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RELEASE BLITZ: Reckless Little Game by Raleigh Ruebins
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SERIES REVIEW: Demon Bound by Grae Bryan
Demon Bound: Wreaking Havoc – Grae Bryan
Sascha has always felt powerless, the weak baby of a cruel family. But that’s fine. He has his looks, his ample allowance, and a smattering of one-night stands to keep him busy. But when Sascha’s oldest brother offends the wrong people, Sascha finds himself in hiding with a target on his back. And when poking around in his temporary home leads to accidentally summoning the hottest demon Sascha could ever imagine, he has to ask does he want to feel powerless anymore?
Kai has been waiting centuries for a summons. When he’s at long last brought to the human realm for his final contract, he expects to find another warrior hungry for battle and bloodshed. Instead, he finds himself bound to a saucy, scared mobster princeling who can’t stop looking at Kai like he’s dinner. It isn’t long before Kai decides that—for once—he wouldn’t mind staying exactly where he is, with a certain human for his mate.
But Sascha isn’t used to anyone sticking around, let alone caring for him in any real way. It’s up to Kai to convince Sascha he can give him so much more than protection. He just has to deal with those pesky enemies—and Sascha’s own meddling family—first.
Wreaking Havoc is a heated MM paranormal romance with a HEA and no cliffhanger. It contains a spoiled (or is it traumatized?) mafia prince with trust issues, the cocky warrior demon who wants nothing more than to pamper him for eternity, a stifling family, elusive enemies, and the frustration of never getting to finish a manicure.
Rating:
3.5 Stars – that place between like and loveSoundtrack: Bakemono
Artist: Yoasobi
Album: Bakemono
Demon Bound: Inviting Bedlam – Grae Bryan
Ivan Kozlov doesn’t make mistakes, no matter what his brothers might say. Mistakes in his world mean death. So while he may have summoned the wrong sort of demon to aid him in cementing his empire, binding himself to the creature with an irreversible contract, that doesn’t mean he can’t make use of him. Except the seductive incubus he’s summoned seems to want more from Ivan than just a piece of his soul. Nix wants Ivan’s body, his desire, his faults and his regrets. But giving those things to him would be a mistake. And one Ivan might never recover from.
Nix has been waiting to be summoned again for ages. And while he might have had to trick his handsome mob boss to make it happen, he’s not going to waste the opportunity while he has it. Only now that he’s here, he doesn’t just want to stay in the human realm. He wants Ivan—his greed and his rage and his lust. And if Nix has to fix Ivan’s life to make that happen—if he needs to handle the dangers in his business, mend the broken bits left by Ivan’s father—then that’s what he’ll do. Even an incubus can be useful to a mobster, if given the right incentive.
Inviting Bedlam is a heated, MM paranormal romance with a HEA and no cliffhanger. It contains a repressed, controlling mob boss and the naughty incubus determined to make him crack, brothers who won’t communicate, more demons than Ivan asked for, and a pair of panties Ivan would like to set on fire. While each book focuses on a different couple, the series is best enjoyed in order.
Rating:
5 Stars – absolutely perfectSoundtrack: Vanilla
Artist: Gackt
Album: Mars
Demon Bound: Calling Chaos – Grae Bryan
Cooper didn’t mean to summon a demon. He may be a hacker for the Mafia, but he’s not exactly brave or adventurous by nature. He was only trying to do a small, easy job for his terrifying boss and then get back to not leaving the house for days on end. Only now that the demon’s here, promising to be Cooper’s friend for as long as he needs one, Cooper might just be lonely enough to let him.
Chaos knew it was finally his time to get summoned. No more being stuck in the boring Void, no more hanging out with the same three dull demons. It’s time for madness and mayhem and answering to no one but himself. Except Chaos didn’t expect his newest summoner to be quite so…timid. And sweet. And willing to cater to every single one of Chaos’s many wants and whims. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to stick around for an eternity or two.
Now Chaos just needs to convince his new friend that it really isn’t all that scary to be mated to a demon, even one who loves to play with fire.
Calling Chaos is a heated MM paranormal romance. It feature a lonely, socially anxious hacker and the wily, wicked, and slightly feral demon who wants to play with him forever. It also contains “it’s just practice” bedroom lessons, Mafia meetings gone awry, and the joys of stealing your not-boyfriend’s hoodies.
