Rogue: Book 3 The Omega Group

Author: Andrea Domanski

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Action-Adventure

Book Rating: 8

Personal Rating: 7.5

Where to start.  Well lets just say I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It made me laugh, kept me wanting to read it. And the characters have such an amazing chemistry that it's hard not to love them.  Grecko is still my fave.  Seriously he needs another book.  One was just not enough.  My only problem with this book was the usual plot device.  Boy falls in love with girl from enemy camp, girl falls in love back.  Someone sabotages forbidden romance, and so on and so forth.  I dunno maybe I'm just passed the stage of seeing this type of thing but for once it be nice for someone to have it last against the odds with out the villain successfully tearing them apart only for them to find out years later they've hated each-other for no reason.  And in some books it's too late.  At least in this book it wasn't.  Okay maybe this wasn't my only problem.  There was a point in the plot where the cast seemed convinced that someone was the main villain, and i was kind of dumbfounded by this.  

Deny the Moon--Wolfblooded book 1

Author: Melissa A Graham

Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama

Book Rating: 6

Personal Rating: 6

When I started reading this book it seemed like I was going to be madly in love with it.  Action, bad boy bikers, romance, and I made the assumption werewolves would be involved before even beginning to read it.  And I love werewolves.  This book pretty much had all the things I would typically enjoy but I just felt like I was reading on into nothingness forever.  It just didn't get to the point.   It read like it was one big massive block of intense character development for the lead that I pretty much had sorted out before I even made it a quarter way into the book.  She was described well enough for me to not need all the extra pages of stuff that felt like it was just stuff.  There was no pull me along I was just sorta going along because I was hoping for something big to happen.

Going Through The Change

Author: Samantha Bryant
Genre: Action, Adventure, Suspense, Supernatural
Book Rating: 7
Personal Rating: 6.5

I really Wanted to love this book.  Thought I was going to hate it, then ended up wanting to read the next one.  It was a serious flip flop of opinion but it did happen.  I was admittedly thinking this book would be a no star but now I can at least give it a three.

The premise is good.  Four women going through menopause who change into supernatural beings because of a certain woman's products.  There's a lot of fun to be had here.  It's not your typical superhero fare.  One woman becomes a villain and the other three become the heroes and the race is on to catch the evil product making villain who made them this way.  Granted this isn't the most amazing plot ever, but it works for the story.  The action scenes were fun to read and the settings where easy to picture in my mind, even the characters were clearly defined.  This book was just awesome…. in the second half.  That was the problem I hit 55% or so on my reader before it got this amazing, and was completely bored to tears with the dragging plot development slow-paced blah.

Changed

Author: Alicia Renee Kline
Genre: Romance/comedy/chik-lit
Book Rating: 9
Personal Rating: 9

Okay.  Having read all of this author's books I can say they do indeed keep getting better.  This one, if I am being honest made the biggest jump into better from its predecessor.  I just couldn't get enough of this book.  Just fun fun fun.  So lets knock out two things first then get into it.

Firstly this did nothing to make me dislike the book it just bugged me considering it was right after the prologue.  Our star Gracie tells us there's a flashback coming.  Now I can say for a fact that I always knew, in the previous book when they where coming.  The author set them up the way most authors do.  So I have no reason to doubt her ability to pull off a flash back.  I actually think I said just when i was like enough... there were no more :) so they didn't even bug me that much.  This did, because the set up in the prologue was so well executed that when i saw flash back, naturally i assumed, like most flashbacks, it would go right back to where the prologue left off.  Of course it doesn't because this book isn't told from those characters point of view.  Basically the book starts in chapter one and works amazingly well with out that little quip.  In my opinion, it was written well enough to not tell me the reader we were going back only one day in time.

Modern Girl's Guide To One Night Stands

Author: Gina Drayer
Genre: Romance/Comedy
Book Rating: 8
Personal Rating 8.5

This book was a delight to read.  I enjoyed it.  Quite a bit to be honest.  Mostly for the laughs, and the side characters.  Not that the mains weren't fun, but I'm starting to notice with this type of genre that the witty, pointed, caring well put together best friends are just more fun.  But more on that later. 

One night stands rock, especially when they go horribly wrong.  Laughter abounds and really risky circumstances come.  And the massive flash of misdirection in which the book is based on is just pure writing genius.  It might be my favorite thing about this book.

Jack Strong and the Red Giant

Author: Heys Wolfenden

Genre: YA/Teen/Scifi/Adventure

Book Rating: 7

Personal Rating: 7

This book seemed like it was going to go well.  it had the makings of a really good, even excelent book but it just didn't quite make it. I can't say that I didn't enjoy it, but i didn't really enjoy it either.  The prologue started of as a great attention grabber.  But after that the story unfolded in a typical manner.

