Too many tropes I didn't like
351217
3.5 stars, but I'm rounding down. This book was pretty tropey and not in the way I usually like. I definitely came into this book with middling expectations and overall the book just about reached them. My biggest problem with the book was the structure of the story and the treatment of Basra, the single trans character in the entire story.

The pacing and conflict revolved around miscommunication and lies. Characters were tongue-tied in the way that made things more dramatic (or attempted to). One character insists his family is good and pure; it's obvious they're not because that's how the trope works. Towards the end, there were a bit too many coincidences that got the characters out of a pickle, which other reviewers have commented on. The will they or won't they relationship between Qole and Nev wasn't interesting because there was no way they WOULDN'T get together, since this is a YA book and they're heterosexuals and the main characters.
I will say I did like Nev; he turned out to be a great fighter, which I wasn't expecting, since I imagined him to be a nebbish guy at first.

Now, Basra... people saying they loved Basra, but I have to say their portrayal was pretty elementary in the world of gender identity thought. First of all, Basra is always gendered by others based on what they're wearing, and even someone like Nev, who has never met Basra before, identifies them as a "he" at first glance which is supposedly correct. Gender and appearance aren't always correlated and especially for a genderfluid character. It honestly seemed to me that Basra only switched genders when it was most shocking to the reader and to the other characters. It felt like a weird thing tacked on that didn't inform their character much... except for the whole "fluidity is treacherous" thing.
And really, the only trans character in the whole book is the one with all the secrets?
I guess I should be happy there was at least one trans character here.. but the portrayal could've been more nuanced.

Overall this book was just OK. Could've been better, but it also could've been worse. The pace does pick up as the novel goes on, and there's fighting and explosions which I always like.
3937439
This book was way to crazy for my liking...way to much cursing and other things that just didn't sit right with me
3333024
I wanted to like this book.  I feel like giving it a poor review is somehow to not like Rocco or Mandy or the Red Team and I really do like them all.  However, the last two full length books in this series have seriously turned me off the series.  I thought this novella would at least give me a story about the two characters who started the series and I'd get away from the increasingly ridiculous plot that has embroiled the series as a whole.  Well, it did do that.  However, this is not a fun story.  The first half is mostly about Rocco's PTSD and his descent into madness.  While PTSD is a serious subject and one I empathize with, it's not something I want to read about in depth in a romance novel.

Rocco - in his madness, to be fair - contemplates killing himself so he can be with the unborn baby his first wife killed when she exploded in Afghanistan.  He worries that the baby will be all alone in heaven and he must keep it company.  So he feels it's better to leave his actual, live son and the woman he loves and who loves him to be with that baby???  Again, he's suffering from mental illness, so I'll accept that far-reaching premise.  But then BOOM, one weird episode later and he's both miraculously "better" and so is the traumatized horse Mandy has been helping.

I also found the premise that Mandy would leave Ravi (if that's the son's name; I can't immediately recall) to force Rocco to some better place.  This scene is traumatic and it's not something I can believe Mandy would do to the little boy.  Why make his life even worse?  If she wanted to force an ultimatum, she might have kicked Rocco out or taken Ravi (I know that's not his name, but whatever) with her.  This did not make sense.

But all of a sudden, Rocco is better and all is well.

I'm done with the series.  I like the men a lot and would love to know what happens to them, but the interwoven threads of the ridiculous groups they're working against and how they are coincidentally all related is just too unbelievable.
4908157
I really struggled to enjoy this book and will not continue with the series.  The premise was good and the writing well-done, but the lack of animal character development and participation in a series named after them, seemed like a ploy to bring over "Cat Who" or "Sneaky Pie" fans.  There was also quite a lot of religion, which would have been ok with a gentler hand, but got quite heavy at times.  I hated how the author used it to paralyze the lead female.  I have always thought faith helped someone make choices, but this character seemed to spend most of her time reading the bible and waiting for signs from God.  Maybe that was needed to make the male lead seem more decisive, but it made her look so inept, that I began to lost interest in the story quickly.

I admit to a preference for strong female characters though, so if this doesn't bother you, you may enjoy the book more than I did.
382936
There were parts of the story I liked, but there were more problems with the story then anything else.  The author made some odd choices in always attempting to make sure the hero had a challenge to overcome and had to face insurmountable odds.  The author falls into a trap where he forgets that not everything has to be hard.

I understood making sure that the audience would hate Edison, but I hated the fact that he kept being brought up even more.  Him constantly being involved never made sense and just dragged the story down.

The blimps were incredibly problematic from a story perspective.  I want to go into why, but it would pretty much ruin things potentially for any would-be reader.