Rating:
5 Stars – absolutely perfectSoundtrack: Inhuman Empathy
Artist: Amazarashi
Album: Eien Shi
Demon Bound: Unleashing Mayhem – Grae Bryan
Matteo’s been running scared for so long he’s forgotten what it’s like to feel safe. Or maybe he never knew in the first place. Raised by a cruel man, tormented by an even crueler one, and recently rescued by a demon, Matty’s still jumping at shadows around every corner. When he sees a familiar face from the past and realizes his ghosts really have come back to haunt him, Matty does the only reasonable thing he can think of.
He summons someone even worse.
Nightmare is a solitary demon by nature. He’s never needed a companion or a lover or a friend, and he’s never minded being feared by others of his kind. But one taste of Matteo’s sweet, terrified soul and Nightmare needs more. When he’s finally summoned to Matteo’s side, Nightmare finds himself exactly where he wants to be. Now it’s only a matter of patience, seduction, and convincing his little human that one contract isn’t enough.
What they really need is an eternity.
Unleashing Mayhem is a heated MM paranormal romance with a HEA and no cliffhanger. It contains a sweet human afraid of everyone but the monster at his side, a demon so possessive even other demons run scared, a found family made of mobsters and monsters, and a summoning gone right (for once). While each book focuses on a different couple, the series is best enjoyed in order.
Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bitsArtist: Beautiful Monster
Artist: Art School
Album: Flora
Demon Bound is a paranormal fated mates series by Grae Bryan that I picked up because I enjoyed her Vampire’s Mate series, which is set in the same world. Also, both series were narrated by Michael Ferraiuolo and that’s always a bonus. His comedic timing is spot on!
The series opener, Wreaking Havoc, didn’t completely blow me away but I was entertained enough to proceed to the next. The story is a beauty and the brute romance between the youngest son of a Russian mob boss, Sascha, who’s trying to stay on the straight and narrow and far, far away from his dysfunctional family. However, someone is trying to kill him.
Through some creative nail art, Sascha inadvertently summoned the warrior demon, Kai, who became his protector from the very elusive killers out to get Sascha. The plot, as with the rest of the series, focuses on the development of the romance and the bond.
We met Sascha’s middle brother, Alexei, in Vampire’s Mate when he was mated to the cute vampire Jay. Here, Sascha’s notoriously scary older brother and now head of the family, Ivan, makes his appearance.
Kai is essentially a grumpy 7-foot musclehead, though a very protective one who treats Sascha like the treasure he is. Sascha is a petite diva and a shopaholic forced to stay in small town Maine for his safety and try to build a crime-free life. I loved his colorful approach to fashion.
My favorite part was during the villain comeuppance scene when Sacha fainted at the sight of blood and Kai held him till he came to. Their dynamic is something I’ve seen before but the plot left intruiging open threads and teasers that I immediately grabbed the next book.
Inviting Bedlam is Ivan’s book and I was happily surprised to see him paired with an incubus. Ivan is estranged from his brothers having been groom by their abusive father in crime and toxic massculinity.
Ivan is beset by enemies left and right and thinking to summon a fearsome demon like Kai to fight in his corner, he got Nix instead. What use is an incubus in a fight thought Ivan, but Nix surprised him at every turn, even during the big villain showdown.
Their dynamic is a delicious play of the fire and ice. Vanya, as Nix loved to call him, is repressed due to his tough mobster upbringing and Nix just couldn’t resist pushing his buttons every chance he gets.
Vanya is taking steps to improve his organization, his life and his relationship with his family. I loved his redemption story and how Nix helped him even if Vanya was being a cold bastard at first. The way the ice melts was wonderful to witness.
Nix adores everything about his Vanya, even him being “a little bit worn around the edges” at almost 40 years old. Ivan slowly but surely found the incubus inextricately weaving himself in his life and realized he loved having Nix there.
My favorite part was after the big villain showdown when the contract was fulfilled. I could practically feel the world stop for Ivan and it was the coldest this intimidating man has ever been. What came after was pure joy!
Calling Chaos is Cooper’s book. He’s the hacker the family hired and also a cousin. He accidentally summoned the chaos demon Ruckus. Their dynamic is a delightful push/pull of the shy and the feral.
