Book Hoarders Anonymous

Well... it wasn't the ending I was hoping for, but I did anticipate part of it due to reading the synopsis of book 7. Fortunately, it isn't as bad as it sounds since there's a book 8, so... I just have a book...or 3...to get to that point. yay.

The good noose is, the nasty gold is taken care of. The bad noose... Oh, there are a few more flying the friendly skies at the end. Fortunately, one doesn't seem inclined to kill everyone. Bonus, the *other* possessed sword actually serves a purpose.

Basically our h in this case has been reassigned to train by the king, not out of punishment, but because he's fascinated by her and it's rather hard to get to know someone when they're on another continent.

Things happen, the king invites himself along (an occurrence which causes his various advisors and bodyguards a good deal of consternation), and between the two of them, they inadvertently set into motion events that will likely cause issue soon.

Well, the story arc was completed, so no cliffhanger. OTOH, it left Cas in a less than thrilling place, and her relationship with Tolemek up in the wind. Indication is that the author left it in a spot where, if it didn't sell, she wouldn't feel bad about stopping here. Fortunately it did so maybe all those loose ends get tied up.

In any case, our band of heroes/heroines are back in their home country, hiding, because the ones in the military are considered AWOL, and the two that aren't, well... there's a witch hunt afoot, literally, for anyone with dragonblood. The irony is, the person behind it, has dragonblood. Much excitement later (not necessarily good excitement), the villain is killed, everyone is either rescued or exonerated...well, except for Cas who is off mentally beating herself up. The end...sort of, because there's Cas, and there's an even more ancient sorceress with a soulblade, and there's also a dragon.

Is it just me or are others having difficulty accessing things here?  I can get to my blog ok but dashboard seems to lead to whitespace.  At least, unless I post something.  Weird.

Well, beyond leaving us in a cliff hanger - again...

I mean; I do sort of like for an adventure to be completely wrapped up rather than a part 1, 2, etc. Or at least, warn me that it's written that way.

That said, when last we left off, our couples, and the parts of their party that were continuing on with them as opposed to well, going back to report on the mission, were leaving. Now they've arrived on an island where the senior Zirkander is researching artifacts (he sort of sounds like Dr. Jones, Sr here, btw) to ask him a question or three. They manage to incense the native shaman, and well, they all get to bail out. Sr Zirkander isn't pleased to wake up in what amounts to an airplane. They land on another island, spend a few days traipsing through a jungle to a temple containing, among other things, a sick dragon in stasis. Much excitement later, the dragon is healed, has healed everyone who'd caught his contagion, and the missing, not-mad;just dragon-blooded and v. telepathic, sister has gone for a ride.

Off to book 5, because they have to go home somehow, find the king, and fix things that have gone to hell in a handbasket while they were gone.

That was a rare occurrence. Usually I have to make myself finish a book on kindle outside a Dr's waiting room. This one was an engrossing read. Also confess that I paid real money for book 4 before coming here to declare "I finished it!" with books 1-3, because gosh darn it, I want to know what happens next. Also, it's pretty much a cliff hanger ending, with the MCs going off on an unauthorized adventure, and a couple of their party going back to report, so yeah; there's a pressing need to read book 4.

I'm not sure what you would call it - there is romance here and there, but the main focus seems to be the fantasy itself, with the romance as a reason to redeem or accept an otherwise unacceptable character.

In any case, book 1 opens with our main H - a pilot - getting sent off to the fantasy equivalent of Siberia as punishment. In the meantime, our main h is about to wake up from a 3 centuries long nap. She, with the aid of her sentient sword, have great fun hiding in plain site.

Book 2 opens with one of the pilots who serve under the H in book 1 being tossed in the enemy's prison, and finding herself sharing a cell with a pirate of sorts who is more a scientist than a bad guy. Much adventuring is had

Book 3 has our previous couples, along with a few others, going off on a mission into enemy territory...and also to rescue a girl.

This isn't a really...deep...series. OTOH, it is entertaining, and sometimes that's what one is looking for. And I'm good with that.

