A Waltz at Midnight by Crista McHugh

TITLE: A Waltz at Midnight
AUTHOR: Crista McHugh
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 19k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $2.69

Southerner Susanna Parkwell has been forced into a life of servitude after the Civil War, and when she is offered payment to write some letters for one of the college girls in the house where she works, she takes it, desperate to help her injured brother achieve his dream. Deceiving the girl’s suitor should’ve been easy. After all, all she has to do is convince him he doesn’t want anything to do with courting. But when she begins to have feelings for this man she has never met, she can’t quite bring herself to end the masquerade…

I love epistolic stories, and the romantic premise of this appealed to me. However, the end result proved too simple for my tastes, ultimately becoming something I had troubles remembering just a day later.

As a tale, it’s a simple one. Susanna works as a maid in her aunt’s boardinghouse for young women attending college. A transplanted Southerner, she is now reliant on her aunt’s good graces to support her and her brother who was injured during the war. One of the girls in the boardinghouse receives a letter from a would-be suitor, but because she’s in love with someone else, she asks the more eloquent Susanna to write a letter back posing as her to discourage him. Susanna agrees to do it only after she is offered payment, but after she exchanges a couple letters with the man, she begins to realize it’s not quite the onerous task she originally thought it would be.

Knowing the length ahead of time, I didn’t expect much. There wouldn’t be time for real depth, just some letters back and forth, hopefully romantic, and a sweet HEA. That’s what there is, but the problem lies with the fact that the conflict that gets introduced – a surprising depth to Theodore’s issues as well as his feelings regarding the duplicity when he finds out – get completely dismissed in the transition between his discovery and the ending. All of a sudden, there’s the HEA, with no real explanation as to how Theodore suddenly is okay with the fact that he’s been deceived for so long when more is really needed. He comes across as incredibly wishy-washy as a result, which does nothing to bolster him as an appealing hero.

Susanna fares slightly better, as she at least has a spine and stands up to some of the more awful girls in the boardinghouse as well as Theodore’s rather obnoxious responses. But my respect for her wears thin as her letters progress, mostly because I can’t fathom how the early ones are ever meant to truly discourage him from courting her. The intelligence I’m told she has doesn’t seem to manifest, and I’m left only half-invested in whether or not everything will work out.

When all is said and done, it’s a forgettable story with unmemorable characters that never seem to have to live up to the promise that’s hinted at several times within the text. Even for a short novella, it failed to do much more than kill the time it took to read.

Readability	7/10 – Simple and direct, easy to read but rather superficial
Hero	5/10 – Rather generic, and the switch at the end came too abruptly
Heroine	6/10 – Has a spine but seeing those letters as off-putting made me question her so-called intelligence
Entertainment value	4/10 – I love the potential of this, and there were hints of what I love about epistolic stories, but it felt too glossed over in the sections where the conflict should have been prevalent
World building	7/10 – There’s no doubt about the time period, though it took a lot to get me past the initial set-up since it felt so abrupt
TOTAL:	29/50

Synthetic Dreams by Kim Knox

TITLE: Synthetic Dreams
AUTHOR: Kim Knox
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 34k)
GENRE: Cyberpunk romance
COST: $3.59

In the world of creating illegal glamour, Vyn is one of the best. She has to be. Scarred as a child, she was forced to wear glamours in order to fit in with her upper crust surroundings. All of that changed when she was caught selling her illegal wares and shipped off to a district known for its hackers and threats. But now, she’s created the most valuable piece of tech there is. Everybody will want a piece of her if they ever find out, including the high-level security guy who almost catches her when she’s testing it…

If there’s one thing this author loves to do, it’s create dense new worlds for a reader to explore. The problem is, her stories aren’t always long enough to really take full advantage of them.

This one is no exception. The reader is thrown headlong into a world where the virtual is as real as reality. Vyn is testing her newest tech, something called a simulacrum, to see whether it can pass inspection. She runs into a security guy who introduces himself as Paul, but when it becomes obvious he’s starting to see through her mask, she decides to leave. She needs a diversion, and thinking quickly, kisses the guy. She never expects him to kiss her back, but she manages to get out with her mask intact. Back in the real world, she ventures out at dusk for some coffee, but after surviving the dangerous trip back to her apartment, she finds Paul in her apartment, announcing he knows full well who and what she is. Seconds later, he tells her the only way she’s going to survive the night is by trusting him. She has no choice but to do so when security storms her apartment and destroys everything non-organic.

Thus begins a night of harrowing action, as Paul sucks Vyn into a world more complex than she’d ever imagined. I can’t explain it. By the time I was comfortable enough with the societal constructs and technology the author had created, the story was two-thirds done, and I’m pretty sure that if I tried to explain it now, I’d just make a mess of it. It’s cyberpunk, though, which should give the reader a starting point. From the start, Paul is practically perfect in a lethal kind of way, which turns out to be his major failing as an interesting character. By the time he starts showing chinks in his armor, most of the story is gone. He’s enigmatic to a flaw, and because of that, I never really bought into his feelings in the last couple chapters.

Vyn is a little bit better, but her characterization suffers in a different way. She’s thrust into the action so early, and the pace is so unrelenting, there’s no real chance to discover what she might be like on a normal basis. I certainly didn’t get a lot of what Paul claimed to know. I had to take his word for it rather than see or experience it for myself. This, too, worked to distance me from the romance.