Ruckus is a riot. This gremlin has a childlike propensity for causing trouble wherever he went just for his own amusement. He immediatly latched on to Cooper, drawn to the young man’s shy and sweet disposition, and accepting nature towards his antics. He’s protective and doting of Coop and likes to call him puppy.
Coop is firmly tucked away in his shell, his social anxiety usually getting the better of him. It took a while for him to venture a toe out of it but Coop is nothing if not resilient, skilled, and brave where it counts. I loved how he lets Ruckus be himself just like Ruckus helped him step out of his comfort zone.
Their story is a fantastic reflection of their dynamics, fluffy and cozy and also wild and free. My favorite scene was during the villain takedown when Ruckus was furious that Coop was harmed.
The author perfectly captured the raging emotions in the way Ruckus unleashed his flames and putting them out in a blink of an eye because of all the FEELS he’s feeling for his beloved mate. It was one of my favorite declaration scenes.
Unleashing Mayhem is Matty’s book. Matty is the stray Sascha and Kai rescued in the first book and taken under their wing. He’s very timid and scared of everything. He frequently suffers nightmares and so avoids sleep as much as possible.
Matty is scared that an evil man from his past might come for him eventually. One day, tired of being scared, he decided to summon a demon to protect him, just like his friends and their mates.
Sarcaren is a nightmare demon who frequently visits Matty’s dreams so Matty immediately found comfort in his new demon. Nightmare promised to exact revenge for everything the evil man did to Matty.
Another fantastic dynamics of the sweet and the scary which is what Nightmare and Matty call each other. Adorbs! It’s a bit similar to Coop and Ruckus but Nightmare is more sinister and shadows. He saw Matty as pure, sweet, and endearingly brave even at his most scared.
Matty is smittened with his demon from the get go and eagerly wanted to become his mate so the mating ritual wasn’t the main focus. Matty’s past is the darkest in the series and the villain was one I wanted the most to suffer after what he did to Matty since he was a young boy.
The revenge part was mostly rushed and partly told rather than seen. The story as a whole was fast paced and enjoyable but not as gripping as the middle books.
My favorite part was how everyone banded together to help Matty. I was super amused at everyone horrified at the fearsome Nightmare taking a mate and it’s little Matty.
LOLed at Ivan being wistful and wishing he summoned the scary nightmare demon. Even tried to recruit him but Nightmare has no plans working for anyone other than his mate. Nix was having none of it.
Demon Bound explores the fated mates trope through different flavors of human-demon connections. The series is a blend of fluffy, humor, steam, and violence, featuring the Kozlov family and their friends. The book are best read in order, with interlapping events and cameos from the author’s other series.
Overall, lovable humans to root for, gorgeous demons to drool over, and all that squee-tastic fated mates magic to swoon over!
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DEMON BOUND: Kindle
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RE-RELEASE BLITZ: Always & Forever Duet by Kindle Alexander (Kickstarter)
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RELEASE TOUR: Pretty Mess by Lily Morton (Excerpt)
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BLOG TOUR: The Care of Broken Things by October Arden (Excerpt & Giveaway + Character Interview)
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REVIEW: His Bane by Courtney W. Dixon
The District: His Bane by Courtney W. Dixon
PLEASE READ THE BLURB AND WARNINGS IF YOU’RE SENSITIVE TO TRIGGERS! And please, please be careful of spoilers and giving away endings of books. Use spoiler tags.
He is mine. I don’t care how long it takes. I will have Malik Amin.
Sullivan Beauchamp
Some people call me a monster. A psychopath. As if I care what others think. So what if I relish in the mayhem of slaughter or enjoy feeling the life blink out of someone? I am who I am. It was Malik who eventually brought me to his home and trained me to hone my skills to work under him as an assassin. Malik Amin is my equal, and he will be mine in all ways as soon as I can chip away at his ridiculous and completely unnecessary self-loathing.
Malik Amin
Sully lost everything as a teenager on my order. When I found him covered in blood four years later, I should have put him down, knowing what he was. Instead, I took him in to train him. It works for us until he wants me more than as a mentor. I cannot allow it. But if Sully is anything, he is a master at persuasiveness and discovering my weaknesses.