In the end, I just wasn't happy with how everything was playing out and can't really explain why without using tons of spoilers.
3530139
I really wanted to give this book more than 2 stars but there were some major issues with the storyline that I could not enjoy.  Our heroine, Margery Quennell, - at age 23, has been through several seasons and has never taken.  At long last, her father, the Earl of Chelmswood, is giving her permission to bow out of the Marriage Mart and allow her to rusticate in her country home, a place she loves with all her heart, including the simple life it affords.  During this last season, she is unexpectedly sought out by the Marquess of Edgecombe for a dance.  She's astounded but they have some enjoyable conversation until she unintentionally hits on a subject that hits a sour note with him.  He simply returns her to her seat and never speaks to her again.

After Margery is back at her family home, Chelmswood, her father shows up with his young bride, Desdemona, who is a few years younger than Margery and who is a little witch.  In fact, she's a huge pain in the rear and has Margery's 50ish father wrapped around her little "demon" finger.  Thankfully, they don't stay very long, but head to London where the earl is manipulated into spending, spending, spending until at last, he has determined he must sell Chelmswood.

This so upsets Margery that she decides she will go back to London for one more season and find herself a husband.  This time she has a plan which includes a total makeover in her attire, her hair and her persona, at least until she can "manipulate" some gentleman into marriage.  Before long, she's stringing three gents along - all friends of Edgecombe which results in Edgecombe attempting to thwart her at every turn.  Some of the "thwarting" is a little humorous, but there's really very little satisfaction in most of the storyline.

***SPOILER***
Eventually, the situation gets dire for Margery, in part due to Edgecombe's remarks made at a very public dinner in front of the Prince Regent resulting in Margery heading back to her country home in a somewhat depressed state, giving up on the Marriage Mart for good. Edgecombe, feels really guilty and decides to propose marriage to Margery.  She accepts, they get married and through a misunderstanding, mostly on Edgecombe's part related to the fact that Edgecombe felt Margery enjoyed the marriage bed a little too much.  As a result, things go downhill before the marriage has time to take off.  At some point, Edgecombe begins seeking out other female companionship and this doesn't set well with this reader.

Margery realizes what he is doing and manages to successfully turn away the other women, until Edgecombe gets wise to her game and is finally successful in bedding an attractive widow. He feels horrible afterwards and heads to his father's home, apparently to try to get some answers.  It seems Edgecombe had always thought that genteel ladies didn't feel and act as passionate in bed as Margery had responded.  This part seemed very unrealistic to me, but his father straightens him out and shares about his own life with Edgecombe's mother.  Apparently Edgecombe was mostly raised by servants and didn't realize his parents had a love match. Also, Edgecombe had, when he was young, imagined himself to be in love with a woman who slept with every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Yes, they manage to have their HEA, but not until after Edgecombe spoke of Margery in derogatory terms to some of his friends, thereby resulting in a very dangerous trap for Margery.  This story bothered me after reading it.  I hate the feelings that remained after I finished the book. What good is an HEA for the H/h if the reader doesn't have one.  I did not not have my "Happily Ever After" and that's one thing I expect when I read romance novels.
1440814
I felt like all of the characters made decisions that were bad or strange or didn't make sense based on their motivations. Sometimes a character making bad decisions can make a good novel; in this case it was just irritating.
949303
I know this book has gotten a great many rave reviews. And generally, I complain about books that are not well written and/or  those with multiple typos, grammatical problems, and spelling errors. This book IS well written, technically, but I could not get engaged in it. I didn't like the hero. Being fixated on a fictional world he read about as a kid sounds more Asperger's than a belief that magic is real. I've forced, literally forced myself to keep reading because I read that the second half is better than the first, but I am now 70% through it and cannot make myself sit down and read another word. I simply don't care what happens. When I actually buy a book, especially for more than a buck, I hate to throw away money, but in this case, would rather do that than throw away time I could spend doing something more enjoyable, like scanning a list of free books or reading the Daily Kos.
898004
DNF

Ugh, I don't know why I keep doing this to myself. I've already decided this dark romance stuff isn't for me. I love the captive/captor trope, but it seems so forced in contemporary stories.

The "hero" in this story goes through "toys" - women he finds, uses for six months, and then kills.

The heroine is a heroin junky/prostitute he picks up off the street. And she's as crass as you could be. She was just kind of...gross.

I just don't like the whole sex slave/BDSM thing. And the hero wasn't likable. Not because he was a twisted perv, but because his personality was so one-dimensional and boring.

Dark romance - you and me are breaking up.

NOTE: If you like the idea and dark romance, then definitely give this one a try. This might be a case of "it's me, not you."
3117140
I had high hopes for this, based on the reviews, and I have to admit that I was sorely disappointed.

