Saved

A.M. Arthur
Briggs-King Books
Reviewed by Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

He didn’t want an alpha to save him, but fate had other ideas…

Braun Etting was raised to know his place as an omega by his alpha father’s cruel words and fast fists, and he expects nothing but violence from the alpha who may one day mate him. His older brother Kell mated a cruel alpha who abuses him daily, and Braun is terrified of that seemingly inevitable future. When Braun’s father dies in a car crash, leaving Braun an orphan, he’s sent to a halfway house for omegas. But on his fourth night there, he witnesses a horrifying crime that sends him fleeing to the streets alone—and edging into his first heat.

Tarek Bloom is settled in his workaholic, single lifestyle, even if it is somewhat embarrassing to be a twenty-eight year-old unmated alpha. He enjoys his job as a constable, helping people and solving problems, so he isn’t prepared for his life to flip upside-down when he walks into his beta friend Dex’s apartment to help with “a problem.”

The problem turns out to be an unmated, nearly in-heat omega orphan who Dex and his husband rescued off the street last night. The even bigger problem is that Tarek feels the mating bond for this terrified omega immediately—and he’s pretty sure the omega feels it, too. But Braun hates alphas as a general rule, and no way is he giving in to the bond. All mating leads to is violence and suffering, so no thank you. But Tarek’s gentle kindness slips under Braun’s emotional shields, and Braun begins to want. To dream. All Braun has ever known is violent alphas, but Tarek is determined to make Braun trust him—and to trust in the idea of their happily ever after.

My Review

Braun Etting is a young Omega living in an alternate version of the United States where no females and three classes of males exist – Alphas, Betas and Omegas. Alphas are the most powerful in physical, economic and social spheres. In order to reproduce, an Alpha must mate with an Omega while he is in heat and at his most fertile. Betas enjoy much of the same rights as Alphas, but they are unable to reproduce. Omegas are the nurturing parents, valued only for their ability to bring more Alphas into the world.

“Only an alpha/omega coupling could create children, and alphas were the top prize. The biggest earners, the CEO’s, the inventors and the powerful. It was considered an honor to be omegin to an alpha offspring, and doubly so to birth two. Only one omegin in history had ever given birth to four alpha children, and he had a small marble bust in his honor at the Museum of Natural History.”

In this world, Omegas are treated as third-class citizens. They are unable to inherit property and unable to drive, unless they are mated and then only with their Alpha’s permission. Because the laws disfavor Omegas, they are vulnerable and subject to the whims of cruel Alphas.

When Braun’s abusive Alpha father dies in a car crash, Braun is sent to a halfway house for his own safety as he’s approaching his first heat.

This story explores the injustices and cruelty of this system, Braun’s deep distrust of Alphas and the infinite patience of his future mate, Tarek Bloom, a forward-thinking constable, and a sweet, likable Alpha. It was easy reading, compelling enough, and comfortably unchallenging, perfect for recovering from a bout of bronchitis. Unfortunately, it was also bland and derivative while I was looking for something more thought-provoking and intense.

While I enjoyed the setting, the tension, and the developing romance, I would have liked more nuanced characters, particularly the villains. Tarek was far too perfect and not at all alpha-like. Though he loved and supported Braun, I found him too indulgent and Braun too childish and petulant. I enjoyed the secondary characters, Serge and Dex, quite a bit more.

The events surrounding Braun’s brother, Kell, captured my interest, but I’m not sure if I plan to continue this series.

Nightblade

Nightblade by Garrett Robinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Loren dreams of becoming a great thief known as the Nightblade. An honorable thief if such a thing is possible. Loren's dreams provide her comfort as her reality is far from enjoyable. Her parents are cruel people who physically beat her and verbally berate her. When her chance arrives, Loren flees her home with a wanted wizard named Xain. The constables who pursue Xain, begin to pursue Loren as well and trouble begins to follow her wherever she goes.