Reading in order will add more pleasure to the reading experience since some of the books end in a series cliffhanger. But they can technically be read as standalones.
CW: internalized homophobia of MC, murder of family, off-page molestation and rape, psychopathy, murder, torture, consensual sexual mutilation between MCs, betrayal.
His Bane is the second book of the dark assassin romance series, The District, by Courtney W. Dixon. This is a found family of queer assassins founded by Malik Amin and Sid Virgil that takes any jobs, no questions asked. The only rule is no hits on children.
Sullivan Beauchamp is the only survivor of an assassination of his family when he was 12 years old. He was put in foster care only to be sexually abused by his foster father. When the abusive asshole killed Sully’s favorite foster brother, Sully took immense pleasure in ending the bastard. While on the run, he was tracked down by Malik and taken under the older man’s wing.
Malik has been monitoring Sully since he went in foster care, but not close enough to know about his home life. Noticing the teen’s psychopathy and his potential, he offered the 16-year-old board, lodging, and training. He might have gotten more than he had bargained for because Sully kept pushing his buttons and pursued the older man with the kind of obsessive-possessive determination only psychopaths possess.
I loved Sully from the get-go! With so many bad things done to him at a young age, from his cold, harsh father to the abusive foster parent, Sully learned to rely on his instincts and intellect, harnessing his rage as a physical force to defeat bullies and bad guys. His favorite weapon is his 25,000$ knife gifted to him by Malik. His favorite music genre is disco.
Sully is immensely self-aware, constantly evaluating himself and learning about emotions and relationships so he can give Malik what he needs. He doesn’t expect other people to understand him. But far from angsting about it, I loved how unapologetic Sully is about who he is. Malik gets him, and that’s all Sully cares about.
Malik is of Syrian descent and a former member of a Syrian gang. The man is 19 years older than Sully, and unlike his self-assured protege, Malik is a mass of self-pity and woes rooted in childhood trauma.
It’s one of the reasons he keeps putting Sully at arm’s length, even though he wants the younger man. He’s also carrying the guilt from a big secret that he should have revealed to his mentee early on, but he didn’t, so it came to bite him in the ass in the form of a Sully meltdown.
Compared to the first book, His Death Bringer, this is a tad less disturbing but still as dark. Please heed the content warnings, especially if blood play is not your thing, because Malik and Sully are heavily into that.
This is not a romance of warm fuzzies. This is a complicated relationship between a traumatized older man who’s touch-starved and hungry for affection, even if he has a hard time admitting it, and a psychopath who doesn’t feel many emotions. This is a slow-burn of 13 stubborn years and a hot/cold dance of one step forward, two steps back, where the hurt comfort comes with a knife and scars are tokens of love.
Sully did all the heavy lifting while Malik is mired in what Sully calls “pathetic self-pity.” There were hardly any private interactions that didn’t devolve to sex, while Malik hopes they can be a normal couple that is more than just sex, a.k.a. the old man needed hugs and cuddles.
There were hardly any proper communications. I say this one is on Malik, who has his electric fences up while Sully was asking Luca (His Death Bringer) for advice and reading romance novels, trying to grasp the mechanics of being in love and the to-dos in a relationship. Our boy was really trying, bless his psychopathic heart!
Something to watch out for is the content-warning confrontation scene between Malik and Sully. It was nothing short of powerful and cathartic! Sully’s jumble of emotions was intensely palpable, and his breakdown was heartwrenching. Malik finally pulled his head out of his ass, but still left me partly unconvinced.
So I didn’t squee, but I rooted hard for Sully. His growth and resilience as a character, his single-minded determination to go after what he wants, and his willingness to go beyond his “limitations” as a psychopath for Malik are what made the book 4 stars for me.
His Bane is a story of kindred souls, warring feelings, and lifelong devotion. It is not a fairytale romance, but love at knife’s edge, painful, intense, and all-consuming.
Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bitsSoundtrack: Knife’s Edge
Artist: Tiger Army
Album: V…_P.S.
I’m ridiculously thrilled about how spot on the book model is! Red hair, copper penny eyes, and all black suit: that’s our Sully!
The District is best enjoyed in chronological order. Meet Luca, survivor, bunny cuddler, and sweetest soul ever, and his dark angel, Dante, in His Death Bringer.
