the same life-threatening danger that nearly took both of his daughters. And it’s up to Max to use his genius to find a way back to the life he left behind, and the heart he never recovered.

Escape Rating B: Game of the Red King is very short, about half the length of the two previous books. A lot of the worldbuilding has already been done. However, this means that it is necessary to read the other two books in the series before embarking on Game.

I’ll also say that because it has been a while since I read the first two books, it took some definitely memory searching to figure out how this whole scenario fit together. I enjoyed the first two books when I read them, but they are a bit like cotton candy – they tasted good at the time but the flavor didn’t linger.

ladder to the red star by jael wyeIn the first two books, there was definitely a fairy tale theme going on, as the author attempted, with some success, to recast traditional fairy tales into a high-tech Martian setting. This was particularly apparent in Ice Red, but less so in Ladder to the Red Star. I didn’t see that theme in Game of the Red King, but maybe it’s there and I missed it.

I still really like both Bianca and Devi. While Max was a neglectful father, he also didn’t hamper Bianca, and Sita did a good job with Devi. Both young women are intelligent, and are not shy about inserting themselves where needed and making sure shit gets done. If they are fairy tale princesses, they owe way more to Princess Leia than Cinderella.

But the main story in Game of the Red King is Max and Sita. It feels like she did the right thing 30 years ago by leaving Max. He was a selfish and self-centered (also uncommunicative) ass, and he deserved what happened. Of course, his response was to retreat even further into his engineering and let other people (very, very unscrupulous people) handle the business aspects of his very lucrative company.

In every story, Max’s tunnel vision has come back to bite someone. First it was Bianca, and then it was Devi. It feels good that this time the person who gets threatened with death and dismemberment is Max himself, because it really is all his fault.

That he gets himself out with a whole lot of MacGyver and some timely help from Sita made a satisfying solution to his dilemma. Unsatisfyingly, however, is that his problems are caused by a villain who has tipped way too far over into bwahaha evil. And also into sheer nutjob territory.

All in all, though, a fitting conclusion to the series.

sci fi romance quarterlyOriginally published at Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly

Review: Honour Bound by M.A. Grant

Review: Honour Bound by M.A. GrantHonour Bound by M.A. Grant
Formats available: ebook
Series: Lawmen of the Republic #2
Pages: 250
Published by Escape Publishing on August 1st 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKobo
Goodreads


The Lawmen of the Republic: fierce, honourable, soldiers, men. But what happens when all that they’ve been told turns out to be lies?

The wars to establish the Republic are over. The families of the Ton have risen from the blood and ashes to claim the new aristocracy. Their prodigal son, First Lieutenant Alexander Cade, is the Lawmen Academy’s youngest and most successful graduate. However, his muddied bloodlines force his exile to the Northern Wastes, the last unclaimed territory of the Republic.
Lailian scout Natalia Volkova knows that her survival in a rebel labour camp rests entirely on her iron will and killing prowess. Her fierce quest for freedom is tempered by only one thing: conflicting memories of the young Republic lieutenant who helped liberate her camp, and then returned to the fold of her people’s oppressors. She never expects that their paths will cross again – under very different circumstances.
Cade’s honour limits his choices to one: take his band of specialised Lawmen into the Wastes, and protect it and its people. There, he meets Talia, a tough, resilient refugee who holds little respect for the Republic and its laws. But as a deathly outbreak leads to a desperate race for a cure, Talia and Cade will find themselves on uncertain ground: What is right is not always obvious, and what is honourable is not always right.

My Review:

Lace & Lead by M.A. GrantI reviewed the first book in this series, Lace & Lead, all the way at the beginning of Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly, possibly even the very first issue. As part of the SFR Galaxy Awards, I also gave Lace & Lead an award for Best Space Western. I called it the Firefly in a Jar Award, because Lace & Lead felt a lot like Firefly, even though that isn’t logical when you break it down.

I never expected a sequel to Lace & Lead, and now that I’ve read Honour Bound, I’m still not sure I have one. Honour Bound is the second book in the author’s Lawmen of the Republic series, but there’s nothing here to reference the previous book. They can be, and according to the author they are, set in the same universe, but the perspective on this universe is so different in Honour Bound that there is no need to read Lace & Lead before embarking on Honour Bound.

