Genre: science fiction romance

Review: Weapons Master by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Weapons Master by Anna HackettWeapons Master (Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone #6) by Anna Hackett
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction romance
Series: Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone #6
Pages: 214
Published by Anna Hackett on August 9th 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A grumpy cyborg weapons master collides with a feisty mechanic from Earth who turns his ordered existence upside down.

Abducted from her exploration ship and enslaved on a desert world, mechanic Bellamy Walsh has fought for her survival. She’s had to fight for everything in her life, and she doesn’t ever expect things to be easy. After being rescued by the tough, deadly cyborgs of the House of Rone, she is shocked to find herself drawn to a grumpy beast of a cyborg. A genius weapons master who prefers his solitude. A man with scars of his own. A man whose brawny arms are the only thing that chase away Bellamy’s nightmares.

Maxon Shaye likes to be left alone to work. He doesn’t mind his fellow cyborg brethren, but he finds people annoying and chaotic. He’s disconcerted by his growing need to keep Bellamy Walsh safe, and thinks she’s irritating and brash. The woman keeps invading his workshop, getting in his space, and…the even more infuriating thing is that he’s actually starting to like her there. What he doesn’t like is her burning need to throw herself back into danger.

Bellamy is determined to help bring down her captors—the metal-scavenging Edull and their deadly desert battle arena—and that makes her a target. She knows too much and the Edull will stop at nothing to silence her. Maxon will do anything to keep her safe, even if that means threatening the growing bond between them. But in order to destroy the Edull’s arena once and for, Maxon and Bellamy will put everything on the line—their desire, their love, their lives.

My Review:

This is the final book in the House of Rone series, and it’s a doozy of an ending. While the final book in a series is NEVER a good place to start, this is a GREAT place to finish!

The House of Rone, with their allies in the House of Galen, have finally managed to lock down the whereabouts of the illegal arena being operated by the sand-sucking Edull. The Edull don’t literally suck sand, but they do make the Tusken Raiders of Star Wars seem as cuddly in comparison. The Edull are tinkerers and engineers, actually rather like the Jawa. But the Edull have turned their engineering talents into the creation of weapons of mass destruction, and they hone their skills making battle-bots that seem to be as lethal to their riders as they are to any enemies.

As this story opens, the last refugee from the ship Helios has been rescued and brought to the House of Rone for healing, because that’s where most of the Helios survivors have wound up. But the healing Bellamy needs is to fight back and face her former captors – no matter how dangerous it might be.

No matter how much Maxon, the House of Rone’s genius weapons master, wants her to stay safe back in the city. Even if he can’t figure out why he’s so protective of this one, particular, and particularly annoying human.

It’s not so much a beauty and the beast romance as it is a grumpy vs. snarky romance. Maxon wants life to go back to the way things used to be, before all these humans invaded the peace of the House of Rone and brought all of the cyborgs back to life. He doesn’t want to feel all of the emotions his cybernetics have suppressed. Because they hurt.

Bellamy pulls Maxon out of his self-imposed isolation. He manages to both make her feel safe and to understand the restlessness inside her that requires payback and closure – not that he ever got any for the wrongs that led him to the House of Rone.

But their shared interest in and genius for engineering and weapons creation leads to a whole lot of emotions that neither expected to feel again.

And to the deadly, shattering conclusion to this kick-ass series.

Escape Rating A-:Weapons Master is a fitting wrap up to this marvelous epic science fiction romance series. It manages to both close out this particular subset of the Galactic Gladiators series, finish rescuing all of the refugees from the Terran ship Helios, set all of the cyborgs in the House of Rone on their way to their well-earned happy ever afters AND provide just a teasing hint of what might happen next in the space lanes around Carthago.

It’s been a wild ride so far, from the rocky beginning – for the survivors – when that errant wormhole opened up near Jupiter and spit out a whole horde of Thraxian ships intent on taking prisoners back to their home base in far, far away Carthago – as slaves for the Kor Magna Arena. Or for whomever is willing to buy.

The wormhole closed behind them when they reached Carthago space. It’s a one-way trip.

Both the House of Galen, the heroes of the original Galactic Gladiators series, and the House of Rone have spent blood, sweat and tears, as well as time, money and expertise, to rescue every single one of the Terrans who were brought to Carthago. Or at least, they’ve rescued every single one they even have a hint about.

One of the beauties of this series is that it’s all too easy to imagine that in addition to Jupiter Station and the ship Helios, the Thraxians or some other bunch of intergalactic low-lifes might have brought other groups back that the gladiators don’t know about – yet.

I have it on good authority (Thanks, Anna!) that we’ll be back to visit this part of the galaxy sometime next year. And I’m definitely looking forward to that return trip!

Review: Hearts and Stones by Robin D. Owens

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hearts and Stones by Robin D. OwensHearts and Stones: Stories of Celta (Celta HeartMates) by Robin D. Owens
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction romance
Series: Celta's HeartMates
Pages: 286
Published by Faery Cat Press on July 15, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

BEFORE CELTA … Passage Through Stone: In the UStates Colorado Area, Levona Martinez is determined to find a berth on the starship, Lugh’s Spear, and escape the psi mutant ghetto for a new life on a new planet. But she’s missed her chance and the ship is full. The leaders might not consider her worth taking, but what about Pizi, her prodigy cat? CELTA, A PLACE OF MAGIC, TELEPATHIC ANIMAL COMPANIONS, AND ADVENTURE! Five stories highlighting some fan favorite characters: Homing Stone: As his magic emerges through fever fugues, nobleman Holm Holly fights death duels in the Downwind slums … and catches the attention of blacksmith Rand Ash, who needs a noble to help him with his revenge on an equally noble family …Fractured Stone: Struggling with his disinheritance and the loss of his identity, Holm Apple strives to make a new life in a new city with his HeartMate and their Fams. Hidden Stone: Garrett Primross didn't expect to be hired by a Cat, let alone two of them, and their idea of payment doesn't match his. When a GreatLord appeals for Garrett's help, he's reluctant to take the case, but finds that solving the mystery unexpectedly leads him to inner answers. HeartStones: Losing his sight and psychic power, treasure hunter Zane Aster wants to make one more score. He discovers a House on the cusp of sentience, but missteps might trigger their deaths. Stone in Zanth’s Paw: It’s time for the best FamCat on the world of Celta to return the irritating sea turtles to their mother in the ocean. Perhaps time to learn a big lesson, too.

My Review:

One of the things that keeps bringing me back to Celta, over and over and over again, is that it feels like a nice place to visit and a place that I would actually want to live in. Not that it doesn’t have its share of problems, if only because it was settled by humans and, well, humans gonna human in all sorts of ways both terrible and wonderful. But also because the place is more or less functional, with occasional hiccups because, again, humans.

So it’s a place where people can, do and will screw up their own lives and the lives of those nearest and dearest to them. A place where sometimes evil flourishes, and occasionally stupid holds sway, but for the most part things generally work. And that’s kind of a refreshing change from a lot of SF and Fantasy worlds where the story generally starts with everything going totally off the rails into situations where things are always darkest just before they turn completely black.