If you like my content, please consider using my Amazon affiliate links below to buy your copy of His Bane. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying Amazon purchases at no additional cost to you.
If you like my content, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi or PayPal. Your donations will help keep this website going. Thank you so much!
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RELEASE BLITZ: Miles by Ana Night (Giveaway)
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REVIEW: His Death Bringer by Courtney W. Dixon
The District: His Death Bringer – Courtney W. Dixon
PLEASE READ THE BLURB AND WARNINGS IF YOU’RE SENSITIVE TO TRIGGERS! And please, please be careful of spoilers and giving away endings of books. Use spoiler tags.
He calls me his dark angel, but I’m merely a killer. A bringer of death.
Luca Davenport
He is my angel, sent to be my death bringer to save me from my tormentors and betrayers—those who sold me into slavery when I was only eight years old. Angel came in with guns blazing and black wings that were made to crush his enemies and envelope me in love. He belongs to me and I belong to him. We are destined. After he saves me from my captors, we hunt down the remaining men who had abused me for eleven years to make them pay in blood.
Dante Varga
He is a broken boy of no more than nineteen. He sees me as an angel, but I’m simply a killer. An assassin for hire. I can’t save him. I can’t take care of him. There’s no room left in my dying soul to care about someone. Not anymore. But I can’t turn him away either. I should kill him. He’s a witness. But I feel compelled to protect him at all costs. Saving him will either shatter the ice around my heart or destroy me. Either way, Luca is dangerous.
Reading in order will add more pleasure to the reading experience since some of the books end in a series cliffhanger. But they can technically be read as standalones.
CW: graphic violence, murder, rape, torture, human trafficking, explicit content
** Note: This book has been re-edited in December of 2024. Several grammatical errors have been fixed and some scenes have been adjusted for sensitivity issues. If you download this book before then, these changes will not be available on your Kindle. But you can get it updated. **
His Death Bringer is the stirring opener of The District, an assassin, found family series by new-to-me author Courtney W. Dixon.
The first thing you need to know is that the book is quite dark, so you must heed the content warnings. It stars Luca Davenport, taken when he was eight years old and subjected to horrific abuse as a sex slave for 11 years. Luca mentions the tortures he experienced, and it’s so stomach-churning I had to put the book down several times.
He was accidentally rescued by Dante Varga when the assassin was sent to kill all the evil men from the crime family who held Luca captive. Dante had no idea the young man was there when he went about his mission. Luca immediately fell in love with his rescuer, called Dante his “dark angel” and hired the assassin to punish all the bad men who hurt him.
Luca is 19 years old and remains childlike since his captors restricted his education. He also has a streak of ingenuity, is surprisingly insightful, and so resilient he survived and wreaked his vengeance. With Dante’s help, he learned to fight, protect himself, and take control of his life.
Dante doesn’t know what to do with Luca, isn’t equipped to deal with trauma, and doesn’t have space in his life for another broken soul as he is just as fractured himself. It was cute how he tried so hard to resist Luca and before he knew it, the younger man not only stole his heart, he was helping put the pieces back together, too.
With all the violence and dark themes, the relationship between Dante and Luca is sweet and tender. The hurt-comfort worked its magic to warm hearts and heal souls through trust, patience, and a whole lot of TLC’s. Realistically, though, it would have been best if Luca had professional help to deal with his trauma.
Cleo, Dante’s Cane Corso and bestest girl, stole the show as Luca’s emotional support dog and fiercest protector. Dante’s District brothers came through with no hesitations, rallying behind him and Luca with guns blazing.
The District is a found family of assassins-for-hire led by Sid Virgil and Malek Amin. The most intriguing member is Sullivan, the resident psychopath who’s lusting after Malek. The older man has his steel walls up, so I’m excited to see how Sully breaks through in the next book.
His Death Bringer is a story of survival and healing. It’s a young man’s journey to reclaim control of his life with the help of a dark angel seeking retribution. Overall, the journey is daunting, the revenge sweet, the feels intense, and the HEA so damn worth it!
Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bitsSoundtrack: Angel
Artist: Alice Phoebe Lou
Album: Shelter
If you like my content, please consider using my Amazon affiliate links below to buy your copy of His Death Bringer. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying Amazon purchases at no additional cost to you.