But there’s enough fascinating action going on that I was okay with not being that invested in the romance. I needed to see it play out, especially once I was really clued into how it all worked. The story hurtles along at a breathtaking speed, leaving little room for anything but strapping in. As a reader, I just had to find a way to survive (much like Vyn with Paul’s driving). And even with my reservations about the romantic angle, I’m likely to be there the next time this author has a new title. She’s one of the few I’ve read who consistently come up with complex, interesting worlds. That’s worth it.

Readability	8/10 – Dense world building really holds this back because there’s just so much going on that it forces the reader to slow down and sometimes even backtrack to catch it all
Hero	6/10 – Too enigmatic to be truly sympathetic
Heroine	7/10 – So much action goes on, there’s little opportunity to learn of these qualities Paul is intrigued by
Entertainment value	7/10 – Getting a firm handle of the world beneath my belt slowed down getting into the tight action of this
World building	8/10 – It needed better descriptions earlier in the story to make it easier to get sucked into, but still love the nihilism of it all
TOTAL:	36/50

The Last Night by Nico Rosso

TITLE: The Last Night
AUTHOR: Nico Rosso
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 40k)
GENRE: Horror erotic romance
COST: $3.59

The world is not like it was. Earthquakes have torn apart the earth’s center, releasing toxins into the air that have changed some people to monsters of stone who eat ash. Those who survived hide away, trying not to become the next victims, but resources are scarce and the monsters can’t be killed. Erica has banded together with a group of others, hiding away in a ruined hotel, determined to fight as long as possible. The despair that takes over so many seems like it might have a reprieve when a man on a motorcycle shows up in the middle of a fight, with weapons that actually leave the monsters for dead. Erica wants to learn how he does it, but Jake isn’t willing to give up his only bargaining chip for free. At least, until he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to fight alone anymore…

This is not your typical romance. No flowery language, no prolonged dwelling on emotions. It might not be to everybody’s taste, but man, it sure was to mine.

The story starts out with Erica on the cusp of another fight. Night is beginning to fall, and the ashers, the name they’ve given the ash-eating stone-fleshed monsters that some humans mutated to, are attacking. Nothing kills them, but they do what they can to hold them back until they get tired or look for easier prey. In the middle of yet another night of this, an unknown man on a motorcycle drives into the scene, swinging blows left and right that take down the monsters. His name is Jake, and he’s discovered a way to kill them. He offers the information at a trade – he needs supplies just as much as the next person – and his mercenary ways really turn Erica off. There’s a connection between them, though, a recognition of fighter to fighter, and eventually Jake shows Erica the trick anyway. He decides to spend the night, but his bike has opened up a possibility for her that she’s desperate to realize.

The first thing the reader will notice is the author’s terse style. Sentences are short, usually simple, and dwell on the visceral rather than the cerebral. That doesn’t work for every kind of story – it certainly didn't for the first story I read by this author a year ago – but it does for this post-apocalyptic horror one. It creates an urgency both in the action and the emotions, and it worked to suck me into each moment as it played out within the plot.

It also helped to put me straight into Erica and Jake’s shoes. They are the fighting spirit of this, those that don’t want to dwell on what they’ve lost but instead find a way to survive in this new world order. These are the doers, the ones that legends are created about, and together, they form the core of what turns the tide for this small band of humans. I loved how the basis of Jake’s feelings for Erica stems from how brilliant she is fighting. He saw straight to the heart of her, more than anybody else ever did. Erica, on the other hand, was far more guarded about her emotions and trusting Jake as explicitly as he did her. The give and take of this brief acquaintance as it blazed into something hotter was a treat to watch.

My only quibbles come toward the end where I found it a little predictable as to what would happen. I won’t spoil, but there was one moment of discord between Jake and Erica that had me thinking, “Oh, please don’t have him…” and then he went and did the predictable thing I wished he hadn’t (not because it didn’t make sense or was a bad move but that it felt a little trite considering how unpredictable it had been up to that point). I wondered last year if the author’s voice would come across better with a better editor, and I think this proves it will. It still won't work well for less action-oriented stuff, but for this particular story, it was more than enough.

Readability	8/10 – A terse, no-nonsense voice seems atypical for the genre, but works in this context
Hero	8/10 – Love that what he loves about her is her fight not just her looks
Heroine	8/10 – Honorable when she doesn’t even know it, a real fighter
Entertainment value	8/10 – Honestly, got so wrapped up in it all that it gave me nightmares
World building	9/10 – Dark, visceral, and horrifying
TOTAL:	41/50

Lying Eyes by Amy Atwell

TITLE: Lying Eyes
AUTHOR: Amy Atwell
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 103k)
GENRE: Contemporary romantic suspense
COST: $5.39

Jewelry designer/store owner Iris Fortune is trying to lead a normal, stable life, but her magician father keeps finding ways of disrupting it. His latest scheme involves mythological Russian gems, a thief named Mickey who makes her heart pound more than her lawyer fiancé, a strong-willed rabbit named Edgar, and oh yeah, two half sisters she never knew she had…

There is so much going on in this romantic suspense, it’s almost tough to know where to start. The premise at the beginning is simple enough. Mickey, a hired thug, snatches Cosmo, an aging magician, because he hasn’t followed through on his end of a corrupt business deal. It’s up to Mickey to find the gems Cosmo was supposed to turn over, except Cosmo manages to get away. Mickey then goes to Cosmos’s daughter Iris, the owner of a jewelry store at the Bellagio, to see if she knows anything. Iris is engaged to a lawyer with political aspirations, a boring, safe choice to counter the less than predictable life she had growing up. Iris gets a call from her security company about an unauthorized entry, and when she realizes it has to be Cosmo, lies to protect him. Thus starts a long, convoluted race to find the gems Cosmo is withholding.

