UNWRAPPING: NEW RELEASE TUESDAY!!

Wow, are there some terrific New Releases Today!! Starting shopping, ordering and downloading because your month of June will be filled with wall-to-wall good reads!

Let's get the ball rolling with some that I know you will clamour to get and with which you will spend many hours in reading heaven!

Recent Releases You Might Want To Consider:

I'll be reviewing this one Friday!

HAPPY READING EVERYONE

AND HAPPY RELEASE DAY TO ALL THE AUTHORS WITH A NEW ONE!!

                                           

Unwrapping: 3rd Review of HOTTER ON THE EDGE, an anthology

This past week's reading has been such a delight that I wish there had been more than three stories in HOTTER ON THE EDGE. This science fiction romance anthology is a wonderful compilation of three talented authors' writing abilities. Science Fiction is not an easy genre to write, it takes not only imagination and skill but knowledge of scientific workings to pull it off convincingly. These three authors did it and did it well.  Ladies, thank you for that.


The last story in the anthology is ENSLAVED BY STARLIGHT by Jessa Slade.


Blurb for ENSLAVED BY STARLIGHT:

Transformed by empathic crystals into the perfect paramour, Benedetta Galil is the last treasure of her fading world. When raiders attack—seeking to corrupt the crystals and conquer all of charted space—she gives herself as a prize to the one man in the universe who values freedom over power. Mercenary sheership Captain Corso Deynah left oppression behind him on a burning planet and has no use for a sex slave, even one as seductive as Benedetta. But while he stubbornly resists her body, her fierce spirit tempts him, and he will risk everything—his ship, his seclusion, the very stars—to win not just her passion but her love.

Crystals that infuse into your body and make you sensual beyond sensual - where do I get me some of that?

The blurb for ENSLAVED BY STARLIGHT is one of the best I've ever read. It summarizes this story in a few lines just as Jessa Slade has taken a full-length story and condensed it into about 117 pages. ENSLAVED BY STARLIGHT is capturing, it's imaginative, it's so well written that by the time I finished reading it, I really had felt like I had read a full-length novel instead of a novella.

Qv'arratz is a planet on the edge of destruction and Corso Deynah knows the destruction of whole planets all too well, he bears the scars to prove it. When he gets a call for assistance from the last keyed l'auralya of Qv'arratz pleading with him to give them protection from possible Universal Union raiders  who are determined to steal their planet's greatest treasure, the crystal qva'avaq, Corso immediately refuses. He's fought too many lost wars and his freedom to roam the universe is too important to him to risk losing. But the l'auralya, Benedetta, is already two steps ahead of him and threatens to have his ship, Asphodel taken away from him. He now has a choice, risk losing his ship to battle with payment being only a not big enough sum of credits and the offer of owning a l'auralya or risk losing it to a conniving pleasure slave who holds the threat of decommissioning it over his head.

Through the two-way visual comm, Benedetta and Corso have seen each (in the case of Corso, Benedetta has seen more than she expected but it was well appreciated) but neither expected the intense physical attraction that bounced between them upon meeting in person. Once the decommissioning edict is voided, Corso agrees to hear what Benedetta and two other elder l'auraly have to tell him. Not really knowing why, Corso agrees to at least learn who the raiders are that intend to attack the vulnerable population of Qv'arratz until they give up and surrender the stunning crystals that infuse a person's nervous system leaving them capable of being enslaved. The crystals cannot fall into the hands of those who will make a weapon out of it. Corso understands that freedom is the last treasure of the universe and anyone who holds such a weapon would enslave anyone who gets in their way, including Corso.

Corso and the crew of the Asphodel soon discover that they are not alone in the battle. Benedetta and the other l'aurlya have skills and abilities that aid them in a way that their weapons don't. Working as a team and facing danger rocketing from the sky, the crew of the Asphodel and the people of Qv'arratz don't give up. Corso learns that freedom isn't what he thought it was and Benedetta discovers that freedom truly is the greatest cost.

ENSLAVED BY STARLIGHT is a truly wonderful reading experience. Jessa Slade has brought to life an imaginative world with triple moons, thin planetary rings of icy dust and caves of sharp dangerous crystals of intense beauty that can kill. These crystals, when blended or keyed with a person who can survive it, create a being so sensually sensitive that sex literally becomes an out of this world experience. Jessa packed more story into this novella than I've read in some full-length novels. Brava, Jessa, for taking this reader on a trip to a far off world wrought with danger, intrigue, and passion. I highly recommend this novella for anyone who has enjoyed science fiction romance in the past or would like to experience it for the first time now. Oh, and Jessa, your plot bunnies can come live at my house any time.