Celta is an SF world that reads like a fantasy world. It’s part of a tradition that includes Pern, Darkover and Harmony. These are all worlds that were settled by breakaway groups of humans that left Earth and were then lost or abandoned or a bit of both.

Celta is particularly similar to Darkover and Harmony in that the people who left Earth all had psi powers and were all persecuted for those powers.

But the first story in Hearts and Stones reminds me of a bit of science fiction romance I read years ago, Trancehack by Sonya Clark. In Trancehack, and in Passage Through Stone, we get to see conditions on Earth for psis before the migration, as opposed to the post-landfall stories we have for both Darkover and Harmony. And the conditions on Earth for psis are pretty bleak and generally awful. Conditions on Earth in general suck in this post-apocalyptic world, but it looks like the psis are getting all the blame for events they had no part of, as a way for the Earth governments to point fingers at someone else. Or to put it the way it was said in a different world, “the humans kill what they do not understand”. So this opening story to the collection, and to Celta as a whole, is downright bleak. It’s kind of a hard read, especially in the plausibility of the terrible treatment of those who are ‘different’, but that plausibility is what makes it sear.

The rest of the stories in the collection take place on Celta throughout its history as we’ve seen it through the course of the marvelous Celta’s HeartMates series. Most of the stories either provide insight into events that happened either before or after the books, or they provide further exploration into characters that we’ve otherwise seen only glimpses of through the main narratives.

The two stories that stand out in this regard are Homing Stone and Fractured Stone, as they serve as bookends on the life of Holm Holly, a character who appears multiple times through the course of the series.

But the first of those stories, Homing Stone, is also a prequel for the first book in the series as they were originally published. It’s the story of a young Rand Ash, the hero of Heart Mate, setting out to befriend Holm, the heir to one of the great families of Celta, in order to enlist Holm’s, and his powerful family’s, help in righting all the wrongs that were done to Rand and his family when he was a child. Now that he’s an adult, Rand is ready to deliver a cold serving of revenge and a hot slice of justice to the people who murdered his family and stole his birthright. This story serves as both the portrait of the beginning of a life-long friendship and an introduction to characters that series readers have long loved.

Fractured Stone, on the other end of the spectrum, shows Holm Holly, now Holm Apple, forced to make his own way for himself and his heartmate in a new city after having been disowned by his birth family as a result of the events in Heart Duel. Although there are, of necessity, references to events that occurred in that previous book, the heart of this story is wrapped up in its portrait of a man making his way in a direction he never expected to have to take, without the love and support he expected to have all of his life. Holm has lost a great deal of status, and now has to make a name for himself based solely on his own accomplishments. It’s a hard lesson in letting go, but very well done.

Last, but not least – if only because Zanth would NEVER allow himself to be the least of anything, there’s Stone in Zanth’s Paw. One of the loveliest things about Celta are its Fams, the psychically powerful familiar companion animals that provide so much of the heart – and comic relief – that imbues this series. Zanth is the FamCat of Rand Ash, the Fam of all Fams of the entire series. He’s also a great, big, egotistical cat who will remind catservants that as much as we wish we understood what our cats are trying to tell us that it would not be an unmitigated blessing. Zanth is not merely every bit as demanding as any cat you’ve ever met, he’s capable of expounding upon his demands and his rights and his status and his deserved privileges at every opportunity.

The story about the Stone in Zanth’s Paw is a slight story that might have been better served up in a previous Celta collection, Celta Cats, but it still serves as a terrific reminder of the wonder, occasional majestic and frequent sheer hubris of these telepathic animal companions.

Escape Rating A-: Hearts and Stones is a terrific collection for anyone who has already been to Celta and is just itching for an excuse to return. If you’ve never been to Celta, but are interested in taking the trip, start with Heart Mate.

Review: Claim of Eon by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Claim of Eon by Anna HackettClaim of Eon (Eon Warriors #6) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Eon Warriors #6
Pages: 209
Published by Anna Hackett on July 6th, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

She’s an alien warrior dedicated to her job, but a tough, handsome Terran captain is a temptation she never expected.

As a female Eon warrior, Second Commander Airen Kann-Felis has fought for her career and is proud of her work aboard the warship, the Rengard. She has no time for men or frivolous pleasures, especially with the deadly insectoid Kantos causing the Eon trouble at every turn. When the Eon Empire makes an alliance with the small planet of Earth, she never expected to be working alongside a man like Sub-Captain Donovan Lennox. A good-looking, smart, and tenacious man who tempts her in ways she’s never been tempted before.

Donovan Lennox was born for space, and he’s happy to be aboard a high-tech Eon warship and helping to take down the Kantos. He’s even happier to work with the disciplined, independent female Eon warrior who is very easy on the eyes. Donovan believes in respect and pleasure, but what he doesn’t believe in is the myth of love. It was the one lesson his loser dad managed to teach him. As Donovan tries to tempt Airen into playing with him, she’s keeping her walls up, even as every second they spend together draws them closer.

When Airen and Donovan are on a shuttle mission together, they find themselves under attack by the Kantos and forced to crash-land on a deadly prison planet. With only each other to depend on, both of them will have to learn to trust each other, or they stand no chance at winning the race to survive the Kantos, or the prison planet’s dangerous creatures and bloodthirsty criminals.

My Review:

This is one of those stories that leaps from one crisis to another. It’s frying pans and fires all the way down, cooked by a chemical reaction made from the combustible relationship between Airen and Donovan – and the heat of incoming weapons fire.

The Eon Warriors series, beginning with Edge of Eon, takes place in a not-too-horribly distant future. It’s both epic space opera and epic science fiction romance in one terrific package. Not that all of the Eon Warriors don’t seem to come in absolutely fantastic packages all by themselves!

In this version of the future, the Eons are one of several advanced races that are out exploring the galaxy, and the Terrans of Earth are basically uncouth upstarts just beginning their exploration of the stars. First contact did not go at all well, because the original Terran delegation seems to have consisted entirely of entitled assholes who weren’t able to even admit that they weren’t the superior race.

Sound familiar?

So the Terrans went it alone, developing a tough and scrappy attitude towards space exploration – at least until they ran headlong into the insectoid Kantos. Or the Kantos found them. That first contact was NEVER going to go well, as the Kantos are a race that expands territory purely by conquest and extermination. They don’t negotiate with anyone about anything.

The Terrans are outgunned at every turn. Even the assholes finally admit that we need help. And the only help they know about are the Eon Warriors they pissed off early on. Their plot to get the Eons’ attention – and on their side – is as assholish as the first contact was. Just with much better results.

That story is in the first three terrific books in the series, Edge of Eon, Touch of Eon and Heart of Eon.

By the point of this story, the Eon Empire and the Terrans are very much on the same side. As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Kantos are very much a mutual enemy, and in their mutual need to keep them at bay – if not on the run – the Eons and the Terrans have bonded. Sometimes literally, as several Eons have found their mates among the Terrans.