The problem isn’t that the plot isn’t interesting. It certainly is. The problem rests in just how many people get involved in it. Right away, we’re thrown into the thick of things, because in addition to Mickey and Iris, there’s Hunter the cop, Allie and Cory (Iris’s half-sisters), the other thugs Mickey works with, Turner the hitman, and the Boss who’s behind it at all. By the story’s end, we get even more characters. It’s not just trying to keep them all straight. There are scenes in so many different POVs (only one per scene most of the time, thank god), that it’s often hard to make emotional connections to any of them.

Thankfully, enough time is spent with Mickey and Iris to recognize them as the central pairing. Mickey is charmingly roguish and capable of pulling Iris out of her safe little shell. She’s intelligent and just wary enough to be believable, but I did feel that she got lost in the shuffle quite often. They have strong chemistry, and I loved how he was able to get her to relax.

Between all this, however, are scenes that often drag on too long (seriously, losing Edgar in the gardens lasted forever), and some that seemed completely extraneous altogether. I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if it had been more tightly focused, rather than allowed to ramble on where it did. It worked to keep me guessing as to what would happen next, but beyond that, I was left fairly unsatisfied.

Readability	7/10 – Clean editorially, but some scenes drag on for far too long and the huge cast does little but muddy the waters
Hero	7/10 – Charming and roguish
Heroine	7/10 – Has a tendency to get lost in the shuffle of more colorful characters, but nothing awful about her
Entertainment value	7/10 – This would’ve ranked higher if certain parts had dragged it down
World building	9/10 – Extensive and fully realized
TOTAL:	37/50

Always a Princess by Alice Gaines

TITLE: Always a Princess
AUTHOR: Alice Gaines
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 83k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.39

When Philip Rosemont, Viscount Wesley, spots the princess at a ball, he knows immediately she’s a fake. The question is, why is she pretending to be an Eastern European noblewoman and how quickly can he get her to himself? He doesn’t expect to find her trying to pilfer their hostess’s jewels, especially since he’s just taken it for himself, but by the time she shows up at his home the following day with the intent of blackmailing him to keep his secret, he’s already decided they’d make a fabulous team, both in thievery and elsewhere…

I had a splendid experience with a book I read by this author last year, and this second effort proved just as entertaining.

The delight starts early and swiftly. We open at a ball, where Philip, the Viscount Wesley, has spotted a woman who is clearly an imposter, pretending to be a princess from a small Eastern European country none of the simpering men surrounding her have even heard of. Philip has, however, and much to the woman’s chagrin, he’s intimately familiar with it. He quickly discovers that she’s at the party for the same reason he is – to steal jewels from their hostess. Where his motivation is sheer boredom, Eve – the imposter princess – is doing it in retaliation after having lost her position as governess when her employer’s son had her take the fall for a cameo he stole from his mother. Eve’s rationale is that since she’s already been accused of thievery, she might as well do it. So far, her plan has worked well. But then she met a man who’d actually been to the country in question, and now everything is in disarray. In an attempt to keep control of the situation, she decides to blackmail him, to force him to pay her to keep his secret that he’s really the Orchid Thief. Philip laughs at the offer. His reputation is the last thing he worries about. But he’s got a counter offer in mind, one that poses them as partners rather than adversaries.

I was laughing at this wonderful farce almost from the start. Philip is roguish and intelligent, with just enough determined swagger to keep him edgy and the right balance of manners to keep him from going over the top. His dialogue, no matter who he’s addresses, comes fast and furious, leaving no room for skimming for fear of missing something he’s said. He typifies the farcical nature of the entire story, and honestly, what a breath of fresh air it was. There isn’t nearly enough farce in romantic fiction, probably because it’s hard to do well. This succeeds. Very, very well.

Is it the most original story? Well, no, but that doesn’t matter when the dialogue and hero sparkle as much as they do. The set-up, taken outside of the context of farce, would be hard to tolerate, because a reader would be left with abundant questions on how so much could get handwaved away (Eve’s acceptance into the ton as nobility before the Rosemonts vouch for her, for one). But farce demands a stretch of that acceptance, and as long as you’re prepared to go that far, it works anyway. The chemistry between the two leaps off the page, mostly as a result of Philip, and the sex when it comes is scorching.

The complaints I have are few. First of all, Eve isn’t quite as entertaining as Philip, but then again, he tends to get the best lines so it’s easy to get eclipsed by that. I did find her ultimate secret a tad banal considering the nature of the story, and it veered dangerously close to more dramatic historical romance as a result. It felt out of place in a story that was so outrageous already. There’s also a point just over halfway through when Philip lost his shine and turned into one of the simpering men who’d been fawning over Eve at the start. It’s just when he’s begun to realize the depths of his feelings for her, and his behavior becomes uncomfortable to witness. It doesn’t last, thank goodness. If it had, it might have been hard to finish.