It dragged too much for me and was a bit predictable.  Jack, I wanted to love him, shy bullied poor boy who earns some friends and some courage.  There is so much win here.  Yet, i just didn't like him.  Getting bullied is one thing, but he jumped, yes jumped, from that to this insane boy on a mission to save everyone.  It was just too much.  I found this hero element fell into the I don't use my brain i just have to save everyone because they are all alive.  I guess I'm a bit jaded but yes, if there are no signs of life and you are slowly dying yourself at some point you have to let go.  And stranded on a planet that's about to blow up.  First priority how the hell are we getting of this planet.  Save people after you have a plan.  Every minute you spend saving people is one more lost trying to escape so you are all going to die anyway.  Lets just say He bugged me.

Spirits Of Vengeance: The Stone Spirits

Author: Andrew John Rainnie
Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy
Book Rating: 9
Personal Rating: 7.5

Lets just get it right out there that I loved this book.  Quite a bit.  It was well paced.  Moved along quite well.  There was so much to love about it.  It was crafted in the way a good book should be, nice action packed opening scene, betrayal, tragedy, all the notes of a good book were hit so yes, it was a masterful piece of fiction.  Yet here I am not shooting for a full five stars.  Lets just start of with the good stuff.

The opening just jumps right in.  Death looming overhead on your toes oh my god is this one of those sequences where the characters die in the beginning and the story starts years later in the aftermath of said deaths.  It was that kind of opening.  One of the main characters Callaghan is introduced here with his apprentice.  Just great no real details needed.

The elves later on are also a nice addition.  Characters who bring a certain amount of life to the tale that it otherwise would not have had.  The different races and cultures were spot on, and the descriptiveness of everything sucked you into the book.  You routed for the heroes, feared they might actually die.  It was all in all done well.  But regardless of the fact that the plot held true, there were no obvious errors, and indeed almost all the characters were enjoyable, even the evil ones.  It just had a few things that bugged me enough to not forget.

For example, the point of the book as said in the title.  Killing someone in vengeance keeps them stuck in this world as a sort of ghost, not here, but not quite gone.  Within itself.  Brilliant. But then if they walk too far away from their creator suddenly both of them become weak.  Why create something and then limit it's potential.  It's like the daemons in Pullman's Dark Materials.  Why can't they be separated.  So many ghost stories, and fantasy novels and what not live in this rule confinement and it somehow takes away the mystery of things because you know they can't get far enough apart so some things will just never happen.  The things that can go wrong are like, well they cant separate so now we have this ghost who cant find a way to save the day for fear of being too far gone for the human to live.

And not just that  Callaghan is supposed to be this all wise ranger.  Yet he's so quick in one part of the book to judge someone that everyone can vouch for as being good because he is the twin of someone bad.  Yet on the flip side a complete and total stranger can spin him a story about something or other and he just magically trusts him.  It makes no sense.  The captain and crew have been sailing with someone and can say he's saved their lives many times, yet a stranger just appears out of nowhere and you a seasoned warrior will accept that, and not solid evidence from the crew people.  Just… I cant deal with characters who act out of character in order to move the plot forward.  If they are capable of such things, there should be a precedent before hand set up so that it doesn't seem rage inducing stupid.

The other thing was the whole rangers not having wives stuff.  Sigh.  What is it with this idea that if a woman joins some hero elite, or a man joins the hero elite, that now magically they are incapable of feelings and must now give up a life of either one love for ever, or even random encounters during their journey.  Apparently love and sex are evil and real heroes cant have them.  

One of my favorite parts was in the second half of the book.  A new country with wonderful animals and a completely different dialect.  Just fun.  What bothered me though is when you add the last paragraph above with a love interest that arrives.  It falls flat.  I never believed even for a second that it would pay off.  Why would it?  The king obsessed with world domination, twisting history to serve his purposes, sigh.  I feel like I've been here before.  And the gods situation, i'm just going to leave that alone.  These are just a few of the things that just made me think why?  

My enjoyment level suffered because of a few too many things that just didn't make sense for the characters to do.  Under normal circumstances I'd get really detailed but since this book, in my opinion, was a very brilliant action packed piece of magical world building fantasy genius--I'm not.  It was indeed a well written book that I could not put down, regardless of the fact that i had a few issues with it.  I loved it.  In fact I loved it enough to be ecstatic about reading part two and I would recommend that any fan of good fantasy read this novel.  You wont be disappointed.