And that’s where this story begins. The Eons and the Terrans are experimenting with joint operations and mixed crews. They each need to learn the strengths of the other, and to get over any lingering prejudices that remain from the decades when their peoples strove to deliberately keep half a galaxy between them.

But the Eons, who have been having less and less success finding mates among their own people, have to admit that in the scrappy Terrans they have found something their own people have been lacking for some time.

Successful relationships. Romantic partnerships. Pair-bonding. Except that, as this story opens, neither of the protagonists is looking for anything of the kind. Or even believes that it exists – at least not for them.

Which means that when they do bond, each is incapable of accepting that the other is all in. And they are both afraid that between the Kantos on their tail, the engineered bioweapons that patrol the prison planet they’ve crashed on, and the prison wardens who kill on sight, they won’t live long enough to find out.

Escape Rating B: The romance in Claim of Eon could be seen as the flip-side of the romance in book 4 in the series, Kiss of Eon. Albeit with a bit of a twist. Where in the earlier book, the Terran is a ship’s captain, and the Eon is an exchange officer on her ship, they are not exactly equals. It’s her ship and her crew and he’s there because he’s the one who has to follow her orders. This time around, while the genders and species are swapped, what makes it really interesting, and provides some unanswered questions for the future, is that it’s not about whose ship and crew is behind them this time. Second Commander Airen Kann-Felis and Sub-Captain Donovan Lennox seem to be at about the same rank. Both of them in the middle of careers that have not yet reached the pinnacle of a ship’s captaincy.

They both begin the story with career goals yet to reach, and personal demons hiding in their emotional baggage that add to the difficulties they will face in any relationship. Not that either of them intends a relationship when this story begins.

Donovan wouldn’t mind a friends-with-benefits relationship at all, but the double-standard is still very much in play. As one of the rare female Eon warriors, and an orphan who has no family connections to help her along, Airen feels that she has to put her career first at all times. She is unfortunately all too aware – and from first-hand experience – that her male counterparts among the Eon Warriors have a difficult time – to say the least – accepting that a woman can be every bit the driven warrior that they are. So she shies away from relationships.

Donovan’s experience with bad relationships is second-hand. His dad was a loser who left his mother to raise him alone. That she never recovered emotionally from that betrayal leads him to believe that love is for losers, and that relationships are foolish.

Of course they’re both wrong.

There’s also a big story overarching the individual romances in each book in the series. The Kantos are after both Eon and Earth, and the events in this story portray their latest attempts. And while they fail in their pursuit – this time – by the time the story ends we’re aware that they haven’t given up – merely changed their focus.

The Kantos have had no luck pursuing the Eons, so as this book ends the ship receives word that the enemy has gone after what they perceive is the weaker link in the alliance. They’ve attacked Earth. Which means that the next book is going to see at least some of the Eon Warriors racing to assist their allies.

But in this story, we have a reluctant romance going on in the midst of an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire, edge of the seat adventure, as Airen and Donovan seem to escape one Kantos trap only to find themselves enmeshed in another. So come to Claim of Eon for the romance, and stay for the thrill ride. Or the other way around! Either way, if you love science fiction romance, you’ll be glad you did!

Review: Hell Squad: Tane by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hell Squad: Tane by Anna HackettTane (Hell Squad #20) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: post apocalyptic, science fiction romance
Series: Hell Squad #20
Pages: 256
Published by Anna Hackett on June 2, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

As the battle against the invading aliens reaches its endgame, a group of bad boy bikers and mercenaries will stand and fight for humanity’s survival…
Tane Rahia is good at one thing—fighting. Before the alien invasion, he fought as a mercenary in the worst jungle hellholes. Now, he’s the leader of Squad Three—aka the berserkers—and he’s fighting to protect his brothers, his friends, and the last of humanity’s survivors. It doesn’t matter if he dies, he knows he belongs in the shadows, doing the dirty work and taking dangerous risks so others don’t have to. There is no warm woman, no love, and no redemption for him, and especially no small, sweet alien woman who he struggles to ignore.
Abducted from her homeworld by the Gizzida, Selena endured captivity and torture. Then she found herself on a distant planet called Earth and rescued by tough, heroic humans. She’s recovered, made a new family for herself, and come into a power that she never knew she possessed. She’s determined to experience everything life on vibrant Earth has to offer and to protect her new home. And she discovers that one battle-hardened, intense man is the only one who ignites a passionate desire that leaves her breathless.
The humans have fought hard, but now the Gizzida have created three deadly, humanity-ending bombs. Tane’s not happy that Selena’s help is vital in the fight against the aliens, and nor is he ready to face her stubborn confidence nor the white-hot desire flaring between them. But as they enter their final make or break fight, Tane and Selena know they need to fight as one. They may not survive the final battle, but they have to try: for their friends, for the planet, for humanity.

My Review:

Not quite five years ago, I picked up a book from Netgalley titled Marcus, the very first book in the Hell Squad series. At the time, I said that the setup read like a cross between the original movie Independence Day – the sequel was not yet out and the Battlestar Galactica remake series, which had ended but sequels were still being played with/discussed/speculated about. With just a touch of Station Eleven, which had come out the year before.

That was a lot of weight for a novella to carry, but it did so with aplomb.

Five years and 19 books later, Tane is the final book in the series. Tane’s story combines the “bad boy romances girl he thinks deserves better” love story of many of the previous books in the series with the final push to kick the invading Gizzida off Earth just in the nick of time.

I want to say that that nick of time is just before the aliens detonate the three bombs that will cover the planet with a blanket of their DNA and convert all of the remaining survivors, both human and animal, into more of their scaly, invading selves. But it’s kind of a Superman ending. The one from the first movie with Christopher Reeve. Sorta/kinda. I’ll leave that hint hanging, for you to discover what really happens.

Just don’t start here. While there are patterns to many of the romances, the overall story arc of the survivors banding together, fighting the good fight, falling in love and figuring out how to take back the planet takes some development and backstory. You don’t have to read the entire series to sit back and enjoy the ending, but you do have to have read some of it. At least the first book, and a few others along the way, plus the final two, Survivors and Tane, to have it all make sense and tie itself up in a nice, neat, happy ending bow.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve been begging for this ending for about ten books now. Not that I didn’t enjoy the journey, because I certainly did, but waiting for the Gizzida to finally get the big shoe dropped on them felt like an endless cliffhanger.

At the same time, I had a bit of an approach/avoidance thing going on with Tane. I wanted the story to end – and I didn’t want to see it end – both at the same time.

Tane’s romance with Selena had been building over several books, just simmering in the background. Like many of the heroes in this series, Tane was a badass before the aliens arrived, and he’s an even bigger badass now. He’s done some terrible things in the name of survival, and he feels like those acts have tainted him beyond redemption – not unlike many of the heroes in this series.

Selena is an alien who was rescued from the Gizzida. She’s not from this planet, and she has some kickass powers of her own. But Tane has her on a very high pedestal and has a difficult time letting her down off that pedestal to admit that it’s her decision whether to love him or not.