But what a joy it is to find a book that has me laughing and smiling as much as this one did. While humor can be quite subjective, especially in written form, I think it’s safe to say that this author’s style of it definitely works for me.

Readability	9/10 – Far-fetched, but funny with witty banter you can’t take your eyes off
Hero	9/10 – Except for a brief period where he turned into one of the simpering fools from the beginning, delightfully roguish and witty
Heroine	7/10 – Not as consistent as the hero, and her secret is a little banal in light of the farcical nature of the story
Entertainment value	8/10 – Delightful and funny, as long as you accept it as farce
World building	7/10 – Stretches credibility, but then again, that tends to be one of the requirements in farce
TOTAL:	40/50

Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep by Michael Merriam

TITLE: Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep
AUTHOR: Michael Merriam
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Futuristic fantasy
COST: $2.69

Crippled as a teenager, Grace survives in her post-apocalyptic world as best she can, but time is beginning to weaken her defenses against those who see her as a burden. While she sleeps, she hears the mysterious loons whose magic governs human’s new way of life. Nobody else can, and the annual meeting to sacrifice one of their own to them is upon them…

One of my resolutions this year is to be pickier about which books I read, and by read, I mean actually finish and review. I started two before settling on this short novella, one that was DNF and one that left too little to talk about to waste time on a review. My hopes are that it’ll give me a lot more to be excited about this year than I was last.

This short futuristic fantasy from Carina is a solid entry into those ranks. It’s the story of Grace Kriske, a young woman in her twenties who has been stuck in a wheelchair since she was a rebellious thirteen. She’s still rebellious, hating to be waited on, but she is slowly losing her strength to beat against those odds. Sometimes, she dreams that she can hear the mysterious loons that reputedly populate a nearby lake. These same loons are the focus of an annual ritual whereby locals and traders meet up at the lakeside, conduct a lottery amongst the citizens, and send the chosen one to the loons. Supposedly, it’s to give something back to the community, but those who are chosen don’t seem to benefit from it. At the meet-up, Grace gets to see her once a year lover David, but it’s there, too, she discovers something that will change her life forever.

Because of the story’s brevity, to give away too much of the details would spoil what happens. That’s a shame, because it’s those plot twists, even in such a short space, that add to its compelling nature. What I can say is that the authorial voice is by far the strongest aspect of it. The tone is ethereal and melancholy, very much matching Grace’s mood and emotions, with haunting details that seep from every page. It sucked me in, even when I had lingering questions about what was going on and what the loons part in it all was. It definitely makes me want to seek out more of this author’s work, since a unique voice is often so hard to find.

What I wish worked better was the exposition side of the story. Some details are skimmed over or simply not given at all, and the resolution, while a natural progression from the plot, occurs too abruptly and with little emotional arc. I imagine a good number of these weaker aspects are due to the story’s short length. I don’t think it should’ve been a novel by any means, but perhaps just a thousand or two more words might have answered enough of my questions to anchor me more securely within its world. It would have enriched some of the secondary characterizations as well, giving David a bit more depth for me to understand Grace’s complex feelings for him, or to help differentiate the various elders amongst the others.

Still, it made a welcome change to read something that takes more risks than typical genre fiction. I’ve also found a new author to check out, which is always a bonus.

Readability	8/10 – An ethereal, melancholy voice only hampered by not quite enough exposition
Characterization	7/10 – Grace has the best job of this, since she’s the protagonist, but some of the more important secondary characters tend to blur
Plot	7/10 – Not as clear as it could’ve been, and the resolution was a little abrupt
Entertainment value	8/10 – I enjoyed this more for the mood and authorial voice than the story
World building	7/10 – The background wasn’t quite clear enough to provide the clearest picture of the present, but the details provided were evocative and lovely
TOTAL:	37/50

Blinded by Our Eyes by Clare London

TITLE: Blinded by Our Eyes
AUTHOR: Clare London
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 45k)
GENRE: Gay mystery erotic romance
COST: $3.59

Charles walks into his gallery to find one of his up-and-coming artists murdered with his ex-lover covered in the man’s blood. Joseph is shaken by the crime, but his alibi holds up, leaving Charles and the police wonder months later just who is responsible…

I’m going to be in a minority on this book. I know a lot of people loved it, and I went into it with high hopes, but in spite of adoring the first chapter, I was bored to tears by a third of the way through.

It’s the story of London gallery owner Charles as he attempts to try and find out who exactly is responsible for killing Paolo, a sculptor he was sponsoring he had high hopes of doing well. Paolo’s body is discovered in the gallery with Joseph, Charles’s ex-lover, and when Joseph is clearly shaken and traumatized by the whole event, Charles takes him in. Weeks pass and the police are nowhere closer to getting answers. Charles begins to discover that perhaps he didn’t know the people who surround him as well as he thought he did and begins trying to ferret out who might have been responsible for the murder on his own.

Told in 1^st person from Charles’s perspective, this is a mystery first and a romance second. The love interest, Antony, doesn’t even get introduced until well into the story, leaving the feeling that the entire romantic angle was shoe-horned in so it wasn’t just a mystery. While he’s a nice foil for the oddly innocent Charles, by the time he came onto the scene, I was already struggling to stay engaged with the story. He didn’t really stand much of a chance with me at all.