Not that you might not want to – Lace & Lead was awesome and surprisingly complete for such a short novella. I want to say that Honour Bound is the icing on what was already a marvelous cake, but I just can’t do the visual on icing that is more than three times bigger than the cake it covers.

So, while Lace & Lead read like a space western, Honour Bound reads more like epic fantasy with a romantic twist. I certainly found shades of Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera in the relationship between Cade and Talia, and also in its similarity to a fictionalized Roman Empire, but there was also a lot of political skullduggery, outright bigotry, and lots and lots of military tactics and action.

Where Lace & Lead reminded me of Firefly, Honour Bound feels more like Pern or Darkover, in that it is science fiction that feels like epic fantasy. There’s no magic, so it isn’t really fantasy, but there’s also very little high tech to push it into the military SF camp. What tech there is feels very contemporary, meaning contemporary to us now. I don’t see the kind of advanced tech that firmly grounds a story in SF. But this is definitely not our world, so SF it is.

The story in Honour Bound is about a system that’s gone to hell, as told from the perspective of a small group of people who at least at the beginning believe that the rot can still be cut out. Again, shades of an alternate Roman Empire.

Our hero is a man who has seen his world from both sides. While he is technically an aristocrat, his mixed race makes him a despised outsider to his own corrupt class. He has come to consider their hatred for him as the highest compliment. As a “prole” Alexander Cade is given the worst military assignments in the Republic, in spite of having been the top graduate of his class at the Lawmen Academy.

He forms a tight unit with the men he both leads and befriends, and uses an obscure law to make sure that they all stick together and watch each other’s backs. They survive when they are not supposed to, sometimes only by the skin of their teeth, or the skills of their medic.

Which brings us to our heroine, Talia. Cade meets Talia when he is part of the liberation of the labor camp that she was imprisoned in at the age of 8. The labor camps appear to be operated by the Rebel faction, and they are horrific. Talia survives by becoming a cage fighter.

After meeting Talia, Cade makes it his mission to eradicate all the labor camps he can locate. He is effective, but makes many more political enemies along the way. There is something very rotten at the heart of the Republic, when his exposure of the network of labor camps nets him more political enemies than it does praise.

The blueblooded upper class that he hates is making money from the supposedly Rebel labor camps, and does not want its gravy train disrupted.

But as we see Cade rise in rank and gain horrific experience, he is always searching for Talia. When they met, he was all of 19 and she was 13 or 14, but her fighting spirit inspired him to continue his lonely crusade for justice.

When they finally meet again, they are both scarred adults who have been through too much in their too short lives. But they are finally both ready for each other.

And in the middle of a war to save as many of the despised tribal peoples of the Northern wastelands as they can, Cade finds himself at a terrible crossroads. Talia is the only woman who will ever be his equal, but the Lawman’s code he swore to uphold states that she should be killed for having seduced him away from marrying a pure blue-blooded woman and maintaining the pure bloodline.

Exposure of their relationship will get them both killed, along with all the men in Cade’s unit. But his life isn’t worth living without Talia.

And is a system that would require that he kill the woman he loves just because of her mixed race worth spilling his own blood for? Is the Republic he serves worth saving?

Escape Rating A-: Honour Bound was marvelous. Up until 3 am marvelous. The only reason I didn’t finish was that I could tell they were about to experience something very dark and ugly before the end, and I didn’t want that to be the last thing I read before sleeping.

The revelations at the end of the story are brutal and disgusting. Not unexpected, but it was the effect that those events had on the characters that sticks with me. I was very, very glad to discover on the author’s website that she is continuing the series, because there is just so much left to uncover. And hopefully fix.

The setting definitely has the feeling of an updated Roman Empire, or similar analog of a place that started out with the best of intentions and went completely to hell in the handbasket. The center is so corrupt that it is obvious that it needs to topple, the only question is who will do the toppling? We aren’t there yet, but I hope that getting there will be at the heart of later books in the series.

