Embrace the Dark

Title: Embrace the Dark

Author: Caris Roane

Series: The Blood Rose Series #1

Genre: Paranormal-Romance, Vampires, Adult

Expected Publication: July 1st 2012 by Spencerhill Associates, Ltd.

Plot:

Enter a world of blood-starved mastyr vampires and the rare women who can satisfy their deepest needs…
How can he resist his blood rose…
Gerrod, mastyr vampire of the Merhaine Realm, never thought to have his blood-needs satisfied by a mere human. But Abigail is no ordinary woman. She stuns him with her telepathy as well as the richness of her blood. However, her human DNA makes her an unacceptable mate. Yet how can Gerrod turn her away when she alone has satisfied his blood-starvation for the first time in a hundred-and-fifty-years?
Will she fall to temptation and give herself to a vampire…
When the dreaded enemy of all realm-folk, the Invictus, attacks at a fae wedding, Abigail’s simple human life gets turned upside down. She doesn’t know if she has the courage to pursue a path that means giving herself body and soul to a mastyr vampire. Will she return to her normal existence in Flagstaff, Arizona? Or will she embrace the dark…
Embrace the Dark is the first in The Blood Rose Series.

Review:

I just can’t continue…

This book had such a great premise and I was really excited to start it. I thought this short novel was really going to grip and thrill me and I felt like it fell too far flat on it’s face. In general most of the short stories I’ve read haven’t been fantastic and I’ve been searching for one to wow me because surely every short story cannot be dreadful? I know as a child I found many fabulously written ones, and now it seems for an adult audience authors simply cannot provide.

Unfortunately when I began to read, I found it stilted, hard to bear and just drab. There was moments that looked like they were about to be fantastic where we were just introduced to Abigail and she seemed a strong, independent woman and then suddenly she’d just thrown this all away and jumped on the Gerrod bandwagon. Personally I just couldn’t finish which is a rarity for me, usually I’m resilient and push my way to the end, but with this one, I couldn’t do it. I managed to get over half way through this short novel and then skim read and just gave up, it really didn’t thrill me. That’s probably the biggest disappointment that nothing was exciting or adrenaline pumping, it felt more of a fluffy romance tale.

Gerrod as a character was perhaps swoon-worthy and redeemable in the sense that he cared about his people and had a conscience, but he just didn’t work for me. There wasn’t a spark that made me yearn after him, nor did I find Abigail’s sudden epiphany that the male protagonist is wonderful and kind and other fluffy things. He starts out to be a brooding man with problems and this seems to vanish from the start of the story. I just couldn’t understand him… He didn’t stick to his traits and the gushing that eventually came from Abigail was surprising.

Especially when the two have very little emotional connection and suddenly we find ourselves drawn into their bed and euphemisms passing easily between them while they engage in intimate acts, that was really upfront and a little bold for this story which had been flowing at a sedate pace until then.

It felt like the author forgot the characters and plot she was writing and just turned them into perfect people who were suddenly in love. Abigail for me gained a Mary Sue quality and along with the stilted writing I found it hard to engage with the story. Nothing really drew me in and I couldn’t find something to latch on and enjoy.

For me this is a poor example of paranormal romance when I compare it to the likes of the Black Dagger Brotherhood and the Psy-Changeling series that I’m currently reading, it’s probably safe to say the high expectations I had would not be met.

I’d suggest bypassing this one and moving onto something more time worth. That’s not to say it’s irredeemably terrible, I just couldn’t face to read any more.

My Rating:

 

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The Peculiars

Title: The Peculiars

Author: Maureen Doyle McQuerry

Genre: Young-Adult, Steampunk, Romance

Published: May 1st 2012 by Amulet Books

Plot:

This dark and thrilling adventure, with an unforgettable heroine, will captivate fans of steampunk, fantasy, and romance. On her 18th birthday, Lena Mattacascar decides to search for her father, who disappeared into the northern wilderness of Scree when Lena was young. Scree is inhabited by Peculiars, people whose unusual characteristics make them unacceptable to modern society. Lena wonders if her father is the source of her own extraordinary characteristics and if she, too, is Peculiar. On the train she meets a young librarian, Jimson Quiggley, who is traveling to a town on the edge of Scree to work in the home and library of the inventor Mr. Beasley. The train is stopped by men being chased by the handsome young marshal Thomas Saltre. When Saltre learns who Lena’s father is, he convinces her to spy on Mr. Beasley and the strange folk who disappear into his home, Zephyr House. A daring escape in an aerocopter leads Lena into the wilds of Scree to confront her deepest fears.(

Review:

I shall begin at our very first impression, the cover. It looks fantastic and extremely different and so it raised high expectations for this story. I was expecting a really intense steampunk novel with a twist. For me, what I got was entirely different and the girl on the front is not the focus of the story. I think the expectation when picking up this book would for it to be centred on the girl on the cover and this disappointed me.