Nightblade is largely a PSA of the dangers of running away from home. No one will debate that Loren's home life is horrible due completely to her parents abuse, but Loren compounds her problems. When she encounters the wizard Xain, he tells her he's a wanted man. Despite that Loren can think of no better companion for the road than a wanted wizard. By all means run away from home, but don't head off with a fugitive from the law for goodness sakes. The first part of the book could easily have been called, Making Bad Worse: Loren's Story or How to Make Bad Decisions and Run for Your Life.

Loren continues to make mind boggling decisions as the story proceeds. I wish the girl was just dumb, but she shows her intelligence from time to time. Loren makes the wrong choice over and over again. Each poor choice leads to increasingly poor choices that multiplied the amount of people who wanted her dead.

Nightblade had some good parts. The most prominent part was the mystery surrounding Loren's blade. When Loren ran away from home she stole a blade her parents kept hidden away. The blade seemed far too fine for her parents to own and seemingly everyone who saw it had a notable reaction to it. Some of these reactions were quite intriguing and the mystery that shrouds the blade travels through the story.

Nightblade was a tale of poor choices and unfortunate consequences.

View all my reviews

SAFE BY RYAN GATTIS

Safe by Ryan Gattis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Ricky Mendoza, Junior, wasn’t my real name, just one I took as my legal back when it seemed smart to. Like, the real me died back when I changed it and what’s left of me just floats.”

Everybody calls him Ghost.

Sometimes a man has to move on from a name and start over. A new name is like shedding your skin. It is a chance to redeem and be someone closer to whom you wanted to be before things went sideways.

Ghost is an addict who doesn’t use.

A man takes a chance on him, teaches him how to crack safes, and now Ghost is about to disappoint him.

”Betraying this man, I’ve never hated myself so much in my life as now. I feel shame bursting up inside me, telling me, once a junkie, always a junkie. Telling me, I can’t ever be loved, or trusted, Telling me, I’ll break his world and everything in it if I haven’t already stolen it first.
It’s what I am.
Stupid.
Selfish.
Worthless.
I grab a big breath and use it to try to kill this negativity inside me. Or at least get it quieter. Because if I don’t, I’ll spiral. And I can’t do that. Not now.”

The DEA calls him and needs a safe popped at a drug house. Ghost has lost the ability to smell, and he knows what that means. The Big C is back, growing tumors in his brain, but before he checks out he decides he needs to do something to help others. It is 2008, the housing crises is cresting, and people, good people, are losing their homes.

He takes $887,000 from the safe.

He’s going to pay off some mortgages. He is a street wise Robin Hood on a mission of self-destruction.

Time has become compressed. Between the DEA and the drug dealers Rooster and Glasses, from whom he stole, he knows it is only a matter of time before they catch up with him. He has to keep moving and stretch his life. He has to steal more.

Glasses wants out. He has a son now who turns him all gooey inside. ”I feel like there’s a secret room inside him, a room inside a room even, one that I can fill up with good things and advice, stuff he should know if I talk to him at night like this. The more I do it, the more I can build a voice in the back of his brain that will guide him through everything even when I’m not here.”

The streets have left their scars on Glasses. Rooster has taught him a lot. Glassas wants to pass his knowledge to his son without his son having to experience the streets. He has to get his son away from all of this, and the only way he can do that is if he burns Rooster down. The DEA has frozen all his assets, all that money Glasses put into Best Buy stock when it was cheap. The only way he gets it back is if he gives them Rooster.

Oddly enough, Ghost and Glasses both end up working for the DEA, but pulling strings from different ends. As Ghost drives around LA, listening to a mixtape from his dead girlfriend, Rose, and Glasses contemplates how best to stay alive while playing the role of Benedict Arnold, little do they know they are on a collision course that will leave one or both of them dead.

”It’s Rose’s fault that I think stories are one of the most powerful things in the world. More powerful than knives and surgeries. More powerful than bullets. Because stories live past you. Stories can get into other people and live there too. Stories are like glasses, kind of. They change how you see the world.”