HOTTER ON THE EDGE, an anthology of novellas by Erin Kellison, KC Klein, and Jessa Slade is packed full with action, danger, intrigue, and passion. These three authors have pooled together to create an adventure into science fiction romance that I hope will be repeated again and again.

Happy Reading!

HOTTER ON THE EDGE, a science fiction romance anthology featuring novellas by Erin Kellison, KC KLEIN, and JESSA SLADE. Published by Hotter Edge, released on February 2, 2012, ASIN: B00757WOT6. Ebook format. Available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. Limited time: you can get it for $.99.

                                                     

Unwrapping: 2nd Review of HOTTER ON THE EDGE, an anthology

On Monday, I began a three-part review of HOTTER ON THE EDGE, a science fiction romance anthology. Today's review is for the second novella in the anthology,  TO BUY A WIFE by KC Klein.

Blurb for TO BUY A WIFE:

In a harsh land where corruption rules and women are few, cold realist Hudson Land must purchase a wife to save his farm. Instead of an auction, he witnesses the start of an execution. With his first look at a beautiful woman in years, Hudson knows he has to have her—no matter the cost. Lake, a chemist and a rebel fighter, is resigned to her death, but when some back-hill farmer rescues her from the chopping block she has no intention of simply becoming his wife. She’s pledged her life to the Rebellion and being bought for some stranger’s bed doesn’t change a thing, though his soft caresses have her longing for more. As lies and secrets build between them, are the quiet moments during the nights they’ve shared enough to stand against two warring factions in a world where only the strong survive?

Let me say this right off the bat, the blurb is misleading.

We meet Hudson first. He's just arrived in town to purchase a wife to save his land from being confiscated by the Elders as an unmarried man is not allowed to own land. He's desperate to buy a wife and is willing to give forth his life savings to get one to save his land, land that has been in his family for generations. Having missed the wife auction, Hudson's last resort is to purchase a wife by saving her from execution. It's a dangerous thought taking a criminal for a wife but he's running out of time.

Lake is so close to death, she can taste it but has resigned herself to it. Knowing her life isn't worth any of the Rebels coming to save, she is surprised when a big man wielding an axe claims she is carrying his child. Simple words that save her life. Women and children are a precious commodity and cannot be squandered. With no other choice, shackled both physically and legally to this man, Lake must go with him. It doesn't, however, stop her from trying to kill him on the way to his farm.

The misleading line in the blurb is:  are the quiet moments during the nights they’ve shared enough to stand against two warring factions in a world where only the strong survive?

The reader doesn't really witness these quiet moments during the nights they've shared.

As it is written, TO BUY A WIFE is Lake's story. We meet Hudson first, we learn what he needs from Lake - protection for his farm, his men, future children, and companionship. I think we even get a hint of his wanting love. After Hudson brings Lake to his farm, he makes a deal with her that she may have twenty-four hours to do what she needs - something she won't tell him - but that she return willingly to him as a wife and eventual mother to his children. Lake agrees but has no intention of keeping her promise. It's at this point that I feel Hudson becomes a secondary character. It becomes Lake's story, her journey, her mission, and eventually her fight. Hudson comes across as nothing more than a second thought and bodyguard. When he does go after her and makes a deal with the Rebels to retrieve Lake's brother, Vonn, I felt it before he declared it that he would easily accept Vonn into his family - I like Hudson.

Lake is a strong character, a strong female character - KC is good at writing strong female characters - but I get the feeling of Lake resigning herself to being Hudson's wife more than desiring it, at least until literally the very end of the story. The romance wasn't evident in this science fiction romance novella. The scene where Lake is being Marked and Hudson brings her to orgasm while she is being brutally tattooed was more sexually sadistic than romantically tender on Hudson's part since this was supposedly Lake's first real sexual encounter. I would think she would forever link sex with pain after that, not tenderness.

You're probably saying to yourself, uh oh, she didn't like TO BUY A WIFE ... not at all, I liked it but I feel it was short changed by being a novella instead of a full-length novel. The premise of the story is intriguing. I got a scifi western-esk feel from it, reminiscent of some Firefly episodes and I liked that. The problem I had with TO BUY A WIFE is that I wanted more. I wanted to see more interaction between Lake and Hudson. I wanted to know more about the world in which they lived, how it came to be and why there was such a shortage of women. I wanted to see Hudson play a greater role in the story and to see him meet Vonn and interact with the boy who he was willing to call his family merely to please Lake. I wanted to feel that Lake really was falling in love with Hudson.

In short, as it was written, TO BUY A WIFE didn't present itself as a romance - a science fiction novella, yes, but a science fiction romance, no. Perhaps some day, KC will take this story and expand it into the really wonderful full-length science fiction romance that I think it can be.  HOTTER ON THE EDGE is an anthology still worth reading!

Happy Reading!