That bothers me, actually. I loved the first chapter. It was vivid, gut-wrenching, and emotional. The second chapter faded a bit for me because of the odd jump at the start of it, but I still held out high hopes. The third chapter jumps to weeks later, and we discover much of what happened in the interim, as well as information that would have come out during the police interrogations in chapter two, in a long, dull conversation that had none of the sparkle and vibrancy of the author’s descriptive voice. I got increasingly annoyed by the surprise background information that was sprung on me at the end of the third chapter, and never really recovered from that.

Part of this stems from the fact that Charles is such an unreliable narrator, and while I’d like to blame the device for the reason the story doesn’t work for me, I can’t because I’ve enjoyed stories with other unreliable narrators before. It just comes down to the execution, because the descriptive prose and editing are excellent. Though it’s told in 1^st person, I felt an awful disconnect with everything going on due to the methods chosen to convey the necessary information. I’m choosing to see my negative experience with this as an anomaly. The author has a great voice, and I’ve had other good reads with her work. Just not with this one.

Readability	6/10 – Lush voice didn’t end up helping to involve me in the story, bored to tears by a third of the way in
Hero #1	7/10 – Sweet and oddly innocent in spite of his age and experience
Hero #2	4/10 – A good foil for the narrator, but came too late in the story for me to care about
Entertainment value	3/10 – Love author’s voice, but the vast jumps and odd juxtaposition of recapping against sudden surprising background information annoyed me early, then bored me
World building	7/10 – A strong feel for the art world and moments
TOTAL:	27/50

Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael

TITLE: Brass and Bone
AUTHOR: Cynthia Gael
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 36k)
GENRE: Steampunk paranormal
COST: $3.59

Lady Abigail and her partner Simon are called upon an old friend of hers for a very delicate job. He needs her to take cargo across the globe on her airship, with the witch he’s captured as part of the magical lock that will seal it forever. There’s a lot of money involved, too much to resist, but Simon thinks the witch’s keeper – her ex-lover – is too cavalier and dangerous about this entire mission…

The more published steampunk I read, the more I wonder what the big deal is. Because if these are the best the genre has to offer – and it seems everybody across the internet proclaims steampunk as the next big thing by begging for more – then I really have to ask just how awful the stories are that don’t manage to get published. Because this novella I recently finished just doesn’t cut it.

It starts out well enough. Simon and his partner Abigail rob a man of a device, having been hired to steal and deliver it for a hefty sum. Things go mildly awry when Simon is poisoned by the thing, but he is treated in time to suffer no long-term damage. He finds out the next morning that they are traveling to see an old friend of hers, a man he can’t stand, because he was both the one that hired them for this particular job and is in need for more work, something he says only Abigail can do. Once they get there, they discover they are to transport something to Australia, where it will be locked away forever using the combined blood of a witch and a human. He has a witch on hand, a French woman named Cynara, but she is treated as more of a thing and prisoner than a person. He’s sending along a keeper, the man who was Cynara’s lover before he turned her over to this group of Witchfinders, and so the four set out on this around the world journey.

If this sounds interesting, don’t be fooled. It’s a muddle and turns even more tedious after they actually leave. The story is riddled with so many weaknesses, it’s difficult to pinpoint just which holds it back the most. First of all, the author chooses to write it in alternating 1^st person POVs – Simon’s (the male half of the airship pair) and Cynara’s (the female witch half of the paranormal pair). I normally love 1^st person, but I find it much more difficult to switch between two within the same story, especially from chapter to chapter. It erases the deep perspective 1^st person creates, and forces the reader to start over again with a character from scratch. Don’t get me wrong. It can be done, but it requires top notch writing and voices to truly pull it off. That doesn’t happen here. Instead, we only get one decent voice – Simon’s. When it switches to Cynara, the entire story gets thrown into confusion, largely because much of what happens in her POV is told instead of shown, and the world-building explaining the magical/paranormal aspects of the story is some of the sketchiest I’ve read in a while.

The telling vs. showing is a problem that runs throughout the entire story, though. For too much of it, it reads like a summary of a much longer work, skipping over what felt like should have been crucial events, skimping on the details on too many things. Characterizations suffer as a result. The only one who felt fully well-rounded and real to me was Simon. Cynara falls short on believable motivations or interest, her keeper Henri is too secretive to be anything but frustrating, and Abigail is put on a pedestal by Simon. The only aspects of the story that seem to get a good balance of loving detail are the steampunk gadgets. Abigail’s airship alone merits nearly 500 words of description, just so “you may visualize it when I discuss such aeronautical locations as the bridge, engine room, galley, hold and so forth.”

Here stems the roots from which my problems with most of the steampunk stories I read grow. I buy a genre book to read a story and be entertained in some fashion, not to be regaled with the author’s imagined gadgetry that seems to fit into this new world. Ultimately, I still need to experience an actual story, and I mean experience it, not told it. Too often, that feels like it gets forgotten, in favor of lavishing all this attention on the elements of a steampunk world. World-building is fantastic, but not the sole purpose.

Though it doesn’t say so on the site, this novella has to be the first in a series, because the conclusion is very open-ended, with nothing actually resolved. It’s just as dissatisfying as the rest of the story, but I won’t be bothering with any more that might come along. I’ve read enough of this author’s voice to know this style is just not for me.