It gives in to two of the worst tropes of fantasy.  First, there are lots of different races, and some hints of complex relations between them, but the racial dynamics serve more to add a colorful sense of otherness to the story than anything else.  The result is a world that is extremely elaborate, but that we don't adequately explore.

My biggest complaint, however, is the multiple story lines that never come together.  I realize that this isn't the only series to do that, not by a long shot.  But more and more I see that kind of fragmentation of storyline as a cheap device to keep the readers going than anything of actual value, because it relieves the writer from the necessity of keeping his or her story interesting at all times.  (I stopped reading Kate Eliot's "King's Dragon" series for the same reason, though at least I got through three volumes of that before giving up--the individual story lines were better, and the world was more thoughtfully imagined.)  I realize that fantasy authors having been using these plot-splitting devices since Tolkein.  But that doesn't make it good writing, or good reading.  In this case, the story suffers from choppiness.  And since many of the characters aren't particularly likeable or otherwise compelling, I resented getting pulled away from the plots that I did enjoy.  Basically, I wish that more fantasy writers would discipline themselves enough that readers had at least a basic sense of how the various plots and characters connect to each other by the 2/3 mark of the first volume of any series.  That shouldn't be a difficult litmus test, and most of the best writers pass it with flying colors.  But this book doesn't: even at the end of the first book it is still not clear how the main plot lines connect to each other.

Believe me, I have nothing at all against literary complexity.  But if I'm going to make the effort to deal with complexity, I want to be rewarded for it.  And with this book, I didn't feel rewarded enough for it to be worthwhile.  And I do love fantasy--just not when it's done like this.

There are some interesting characters, yes, including one very enterprising young woman--who is the most interesting character and stars in what is by far the most interesting plot.  She is a strong and refreshing female character, and her development over the course of the story is excellent.  (It doesn't hurt that the other main characters in her plot line are also particularly well done.)  If her story had been separated from the rest and sold as its own novel, I'd be writing a much more positive review.

Also on the plus side, the book does a pretty good job of handling magic so that it is interesting and meaningful without overbalancing either the story or the characters.  I found the political plot somewhat trite, but then I usually do.  The main problem is that that plot line thinks itself far more original than it is.  The religious aspect is the most interesting, though it was light in some ways (can't be more specific without introducing spoilers).  It's not that Abraham is doing a lot of things wrong, so much as that he's dragged down by his adherence to some very unfortunate conventions.

There are no huge flaws, but few crowning achievements, either.  The strong points are sadly diminished by the story not forming a unified whole.
2801918
*I am voluntarily reviewing an eARC given to me by NetGalley and the publisher*

2.5 stars

I will be honest - I knew at 15% this book was not going to be a keeper for me. I dislike reading about a "hero's" previous sexscapades and I didn't really care for the hero kissing another woman (or in this case being kissed by another woman - but not wanting to hurt her, doesn't push her away - I guess that's his story and he is sticking to it).

I am not even going to get into the plot - while the writing is fine, there are so many unbelievable scenarios that I just couldn't take this book seriously. I failed to connect with either Olivia or Thorn - in fact, I really didn't like Thorn. Olivia was OK, but she was TSTL and it bothered me that she couldn't tell the twins apart - I know they were identical and even their mother had problems telling them apart - but I still wanted to see her connect with Thorn past the physical and that didn't happen.

I have no idea when Olivia and Thorn fell in love, why they fell in love or if they will remain in love and by the end of the book, I just didn't care.

This book just was not for me and I won't be reading the rest of the series.
1097507
While well enough written, the plot had large holes in it. I won't detail those as they would be spoilers. It also was trying to appeal to too many audiences. Even though I belong to at least one of those populations, I found it tiresome and unrealistic.
4177072
I had very mixed feelings about this one- the story itself was sometimes very interesting, but there were also some really annoying aspects to it.

For one thing, Adeline (the heroine) is so excruciatingly perfect that sometimes I just wanted to slap her upside the head. She is stunningly beautiful, ridiculously intelligent, and on top of that, she never has anything less than an entirely virtuous motive for any action she takes (or lack thereof). Apparently Mrs. Radcliffe was not aware that pictures of perfection make most people sick and wicked, not sympathetic. On top of this, as another review pointed out, she cries at a drop of a hat. I am myself rather sensitive, but there were times that it got fairly ridiculous.
Another annoyance was that there were several hackneyed plot ideas that really shouldn't have been used- the worst being the tired device of a character suddenly being found to be of noble birth and great fortune near the end. I don't know why this is a popular plot twist, but it seems to add little to the story as a whole.

The third was the overuse of poetry and descriptions of scenery. Having read The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, I thought I would be prepared for this, but there were times in The Romance of the Forest that I got so fed up that I skipped these parts to get back to the main story. I can understand a little bit here and there, but there were portions that it went on for several pages at a time.