I’ve never read Ryan Gattis before. Not only was I impressed by the deft way he handled this duel plot, but also how he humanized monsters. Because most people, even bad people, aren’t monsters once you peel back the bark they have built between themselves and the world. They have been hurt. They have been forced to hurt. They are caught in a tragic play, and survival is paramount. They are capable of terrible acts, but they are also capable of extending compassion, as well. They are broken human beings who, if given the choice, would live a different life, but early on the street grabbed them and never let go. They learned to survive and became people they were never meant to be. This is a hardboiled, gritty, street wise novel that is not only heart pounding thrilling, but also incredibly moving.

FSG sent me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

View all my reviews

Fore-runner? More like Bore-runner! *rimshot*

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I guess a review of this requires me to say that Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone is one of the first mystery novels ever written. Now that I've got that out of the way, let's get on with the review.

This English drama/mystery started out great. It also started out much the same way many English drama/mysteries of the period would start out: in the manor house. It also used the popular-in-its-time epistolary form of storytelling, with about a half dozen characters taking up their pens to relate their portion of this story.

What is the story? Well, it starts off like an adventure with a mysterious diamond discovered in a faraway land. The diamond is passed down as inheritance and then it is stolen. Lovers are torn asunder and the mystery of the missing diamond must be solved if love is to prevail.

In fact, love plays a large roll in this, so large actually that I'm inclined to call it a romance as much as a mystery. If memory serves, it is even referred to as such as a subtitle, as in The Moonstone, a romance.

Regardless, if you've come solely for the mystery you'll be disappointed in much of this. As I say, it started out great. The first quarter or so of the story is related by the butler and much of his portion of the tale involves the facts of the case. He's also a colorful character, who it seems Collins enjoyed writing about. After him, we move on to less charming characters such a fanatic Christian, a lawyer, a physician, detective and one of the principle suspects involved in the disappearance of the diamond.

The faults, for me, in this novel are its overlong explanations, its unnecessary sidebar storylines, occasional repetition, and the time spent dwelling on the mundane. Many scenes could have been easily reduced, some could have been dispensed with all together, and the book would've been all the better for it. All in all, it's not horrible. I'd put it in league with Dickens' middling work. Not worth rushing forth to read, but I wouldn't dismiss it altogether.

View all my reviews

A Modern Classic

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This feels like a classic piece of literature, one of those core foundation books taught in American Lit classes at liberal arts colleges. Perhaps it's because of the all classical references Michael Ondaatje places in the mouths of his character the English patient. Perhaps it is in the storytelling, concerning itself with the cerebral and almost entirely devoid of action except in the backstories. The poetic choice of words themselves may be the cause. Perhaps it's the World War II Italian countryside setting that draws one back and ages these pages.

I don't know. I stopped trying to know long before I finished The English Patient. I just let those words wash over me like a bath for the mind.

Here is a lengthy summary if you care to know more, but I would skip it and just dive right into the book: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/english...

Though I think this is a brilliant novel, I wasn't entirely blown away. It drags in places and is a tad too self-consciously literary for my tastes these days. And yet, despite these personal taste flaws, I still have to give this five stars. It's too good to be lumped into with the sea of four star books I've read, many of which are quite good, but few of which attain the unearthly feeling one gets when reading The English Patient.

View all my reviews

Black Box Inc. is an action packed urban fantasy quest novel

The team is the thing in Jake Bible's "Black Box Inc.", a nifty urban fantasy quest novel. Bible spins a convincing and fun tale, throws in some likable, but unusual characters and good dialogue Sporting some interesting world-building, a main character with a quasi-magical talent and a road trip with continuous action sequences, it is a book that fans of fantasy with modern weapons and action can sink their teeth into. My minor quibble is that Bible seems to assume that everyone has already met his characters. So it feels like there is not enough character introduction in the beginning, but once the story gets going, it is not as important.