This entry in the series operates under a very strict time clock. There’s a rather limited amount of time to figure out how to destroy the bombs without letting them explode, and desperate times, as they say, call for desperate measures.

Selena’s solution, in the end, is pretty damn desperate, but it works and we get the HEA we’ve all been waiting for. It’s been a wild ride.

As SFR, the ending is very satisfying. We want the villains to get their just desserts, and for the good folks to get their HEA. I’ll confess that near the end there was a point where it looked like the ending was going to be more bittersweet than it turned out to be. As SF, without the R, that bittersweet ending was a bit more satisfying. It felt more real.

Of course, we don’t read romance, particularly SFR for the real. We want that HEA. And this time we got it with a bang! (Probably lots of banging, most of it offscreen after the books end, with lots of babies after.)

A good reading time has definitely been had by all, 20 books of it. If you haven’t gone to Hell with the Hell Squad to deliver the ass kicking the Gizzida devils truly needed, you’re in for a real treat.

Review: House of Rone: Guard by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: House of Rone: Guard by Anna HackettGuard (Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone, #5) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction romance
Series: Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone #5
Pages: 200
Published by Anna Hackett on April 7, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

From the dangerous desert sands to the deadly glitz of the city, the lawless desert planet of Carthago is filled with lethal cyborg gladiators risking it all for the women who capture their hearts. GUARD contains two novellas and one short story all set in the Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone series.

Dark Guard: lethal cyborg Zaden will do whatever it takes to guard and protect beautiful, sweet Calla from mysterious attackers.

NOTE: previously released as part of the 2019 Pets in Space Anthology

Abducted from her homeworld, Calla Ryss has spent months in a cell, surviving her captors—the metal-scavenging Edull. Deep in the deserts of the lawless planet of Carthago, she knows that there is no chance of escape. The only thing that gets her through is her friendship with a fellow abductee, a woman stolen from Earth. But everything changes when they are rescued by the bone-chillingly dangerous cyborgs of the House of Rone, and Calla finds herself staring into eyes of metallic silver.

Zaden lives for the House of Rone. His cyborg enhancements help him keep a ruthless hold on his emotions, and loyalty is the only thing he allows himself to feel. And the rare spurt of annoyance at the cyborg hunting cat that refuses to leave him alone. But when sweet, lovely Calla falls into his arms, Zaden starts to experience emotions he’s never felt before…which is dangerous for a cyborg whose enhancements are in place not to increase his lethal abilities, but leash them.

When mysterious attackers attempt to snatch Calla, Zaden vows to be her guard and keep her safe—with some unsolicited help from a certain cyborg cat. But there is more at stake than just Calla’s safety, and as she and Zaden are drawn into an intoxicating storm of emotion, they will risk their hearts, their lives, and their freedom to rescue another innocent captive.

Cyborg Guard: on a dangerous mission into the desert, female cyborg loner Seren must act as bodyguard for champion gladiator Xias—a man who pushes every one of her buttons.

NOTE: this is a BRAND-NEW, never-before-published story

Seren dan Stal was once the pride of the Dan Nonian Warrior Academy, but when her people were wiped out by a virulent virus, she is the lone survivor. Now, her home is the desert world of Carthago, and she works hard to honor her father and her planet by being the best cyborg fighter at the House of Rone. She has no time for fun or frivolity, and that especially includes the always-smiling showman gladiator Xias.

Xias grew up on the streets of Kor Magna and lost the most important fight of all—protecting his sister. He vowed to become a champion for her and to never lose again. He commands the sands of the desert arena, is loved by the spectators, and would die for his imperator, Magnus Rone. But then he finds himself becoming far too fascinated by a prickly, dangerous, and gorgeous female cyborg.

In the desert city of Kaffit, Xias and Seren must work together on a mission for Magnus. Xias pushes Seren to feel, and she inspires his need to protect and pleasure. Together, they uncover a scorching-hot hunger that won’t be denied. Now, they just need to survive long enough to see if that hunger can grow into love.

Includes the short story – House of Rone: Beginnings

Soldier 47 is the most lethal cyborg in the Orionix Military Program. But when a young cyborg, Jaxer, is slated for deactivation, Soldier 47--also known as Magnus Rone--will risk everything he knows to save his friend.

My Review:

This fifth book in the House of Rone spinoff of the Galactic Gladiators series is a collection of short works, much as Rogue and Hunter were for the original series. In fact, VERY much as Hunter was, as both books contain works that were previously published in the utterly marvelous Pets in Space anthologies.

Which means that I’ve read and reviewed one of the three stories in this collection before. Specifically Dark Guard. I loved it, not just for the familiar setting, but particularly for its feline hero – even if the feline, like many of the members of the House of Rone, is a cyborg.

The second entry in Guard is a VERY short story, House of Rone: Beginnings. When I read Beginnings it felt very, make that extremely, familiar. But I’m not certain if that’s because I’ve read it before, or if it’s because the origin story of the House of Rone has been told, although not in this much detail, before. Both Magnus and Jaxer refer to the events that brought them to Kor Magna fairly often, particularly in their respective books, Cyborg and Sentinel.

So Beginnings FEELS familiar, even if I haven’t read it before. And I’m saying that in a good way. Everyone loves a good origin story – unless it gets rebooted too many times too close together. (I’m looking at you, Spiderman). But we all tell ourselves origin stories, stories that we repeat over and over, like the story about how we met a spouse/partner, how we met a best friend, memorable events in family history.

And that’s what Beginnings feels like. It’s the story that creates the House of Rone, even though none of that was envisioned at the start. It’s Magnus discovering that his cyborg implants have not destroyed his heart after all, and that even if he never planned to save himself, he can’t let a friend be killed. And in saving Jaxer, he saves himself and every single soul that the House of Rone rescued after that. It all comes back to this one event, this one story, and it’s lovely to get it in detail.

The other new story, Cyborg Guard, was definitely new. I really liked it because it presents different perspectives on the House of Rone, explores seldom seen variations of the romance patterns in this series, AND pushes the action forward in the quest to rescue the last Earth-human survivor still in captivity with the evil Edull.

The Edull remind me of the Jawa in Star Wars, only taller and more disgusting. Still sandsucking scrap merchants and experimenters. Although I don’t think we’ve ever seen the Jawa incorporate organic parts into their creations – while the Edull certainly do. The Edull are conducting experiments like the Nazis, just without the racial component. The Edull will use anyone in their experiments.

What I enjoyed about the romance in Cyborg Guard is that it was just a bit different from the patterns that have generally been followed in both the Galactic Gladiators and the House of Rone series.

The Cyborg Guard of the title is Seren, one of the female cyborgs who are part of the House of Rone. Unlike many of the cyborgs we’ve met previously, Seren’s suppression of her emotions is training rather than programming. She FEELS emotion, but she’s been taught to rigorously suppress it – kind of like a Vulcan.