The romance in this story is a relationship between equals, and I always love those. While Cade has the formal military training, Talia has learned in a school of very hard knocks, and is every bit his equal as a warrior. Different, but equally tough and strong. The difference is that he is a leader, where Talia has always fought alone. Part of the story here is not just about Cade and Talia finding their balance together, but also Talia learning to work as part of a unit.

The members of Cade’s unit are all very different individuals, but they have a team spirit that can overcome anything, including their own government. Seeing the way that they work together in spite of their differences is a treat.

But as much as I enjoyed the romance and the camaraderie, it’s the political situation that has kept me thinking about this book. The saying goes that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. The Republic has become expert at silencing, suborning and ultimately killing good men (and women) so that they are not able to effect change. It’s hard to fight back when you’re dead.

They’ve tried to get Cade and his men killed in a military action to prevent them from fighting for change. We see them fight back at every turn, thinking that they are fighting the good fight.

Then suddenly they are. And it’s awesome.

sci fi romance quarterlyOriginally published at Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly

Review: Gabe by Anna Hackett

Review: Gabe by Anna HackettGabe by Anna Hackett
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Hell Squad #3
Pages: 210
Published by Anna Hackett on August 10th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.org
Goodreads

Hell Squad soldier Gabe Jackson has lost everything that mattered, including his twin brother. Now he just wants to kill the invading aliens anyway he knows how...and he knows a lot of ways. Previously part of a secret Army super-soldier project, he's faster, stronger, deadlier...but on the inside, he's a mass of rage, and pain, and grief-all waiting for a chance to drag him under. Until he finds her. Dr. Emerson Green had her life planned: thrive in the high-stress environment of the ER, build her career, have a great life. Then the raptor alien invasion happened. Now she's the head of the medical team for the secret base sheltering human survivors outside of Sydney. She's also in charge of patching up the soldiers who get too close to raptor claws. She'd never planned for this...and she'd never planned for sexy, brooding Gabe Jackson. As Emerson uncovers clues to the aliens' secret plans for the human race, she and Gabe collide in a storm of volatile passion. But the brooding soldier is as stubborn as he is silent, and Emerson knows she must convince him to reach out to her...because Gabe is a ticking time bomb about to go off.

My Review:

There be Borg here.

Not exactly, but close enough. In this third entry in Hackett’s awesome post-apocalyptic SFR Hell Squad series, the invading Gizzida reveal that at least part of their purpose in conquering Earth was to “assimilate” the human race by transforming them into the reptilian Gizzida, and Hell Squad has found the transformation tanks to prove it.

Anyone who doesn’t hear echoes of Star Trek when the transformation system is named “Genesys” isn’t paying enough attention. Not that the Trek homage matters to the plot, but I love it when my new SFR loves reference my old SFR loves.

Your warp speed may vary.

cruz by anna hackettThe romance in this entry, after series opener Marcus (reviewed here) and Cruz (here) was hinted at during the previous book. Gabe lost his twin brother Zeke in the first book. But he went batshit crazy in the second book when base medico Emerson Green was temporarily captured in their hunt for human prisoners/experimentees/torture victims.

It was pretty obvious at that point that something was going on between the genetically modified warrior and the doc. Even if whatever it was was only in Gabe’s dreams, or Emerson’s nightmares. Or both.

One of the things that has changed since the end of the world as we know it arrived is that casual sex has become the go-to stress reliever for a significant chunk of the population of the secret Blue Mountain base.

One of “Doc” Emerson’s worries is what will happen when everyone’s birth control implants get way past their expiration dates. Whether the last outpost at the end of the human race in the middle of a guerrilla war is or is not the best place to start having a population explosion, Emerson knows its going to happen soon.

Sooner than she thinks, as Cruz’s lover, Santha, becomes the first woman to find herself unexpectedly , but happily, pregnant.

marcus by anna hackettIt’s also a personal question for Emerson, as she and Gabe are secretly providing each other with a bulwark against the all-too-frequent nightmares. Just like in the first book, Gabe doesn’t think he’s good enough for Emerson, and doesn’t think a genetically modified warrior like himself is a safe lover for anyone, let alone the well-educated doctor.