Chase Lawter is the leader of Black Box Inc., a company that takes advantage of Lawter's talent to manipulate dimensional energy, that he calls the “dim” to create objects. Lawter speciality is the creation of boxes that he can seal and lock away. He is the only one who is able to open the boxes. Lawter’s partners are Harper Kyles, a weapons specialist, who grew up with the fae, and not in a good way, Sharon, a zombie businesswomen, who is in charge of billing and Lassa, a 7 foot yeti, an oversexed bi-sexual, who you would think would be a gunner, but who is really in charge of logistics and transportation.


After a night of drinking, Lawter wakes up naked covered with blood in his apartment, with no memory of what happened the night before. He is met by Travis, a shapeshifter, who just happened to come by and found him in this state. Meanwhile, the team soon discovers that Iris Penn, the bartender at the local watering hole, and who Lawter has romantic feelings, although unrequited, is missing. While on an amusing visit to the local constabulary, Bible introduces Teresa, Lawter’s banshee lawyer.


Teresa starts to file legal papers, but Harper cannot wait and uses blood magic to arrange a visit with Aspen, a fae assassin. The fae want Lawter to do a job for them and the fae, who are the heavies in Bible’s world do not like Lawter, who they call the “defiler of dimensions”.


So the team and Teresa go to the faerie dimension, where they meet Daphne, the evil fairy godmother, and that is typical of Bible’s fun sense of humor, who wants Lawter and his team to go on a road trip to steal the devil’s soul in Hell, or a world that looks like Hell, which is populated with citizens, who look like evil imps and demons, but who are not really that, year right. While the team has good intentions the road to Hell is fraught with violent predators, who want nothing better than to eat, maim or kill Lawter There will be an attack by harpies, a turncoat, an evil fae guard and a host of other troubles.


Even Hell is not what it seems. Will Lawter and his team trust the fae devil they know in Daphne or make a contract with Lord Beelzebub, who you know wants his contract signed in blood. It’s hard to know which bad guy to trust. But you have to know that the team will be able to turn the tables on somebody.


Bible is able to set up a really fun quest novel with engaging characters. While the quest novel is a standard fantasy trope, Bible’s inventive dialogue, amusing situations, unusual characters and action packed plot sets it apart.


It is a fine time to join Lawter’s team on their next adventure.

Lying Eyes

Robert Winter
Self-Published
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

This bartender’s art lies in more than mixing drinks …

Randy Vaughan is a six-foot-three mass of mysteries to his customers and his friends. Why does a former Secret Service agent now own Mata Hari, a successful piano bar? Where did a muscle daddy get his passion for collecting fine art? If he’s as much a loner as his friends believe, why does he crave weekly sessions at an exclusive leather club?

Randy’s carefully private life unravels when Jack Fraser, a handsome art historian from England, walks into his bar, anxious to get his hands on a painting Randy owns. The desperation Randy glimpses in whiskey-colored eyes draws him in, as does the desire to submit that he senses beneath Jack’s elegant, driven exterior.

While wrestling with his attraction to Jack, Randy has to deal with a homeless teenager, a break-in at Mata Hari, and Jack’s relentless pursuit of the painting called Sunrise. It becomes clear someone’s lying to Randy. Unless he can figure out who and why, he may miss his chance at the love he’s dreamed about in the hidden places of his heart.

Note: Lying Eyes is a standalone gay romance novel with consensual bondage and a strong happy ending. It contains potential spoilers for Robert Winter’s prior novel, Every Breath You Take.

My Review

After meeting Randy Vaughan, sexy older bartender in Every Breath You Take, I was thrilled to get the opportunity to read his story and find out why he is not in a relationship and why he retired early from the Secret Service.

Those mysteries and a few others gradually get solved as Randy learns more about Jack Fraser, an English art historian who is extremely interested in a post-impressionist painting Randy purchased while he was in London. Meanwhile, a homeless teenager is assaulted outside Randy’s bar and Randy, all big muscles and soft heart, dispatches his assailants and brings the kid home. Danny has secrets, but doesn’t hide the fact that he finds Randy hot. Though this is an awkward situation for Randy, he remains firm and never allows their relationship to move beyond friendship. While Danny is living with him, Randy also hides his weekly visits to an exclusive leather bar. To his surprise, he discovers the sexually submissive Jack shares similar interests.

