A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.
A human woman who feels like an outsider finds love with an exiled alien.
Maddie and her sister, Lila, were kidnapped from Earth and crash-landed on an ice planet. Lila is deaf, and Maddie has spent most of her life in the role of Lila’s protector. But now Lila is happily mated with a baby on the way, and Maddie is struggling to forge her own identity separate from her sister. Maddie is the last unmated human woman on the ice planet. She’s convinced it’s because she’s temperamental and difficult, and she feels a lot of self-loathing about her body, which she thinks is “fat” compared to the other women. Bored and lonely, Maddie decides to teach herself to hunt. Impressed by her strength and determination, Hassen, one of the clan’s hunters, offers to teach her hunting and trapping skills. She’s curious about Hassen, who is alone, having lost his entire family when a sickness swept through his clan. In Barbarian’s Touch (2024), the previous book in the series, Hassen kidnapped Lila, hoping to find a mate. As punishment, he has been outcast, but he continues to hunt on behalf of the clan, hoping to show that he’s worthy of being readmitted. He regrets that his loneliness and longing for a family prompted him to take such a rash action. Maddie is intrigued by Hassen, recognizing a fellow outcast when she sees one. She offers a friends-with-benefits arrangement, and the two enter into a passionate affair. Hassen hopes Maddie will eventually consider him as a permanent mate. Dixon shows how her characters’ arcs mirror each other, with both longing for acceptance and belonging. Maddie realizes her strengths add value to the tribe, while Hassen longs to be forgiven for his selfish kidnapping. There is very little conflict between the two, as the difficulties of actual survival on an ice planet trump minor emotional conflicts. When a huge earthquake throws the entire society into crisis, Maddie and Hassen prove their worth by going to extraordinary lengths to save the others.
A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780593639481
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Slow and plodding.
A young woman with a magical ability to harness light discovers she is royalty.
Talasyn is a foot soldier for her homeland of Sardovia, which has been under attack for the past decade by the powerful and evil Night Empire, a conflict known as the Hurricane Wars. Talasyn is an orphan with no knowledge of her family, but she assumes they might be the source of her rare, magical Lightweaving talent. During a battle with the forces of the Night Empire, Talasyn spars with Prince Alaric, a fierce warrior who is the son and heir to the Night Emperor. Talasyn is sent on a covert mission into Nenavar, a nearby matriarchy that has remained neutral during the Hurricane Wars, to try to access a Light Sever which could hone and refine her magic. Instead, she discovers she is the heir to their royal throne; she and her mother, now presumed dead, disappeared under mysterious circumstances when she was a year old. Alaric follows her into Nenavar, and they discover his magical ability to cast darkness and shadows produces shocking results when mixed with her Lightweaving. A few weeks later, the Night Empire defeats Sardovia and ends the Hurricane Wars, and the novel transitions to a tedious, slow-moving story of court intrigue and diplomacy. A group of Sardovian soldiers and refugees seek asylum in Nenavar, but Talasyn’s grandmother agrees to protect them only if Talasyn agrees to join the royal court and marry Alaric. The politics surrounding the impending wedding is the primary plot for the rest of the novel, and it’s a slog. The glacially slow pacing only serves to highlight the confusing world building and underdeveloped characters. It’s unclear why Alaric and Talasyn are attracted to each other, and their tentative romance is just as stuck in a rut as the plot.
Slow and plodding.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780063277274
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
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