A lot of this story is the push-pull between Gabe and Emerson, as they try to work out whether either of them can manage a real relationship. She buries her stress in overwork, and he kills his, over and over, by slaughtering Gizzida. Neither of them is good at talking about their feelings, or sometimes even admitting they have feelings. Or that they can’t stop feeling things about each other, whether it’s a good idea or not.

But while Gabe and Emerson are sorting out their feelings for each other, the Gizzida are laying a trap for both the doctor and the Hell Squad. Their leader thinks that Emerson and the Squad would be perfect additions to their race.

Escape Rating A-: I love this series. It is the perfect blend of romance, action adventure and science fiction worldbuilding. It’s also a great post-apocalyptic series for people who don’t generally like post-apocalyptic stories.

But then I expect no less from this author. Which is why her books are my go-tos when my schedule goes FUBAR as it did this week. It’s not that I didn’t want to read the book I originally scheduled, it’s that I knew I couldn’t tackle 672 pages in one night.

Gabe, on the other hand, was an absolute treat. We get to see more of the workings of Blue Mountain base, and we learn chillingly more about the Gizzida’s motives. Which make complete sense from their perspective, while still giving us humans the shivers.

I like it when my villains make sense. Bwahaha is funny but does not a superior foe make.

I also enjoy the way that the romances are not the driving force of the story, but they are a driving force for the characters. Gabe is going berserker because he isn’t dealing with the loss of his twin, and can’t deal with his feelings for Emerson.

Speaking of not dealing with stress, in one of these books I want to see the base commander finally find someone of his own. He needs to have someone he can rely on, and someone who can relieve his mountain of stress!

Emerson is suffering from PTSD after her capture by the Gizzida, and is unwilling to take the time to deal with it. (Doctors make the WORST patients). Gabe and Emerson help each other forget what’s hurting them, and in the process, help each other remember how good it is to be alive and what they have that is worth fighting for.

Review: Cruz by Anna Hackett

Review: Cruz by Anna HackettCruz (Hell Squad #2) by Anna Hackett
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Series: Hell Squad #2
Pages: 244
Published by Anna Hackett on August 10th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.org
Goodreads

Battle-hardened soldier Cruz Ramos is running on empty. As second-in-command of the deadliest commando squad fighting the invading aliens, he doesn't know why he's fighting anymore. He's seen too much destruction, devastation, and far too much death. Still, every day he goes out to protect those humans left, and every day the growing numbness threatens to take over. Until a mysterious woman emerges from the ruins of destroyed Sydney and saves him from a pack of rampaging aliens. Santha Kade has one goal: revenge. The raptors who have devastated the Earth have taken everything from her: her team, her home, her beloved sister. Santha-a former police officer-has spent a year alone in the ruined city, waging her own guerrilla war. Sure, she might get lonely sometimes, but she doesn't have room for anything but vengeance. Not even for a sexy soldier with liquid brown eyes, a bone-melting accent, and a face designed to drive a woman wild. But as Cruz and Santha join forces to rescue human hostages from the aliens, their explosive attraction is impossible to resist. Can these two warriors survive long enough to find something worth living for?

My Review:

This was not the book I intended to read for today. Who knew that someone could possibly make a book titled The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse boring? When that fell with a thud, I turned to one of my go-to authors, Anna Hackett. She has never disappointed me.

marcus by anna hackettAnd certainly still hasn’t with Cruz, the second book in her post-apocalyptic Hell Squad series. A lot of the setup for this series is in the first book, Marcus, reviewed here. The brave new world that Hackett has envisioned in Hell Squad needs a whole lot of bravery, because the new world mostly sucks.

In this near-future, the apocalypse that the series is dealing with the aftermath of is an alien invasion. The Gizzida look a lot like a cross between the aliens in Alien and ancient Earth dinosaurs – chiefly the predatory kind. However, these reptilian invaders have a philosophy that owes more than a bit to Star Trek’s Borg. They intend to absorb the human race and make it stronger. The difference between the Borg and the Gizzida is that these invaders don’t wipe out their own individuality. Or at least not all of it. Or they may be even more like the Borg than we’re sure of at this point, having a queen who is an individual directing an army of drones.