The book is supposedly ‘steampunk’ and there are elements such as talks of inventions and flying machines and lots of tinkering in a laboratory, but we never truly get a feel for the intensity that I feel steampunk needs. We seem to skirt around the genre in this novel and although we have talks of mines, trains and lots of engineered machines I cannot say for me, this equates as steampunk. Since the cover seems to promise steampunk with the cogs on the front, it makes you think that the steampunk aspect will be a strong element of the story. Ultimately, it’s not!

For the actual tale itself, I found it all rather boring. I managed to finish the book, and I suppose that could be concluded as a positive, but throughout reading it all, nothing really exciting happened. We always seemed to be waiting and building for a really intense, exciting moment and we never tipped over that verge to reach it. There were a couple of moments where I thought the story was about to get exciting, but then it seemed to fail in reaching the peak of anticipation. I felt like this story built an awful lot of anticipation up and delivered nothing from the cover to the plot.

Peculiars is an incredibly unique idea and I thought the author could have taken the story in so many different directions, but we seemed to not really learn much about the Peculiars themselves or the types. The title of the novel being “The Peculiars” seems to indicate they will have a strong presence in the story, but for much of the time, we only find they are relegated to a place called Scree.

On a positive note, I thought the whole novel was well-written despite lacking excitement and thrills, it still managed to read well and be well explained. I felt descriptions could have been a little more detailed when characters and new places were first introduced because I found it hard to visualise the places McQuerry was depicting. However she chose to focus on a specific feature of a person or a place and repeat it constantly throughout the book which particularly annoyed me. I felt like these traits were overemphasised to the point that when the character was introduced to a scene, I expected to read the trait and in most cases it was mentioned.

The characters themselves were of huge disappointment! They lacked all life and feeling. Lena is one of the worst female leads I have ever read, she was whiny, stupid and seemingly focused on solely her hands and feet in life and nothing else. Not only that she started out as extremely stuck up and unlikeable, this may have changed across the journey of the story, but I found it impossible to make any emotional connection to her because she didn’t seem to portray any emotions throughout the whole of the story. She lacked the humanity that allows you to really enter a character’s head. I couldn’t even label her a heroine in my view, because she just didn’t do enough to be seen as a heroine. She allowed people to walk all over her and never really saved anybody, she lacked in strength for me.

Jimson was a rather dire male lead. He was concerned and kind, but I think everything failed from there. At first he appeared to be an incredibly stupid man, who then developed an intellect halfway through the book, which didn’t equate to the character we’d first met. He didn’t really become a “hero” and the romance never really reached any spectacular point because he seemed to dawdle. Jimson failed to take control as the romantic interest and he lacked any sustenance for me to really think he’s a man I’d want. When reading a romance novel, I want to really be able to fall for the male lead and I just didn’t with Jimson, I felt very indifferent about him.

Overall, this book promises a lot, delivers very little if anything and was a waste of my time. If you want a steampunk novel, don’t pick this up. If you want romance, don’t be expecting a lot and don’t let the cover delude you even if it is pretty. This book gets its rating because it was well written and I managed to finish it, otherwise my enjoyment factor was very little!

*Received from the publishers via NetGalley for review*

My Rating:

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Henry VII

Title:Henry VII

Author: Sean Cunningham

Genre:History non-fiction

Published:April 12th 2007 by Routledge

Plot:This biography illuminates the life of Henry VII himself, how he ran his government, how his authority was maintained, and the nature of the country over which he ruled since he first claimed the throne in 1485.

Sean Cunningham explores how Henry’s reign was vitally important in stabilizing the English monarchy and providing the sound financial and institutional basis for later developments in government, and tackles key questions in the debate:

Was Henry VII a conventional late medieval nobleman?
How did his upbringing affect his later kingship?
What was the nature of Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth of York?
How and why did he become the main rival to Richard III following the disappearance of Edward V and his brother in July 1483?

Up until now the details of Henry as a person and as a king, his court and household, his subjects, and his country have remained little known. This book fills that gap, bringing to the forefront the life and times of the very first Tudor king.

Review: Most probably one of the worst historical non-fiction pieces I have ever read. There was little in any analysis, we didn’t really gain a view on Cunningham’s own opinion. If we did his voice was weak and drowned out by the factual statistics he bombarded us with.

It didn’t entertain me or engage me and I found it a drag to read. I do enjoy reading non-fiction historical novels and this book for me held some insightful facts at times that really made me think, WOW, I didn’t know that.

Then we’d drop into relaying everything that happened under Henry VII. If you want an interesting analysis of his life and an independent thinker who chooses to express their opinion, Cunningham is not one.

The wording at times may be simplistic and easy to read, but the pace at which the events drag is tedious. We have a very quick run down of Henry’s reign throughout the first section of the book and then we drop into separate factors. Once you surpass the quick overview of his reign, that was where I hit problems. Nothing was engaging!

I feel this book lacked the engagement and analysis I truly desired. I wanted to really understand the workings of Henry VII and his relationships. This book promised a lot and delivered little!

I do not recommend this book to anybody unless they desire a run down of everything Henry did in his reign, which you can get in a simplistic history textbook. This book does not offer an experience, it offers hours of boredom!

Rating:

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