Perhaps this series would have been better wrapped up with the previous book. After all, once you've written the story about the central character, what's the point of continuing? And too, the purpose for this one feels more like a way of tying up loose ends, but it's done haphazardly.

The H... I kept picturing the reporter in Tim Burton's Batman (not Vickie Vale; the other one). He spends the first half of the book being an arse because mutants. We see a turnaround, but I'm not sure I believe it really.

The h... eh.

The background noise AKA the overarching plot is a conclusion on the whole "who's hunting them?" bit. Sortof. Because the people hunting them in the previous books aren't the ones hunting them now, but instead they're the H's mom's goons. Because of course. And of course, what better way to underscore that arsehole's initial attitude is wrong than to have mommy dearest give him the same treatment?

The real issue I had with this series in general is that it was all released over the course of a year or so, which means all the books were written entirely too close together for plot inconsistencies to occur. Book one had the H becoming a dick and getting locked away because he realized he had no freedom. Book two had the ones who went feral being hidden in a cage in a secret lab (even the secret lab has secret labs) and being "iced" if they went truly feral. Book 3 had the h with complete freedom to be a mercenary even though she's one of the experiments, and the ferals locked in cages on the level the H in book one was in, Book 4 was the outlier in that at the end of book 3, the lab was blown up so it took place at a house in the woods. Book five indicated that well, only the upper levels of the lab blew, and that a lot were left behind, locked in their cages to die. Strangely enough, that was never addressed after the H/h were collected and taken to that relic of a hotel the gang was hiding in.

And of course there's the bit where we have everyone being injected with all sorts of "natural" DNA, which explains one with wolf characteristics, one with lion characteristics, and one hyena. One could even sort of explain a mermaid - fish exist after all. But how do you get a phoenix? How do you get a unicorn? Demon/vampire/something or other? You kinda need an explanation there; things like that don't just appear out of nowhere.

And IS it over? It says "the end" at the end, but the tied ends are rather loose.

I am...so torn. On the one hand, seeing our former villain's struggle with his inner monster, his caring for the h, which had been there before he ever started experimenting... And yet, previous books indicated a complete lack of concern about anything or anyone. That's problem A. That until the end of the previous book, there was no indication he really concerned himself about others.

And then you find he's kept the h's comatose body in a penthouse for...an undetermined amount of time, because he cared about her.

(scratches head)

Problem B would be the sudden delving into the supernatural. Up until now, the theme was they used some method to give animal DNA to damaged humans to help them heal. 1) we have a flipping phoenix, 2) the other Dr has apparently turned into a vampire or demon or..something.

So the H has kept the h hooked up to equipment in his penthouse for...years. She's been in a coma since ODing 20 years before. Her parents died, and he ah...absconded with her before she got unhooked. Sleeping beauty has undergone his special treatments, yet remains comatose...until he makes the decision that he's got to hide evidence he was here and blows the penthouse. Since the h has turned into a phoenix of sorts, she's finally warm enough to come out of hibernation. He finds out she's alive after she's seen walking into burning buildings, starkers. He manages to catch her attention, bad guys show up, failed experiments show up, a not-so-failed experiment and his wife show up... Eventually they are sort of all together but still being tracked.

Just guessing here but equipping a room to be a lab, complete with hospital bed, would likely get someone's attention. Just also guessing but if your former partner sold you out, you probably should have changed all the locks immediately, so to speak, as it's likely he knew all your bolt holes.

Lessee... the H has issues, mostly due to having been - prior to the treatments - a scrawny dweeb with a receding hairline (well, that's how the book described him). He was the sort who would have lived in his mother's basement if his mother had been a tolerale human being. He ended up in the treatment program, not of his own volition, but because he had a car accident and was on life support. His mom essentially sold him to Chimera. So... he has no idea what he looks like now; just that he has all these animalistic urges, and also no idea how any of this happened.

The h...is a free roaming experiment, and also the daughter of one of the Drs. She fried her brain from drug use and has not much of a conscience. She's called in to fetch the H, who has been roaming wild, just outside the lab.