(It’s rare to be able to mix Star Wars references and Star Trek references in the same review. Achievement Unlocked!)

Another thing that makes this romance a bit different is that the person Seren is guarding is Xias, one of the non-cyborg members of the House of Rone. Cyborgs are not allowed to compete in the Kor Magna Arena – as they certainly do have an unfair advantage. So the House of Rone has a number of unenhanced members who compete under their banner. Xias is their champion.

While both Seren and Xias are warriors, Seren sees Xias as more than a bit of a showboat, someone who competes because they love the attention – and revel in it. When their mission to retrieve a map of the Edull compound goes completely pear-shaped, Seren is finally able to see that none of her assumptions about Xias were true – except the one about whether or not he’s good in bed. That one was right on the money. And once Seren discovers the man hiding behind the showboat, she’s all in – not just for the sex but eventually for the love that she never believed she was capable – or worthy – of.

Escape Rating A-: All in all, this was a VERY fun entry in this long-running series. It had a whole bunch of elements that I just loved. I’m always a sucker for a good cat story, I love a well-done origin story and I really enjoyed seeing a romance break the established pattern for a series. AND we got to see the other side of the House of Rone, so a real treat all the way around!

Review: Paladin by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Paladin by Anna HackettPaladin (Galactic Gladiators; House of Rone #4) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction romance
Pages: 200
Published by Anna Hackett on March 22nd 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A cyborg drowning in emotions and an abducted Earth woman trying not to feel.

Abducted, enslaved, and constantly worried for her daughter, scientist Dr. Simone Li has had a rough few months. Now that she and her daughter, Grace, have been rescued by the fierce cyborgs of the House of Rone, she’s trying to make a life for them on the desert world of Carthago. But guilt and worry are eating at her…Toren—a once-emotionless cyborg—was injured rescuing them from the dangerous Edull aliens. Now, he’s inundated with emotions and not coping. Drawn to the wounded cyborg, Simone must find a way to help him and still protect her battered heart.

Bred to be a warlord’s personal cyborg, Toren has prided himself on being a cool, precise fighter dedicated to his house and imperator. Now his entire life has been torn apart. He’s broken, useless, and sidelined as an elite House of Rone cyborg. Every minute of every day, he struggles through a deluge of unfamiliar emotions and wants revenge…and only one woman calms the storm.

Desperate to bring down the Edull and rescue another abducted woman, Toren and Simone go undercover in the desert. Despite the dangers around them, these two tortured souls can no longer fight their intense attraction and the pull of fierce, overwhelming emotion. But Toren will soon have a choice to make: risk it all for love or go back to being the emotionless warrior he’s always been.

My Review:

I decided on Paladin today because I knew exactly what I would be getting from this latest entry in Hackett’s swords, sandals and occasionally spaceships series. Considering that yesterday’s book and tomorrow’s book are both a bit out there in terms of storytelling, I really felt like something a bit straightforward here in the middle.

Not that gladiators in space is exactly straightforward, but the storytelling in this series, like all of this author’s marvelous stories, reliably goes from point A to point B to point C – usually meaning SF (or occasionally action-adventure) meets romance, two lonely and/or somewhat scarred people meet (often briefly in the previous book in their series), figure out that they make each other strong in their broken places, get themselves in serious hot water with the big bad of the series, rescue each other and live happy for now with a happy ever after on the horizon when the series wraps up and the big bad is sent to whatever version of hell their beliefs and ours say they have definitely earned and certainly deserve.

And so it is in Paladin, with the added fillip that all the romances in the House of Rone spinoff from the Galactic Gladiators series feature cyborg warriors discovering that they have hearts and emotions after all, no matter how successfully they’ve managed to pretend otherwise until now. And in this particular entry in the series, the female refugee from Earth comes with her very own plus-one in the form of her daughter Grace.

Grace the budding little chemist with a penchant for making things explode. A skill that is bound to come in plenty handy on Carthago.

Grace’s mother Simone has survived the one-way trip from our Solar System as well as captivity and enslavement by the big bad for this series, the evil bot-making Edull. She’s just starting to get her feet under her again, but her involvement with Toren, the cyborg who was wounded while rescuing her, may set her back emotionally as much as she moves forward physically.

The damage that the Edull inflicted on Toren during her rescue has stripped away his primary cyborg weapon and the emotional distance that was part and parcel of his many, many implants. Now that he suddenly has emotions, he’s unable to control them and unfit for being part of the security that keeps the House of Rone and its inhabitants safe from the dark things that thrive in the shadows of Carthago and the Kor Magna Arena.

Dark and deadly things – and people – like the Edull and their bots.

Toren claims to want nothing more than to be stable enough to regain all his implants and the emotional lockdown that goes with them. But Simone can’t seem to stop herself from reaching out to him, no matter how much his need to pull himself away reminds her of the worst of her marriage back on Earth.

But in investigating their current lead to both the Edull and the female Earth engineer that they know is still a captive, Toren and Simone are forced to rely on each other and get past their emotional blocks.

Whether they can save the day – or even each other – forms the beating heart of this entry in this nonstop action/adventure/science fiction romance.

Escape Rating B: As much as I ALWAYS enjoy this author’s work, I’m not having nearly as much fun with the House of Rone as I did with the first series on Carthago, Galactic Gladiators.

And it seems to come down to two things. The first is that as interesting as each of the individual cyborg heroes are in the House of Rone, they are ALL coming from a very similar headspace and lack of heart space. They either haven’t had emotions or have had to suppress their emotions all of their adult lives, only to discover with the advent of the refugees from Earth that, well, the Tin Man has a heart after all. It feels like they need a Scarecrow and a Cowardly Lion to balance things out. Or someone coming from a different place.

Not that the women they fall for don’t show plenty of variety, because they certainly do. But the men, not so much.

The other thing that makes this series less compelling for me are the villains. As a reader, I don’t know why the Edull do what they do or are what they are. In the author’s Hell Squad series, I may hate the invading Gizzida but I know enough about their motivations to know that they make sense from their perspective. They are evil from our perspective, but not from their own.

The Edull seem to be a race of mad scientists, or at least mad engineers, who are evil for evil’s sake. There’s a piece missing and it makes them less comprehendible. I need to see that from their own point of view they are more than just BWAHAHA evil – and I’m not there yet.

Maybe in the next book in the series, later this year.

Review: Hell Squad Survivors by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hell Squad Survivors by Anna HackettHell Squad: Survivors (Hell Squad #19) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: dystopian, science fiction romance
Series: Hell Squad #19
Pages: 222
Published by Anna Hackett on February 11th, 2010
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

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

Survivors contains three action-packed novellas in the Hell Squad series.

