Night Pleasures

Sometimes when I’m reviewing a book, especially a book I know isn’t a keeper, I fold over the upper right corner of a page to remind myself that something there bugged me. My copy of Night Pleasures looked like an accordion before I was even a third of the way through. Amanda Devereaux is the…

Dominion

Sometimes I wonder what an author or publisher is thinking when they assign titles. Other times I wonder what they could be thinking when they assign labels – for instance “romance.” By the time I’d finished reading Melanie Jackson’s latest release, Dominion, I realized that both these decisions had to have been completely arbitrary. The…

Enchantment by Kathleen Nance

Kathleen Nance’s previous book in this series, More Than Magic, got B grades from AAR reviewers Marianne and Katarina – no softies. They were both initially skeptical, but both were won over by the book’s charm. While I enjoyed parts of the follow up, Enchantment, there’s nothing here to charm me. Leila is a djinni…

Virtual Warrior by Ann Lawrence

When it’s done well, fantasy and science fiction can be breathtaking, twisting the constraints with which humans see themselves and their world. Amateurish SF/F, however, reads like a high schooler’s first attempt at writing after getting stoned and playing Dungeons and Dragons. The first three quarters of Virtual Warrior reads, unfortunately, like the latter; the…

Desperate Alliances

I wanted to read this book because it has a gorgeous cover, and because it’s billed as a romantic fantasy. I didn’t realize that it’s the third of a trilogy. When Desperate Alliances opens, the uninitiated reader must deal not only with an unfamiliar universe, but a well-established love-triangle. Imoshen is the last surviving member…

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