I loved Jack’s passion towards his job and found the story rich with interesting details and history of post-impressionist art and was fascinated by how much work and research goes into determining the authenticity of a painting. While Jean-Pierre Brousseau was a fictional artist, he sure felt real to me. I also loved the glimpses into Randy’s warm and caring personality. Despite his skittishness about relationships and his gruff exterior, Randy cares deeply about his friends, treats his employees well, and is devoted to Danny’s care.

This was a perfect mix of romance, mystery, and suspense that was a lot of fun to read. Weighty issues, like overcoming the pain of betrayal, and learning to trust and forgive are explored, lending depth and complexity.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story and hope Danny will make another appearance.

Reaper

Reaper by Gregory Blackman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Horace McKidrict doesn't remember two years of his life. McKidrict plans to learn what happened to him by hunting down the first being he remembers after his two year time gap, a demon called the Abaddon. While angels fight for heaven and demons fight for hell, reapers like McKidrict fight for humanity.

Reaper feels very much like a knockoff demon hunter story. My initial thoughts go to the Supernatural TV show, most specifically when Angels were revealed to be real. It also has the vibe of the Supernatural episode where Sam and Dean travel back in time to meet Samuel Colt in a Western era monster hunting mashup.

Horace McKidtrick could be any one of numerous bland monster hunting characters. He's mean, carries a gun, and tends to work alone. Plus demons shutter when they know he's after him. It's all pretty cliché unfortunately. I didn't find any particularly interesting original material.

Reaper was a below average monster hunter story packed full of familiar tropes.

View all my reviews

THE BLACKHOUSE BY PETER MAY BOOK ONE IN THE LEWIS TRILOGY

The Blackhouse by Peter May
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Knew, too, that it wasn’t just Mona he wanted to run away from. It was everything. Back to a place where life had once seemed simple. A return to childhood, back to the womb. How easy it was now to ignore the fact that he had spent most of his adult life avoiding just that. Easy to forget that as a teenager nothing had seemed more important to him than leaving.”

Detective Fin Macleod is sent back to the place where he was bred, born, burnished, and raised as an orphan. A murder has happened on the Isle of Lewis in The Outer Hebrides of Scotland in the very town Fin was from, Crobost. The murder has similar characteristics of brutality to a murder he has been working on in Edinburgh. He had only come back to the island for the funeral of his aunt since he left to go to school in Glasgow, so everything there is tinged in the sepia tones of the past. The tender threads that held his marriage together with Mona snapped with the tragic death of his son. The sorrows and desperations of his current life outweigh the dread of dredging up memories of his unhappy childhood. When you grow up in a small community, they remember everything you’ve ever done: the good, the bad, and the ugly. In some ways, you never escape the fallacies of your youth, when everyone’s memory is so long.

The irony is that he is going back to investigate the murder of Angel Macritchie, who despite his name was certainly no Angel. There is no one from Fin’s past who inspires more terror wrapped nightmares than Angel Macritchie. With a long list of grievances perpetrated against nearly every male member of the community and more than a few females, most everyone's a viable suspect, but then a brutish murder like this comes from more than just someone harboring a grievance.

This murderer is twisted and depraved.

As Fin investigates the murder, trying to find a motive that would fit such a crime, he also finds himself sifting through the debris of his own memories, his own failings, and those he hurt the worst as he flailed to adulthood. There is no one he hurt worst than the lovely girl from the farm who loved him from the first moment she laid those cornflower eyes on him...Marsaili. She is still on the island, now married to his best friend from school, Atair MacInnes.