But our story follows the human resistance. Who seem a lot more sympathetic than the invaders. The Gizzida wiped out all the human cities with bombs and raptors, but humanity fights back. The Hell Squad lives and works at Blue Mountain Base in Australia, far outside Sydney. In my head I see Blue Mountain Base looking an awful lot like the Cheyenne Mountain Complex outside Colorado Springs in Stargate SG1, crossed with that sense of last humans fighting back from Battlestar Galactica.

(There have been a lot of references to BSG this week. A good trope is a reused trope.)

In the first book, Marcus, we were introduced to the people who make up Squad Six of the resistance out of Blue Mountain. Squad Six is much better known to everyone except the base commander as Hell Squad. They go into hell and bring hell to their enemy.

At the very end of the first book, we met Santha Kade, a lone warrior who is fighting the aliens all by herself, and has been for a year. She’s a former SWAT officer, and is good at fighting and staying alive.

She also fascinates one of the members of Hell Squad, Cruz Ramos. There’s something about the woman warrior that keeps Cruz from descending into the unfeeling darkness of too many missions, too many deaths, and not enough hope that the fight is worthwhile.

Santha thinks that Cruz makes great eye candy, but she’s in this fight to avenge herself against the alien commander who murdered her sister right before her eyes, while Santha was paralyzed by an alien poisoned weapon. She’s not ready for the emotional confusion of a relationship. On the other hand, some life-affirming hot sex seems like an incredibly good idea. At least with Cruz.

Santha is not interested in being part of the hierarchy and orderly chain of command at Blue Mountain Base, in spite of the safety that comes with having a secure hideout. But they need her. The resistance has learned that the aliens have kidnapped a group of human scientists, and the resistance wants to mount a rescue.

But in order to rescue someone, first you have to know where to look for them. Santha has the best, in depth intelligence on the alien operations, because she’s spent an entire year observing them and searching for the alien commander. They need her intel, and when she is injured, she finally realizes that she needs them. At least a little bit.

Santha still burns for revenge. Blue Mountain wants a surgical strike, in, rescue the prisoners, out. Of course it all goes FUBAR.

Because in the best alien invasion tradition, the Gizzida aren’t just capturing scientists for their knowledge, they are grabbing humans of all types, ages and sizes so that they can conduct torturous experiments. The Gizzida want to see what makes us tick. Because, in best evil alien fashion, they want to make us all stop ticking.

The laboratories that Hell Squad uncovers show a hell that none of them imagined in their worst nightmares. But they will stop at nothing to get those people out. One way or another.

Escape Rating A-: This second book in the series gets a little more into the aliens’ motives. Not that there isn’t still more to come, but for the first time we hear one speaking to a human while thinking they are on top, and getting just a tiny bit into their outline for the subjugation of the human race. It begins to let us see that the Gizzida are not just evil for evil’s sake. They don’t see themselves as evil. They think they have a manifest destiny. We naturally think they are purely destructive.

Just like in the first book, there is a romance here. Cruz and Santha have fascinated each other from the first time they met. But Santha is totally invested in her revenge-motivated lone-wolf crusade, and Cruz is part of a team. He’s more than willing to open up that team to include Santha, but living in the base will mean submitting herself to the same rules and discipline as everyone else. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but while you are in the midst of pursuing it it’s damn hard to let go of.

Unlike the romance in Marcus, Cruz and Santha are coming from the same kind of place. They are both soldiers, and they have both always been soldiers. Cruz admires Santha’s strength and intelligence. Life in the resistance is a hard life likely to end in premature death. They both need someone who accepts the darkness in every survivor, and who has the strength to fight, often literally, to grab some joy from existence and fight to keep it.

They are also both people who have a lot of demons in them, and need a partner physically strong enough to hold them down when necessary, or spar equally with them until exhaustion moves to temporary oblivion.

It’s a very different relationship than the one between Marcus and Elle in the first book. Marcus needs a refuge, and Elle needs validation that she’s a capable partner. Cruz and Santha both need people who have been exactly where the other one is and understands the monsters they hold inside.