Includes:

Nate – Long before the aliens invaded, former Marine Nate Caldwell came home a broken man. Going off-grid in a cabin he inherited in Australia’s Blue Mountains, he survived the invasion with only his dog Blue for company. For two years, he’s avoided the aliens and any survivors – he’s done his fighting and can’t go into battle again. But when a young woman crashes into his lonely existence, with the aliens hot on her heels, she changes everything…

Dak – Captain Dak Vaughn only has room for his job as head of security for Groom Lake Base. His focus has to be on keeping all the survivors alive, and not on the tough, attractive new recruit who gets under his skin. But when a dangerous mission requires them to go deep into alien territory, Dak finds himself up close and personal with a woman who is pure temptation.

Alexander – Marine engineer turned base leader, Alexander Erickson, leads a tiny base of survivors in the snowy climes of Norway. Balancing the needs and safety of his group keeps him busy, and he longs for someone to share the load, someone to call his own. The one independent woman he wants refuses to see him as anything more than a leader and a younger man. But when mysterious alien activity encroaches on their safety, they will join forces to investigate and Alexander might finally have his chance.

My Review:

Survivors is, OMG thank you Anna so much, the next-to-last book in the Hell Squad series, which began all the way back with Marcus back in 2015. I think more real world time has elapsed since that first book than has world time within the series.

Although the world of Hell Squad has certainly had one hell of a worse time than the real world has, in spite of everything awful that has happened since 2015.

Why? Because we haven’t been invaded by rapacious alien insectoids intent on stripping the Earth of its resources and converting the entire population, both human and animal, into more of their kind.

The Gizzida are basically space locusts with much too high an IQ. They are unfortunately way too good at conquering and consuming their way across the galaxy. And now they’re here.

The Hell Squad series has been a race against time from the very beginning. The Gizzida plan to strip the planet and move on, leaving nothing behind them. The remaining human population has been waging a constant guerrilla war to slow the aliens down long enough to either kill them all, shove them back into space, or preferably both.

That race is now down to the wire, as the Gizzida are building three superbombs filled with their DNA. They plan to deploy those bombs in a coordinated strike, blanketing Earth in their genetic material and converting the remaining population in one exceedingly fell swoop.

The story in Survivors is all about the human survivors plan to thwart them.

But those bombs are distributed around the globe, and so are the novellas in this collection, giving readers a chance to finally see some of the action happening in the human enclaves outside of Australia where the series so far has been set.

We do start “down under” with the kind of person we know must have existed but haven’t seen much of. Most of the survivors have banded together in The Enclave, under the protection of as many of the United Coalition Armed Forces as could make their way to the base. But some lone wolves would have managed to survive in remote locations far away from either the aliens or the protective squads.

Nate’s story is that of one of those isolated survivors, a man who left his war behind before the aliens invaded, and stayed on his own because he felt too damaged to return to any fight. His peace is invaded by a courageous woman escaping from an alien experimentation lab with the Gizzida hot on her heels. But Ali has seen one of those terrible bombs, and its location has to reach The Enclave at any cost.

Speculation has placed the second bomb in North America, and it’s up to the security forces at Groom Lake (that’s Area 51) to locate its hiding place. Meanwhile, the third bomb is hidden by the snow and ice of Norway, and it’s the job of the their base leader to dig up its location so the humans can enact their plans before the Gizzida can complete theirs.

Escape Rating A-: I liked Survivors a lot, more than many of the recent entries in the series, for a whole bunch of reasons.

One reason is that we got to see some things we haven’t seen before. While both Groom Lake and Setermoen Base have been mentioned before in the series, we hadn’t had a chance to go there until now.

Second, I loved that the romances were different from each other, and that two of them were different from the usual pattern in this series. Nate, as mentioned above, is a lone wolf survivor. While he’s very much the kind of damaged, scarred soldier as the men who make up the squads, the shattering of his fragile peace by Ari allows him to reconnect with the rest of humanity.

Liv, in the third story, is a solitary who visits the Setermoen Base for supplies but prefers to live on her own. So not as lone wolf as Nate but also not as “part of the tribe” as the protagonists of the other story. I liked that the leader of her base was an engineer, not a soldier, and that he had managed to save most of his extended family, so he has connections to parents and siblings that most people in the other bases no longer have. And I always love an older women/younger man romance when it is done well, and this one is.

Also, both Nate and Liv have marvelous canine companion animals.

While Dak and Naomi’s romance in the Groom Lake story did follow a similar pattern to many of the romances in this series, their high-stakes, high-wire exploration of and escape from Hoover Dam was terrific.

And in all three cases, the stories moved the overall series plot forward by leaps and bounds. They’ve found all the bombs. They have allies to work with, and time to finalize their plans and kick the Gizzida off Earth once and for all.

That’s a story I’ve been waiting for since 2015, and it’s finally here. The next book in the series, Tane’s story, will be the last. The human survivors will get to celebrate their very own Independence Day this summer. And I can’t wait.

Review: Malfunction by Nina Croft

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Malfunction by Nina CroftMalfunction by Nina Croft
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: mystery, paranormal, science fiction romance
Series: Dark Desires Origins #1
Pages: 320
Published by Entangled: Amara on January 20, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Investigator, Sergeant Logan Farrell, has never been convinced the human race deserves saving. But it looks like he’s got the job anyway.

It’s been five hundred years since we fled the remnants of a dying Earth in search of a new home. Twenty-four ships, each carrying ten thousand Chosen Ones. All sleeping peacefully...until people start dying in cryo.

Malfunction or murder? Hopefully, the former—a serial killer in the fleet would be drastic for morale. But Logan is determined to find the truth. Unfortunately, he’s got a new partner—and he works best alone.

Katia Mendoza, hot-shot homicide detective, has been woken from cryo to assist with the investigation. But is she really interested in solving the case, or does she have her own agenda?

Before he can answer that question, though, they become targets themselves.

Nothing like a few near misses with death to bring a couple together, and Logan finds himself falling for the alluring detective. But he doesn’t know that Katia is hiding a secret.

It’s not only humans who fled the dying Earth.

My Review:

Once upon a time there was a book called Break Out. It takes place in a far distant future – 3050 – in a galaxy far, far away. It’s kind of a heist story, and the first paranormal SFR I ever read. It’s SFR because, well, obviously, 3050 and humanity has managed to get itself off this rock. It’s paranormal because one of the lead characters, the captain of the spacefaring band of mercenaries that the series follows, is Ricardo Sanchez.

Rico was born on Earth in 1452. He became a vampire – yes, you read that right, vampire – during the Spanish Inquisition. A vampire, whether from the Spanish Inquisition or otherwise, is not what you expect to discover on a spaceship.

And yet, when humanity fled Earth, Rico managed to beg, borrow, bribe or steal – mostly bribing and stealing – his way onto one of the sleeper ships heading away from the disaster. And he brought 5,000 or so of his fellow paranormals along with him. Vampires, werewolves, werecats, demons, etc.

Through a bit of timey-wimey time travel bits, we got a few glimpses of Rico’s life before he went space traveling in Break Out and the books that followed. However, while he and his friends talked about their journey to get to the far-flung future, we didn’t get to actually see it.