”A blink of moonlight splashed a pool of broken silver on the ocean beyond. There was a light on in the kitchen, and through the window Fin could see a figure at the sink. He realized, with a start, that it was Marsaili, long fair hair, darker now, drawn back severely from her face and tied in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore no makeup and looked weary somehow, pale, with shadows beneath blue eyes that had lost their lustre. She looked up as she heard the car, and Fin killed the headlights so that all she could see would be a reflection of herself in the window. She looked away quickly, as if disappointed by what she’d seen, and in that moment he glimpsed again the little girl who had so bewitched him from the first moment he set eyes on her.”

Fin treated her terribly. That’s what we seem to do to those who love us the most. Peter May gives us this relationship from the first flowering of love, through the lust, and onward to where we see the tearing apart of their entwined lives. Fin tries to explain the unexplainable.

”’Please,’ she said, almost as if she knew that he was going to tell her he had always loved her, too. ‘I don’t want to hear it. Not now, Fin, not after all these wasted years.’ And she turned to meet his eye. Their faces were inches apart. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’”

This reader couldn’t bear it either. Don’t you dare say it, Fin.

Because we know so much about Fin and the numerous times when he experienced crushing setbacks in his life, we can’t even condemn him. (Ok that isn’t completely true. I’m still pissed at him.) The one person who could have sustained him is still connected to the very island he was trying to escape. Marsaili washes back upon the shore of the Isle of Lewis as part of the debris that is the shipwreck of his life.

The Churches of Scotland dominate island life, each vying to be more severe than the next as proof that their sect is more religious than the others. Swings are tied up on Sunday so no child will be tempted to be lifted from the earth on the Sabbath. Belief in a higher being drowned by madness. This overbearing influence warps minds and deforms bodies under the crippling weight of guilt that can never really be forgiven, but must be carried on the soul like piles of jagged black stones. We must be reminded of our sins so we stay afraid of our creator.

There is a rock off shore called Sulasgeir, where ten selected men go each year to harvest the guga’s offspring. It is a bloody massacre, and fortunately, the government only allows them to take 2000 birds a year. The fledglings have to be the right age to taste the best. If they are too large or too small, they are allowed to live. Fin was a part of that group one year before he left for college. It is a dangerous experience for the men, among the craggy rocks that prove to be tinged with tragedy. Why do these men do it every year? Tradition? ”But Gigs shook his head. ‘No. It’s not the tradition. That might be a part of it, aye. But I’ll tell you why I do it, boy. Because nobody else does it anywhere in the world. Just us.’”

This book is so much more than just a murder mystery. I felt completely immersed in these people’s lives. I wasn’t always happy about it. There were times when it made me feel uncomfortable. I read this on the plane to San Francisco for a visit to Goodreads Headquarters, and I’m sure many of my fellow passengers wondered what I was reading that was making me grimace and squirm in my seat. Once on the island, Fin remembers things that were tamped down so deep they were nearly forgotten. He burns with shame at his own failings, laid so bare, and tries as best he can to fix the wounds he left in others as he tries to live with the lacerations that life has inflicted on him. There are twists and turns and revelations. By the end, I could not deny that Peter May has written a novel that I will never forget. Hebrides Noir.

”And then he felt it. The cold bite of iron, the movement of the ring as his fingers closed desperately around it, and held. And held. Almost dislocating his shoulder as the sea pulled and jerked, before finally, reluctantly letting go. For a moment he lay still, clutching the mooring ring, washing up on the rock like a beached sea creature. And then he scrambled for a foothold, and then a handhold, and the strength to propel himself upward before the sea returned to reclaim him. He could sense it snapping at his heels as he found the ledge of the rock…. He’d made it. He was on the rock, safe from the sea. And all that it could do now was spit its anger in his face.”

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

View all my reviews

Blackwing By: Ed McDonald

Blackwing by Ed McDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

one of the best fantasy's of the year..period. A horrific wasteland that you want no part of, but a book you can't stop reading. Strong characters, great action, a interesting world that you want to find out more about. It hits all the buttons.

If you haven't picked this up go do it....(you can thank me later)



View all my reviews