Readability	6/10 – Alternating 1st person POVs with lots of telling makes this very tedious to get through
Characterization	5/10 – Simon fares the best, but the rest of them come off as vague or caricatures
Plot	5/10 – Incomplete since it’s clearly meant to be part of a series, with little sense of flow
Entertainment value	3/10 – Started off well, but the disjointedness of the plot as well as too much tell rather than show turns this into a slog
World building	6/10 – The steampunk aspects are all right, but everything on the paranormal side leaves a lot to be desired
TOTAL:	25/50

Soul Survivor by Misty Evans

TITLE: Soul Survivor
AUTHOR: Misty Evans
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 52k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $4.49

Keva Moon Water’s dead body is at the center of what looks like a ritualistic murder, the bodies of five dead women surrounding her. FBI agent Rife St. Cloud knows evil when he sees it, but when Keva comes back to life right before his eyes, he’s just glad to have a living witness to this awful crime. The hospital declares Keva a miracle, but she only cares about one thing – finding out why Rife doesn’t remember the brief life they shared together a thousand years ago…

While I’m not a big fan of soul mate stories, I am a fan of reincarnation ones, as well as Native American lore. I jumped all over this when I saw it, but unfortunately, its execution left it severely lacking.

It starts out all right, with Rife St. Cloud, an FBI agent on vacation, called in to look at a crime scene by his cop grandfather. The murder scene looks to be ritualistic, with six dead women, but as he’s looking at the woman at its center, she comes back to life. She is rushed to the hospital, where the doctors and nurses are amazed at her miraculous recovery. For his part, Rife is just glad that he has a witness he can interrogate now. Keva Moon Water is a bit of an enigma, and while he has a lot of questions regarding her past, his primary concern is who would want to kill her. What he doesn’t realize is that Keva is immortal, living the past thousand years as a result of trying to save her lover’s soul. She recognizes Rife as his reincarnation, but Rife has no idea about the truth, still disbelieving even after she tells him her story.

There’s the ongoing thread of Keva’s spurned fiancé wanting to prove to her he’s worthy of her—the core of the murder plotline—but it takes forever to get to a point where that plays a strong part. With the exception of a brief scene or two, the first half is dedicated to Keva trying to show Rife the truth about his soul in clumsy, boring information dumps. It tries to break up the flow by jumping back in time with flashbacks, but those never felt like they gelled with the rest of the story. It’s all tell, tell, tell, and boring telling at that. I got so bogged down with all the backstory that is necessary to get even a fraction emotionally invested in the current events of the story that I didn’t even care about the people it was trying to sell me on. Rife felt generic and predictable, while Keva’s attitude got on my nerves. She tells their story to Rife in hopes that he’ll remember, but there’s no finesse to it. I couldn’t help but think that someone who’d lived a thousand years should’ve been better at that kind of thing by now.

The pace does pick up in the latter half, but that just meant it got me to the end faster, not that I actually enjoyed it. Of all the characters in the book, I actually thought the bad guy was the most interesting, even if he did do some truly horrific things. But that’s not nearly enough to make up for my other misgivings about the story. It could be that this author’s voice isn’t for me, which is a shame since I really liked the ideas behind the basic story. I probably won’t read another one to find out, though.

Readability	6/10 – Lots of clumsy information dumping in the first half makes this read a lot slower than it should
Hero	4/10 – Kind of generic and boring, to be honest
Heroine	5/10 – Strong, but I found her brand of bluntness a tad offputting
Entertainment value	4/10 – I was bored to tears by the middle of the story, it took a lot to finish it
World building	7/10 – I liked a lot of the ideas, blending the Native American lore with the paranormal, it was just the execution that was clumsy
TOTAL:	26/50

No Angel by Vivi Andrews

TITLE: No Angel
AUTHOR: Vivi Andrews
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 33k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $2.69

Sasha was born into Hollywood royalty, but being recognized isn’t exactly high on her list. The fact that her current boyfriend doesn’t seem to care is a bonus, but the way he’s stonewalling on meeting her famous mother on Christmas is not. She’s going to make one last ditch effort to convince him, even though she worries about his odd behavior the past few months. Little does she realize that Jay isn’t the goody-two-shoes she believes him to be, nor is he worried about meeting her mother. His fears are a little bit bigger than that, mainly how he’s going to tell her he’s actually half-demon and can’t spend Christmas on the mortal plane. Before he can explain it, however, he’s sucked into a vortex, and Sasha finds herself with a contract from the angels to rescue him from Hell before dawn…

I held off on buying the holiday anthologies that Carina put out last year, instead choosing to pick up a few of the individual novellas instead. Most of the time, I actually prefer this method rather than purchasing whole collections that often leave me more disappointed than not. This way, I can pick and choose what I want to read and better my odds at finding a gem. With this one, I came out a winner.