Now we do. Malfunction is the first projected book in a prequel series to Break Out and its series, which is either titled Blood Hunter or Dark Desires. And if you’re wondering why I’m going through all this background information for a prequel, it’s because my love of Break Out (I gave it an SFR Galaxy Award in 2013.

I was interested in this book because I loved that one. Whether a reader new to the series will have that same reaction is anyone’s guess. I’m not sure.

Because this is not actually Rico’s story – not that I didn’t love seeing him again. Instead, this prequel is an SFR murder mystery – not that there aren’t plenty of paranormal elements in the mix.

This story takes place aboard the good ships of the Trakis expedition – and they are all falling apart. But those malfunctions are mostly what you’d expect after 500 years of continuous operation with no resupply and no hope or home in sight.

The Captain of the Trakis One and Rico on the Trakis Two have each woken an investigator from cryosleep because a recent audit of ships’ systems has turned up a malfunction that is not merely not random. It’s not even likely.

Someone has been running from ship to ship sabotaging cryosleep chambers – including each and every failsafe built in to those chambers to prevent the dozens of deaths by asphyxiation that have occurred.

Trakis One wants their investigator, Sergeant Logan Farrell, to declare the whole thing an unfortunate series of accidental but coincidental malfunctions. He’s not buying what they’re selling, but he’s a good enough soldier to pretend he does.

Rico Sanchez, on Trakis Two, wants his own investigator, Detective Katia Mendoza, to make sure the investigation stays away from the Trakis Two and doesn’t poke its nose into the many, many illegal things that Rico did to get his people onto the ship instead of the people who were supposed to be there.

As Katia is also one of Rico’s illicit people – and a werecat – she’s more than willing to keep the fleet out of their business. But her detective instincts are aroused by the crimes, which are definitely real and definitely crimes and not accidents or malfunctions at all.

That her baser instincts, as well as her emotions, are equally aroused by Sergeant Logan is something that she’ll have to either ignore or let Rico deal with – permanently. One way – or another.

Escape Rating B: I loved the early books in the original series, so I was all in for Malfunction. That being said, Malfunction didn’t feel like it hung together nearly as well as the early books in that series. I enjoyed Malfunction for its look back at the origins of a story I really liked, but I’m not sure that I’d have liked it nearly as much without having already seen the future of this universe and at least one of its characters.

Although the reviews seem to be saying that I’m a bit off-base, and readers new to this world are still loving this book. Your warp speed may vary, of course.

For this reader, it felt like the story existed on three levels. One is the “nostalgia” factor, that I already knew where this universe ended up, so it was fun to see where it began.

The second, and the primary plot of this particular story, is the spacefaring murder mystery. In a strange way, it reminded me of Medusa Uploaded, probably the bit about the mysterious deaths being investigated as well as the class system that has been not just preserved but enshrined in the way that people where chosen for this journey. It also has a bit of Veronica Scott’s Star Cruise/Sectors SF series to it, as that spacefaring SFR series often deals with crime aboard a spaceship. But the tone in Malfunction is dark in the way that Medusa Uploaded is dark.

Third, of course, is the romance between Logan and Katia. They have instant chemistry together, and they both resist it for equally good reasons. Sometimes for the same reason – neither of them has ever fit in and they are afraid to trust themselves emotionally. Of course Katia has another reason for resisting the attraction. She’s not sure how Logan will react once he knows her secret and she’s not sure about becoming emotionally involved with someone that she will probably outlive by centuries.

Unless, of course, the course of this investigation sends them both to “kingdom come” in a ball of fire. After all, someone is committing the crimes that they are investigating, and it becomes almost instantly clear that whoever that someone is they are willing to murder not just dozens but literally thousands of people to cover their crimes.

Or to fuel their need for vengeance. After facing near-death at every turn and always – so far at least – managing to survive together, it’s not any wonder that Katia and Logan decide to grab whatever joy they can in the now – because tomorrow really might never come for either of them.

I, however, certainly hope that there will be more books in the Dark Desires Origins series. It was fun to see Rico and company at an earlier stage of their journey – and the trials and tribulations of watching a new human colony being created while hiding in more-or-less plain sight should be fascinating.

Review: Mark of Eon by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Mark of Eon by Anna HackettMark of Eon (Eon Warriors #5) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Eon Warriors #5
Pages: 215
Published by Anna Hackett on December 29th 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Oil and water. Fire and ice. Terran space marine and rugged alien warrior.
Space marine Lieutenant Jamie Park has a reputation as tough as steel…just the way she likes it. A horrible childhood and her marine training have forged her into a strong woman, and she’s never seen a fight she’d back down from. Taking on the voracious insectoid Kantos is her focus, even if that means being assigned to the Eon warship, the Desteron, and working with the one arrogant alien warrior who’s seen her vulnerable and weak.

Medical Commander Aydin Kann-Ath lives to be the perfect warrior and doctor. All his life, he's worked to restore his family's tarnished honor. He has no room in his life for anything but his work, and that includes a headstrong, battle-hardened Terran who -- even when injured -- refuses to follow orders. Yet every minute he spends with Jamie, she ignites both his temper and his desire, and he can't seem to stay away.

With every interaction, Aydin finds himself fascinated by Jamie's courage and spirit, and Jamie finds herself consumed by a fiery attraction that terrifies her. On a dangerous hunt to find symbiont lifeforms that have been stolen by the Kantos, the pair can't ignore their passionate connection. But the evil Kantos threaten not only their lives, but the fate of the galaxy, unless Jamie and Aydin sacrifice it all to stop them.

My Review:

The Eon Warriors series is exactly the kind of space opera type of science fiction romance that got me hooked on SFR in general and Anna Hackett in particular. My first Anna Hackett book was At Star’s End, the first in her Phoenix Adventures series, and I think I’ve read everything since. If I’ve missed one or two, I certainly haven’t missed much.

But they’ve been all over the SFR map. Hell Squad is post-apocalyptic, Galactic Gladiators is wormholes and rescued captives, Team 52 is Earthbound Stargate. They’ve all been fun, but I’d really been jonesing for more space opera when the Eon Warriors burst onto the SFR scene with Edge of Eon. And I was hooked all over again.

The first three books in the series, Edge of Eon, Touch of Eon and Heart of Eon form a strong unit. They’re almost a single story in the way that the action follows the Traynor sisters of Earth who have been coerced/convinced/strong-armed into doing some really stupid things to people and places in the Eon Empire out of a truly desperate need to get the Eons’ attention.

That Earth needs to be that desperate because they really, seriously, totally and completely screwed the pooch in Earth’s first contact with Eons is kind of icing on the cake. Humans and their phobias can turn us into serious assholes – and that’s pretty much what happened.

The Eons and the humans have a mutual enemy – the insectoid Kratos. (Someday I want to find out that the Kratos and the Gizzida – the enemies in Hell Squad – are cousins or something. Let’s just say there’s a serious family resemblance.)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend – or at least my ally. The humans, after all, were merely assholes to the Eons. The Kratos want to conquer and destroy. Assholishness definitely takes a back seat to that.