HIS DEATH BRINGER: Kindle | Audiobook
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REVIEW: Prodigal by Avril Ashton
The Council: Prodigal – Avril Ashton
One man intent on reclaiming his birthright. Another denied his own. The secrets between them should keep them apart, not bring them closer.
The first time someone tried to kill Gideon Winters, his mother took the bullet meant for him. He was thirteen. The second time they came for him, his father faked Gideon’s death and sent him into hiding. It’s been fifteen years and he’s finally out of the shadows, ready to claim his rightful seat on The Council, the secret group of seven with the ability to make or break corporations and countries.
The son of a powerful man who refuses to acknowledge him, André Tesfaye leads a quiet life of monotony that’s upended when he gets trapped in a random robbery. Whispered warnings abound about the man who saves him, but he’s too busy getting lost in Gideon’s ice-blue eyes to listen.
André is the weapon Gideon plans to use to exact revenge on the people who took so much from him. Wanting him, loving him, puts everything at risk, and tests Gideon’s loyalties and focus… Which is a shame, because a battle is on the horizon.
And Gideon has acquired a weakness.
Prodigal is the first book in The Council, a brand new series by bestselling m/m author Avril Ashton. It features forced proximity, opposites attract, interracial romance, and Av’s signature heat and angst.
Prodigal is the first book of The Council, a series by new-to-me author Avril Ashton that features my go-to trope du jour: billionaire secret societies.
Unlike Park Avenue Kings, where the secret society is unified, Prodigal chronicles the upheaval of The Council’s status quo when the son of a recently deceased council member, Gideon Winters, secured his seat through a series of machinations and assassinations.
Gideon has been groomed since childhood and was biding his time until the right moment to strike. To gain leverage on one council member, he convinced the man’s secret son, Andre, along with his adopted sister Juliet, to stay in his penthouse.
Andre has a chip on his shoulder the size of his absentee father, whom he never met. He was forced to stay with the famous billionaire Gideon Winters when the man saved him and Jules from bad guys. Jules adored Gideon right away. Andre doesn’t trust the man but has nowhere to go.
The premise grabbed me right away and the concept is very intriguing. Sadly, the execution didn’t live up to the promise.
The romance came out of nowhere. Gideon and Andre went from barely talking to professing forevers with hardly any build-up. But this is the only part that made them unconvincing because they were pretty fantastic together! The author did a fabulous job making their chemistry sizzle deliciously!
Father-and-son relationships are the central theme, highlighting the contrast between Gideon’s loving relationship with his dad and that of Andre’s connection the stranger who fathered him.
With daddy issues up the wazoo, the vibe is often angsty and bitter, and it’s usually Jules’ cheerful personality that lightens that mood when things get too intense. Jules is 15-years old but her characterization makes her seem 10-years old.
The plot lacked depth and was all over the place, yet it was also compelling enough to keep me hooked. It aimed to depict Gideon as a morally grey character, which he is, but the execution was clumsy. It also turned out the wrongs Gideon was seeking to avenge were the schemes of a dead character, which felt rather anti-climactic because it took away a villain comeuppance scene.
Prodigal isn’t the strongest series opener but it still has its merits. I’m still interested to see where Gideon and Andre would take The Council, so I’m looking forward to Book 2.
Rating:
3 Stars – not exactly setting my world on fire but I liked itSoundtrack: Prodigal Son
Artist: Rationale
Album: Rationale
If you like my content, please consider using my Amazon affiliate links below to buy your copy of Prodigal. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying Amazon purchases at no additional cost to you.
If you like my content, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi or PayPal. Your donations will help keep this website going. Thank you so much!
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REVIEW: A Bright Celestial Sea by Chani Lynn Feener
A Bright Celestial Sea – Chani Lynn Feener
Pryor Oro came to the Olympus to find a missing Imperial, not fall for one.
On the space station Olympus, a disappearance and a theft has captured the attention of the Intergalactic Police Force. Assigned to the case, Pryor heads to the World Ship in order to search for a missing prince. While there, he’s forced to work with the Emperor, Wystan Aurelius, who seems to never let Pryor out of his sight. Confused over why a man he’s never met is acting so possessive, Pryor’s urgency to solve the case and get away from Olympus and its ruler intensifies, even as the unruly Emperor starts to grow on him.