The story opens with Sasha on Christmas Eve, braving grocery store crowds to pick up a missing ingredient for the baking bonanza she has planned to surprise her boyfriend with. She’s running late because the store is a zoo, and has a less than pleasant experience when she’s recognized. See, her mother is considered Hollywood royalty, and though Sasha isn’t an actress, she’s treated in much the same way. It’s a role she’s tired of, since she can rarely be certain if someone wants to know her for her rather than her family connections. Her boyfriend is one of the few who doesn’t seem to care who she is. Jay is a good man, more low-key than the bad boys she usually dates, but Sasha is worried that his repeated refusals to spend Christmas with her family mean there’s bad news on the horizon. Especially since he told her they needed to talk. Little does she know that Jay isn’t exactly what he seems. He’s half-demon, and as such, isn’t allowed to be on the mortal plane for Christmas. In fact, he was supposed to be back in Hell months ago, but he’s ignored various summons in favor of staying with Sasha. Now, though, he knows he needs to tell her the truth, but before he can, a vortex opens in Sasha’s kitchen and sucks him straight to Hell. Sasha is then visited by an angel who lays upon her the responsibility of retrieving Jay before dawn, or losing him forever.

Comedy is always a tricky sell, because humor often translates so differently to paper. I’ve not always had the best luck when I’ve tried it out, but this time, I got lucky. Where most holiday stories tend to be saccharine sweet, this one was plucky, smart, and kickass.

The author’s voice is suitably sarcastic and sharp, befitting both of her leads, and the pacing is brisk and compelling. I could have easily read another 30k without batting an eyelash. Both the characters and the situation were that entertaining.

I especially loved the heroine. Sasha disdains the superficiality of the world she was born into, choosing to be a stuntwoman rather than an actress. She has a propensity for falling for bad boys, but her latest boyfriend, Jay, seems the antithesis of that. She met him in a library, and she often thinks that he’s actually too good for her. However, he sees past all the crap that comes with being her, and for that alone, he should be a keeper. Her reactions throughout the story reflect this front she wears like armor, when in actuality, she’s as scared and vulnerable as anybody else. It never gets in her way, however, and her consistent bravery and fast thinking made her incredibly easy to root for.

Jay’s a little harder to get a grasp on, but that’s due mostly to the duality of his nature, the fact that he’s kept so much hidden from Sasha, and the slightly sketchy world-building that doesn’t really provide all the answers I needed. My first perceptions of him are colored by Sasha’s thoughts, and it takes a while for those to smooth away to allow his real personality to shine through. When it does, he’s every inch the hero he actually wants to be, even if he’s just a little tarnished. It’s the tarnish that makes him so fascinating.

Knowing I can trust this author’s voice makes me eager to delve into her backlist. I know she’s published with Samhain at the very least. I’ll probably start there. Because when a story is this well-written, with characters that are real in spite of its supernatural setting and such excellent pacing, there’s no way I can stop at reading just one.

Readability	9/10 – Funny, intelligent, and completely absorbing
Hero	8/10 – I had less of a handle on him as his dual nature wasn’t very smoothly portrayed, but that didn’t stop me from really enjoying him
Heroine	9/10 – Sassy, confident, and ready to kick ass
Entertainment value	9/10 – This isn’t one of your saccharine holiday tales, it’s fun and spirited
World building	7/10 – With the focus so much on the paranormal world, I needed either better clarification of how it all worked or more of it
TOTAL:	42/50

Quarter Square by David Bridger

TITLE: Quarter Square
AUTHOR: David Bridger
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 47k)
GENRE: Urban fantasy
COST: $3.59

Carpenter Joe Walker walks in on his wife and best friend having sex, and finds his life thrown into chaos. He makes a deal with them. In exchange for not giving them a hard time by being together, he’ll take a rundown theater his friend owns and keep it as his own. His motives are selfish. The night he discovered the affair, he also discovered a secret magical door within the theater that leads to an idyllic place where magic reigns. But finding Quarter Square will change his life far more than losing the two people he trusted most…

I was fascinated by the blurb for this story on the publisher’s website. I have a soft spot for alternate worlds and an even softer spot for theatrical settings, so this seemed right up my alley. Unfortunately, the execution left quite a lot to be desired.

When Joe Walker discovers that his wife and best friend are sleeping together – by walking in on them – he runs off to lick his wounds by spending the night in the rundown theater his friend has recently acquired. There, he sees three young men go through a magical door. He follows, convinced he’s dreaming, and meets a group of street performers who live in an idyllic world cut off from the rest of Plymouth called Quarter Square. After confronting his wife and friend the next day, he agrees to let them go off and be together without a fuss if the friend gives Joe the theater. A deal is made, and Joe returns, hoping to find Quarter Square again. He soon realizes that it’s actually a real place, kind of a halfway house between the mortal world and the wild magical one. It’s populated by a vast variety of people, most of them street performers. One in particular, a singer named Min, enchants him, and when he discovers that their hideaway is in danger of disappearing forever because it’s losing its anchors to the real world, he decides to rebuild the theater and make it more permanent in order to save the square.

This is only the beginning of what turns out to be a very convoluted, almost schizophrenic fantasy tale. I call it schizophrenic because I could never figure out what exactly it was trying to be. Every time I thought I had it, something would twist the story off into a new direction, and I was left floundering all over again. At turns, it’s magical realism, pure fantasy, shapeshifter horror, and romance, and while I admire writers who try to blend genres, it’s just not done very well here. Each time the story shifted gears, the voice itself changes, with the pace and style changing with it, so that there was no sense of flow or build. The most interesting section occurs just about the middle of the story, but then it veers off again into a whole new direction that left it scattered in its dust.