The plot of the story – discovering and rescuing the captives, is a heartbreaker from beginning to end. While this theme has been used before, here it was especially gut wrenching, because Hell Squad has to deal both with healing the ones who can possibly be healed, and making the unfortunate but necessary call that in some extreme circumstances, death can be a mercy, especially for those we love.

If you like your end of the world scenarios with a little bit of love and whole lot of fighting back, Hell Squad is a winner.

Review: Damage Control by Jess Anastasi + Giveaway

Review: Damage Control by Jess Anastasi + GiveawayDamage Control (Valiant Knox #2) by Jess Anastasi
Formats available: ebook
Series: Valiant Knox #2
Pages: 302
Published by Entangled: Select Otherworld on October 26th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

In space, you can't hide from temptation...
Nick-named Hardass by the new recruits, Leigh Alphin is captain of the Fighter Force of the battleship Valiant Knox. He’s honorable, straightforward, and hard as nails – except for the soft spot he has for a young woman he rescued off a transport under attack. Now that she’s one of his new recruits, it’s imperative he stop thinking about her in that way.
Especially now that the Knox has been secretly infiltrated by the enemy.
Mia Wolf’s new commanding officer is icy, no-BS, and completely gorgeous. His glances send heat searing through her. Neither of them can afford to make this mistake, yet desire takes hold, consuming them. For the first time, Leigh’s iron sense of honor falters as his heart fights for love… and against an enemy trying to destroy everything they hold dear.

My Review:

Welcome to the Valiant Knox, a floating city in space. More like a flying city. Think Battlestar Galactica, with the long-running war being not quite as devastating. At least not yet.

The Valiant Knox is an Alliance space battleship, on the side of the good guys fighting the evil CSS. The CSS believes in bombing everyone back to a religious-based stone age, even as they use stolen Alliance space ships to get that job done.

escape velocity by jess anastasiThe CSS still strikes this reader as basic fundamentalist-type loonies, but they seem to be damn effective loonies. If space opera with a very strong romantic element is your thing, start with Escape Velocity (reviewed here) to read this series from its start.

While the setting of the Valiant Knox itself is very cool, the series as a whole still strikes me as gateway science fiction romance for readers who love military romance and just aren’t sure about the whole “space” thing.

A lot of the story, and an equal amount of the tension in the romance, will feel very familiar to readers of military romance. New recruit Mia Wolfe is rescued by Captain Leigh Alphin of the Valiant Knox. Wolfe needs a rescue because the CSS has infiltrated the Alliance hierarchy, and someone knew just when the shuttle carrying new recruits to the Knox would be the most vulnerable to enemy action. Her shuttle squeaks into the Knox cargo bay, with the engines about to explode. Instead, Alphin disobeys orders and board the fire ship all by himself. He barely makes it to the bridge controls to cut off the doomed shuttle’s engine in time. In time before he succumbs to smoke inhalation, and in time before the cargo bay is vented to space to prevent the shuttle from taking the Knox with her in a ball of flame.

Mia Wolfe is one of many in the ship of recruits, but her dogged determination to keep both her unconscious friend and herself alive with one gas mask during the fire snags at Alphin’s heart. A heart most people claimed he didn’t have.

He assumes that the raw recruit will be assigned somewhere else in the war effort, probably to the planet below. Which gives him a bit of license to let the young woman know how much he admires her courage, and lets him just be human for a minute in her company, instead of always sealing himself inside his hard ass, Captain Air Fighter Forces (CAFF) persona.

(His rank feels borrowed directly from BSG, as both Lee Adama and Starbuck served as CAFF on that series at different times. Leigh is high in the chain of command, serving as the commander of all the fighter squadrons on the ship.)

Of course, Murphy’s Law states that the one woman Leigh let his guard down in front of is assigned to the fighter squadron. Now she’s not just forbidden because she’s a recruit, but because she is his recruit and he will have the responsibility of judging her fitness for the squad or washing her out and kicking her planetside to the ground forces.