Wystan Aurelius finds life on a World Ship dull, until Detective Pryor steps onto his ship, and into his territory.
More concerned with discovering who has stolen missing medical technology, Wystan couldn’t care less about a vanished prince from another planet. At least, not until he sees how invested in the case Pryor is, and realizes how upset he gets when he doesn’t have the Detective’s full attention turned his way, and his way only. Wystan finds himself at a crossroads. Force Pryor to accept him by telling the truth? Or win him over the old-fashioned way?
Wystan’s secrets could unravel everything, but he isn’t the only one hiding things. Pryor’s privy to some classified information could end up turning the entire galaxy for a loop. Together, the two must navigate through their emotions and the seedy underside of Olympus to solve the case before it’s too late, and life, as they both know it, is altered forever.
A Bright Celestial Sea is another book written by Chani Lynn Feener in the same sci-fi universe as Between the Devil and the Sea and A Sea of Endless Light. It does not have a name yet, but I’ll call it IPF-verse since the Intergalactic Police Force is one thing common with the other books. Also, the MCs are IPF detectives with secrets they desperately want to stay buried.
The opening puts us right in the thick of things. From what I could suss out, a member of the Tiberian imperial family, nephew to the Empress, is missing. A critical illness, a top-secret nano-technology, and a classified medical procedure were uncovered. There’s an assassination attempt, and either imperial twins, sons of the Empress, might be involved, but then they were supposed to be dead.
All of this happend in Olympus, which is the world ship of the Vexans.
I spent half the book untangling the convoluted plot. For one, I was confused by all the names that came up. I was audiobooking this, and the Tiberian Imperials had very close-sounding names that I didn’t immediately realize there were several of them.
Roth is the nephew, the party boy wasting Tiberian tax money on lavish shindigs across the galaxy. Rath is his twin and is said to have died at birth or missing (I’m not sure). Ross is the twin most favored by the Empress, so he’s spoiled rotten. Rune is the unwanted, sickly spare.
The world-building was just enough to establish there are world ships, essentially artificial planets, and Olympus is ruled by twin Vexan emperors Wystan and his sister. The two alternately ruled every six months. It seems the Tiberians and Vexans are born in pairs, and this is a key element here.
Also, Vexans have the most beautiful eyes, which are the color of galaxies. The cover grabbed me with the image of Wystan and his eyes.
It helped that I had read the other books, so I was able to piece together the setting. Similarly, we have an IPF team led by Detective Pryor Oro and Inspector Castor (forgot his last name). Immediately, sparks flew as Pryor butted heads with the cocky and shamelessly flirty Wystan, who made it clear he wanted the detective.
Also, Pryor is a Tiberian, and saying the case hits close to home is a gross understatement, as we later discover.
The author was building some delicious antagonistic USTs, but I couldn’t fully enjoy it. I was too busy trying to understand what was going on. This is also the very thing that makes the mystery so compelling. I was in the dark until the bad guy showed his cards.
The second half was full-on squee-tastic BL manga vibes, with my favorite childhood connection trope working its magic. Because Pryor was that abused young boy Wystan wanted to protect once upon a time ago, and adult Pryor is strength, competence, and hurts rolled into one irresistibly gorgeous package.
The detective is still dealing with PTSD and amnesia, and the emperor is that possessive, adoring seme patiently waiting for his hot/cold yet can’t stay away uke, to remember and/or admit they knew each other as children. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt to shower the overworked detective with TLCs and assist, a.k.a. insert himself in the investigation whether the detective wants him to or not.
This part tied beautifully with the mystery, giving us an edge-your-seat villain showdown and a slow-clap-worthy takedown of the person who hurt Pryor the most. It was fanfuckingtastic! And so satisfying, especially knowing what Pryor had gone through. It totally made the book for me!
A Bright Celestial Sea is a story of unwanted children, secret identities, and inescapable ties. The “cold open” and figuring out who’s who took some time for me before the story hit its stride. But I’m thrilled I stuck around. Ultimately, It was a rewarding experience.
Overall, a complex mystery and a sweet sci-fi romance between two men who shine the brightest at their most vulnerable.
Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bitsSoundtrack: Celestial Bodies
Artist: Ghost Data feat. Jovani Occomy
Album: The Occulus Occult
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