Notice I’m not saying that the Kratos are evil per se. For that matter neither are the Gizzida as a race. They are both acting out their species imperatives. It’s just that our species imperative – and that of the Eons – is diametrically opposed to theirs.

So, in the name of fighting that common enemy, the Eons and the humans have banded together for mutual aid. The humans needs the Eons a lot more than the Eons need the humans, or so it appears on the surface.

But the humans are used to fighting against enemies who are bigger, stronger, more technologically advanced and better equipped than they are – problems that the Eons haven’t faced in millennia, if at all.

And there’s just something about humans – something that hasn’t been studied yet but hopefully will be. Eons are only fertile with their true – or fated – mates – or in a test tube. They’ve been increasingly going the test tube route because they’ve been decreasingly finding their true mates. Until those pesky Traynor sisters got involved, proving that Eons can EASILY find their mates among the human population.

And that’s where we are in Mark of Eon. The Eons and the Terran Space Marines are conducting joint operations and officer exchanges, figuring out a way to work together to take the fight to their mutual foe.

Along the way, some individual Eon Warriors and some individual Space Marines keep discovering that, while they are all far from perfect, they can be perfect for each other.

“These are their stories…”

Escape Rating B: I couldn’t resist that tagline. It just fit.

But seriously, now that all three Traynor sisters have found their mates among the Eon Warriors, the romantic action of the series has moved to the officers and crew of the Terran space fleet as they cross-train with the Eon Warriors.

A pattern has emerged in this series, as often does in a long-running series. Each story has two elements, one from the overall arc and one the individual romance.

Taking the battle to the Kratos – or at least trying to advance that initiative, is the focus of the overall arc. The Kratos are as determined and seemingly as advanced as the Eons, so that arc moves one step forward and two steps back – or the other way around – in each book. And there’s always a scene where the hero and heroine are directly in danger from the Kratos and isolated from their ship and crew to add to the tension.

The romantic pairings have generally focused on two scarred people who make each other strong in their broken places. In the case of Terran Jamie Park and Eon Warrior and Medical Commander Aydin Kann-Ath, it’s a romance between two people who have never felt like they’ve been enough and have a difficult time believing that each might be enough for the other.

I enjoyed reading Mark of Eon, just as I have pretty much everything Anna Hackett has written. Because it hews so closely to a formula that has become a bit obvious, it qualified as good mind candy for me but didn’t rise to the stellar level as the first books in this series did.

But I can always be in the mood for good mind candy, and the Eon Warriors are definitely that – probably excellent eye candy as well. I’ll certainly be back for the next entry in this series – and anything else this author wants to send my way!

Review: The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa ColeThe A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole
Format: audiobook
Source: publisher
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: science fiction romance
Published by Audible Audio on December 3rd 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A captivating romantic comedy with a thrilling sci-fi twist by award-winning author Alyssa Cole!

Trinity Jordan leads a quiet, normal life: working from home for the Hive, a multifunctional government research center, and recovering from the incident that sent her into a tailspin. But the life she’s trying to rebuild is plagued by mishaps when Li Wei, her neighbor’s super sexy and super strange nephew, moves in and turns things upside down. Li Wei’s behavior is downright odd—and the attraction building between them is even more so. When an emergency pulls his aunt away from the apartment complex, Trinity decides to keep an eye on him…and slowly discovers that nothing is what it seems. For one thing, Li Wei isn’t just the hot guy next door—he’s the hot A.I. next door. In fact, he’s so advanced that he blurs the line between man and machine. It’s up to Trinity to help him achieve his objective of learning to be human, but danger is mounting as they figure out whether he’s capable of the most illogical human behavior of all…falling in love.

My Review:

I thought I knew where this was going. Since I was enjoying where it was going, I was happy to be along for the ride. But then, it went in a direction I wasn’t expecting – and it got even better.

What I expected after the first chapter or so was something like the classic A.I. romance The Silver Metal Lover – or perhaps Data proclaiming that he was “fully functional” in the Star Trek Next Gen episode The Naked Now, but set in a world that felt like a slice of Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow from his Radicalized collection.

Instead, I got a terrific science fiction romance set in a near-future dystopian U.S. crossed with a spy thriller. And I loved every minute of it – especially after I got surprised by the turn.

So, at first we have Trinity Jordan, working from home while recovering from an accident. But this is the future. Her home is a tiny apartment and all of her appliances are way too smart for Trinity’s own good – especially Penny, her home monitoring app – and secret therapist.

But it’s obvious from the beginning that things aren’t quite what they appear.  A suspicion that only gets deeper when Trinity meets her neighbor’s visiting nephew, Li Wei. (Actually, it turns out that nothing and no one are quite what they appear to be.)

Something isn’t right about Li Wei. Her neighbor passes off his strangeness as memory issues due to recovering from an accident – not a dissimilar case to Trinity’s. While Li Wei’s social skills may be so lacking as to be non-existent, he’s so damn good-looking that Trinity’s libido wakes up from an extremely long nap to sit up and take notice. And notice. And notice.

The more time they spend together, the better Li Wei gets at communicating – and the more obvious it becomes that something is wrong with both Li Wei and Trinity. And that it’s the same kind of wrong – and the same kind of right.

Escape Rating A: First of all, I absolutely loved this. It was short and sweet and went in directions I wasn’t expecting and it was all just marvelous.

Second of all, this is the first romance audiobook I’ve ever reviewed. I read plenty of romance, but those are ebooks. Listening to romance is a bit different. It felt weird listening to the sex scenes. They were well done – they definitely were – but there’s a psychological difference between having those scenes go through my eyes vs through my ears.

Third, this is a full-cast recording. Most audiobook narrators are good at differentiating the voices of the different characters, but full-cast recordings are always extra special.

The one downside of this being an audiobook and only an audiobook is that I have no idea how to spell the name of any character who isn’t mentioned in the Goodreads blurb. For most of the time I was listening to this story, I thought that “Li Wei” was “Leeway”. This does not change my enjoyment of the whole thing one little bit, but it makes me wary of mentioning any character whose name I have no idea how to spell. Like Trinity’s neighbor who claims that Li Wei is her nephew. Or Trinity’s two girlfriends. I’m pretty sure that Tim the cat is just “Tim”. And he’s an adorable cat even though he does turn out to be 50 pounds of bio-synthetic feline.

What I loved about this story was the ever-deepening layers of subversion. At first it feels like a robot romance – and those have been around at least since 1981. So there’s nothing new about the romance between Trinity and Li Wei. But then things get deeper – and darker. The more that Li Wei falls in love with Trinity, the more he realizes that there is something wrong – even more wrong than what is obvious on the surface.

The deeper he digs, the more he uncovers, and the deeper they fall. Until the story finally breaks open – and it changes everything.

So grab The A.I. Who Loved Me for the romance – and stay for the surprisingly deep science fiction surprise tucked into its gooey center. You’ll be glad you did. Meanwhile, the audiobook promises that there will be more in this series, following Trinity’s friends. And I’m really looking forward to hearing what happens next!