They are as stupid for each other as romance readers could want. They both know that any relationship is a career-killingly bad idea for both of them, but they can’t seem to resist. To make the situation fraught with even more peril, the ship’s commander, Kai Yang from Escape Velocity, is fighting for his career as he tries to ferret out just how many CSS moles are aboard the Knox, and he asks for Leigh’s help.

Leigh gets Mia Wolfe involved in his covert intelligence operation, which provides even more opportunities for them to be dangerously alone together. But as the attacks against them and the Knox escalate, their relationship also shows them just what they have to fight for.

If they survive.

Escape Rating B+: I like this series a lot. It reminds me of a cross between BSG and Stargate SG1, but in my book those are awfully good progenitors for a military SF series.

The relationship between Mia and Leigh is a slow burn that heats up fast. And that any relationship will be extremely damaging to both their careers just adds that luscious flavor of forbidden fruit to the whole thing.

It’s easy to see why their relationship is so dangerous. At the moment, he controls her future career. And by entering into a relationship with a recruit, he leaves himself wide open to charges of favoritism by any other recruit. And then there’s the power imbalance. This just shouldn’t happen.

But they have something for each other. Leigh is tired of having nothing in his life except his job. A good job will not love you back, as the saying goes. Mia has the potential to be his equal, given time and experience. But with a deadly war escalating, time is one thing they do not have.

There is a traitor in their midst. Leigh knows it, and so does Yang, but can’t figure out who among his trusted officers might be the moles. Mia has some mad computer skills, and is capable of ferreting out the truth, if Leigh can keep them both alive.

The tension ratchets up in every direction. Not just the romantic and sexual tension, but the tension of the situation. They need to find the moles and plug the leak. They need to keep their relationship under wraps. Yang needs to fend off the bureaucrats who want to end his career, and possibly the effectiveness of the Knox along with it. And the moles are out to get them personally, as well as get the Knox and the Alliance in general. (I have a sneaking suspicion that the political movement against Yang may turn out to also be a product of CSS moles, but only future entries in the series (please let there be some!) will tell me if I’m right)

The plot doesn’t let up for a minute.

As much as I’m enjoying this story, I still want to know a lot more about the crazy CSS. Because we see everything from the side of the Knox, we aren’t able to get deeply into their motives and operation. They still seem like lunatic fringe fundamentalists. For this story to move from B+ into the A’s this reader needs to see more explanation for why these bad guys have turned so bad.

But Damage Control (and Escape Velocity), the continuing adventures of the Valiant Knox, are still a marvelously fun ride.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Damage Control tour banner

So that new readers can get caught up with the Valiant Knox, Entangled is giving away two ebook copies of Escape Velocity to lucky commenters on this tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Marcus by Anna Hackett

Review: Marcus by Anna HackettMarcus (Hell Squad, Book 1) by Anna Hackett
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Series: Hell Squad #1
Pages: 217
Published by Anna Hackett on April 19th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

In the aftermath of a deadly alien invasion, a band of survivors fights on…
In a world gone to hell, Elle Milton—once the darling of the Sydney social scene—has carved a role for herself as the communications officer for the toughest commando team fighting for humanity’s survival—Hell Squad. It’s her chance to make a difference and make up for horrible past mistakes…despite the fact that its battle-hardened commander never wanted her on his team.
When Hell Squad is tasked with destroying a strategic alien facility, Elle knows they need her skills in the field. But first she must go head to head with Marcus Steele and convince him she won’t be a liability.
Marcus Steele is a warrior through and through. He fights to protect the innocent and give the human race a chance to survive. And that includes the beautiful, gutsy Elle who twists him up inside with a single look. The last thing he wants is to take her into a warzone, but soon they are thrown together battling both the alien invaders and their overwhelming attraction. And Marcus will learn just how much he’ll sacrifice to keep her safe.

The setup for this book, and for the Hell Squad series, reminds me of a combination of the movie Independence Day and the TV series Battlestar Galactica (the remake, not the original). Just like in Independence Day, the aliens have not only landed, but they have targeted all of our major cities and are the in process of wiping out the human race.