HOTTER ON THE EDGE, a science fiction romance anthology featuring novellas by Erin Kellison, KC KLEIN, and JESSA SLADE. Published by Hotter Edge, released on February 2, 2012, ASIN: B00757WOT6. Ebook format. Available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. Limited time: you can get it for $.99.

                                                               

Unwrapping: Review of HOTTER ON THE EDGE, an anthology

The other day, I received a request from KC Klein (author of DARK FUTURE) asking me if I had time to read and review an anthology that she, Erin Kellison and Jessa Slade had come together to create. As soon as I read the blurbs on Amazon, I couldn't say yes fast enough. Three stories of sci-fi romance, oh yes! Since I'm still reading them, I decided to give each author the credit due them. I am going to treat each novella as an individual work, which they are of course, and will review each one as I finish reading it.

The first novella in the anthology belongs to Erin Kellison, ALL THAT GLITTERS.

Cheated out of a fortune by the Sol royal family, lowborn Simon Miner will do anything to get his revenge, no matter how ruthless. When Princess Mica Sol, a terraforming expert, is shot out of the sky on the way to her sister’s lavish wedding, she fears the worst—scavengers—and flees into an alien jungle to avoid capture. But the man who pursues and captures her is none other than Simon, her former lover. Passions reignite as violence rocks Sol City, and Simon and Mica must fight for love, family, and their world… or lose everything.

ALL THAT GLITTERS starts out fast and never slows down. In the true tradition of science fiction, Sol is a well imagined, believable place with environmental dangers that put our heroine into a precarious position from the very beginning. If the fear of scavengers (those who live on the outskirts of the dome protected city and who are willing to do anything including kill a Sol Princess to regain control of their planet) aren't enough to worry about as she flees her disabled ship but she also has to worry about the planet itself trying to kill this determined daughter of Sol, Mica.

Simon isn't with the scavengers, he's on a mission of his own - to regain the riches that were stolen from him and the families of the men of whom he feels responsible for being killed while mining the precious red mica. His mission - steal it back during the extravaganza that is Mica's sister, Pilar Sol's wedding event. Unknown to him, the one woman he'll always love is on the ship that he and his men choose to shoot down and steal to use to get into the highly protected domed city. Once he realizes the ship belongs to his beautiful, headstrong Mica, he has a new mission - keep her alive even as his two partners would just as easily execute the daughter of Drummond Sol, the head of the Sol family.

Mica hadn't expected to meet up with Simon, the only man who had a claim on her heart, but there he was and now she had not only a need to know what had happened in his life since she left Sol five years earlier but she had an even greater need to be his once more.  Unsure of what he has planned and not fully trusting him, she decides to free herself by aiding his cause and turning the tables on him. After getting the three would-be thieves into the city, she allows Simon's partners to disappear into the crowds knowing they wouldn't stay out of trouble long enough to worry about and claims Simon as her consort thereby forcing him to remain at her side with the hope of protecting him from her father's wrath. So begins their journey together to right the wrongs done to those in need, protect the Sol family from attacks by the scavengers, all the while reigniting the love that had survived a five year separation.

As someone who enjoys science fiction as easily as any other kind of fiction, I am always thrilled when an author mixes romance with one of my favorite genres. ALL THAT GLITTERS is all that and more. It snatches up and deposits the reader on a new and strange world. The setting, different than anything we normally expect in a romance, abounds with dangers and wildlife that make it most hostile toward Humans. Erin Kellison paints a story using a pallet of colorful images that brings the world of Sol to life and endears us to Mica and Simon immediately. Star-crossed lovers torn apart by a vengeful father but reunited stronger than ever to overcome all obstacles before finally coming together as an even more loyal pair in love.

Even if you're not a science fiction fan or a romance fan, for that matter, I think everyone who ever enjoyed a sexy conflict struck romance with a HEA ending or a Robert Heinlein novel will thoroughly enjoy ALL THAT GLITTERS. My only question to Erin is, what happened to the injury to Mica's shoulder? By the time she is discovered by Simon, it's gone. Just a little nitpick. That aside, ALL THAT GLITTERS by Erin Kellison is a wonderful read and I highly recommend it ... it's a wonderful way to introduce yourself to science fiction romance, if you're not already acquainted. 

Now, on to reading the next two novellas, next up - TO BUY A WIFE by KC Klein.  Even if I were to not like the next two as much as ALL THAT GLITTERS, this anthology would be worth getting just for this novella.

Happy Reading!

HOTTER ON THE EDGE, a science fiction romance anthology featuring novellas by Erin Kellison, KC KLEIN, and JESSA SLADE. Published by Hotter Edge, released on February 2, 2012, ASIN: B00757WOT6. Ebook format. Available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. Limited time: you can get it for $.99.  A great Valentine's Day treat for yourself or someone you know loves science fiction romance!