AUTHOR: Charlotte Featherstone
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 16k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: ₤2.49
Nadira has believed in angels her entire life. But when one shows its face to her the night she is supposed to meet with a dying friend, she doesn’t know what to believe anymore. His prophecy that she will give herself to another angel seems farfetched, until another literally stumbles across her path a few minutes later. She doesn’t realize he’s Gadriel, one of the Fallen and hater of humankind. But can he continue to hate them with Nadira now in his proximity?
Have you seen the cover for this book? It’s actually not the only story that has this cover, as Total-e-bound released three Fallen Angel books in December, but it’s beautiful, nonetheless. I wish I could say the same for the story.
I had the feeling something would be wrong about halfway through the story. In the first half, we’re introduced to Gadriel who has followed one of his enemies to the home of a woman who is dying. He’s going to kill her, since she’s obviously important to the other side (though he doesn’t know why). We meet Sammael and Sariel, two other angels, though their roles in the grand picture aren’t quite as clear. And we meet Nadira, the nurse friend of the woman who is dying. There is a lot of conflict set up in the first half of this story. Gadriel hates humans. Hates them. He was cast out of Heaven for not bowing to them when He made them equals to angels. Gadriel is bound and determined to do whatever it takes to enact vengeance on his fellow angels who stayed behind, even if it means killing off innocent humans. He doesn’t even meet Nadira until halfway through the story. Are you beginning to see the problem here?
Sammael tries to convince Gadriel that he could love humans if he gave them a chance, but Gadriel laughs him off. At that point, I utterly believe in his bitterness. The author has started to create a really interesting world, and convinced me in Gadriel’s characterization. But guess what? Then he meets Nadira, and – surprise, surprise – he’s instantly enamored. There’s some kind of prophecy involved that’s never really explained that justifies it, but nine times out of ten, “prophecy” serves the same function as “mate” in werewolf stories. It’s shorthand for realistic romantic development. I’m supposed to suspend everything I’ve believed up to that point because a prophecy tells me to. Um, no.
The entire second half of the story is devoted to how much Gadriel wants and desires Nadira then. It’s schizophrenic, at best. There is no logical bridge between the tense, angry first half and the sappy, erotic latter half. Worse, the prose drops to cringeworthy levels. The author headhops throughout the entire smut scene – when she didn’t before – and starts taking action and characterization to extremes. Gadriel is by far the worst hit with this, turning into some over the top ideal of what might be considered the perfect lover. Though he apparently had never even been aware of his cock before, he grows to “massive proportions,” then goes down on Nadira and gives her an orgasm before he even considers penetration. And he’s good at it. And he reads her thoughts so he knows exactly what to do to please her best. And did I mention he purrs? Then, we get this: A fresh flood of arousal seeped from her body, and he watched it trickle out, then swiped at it with his tongue. “Mine,” he murmured over and over again until it became a chant. By this point, I can’t stop rolling my eyes. When he comes on her stomach – because apparently she has a secret thought that she wants to be marked as his, “like an animal.” – he’s still hard enough to get to the actual penetration.
God, he was beautiful. The way he was so big, he loomed behind her. And his cock. It was huge. Beautiful. He held his cock, straight up in his hand, showing her what was going to be inside her. She studied it, the size of it, and felt her pussy weep.
At this point, all I can think, “Is it crying because it’s afraid?” I was. All those massive proportions. It was only made worse when he asks her permission later to fill her even deeper. I guess he wasn’t giving it all to her before, which is more than a little scary.
What bugs me about this story is that it could have been so much more. The first half had a huge amount of promise. There was tension, there was conflict, there were interesting characters. All of that was sacrificed for length and to get to the smut. If the author had chosen to make this a full-length novel, the extremes of the sex scene might have been more palatable. As it stands, it just isn’t.
| Readability | 6/10 – The first half redeems the second half. |
| Hero | 4/10 – Even for the guy being an angel, once the story hits the romance part, I have a hard time seeing him as anything but silly. |
| Heroine | 5/10 – Mildly better than the hero, but when so much of the second half of the story is over the top, it’s hard to invest in her. |
| Entertainment value | 4/10 – What started out promising degenerated into so much stuff that drives me insane that I really can’t recommend it. |
| World building | 6/10 – Just like everything else, it starts out promising. Too bad the author never takes advantage of it. |
| TOTAL: | 25/50 |
No comments:
Post a Comment