So why have I given it a three, then? Because there were also several things that somewhat redeemed it. Peter, La Motte's servant, was a delightful character, and I thought it was very unfair of Adeline and La Motte (the latter especially) to constantly be belittling him since it wasn't his fault he was not very bright. La Luc was also an endearing character, as were Theodore and Louis. I also liked Madame La Motte because she was more of a mixed character than any of the others- she had both good and bed qualities, unusual in Radcliffe's works.

So all in all, I would say that though there were many frustrations, the novel was not with its charms as well.
2056496
A decent series, but this was my least favorite of the stories
3452450
My daughter chose three books to read over the summer for 6th grade and one of those books was "Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow."  She is a strong reader but had a hard time getting into this book.  She eventually finished it and said it was OK.

I read the book and found myself very irritated at the lack of strong female characters, with the exception of Jake's mother (but she's dead) and Marika, a friend he makes in Calypsos.  Probably I was irritated at the lack of strong female characters because of Jake's sister Kady, who is shallow and vain.  Even Jake recognizes that Kady is more concerned with looks, hair and makeup than she is about getting out of Calypsos.  It's a case of the man saving the woman.

Perhaps there is an argument for the Viking women and the huntress who is injured, but again, she is injured and we are not told of the Viking women's bravery.

Another reviewer mentioned that this was a book more for boys than for girls because of the ridiculous female characters, but I would want my boys to read about strong boys AND girls in their books.  It's always a positive learning experience when children of both genders can appreciate the strengths and weaknesses that are part of human nature.

Aside from all my complaints about characters, I still didn't care too much about the book.  I felt this way also about the Percy Jackson series.  I was reminded of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies, which I LOVE, but I am not a science/alchemy fan, even in young adult books.  I could have cared less about the mix of cultures through the ages in Calypsos, and the creatures, simply because I did not see that part of the story as integral to the plot.  It reminded me too much of the Percy Jackson series, which I also did not like.

Give me Harry Potter, the Inkheart series or Margaret Peterson Haddix and I am a happy reader!
2550883
I cannot stand the female character in this book. Jaxon is whiny, childish, and so full of false bravado it is insulting to all women. I realize that she had a traumatic life being raised by a psychopath, but that should have either broken her spirit or made her extremely courageous. In her case, it seemed to do neither. Instead, she buries her head in the sand and tries to forget everything around her. I actually felt bad for Lucian throughout most of the book. He is such a noble and courageous male and he is literally a living legend in his own world. I think he deserved a much better lifemate than he got. Jaxon was too afraid to drink blood, sleep underground, and fly, yet she was insistent that she help Lucian hunt the vampires. She was terrified of her human predator and lived her life isolated from everyone instead of actively doing something about the situation. She was ridiculously rude to Lucian for the majority of the book and refused to face the situations she found herself in and instead just ignored them or ran away from them. Yet, she believes that Lucian should accept her as his equal simply because she demands it. That is not how it works in any world. Maybe if she had stopped acting like a baby and stopped whining about every tiny little thing, she would have deserved his respect and the status as his equal. Instead, she was afraid of Lucian for most of the book even after he saved her multiple times, couldn't handle being around wolves that were perfectly friendly towards her, and even threatened to shoot Lucian multiple times. She wouldn't even believe her own eyes and mind when she found out about vampires and Carpathians. She continued to try to make herself believe that she was either crazy or that it was a dream. She literally had large amounts of proof in front of her and she tried to forget everything because she was too small-minded to accept the truth about her world. She would get mad every time Lucian did something she didn't like or considered unfair, yet she constantly and almost purposefully put herself in danger just because she felt she was better than everyone else around her. She refused to believe that Lucian could be more powerful than herself or anyone she knew and put herself into situations where he would have to save her. Even after she was turned and was considered a fledgling, she put herself in constant danger without knowing how to control any of her new powers and just fumbled her way through these dangerous events waiting for Lucian to save her. She has a ridiculous amount of false bravado and she hasn't earned any of the respect that she demands. She spends too much of her time whining and burying her head in the sand, when she could just accept her situation and work to improve her strength and powers. I really expected a fantastic woman for Lucian because he is such an extraordinary character and a legendary man in his world, instead, he got someone who refused to face the hard situations and was so arrogant that she believed herself better than everyone else. I am really disappointed with this book. There were only a few other characters in this series that I disliked and they all seem to be the female characters. Some are fantastic women that are equal to their mates and some are just to ridiculous to believe.
3165592
Some of this plot doesn't make sense and its very wishy washy. First one of the friends advises against dating the hero then says he's strong and protective. Then the heroine does then doesn't want to be with the hero. Everyone was all over the place and I was getting whiplash from the back and forth. I don't like cliffhangers on books either.