Boundless by Annie Dean, Bonnie Dee, & Dionne Galace

TITLE: Boundless
AUTHOR: Annie Dean, Bonnie Dee, & Dionne Galace
PUBLISHER: Liquid Silver Books
LENGTH: Anthology (roughly 67k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $5.95

Shapeshifting and sex come together in these three novellas, as three different couples overcome their differences to fall in love.

“Seven Days” by Annie Dean is a week in the life of novitiate Teresa Wolff when incubus Dev arrives to try and steal her soul for the Devil. If he succeeds, he gains his freedom and can return to his natural form as a dragon. If he loses, he’s damned forever. Who wins? Ultimately, the appeal of this story isn’t the final result. Annie Dean writes some of the most gorgeous prose I see in e-books these days; even the blurb for this story on Liquid Silver’s site is gorgeous. She stands out in a sea of mediocre writing as someone with a gift for finding unique ways of describing things. In this story, too, she demonstrates some rather interesting insights regarding love, religion, and redemption that you just don’t find too often in romances. What the story lacks, however, is a sense of balanced pacing. I was completely into the story for the first two days, but I’ll admit, my devotion began to falter on the third day when Dev flies Teresa to Paris. At midnight. And they land in Paris and it’s still night. Now, Teresa says that the nearest big city to the monastery she lives in is Vancouver. That’s an 8-hour time difference to Paris. I know it’s silly, but I got completely jarred out of suspending my disbelief for this love story when I sat through the entire Paris section – which should have been wonderfully romantic – thinking, But even if they traveled in the blink of an eye, it’s still the next morning there! I couldn’t find a single explanation for it, and the fact that I went and re-read that section three times looking for it shows you just how jarred I got. Because I wanted to love this story as much as I loved the prose. In the end, I didn’t. Because Dean never managed to suck me back into disbelieving, especially when she starts throwing backstory in for Teresa at the last minute. And I’m still not sure exactly why we got the final result to the story that we did.

“The Straw Man” by Bonnie Dee is the story of a lonely, 32-year-old woman who owns and runs a local farm. It’s Halloween, and in a moment of loneliness, she makes a wish on her scarecrow for just one night with the perfect man that she then describes. Lo and behold, that man knocks at her door that night. But that’s all she gets. Even if she wants more. Well, I didn’t want more, I’m afraid. What started out promising, with Dee’s solid, competent prose, derailed quickly as soon as Marie, the heroine, threw caution to the wind and started macking on her come-to-life scarecrow. Marie had spunk until she started kissing him, and then she seemed to lose any semblance of a character at all. By the time she was begging him not to leave in the morning, I just didn’t care. I didn’t even get into the smut, which just seemed to go on and on and on, and in inactuality was barely a third of the story. The situation only got worse while I had to read about Marie being depressed for a good month after this one-night stand. Bored doesn’t even begin to describe my reaction to this entire story.

The final story is “Waking Kitty” by Dionne Galace. Jack Ridley, jaded reporter and Vicodin thief, gets sent out on assignment to report on a ship that mysteriously appears in the middle of a busy bar. There, he meets the eccentric waitress Kitty, complete with pink hair, great breasts, and smart mouth. What he doesn’t know is that Kitty is experiencing blackouts and memory loss, and when a man shows up in her apartment the next day claiming to be a dragon and her mate, she is driven back into Jack’s company, and his arms. And the action doesn’t stop there. “Waking Kitty” hits the ground running and then turns into a tornado of sharp lines, fast action, and over-the-top zaniness. The best part of it is, it doesn’t lose steam. I laughed in the beginning, and I laughed in the end, always a good sign. I absolutely adored Jack. I love how much not-a-hero he is – I mean really, when was the last time you read about your hero raiding medicine cabinets of his one-night stands? And Kitty’s his perfect match. These two are remarkably refreshing, though the haste with which they decide they’re so perfect each other detracted from the romance angle for me. What would have been great would have been to see these two have more than a single 24-hour-period to develop a relationship. They certainly were interesting enough to carry a full-length novel for me.

Though the anthology contains very different stories, at least two of these will stick with me for a while. I might have misgivings about Dean’s sense of pacing, but her prose more than makes up for it. Galace has a humor and freshness that make “Waking Kitty” my hands-down favorite of the three. I would have happily purchased each of these two stories singly and considered it money very well spent. These are the authors to watch out for.

Readability	8/10 – Technically superb with 2 of the most entertaining author voices I’ve read recently
Romance	5/10 – The various romances are probably the weakest part of these stories, with Dee’s the weakest of all
Characterization	7/10 – Quirky and interesting for the most part
Entertainment value	7/10 – Some fascinating ideas combined with humor and original characters means I quite enjoyed this anthology.
World building	6/10 – Some valiant attempts get thwarted with the lack of space to truly explain these worlds
TOTAL:	33/50