As a result of trying to put too much into the story, characterizations falter. The story is told in 1^st POV from Joe’s perspective, and because he has no idea what’s going on – and because other characters are actively keeping him in the dark a good part of the time – neither does the reader. Min is presented as this feminine ideal almost from the start, but she lacks any kind of personality for the first half, instead becoming this icon for Joe to admire. He tells us he’s falling in love with her, but I never understood why or what the real appeal was. Then, when she does start getting a personality, it’s not even a likable one. She’s manipulative and bossy, withholding information that would make their situation better and treating Joe like a child. Since so much hinges on her, both the action and caring about what’s going on, I was distanced from what was going on for almost the entire story. I mostly just finished it because I was curious about what else could get stirred into the pot, and I can honestly say I have no desire to keep on reading with the series, especially with how unresolved everything was at the end. There’s some sense of inner closure for Joe as he reaches a better and more true understanding of his self and purpose (and makes choices based on that), but in light of the emphasis placed on the action, the fact that it remains unresolved is frustrating enough to deter me from investing more time in the series.

Readability	6/10 – Technically clean, but with so much packed into it, it never flowed well or really engaged me
Characterization	6/10 – Characters blend into each other for too much of the story, and motivations given little depth
Plot	7/10 – A lot of original ideas going on in this, but it’s too much for the size of the story and none of them get developed well enough
Entertainment value	5/10 – I only finished it because I was curious about what else could get thrown into it, not because I cared/liked about any of the characters
World building	6/10 – Some great ideas that never get the space to bring them to life
TOTAL:	30/50

Blue Galaxy by Diane Dooley

TITLE: Blue Galaxy
AUTHOR: Diane Dooley
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 22k)
GENRE: Sci-fi futuristic romance
COST: $2.69

It’s a job that will guarantee Javan Rhodes economic freedom. All he has to do is transport someone without asking any questions. When that someone turns out to be a beautiful aristocrat off to make a marriage alliance, however, his resolve to get the pay-off begins to waver…

This one’s my own fault. I need to pay better attention to red flags when they show up instead of giving the author the benefit of the doubt.

Captain Javan Rhodes is a cargo ship owner/pilot/businessman, who agrees to take on a special passenger for an exorbitant amount of money if he promises to keep his mouth shut and not ask questions. He has no problems with that until he meets the cargo in question. Her name is Sola, and she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. From the very first look, he fears he’s fallen in love with her. He has to transport her to an as yet unknown destination to satisfy a marriage alliance, but almost as soon as they’re in the air, he’s broken the agreement by pressing for details. She doesn’t give many, but she intrigues him, and when he finally does start discovering things about her, it’s a little too late to do him much good.

Within just the first thousand or so words, I got fed a line that should have made me put the story down. Javan meets Sola, and gazing on what had to be the most exquisite face in the entire universe, felt his heart twist as he fell instantly, irrevocably and most definitely in love. I stopped reading. I thought, “Seriously? Insta-love? Why wasn’t that in the blurb?” But then I thought, “He’s a hardcore space captain. He wouldn’t fall instantly in love. He’s too cynical. Maybe this is just indicative of a sense of humor or grandiose statement or something.” So I went on, putting my faith into the author. Big mistake. It might not have quite been instant love, but it came pretty darn close. He acts like an idiot around her from the start, allowing her to manipulate him in such a blatant way, I lost all respect for any sense of intelligence he might have had. It might not have been so bad if I’d had the opportunity to get to know the man and see that he wasn’t actually an idiot prior to her arrival, but I didn’t. I only got to see him after she came onto the scene, and frankly, I wish I hadn’t.

Sola is the worst heroine I’ve read in a very long time. She lies, she manipulates, she uses sex to get him to do what she wants. And when sex fails, she uses violence and death threats. Unrepentingly. I have absolutely no idea why Javan falls for her. He claims she’s funny and smart and curious, but I only saw evidence of the intelligence (and that was later in the story, long after I’d lost any sympathy for her whatsoever). She’s so flat in the first half of the story that I wondered what I was missing. Even if her actions weren’t so appallingly awful, her characterization suffers a lot from the fact that the entire story is told from Javan’s POV. This is done to maintain the suspense of who she is and what she’s doing, but ultimately, it doesn’t work because by the time I did find out, I hated her so much I didn’t care.

The prose doesn’t help it. This is not an erotic romance, but these two spend a surprising amount of time having sex…off-screen. And during that sex, important things happen and get discovered. Things we are told about rather than shown. It weakens an already floundering story, crippling the pace and stifling the suspense. Ultimately, it becomes a pedantic exercise in reading, with the only emotions getting generated those of anger and frustration. I have zero interest in following on in this world, since it’s clear from the very open ending that this isn’t it. And if for some reason it’s not meant to be continued? Then all of those hanging plot lines that were left are just more proof that it just wasn’t a very good story at all.

Readability	6/10 – Prose that’s more tell than show, with soft POV sometimes
Hero	4/10 – A gullible idiot
Heroine	1/10 – When she’s not flat and boring, her blatant and unremorseful manipulation of a man who loves her makes her the most unlikeable heroine I’ve read in a very long time
Entertainment value	2/10 – Hating the heroine with all the telling problems made this a complete waste of my time
World building	6/10 – There’s some attempt at doing something interesting but it’s never clearly explained or well delineated
TOTAL:	19/50