It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, but my memory says that the aliens looked like the raptors. In the book, the aliens look an awful lot like honking big dinosaurs, only clearly with way more intelligence as well as advanced space flight.

The story also has the dystopian feel of BSG. It’s not that the humans have space flight, but the gritty feeling of the last human outposts fighting back against an overwhelming invasion as they barely keep their technology together feels similar.

The Hell Squad series is certainly dystopian, or at any rate post-apocalyptic. The humans know exactly what the apocalypse was in this case – the aliens landed and are well on their way to wiping out humanity. Victories for the human survivors are damn few and very far between.

The humans in the Blue Mountain outpost in Australia are all too aware that even if they somehow manage to take Earth back from the alien Raptors, nothing will ever be the same.

In this first installment of the Hell Squad series, we focus on one of the combat squads that operates out of Blue Mountain Base. Squad Six, otherwise known as Hell Squad, is one of several squads that regularly conducts raids in enemy territory, scrounging for supplies, assisting isolated groups of humans reach the relatively safe base, and attempting to capture enemy intel.

The story in this book is in the context of one such intel operation. Through torturing a captured Raptor prisoner, they have determined that there is an enemy communications hub somewhere in their patrol area. They even have enemy data crystals that pinpoint the exact location. What they need is a translator.

What they have is Elle Milton, their comms officer. Elle has learned more of the Raptor language than anyone else. She knows enough to know that the data crystal they have recovered will lead them to the hub, but not enough to translate the exact directions. Elle needs a Rosetta Stone.

Marcus, the leader of Hell Squad, just wants to keep Elle safe. It’s pretty obvious to everyone in his squad that he is in love with the beautiful refugee who has worked so hard to become a comms officer. Her life pre-invasion was that of a spoiled little society girl, and she has worked damn hard to become someone useful. Someone strong. And she is endlessly disappointed that Marcus does not want her around – not on his missions, and not in his life.

Of course, Elle couldn’t be more wrong. It takes the high-adrenaline danger of needing to take Elle on a mission to make Marcus admit that he’s been keeping her at arm’s length in order to protect her. Elle’s way of proving to Marcus that he’s wrong is to not just get the mission done, but to save his life along the way.

Escape Rating A-: As the series introduction, Marcus is short and tremendously fun. We get glimpses of the way that the world has gone to hell, just enough to explain things without being overwhelming. We see the humans as survivors, and not just as victims. It reminds me of Station Eleven (see review) in that respect. We don’t need to live through the entire alien invasion to get the picture. It’s enough to show the humans as plucky survivors who have a hell of a fight on their hands, even if it is a fight they are mostly losing at the beginning.

The love story is a classic. Marcus the military leader feels like the only thing he’s good for is killing. And he is good at killing raptors, but he is also a terrific leader for his squad. He feels like he is atoning for some of the dirty missions he conducted while he was in U.S. Special Forces, before the invasion. He feels as if his hands will never be clean, and he doesn’t think he deserves happiness in general or Elle in particular.

Elle has her own demons to fight. As a spoiled party girl, Elle had no skills with which to fight off the raptors when they invaded her parents’ estate and killed them. Elle feels like she hid uselessly in a closet as she listened to her parents die, and has become a comms officer in order to battle past her own feelings of uselessness and worthlessness.

So when Marcus shoves her away, she interprets it as her worthlessness and not his need to protect. They make a very stubborn, but equally matched, pair.

The mission is one that showcases what humanity has lost, and at the same time bonds Elle with Marcus and with his whole unit.

The raptors have taken over a public library, because they are using the library’s data banks to translate human electronic documents into their language. They don’t just control the whole planet, they want to make sure that they wrest every scrap of technology out of it as well. These aliens are like interstellar locusts, they find a planet, kill its inhabitants and steal its technology, then fly away leaving their conquest a dead hulk in space.

But Elle is able to use the aliens attempt to reverse engineer English the other way. She gets enough of a start to reverse engineer the aliens’ language, and find their communications hub. The mission to take out the hub is an action-packed page turner that will keep any reader glued to their seat.

It’s impossible not to root for these stubborn humans to find a way to throw the aliens off of our world. And the fight has just begun.