Issues I had - he was a little too forgiving of a woman who injected him with tranquilizers multiple times (including the point where he was recaptured). She was just a little too...cold blooded about it.

There are other issues, relating to the series in general but they can wait for that last book.

The h is dying, a nurse, and aspires to be a journalist. She's injured by one of the ah...experiments... and becomes one herself, only Chimera is a lot more subtle about it with her. In the meantime...

The H is a cold blooded sort who, until the h starts pestering him, has feelings for nobody. He's...bothered...to discover her illness.

There were things that bothered me I guess - how does one go from being a conscienceless killer to being somewhat saddened at having to put an experiment down? And then there are the secret labs within a secret lab bit. Why bother?

Well... it was short. Also about what I expected. Tess actually had a date planned but you know, one thing after another...

Was a bit confused - who was the dead vampire, and who did the foot belong to? Also, where does Susan's ex figure into this? Did I miss something?

If I had a complaint, it's that this book is a complete standalone. It ends as if it could have a sequel, but it doesn't.

It's...entertaining. Not quite Star Wars, not quite Firefly, not exactly Pirates of the Caribbean (due to the whole space thing) a whole lot of situational humor... The H is smart but dumb. His cast of misfits are in various states of trying to decide if he's a genius or an idiot...and they're multiplying (he takes on two over the course of the book).

The basic plot is that a pirate has decided to take over the galaxy, the H runs across them on the way to pick up a load of cargo, and runs for another planet where we spend the better part of the book in one escapade after another. They finally manage to get off the planet, then head for the pirates' base. Much silliness later, the spy has been identified, the pirates all captured, and the H skipped out. It leaves us with the idea that they intended to go to a crew member's home planet to make sure the royal family hadn't been displaced by clones. As I said, there was a feeling a sequel was planned for, but that's as far as it went.

Not to my taste.

Tale the first features a h and her bestie getting caught up in the mists of time and finding themselves in Scotland long before indoor plumbing was invented. Add to that, the convenience of the H and his band of merry men being on a rieving mission to steal his would-be bride (steal her and marry her in some random priest's hut as opposed to a formal arrangement between families. Gotcha). I mean, I suppose it wasn't bad, but it's hard for me to get past the 0-60 aspects of it. But then there was that position where we're beat over the head with the fact that her buttocks and labia are skyward (that's what it said. :shrug: )

Tale the first reminds me of a book I read sometime last year. I'd swear the book author read this and decided to improve upon it. Basically the H is a dragon, the h is trying to get something from him, and as he discovers quickly, she's his mate. Irritants - that 0-60 aspect, coupled with bdsm.

Tale the third is an alien abduction, with the H being a dragooni or something like that. The h spends several days in an induced sleep while getting "prepared" for mating while she's awake. The impression I got was that the H (and with this sort of thing as a norm, I'm using that term v. loosely) was boinking her while she was drugged out of her mind. Then expected her to be all warm and fuzzy about things when she woke up. Frankly I would have been out for blood. Also, this is a menage.

nteresting premise - the H with severe injuries giving someone permission to experiment on him.

The h, for various reasons, signed a contract to work in a top secret facility for a period of time. The H, by this time, has become enlightened to what was done to him, and to his existence. He's one of the more...stable...experiments. Many have escaped and proven dangerous. (why the genius in charge keeps experimenting... it's the old adage - when you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...

Anyway, the h gets assigned to his care, and manages to gain his attention in other ways (as was intended, though you don't get confirmation of that until the end).

The parts I have an issue with are:
that he keeps telling her he's a monster, and that bad things happen here. And yet, in spite of evidence that he might be telling her the truth - she's attacked twice by experiments - she refuses to believe him, basically telling him that he needs his meds adjusted. Well, up until she's grabbed by a couple of experiments and he lets his inner wolf out to hunt them down. Then she freaks.

and that at no point after their escape does it occur to them that they may be being tracked.

I'd also add that I spent a bit of time pondering connections between this and other series from the author.