Review of Shell Shocked

Shell Shocked by Angelia Sparrow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Thank goodness for an inspirational romance that is not Christian. It's refreshing to see a tale that relies on the power of Pagan spirituality for once.

The romance was overall gripping. I loved both characters. I know it's a cliche to say this, but I couldn't put it down. Both Gabe and Sean were well written and likable (for the most part, but I'll get to that later). Even the whirlwind aspect of their love didn't seem forced or cheap. I could easily see why they would bond that quickly.

Part of their connection with one another is that they are both disabled. I have to give major kudos to the author for choosing disabilities that are hard to sexify. That is, there is a tendency for people to give their characters only the aspects of a particular problem that seem attractive (dark, brooding, just enough of a guilty past to be interesting but not enough to actually make the love interest question their decision as to whether they should be with this person) and to gloss over the rest. Not here. Gabe had both legs amputated and Sean has a nasty case of PTSD, plus bad knees and other physical complaints. I am so happy to see a book with disabled main characters having a sexual relationship, I can't even tell you.

Now, here are some of the things I found disappointing. Sean always being on top is a thing that's brought up in the book more than once. Basically, he's reluctant to be penetrated because of lingering issues with his sexuality and the fear of the unknown. A lot of build up is put in to whether Gabe will ever top. Then that moment comes...and the author doesn't show it! How insanely frustrating.

Phone sex is just as awkward on the page as it is in real life. Seriously.

At one point, Sean and Gabe get in a huge fight. Words are said. You know the kind. Words. One example: Gabe is not the character's legal name. It's one he chose himself. Sean happens to know Gabe's legal name and he busts it out in the most invalidating way possible. As someone who also chose their name, man, did that sting. Marriages have ended for less. And yet, there doesn't seem to be as much fallout from this fight as I would have expected. It's a verbally abusive altercation, and since whether or not Sean is abusing Gabe comes up a couple of times, I thought this should have been handled with more detail.

Overall, a great read. I very much enjoyed it.



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My review of Strange Little Band

Check out the website for Strange Little Band

The world of Triptych is not unlike our own, but despite familiar cultural references and a collection of mundane day to day problems, Addison Harris and Shane Meyers have lives further complicated by belonging to a cut throat organization populated by super humans.

In the Triptych organization, anything goes as representatives of Homo Superior lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. Affection is a thing to be exploited and genuine love is almost unheard of. Even children are potential pawns.

Addison Harris, resident self-described ice queen, thinks that she will have no trouble bearing a child for Triptych. She’s used to the scheming and already has only tenuous ties with her first child, daughter Ashlynn. What does she care if they want to breed a race of Homo Superior that also has alien blood?

One unintended psychic bond later and she finds herself in Shane Meyers’ office, informing the half alien scientist that he’s about to become a father. Professionally cool to one another at best before, Addison and Shane find themselves drawn to each other, first because of their unborn son and then because of mutual respect and attraction.

Of course, love is a weakness at Triptych, whether it be for an unborn child or for each other. Everyone from a sexual predator to a selfish boss want to split them up for their own purposes. Can Addison and Shane’s relationship survive?


The good

I do not like these people, but the true success lies in the fact that I want to read about them anyway. I very much appreciated that both Addison and Shane are sexual sharks, that it wasn’t the romance trope of the male main character brow beating and using the female main character until she declares it true love. They’re both terrible people when the story opens, and they use every weapon available to them to try and control each other. It sounds odd to say this about something that begins in a rather heartless place, but I appreciated that they always, throughout the book, seem as strong as the other even when behaving badly. They are equals, and I find that alone fairly revolutionary. As a romance, it automatically succeeds when I can’t help but return to the main characters, even if I wouldn’t spend a second with them in real life.

Another positive is that the beginning is gripping. The writing is tight here, because I immediately know what everyone cares about and what their motivations are. The author includes many point of view characters and while I think it would have been a leaner, meaner book without them, I have to praise the author for handling them in such a way that it made me feel as though there was a bigger, living world outside of Addison and Shane’s relationship. That only strengthened the story, rather than succumbing to a narrow and potentially stifling style that only included the main characters.

I also appreciate how the author incorporates psychic powers as being a fact of life. They feel like a natural part of the character’s existence, and are mentioned the way any mundane sense or ability would be mentioned. I enjoyed the way she used it to fuel and affect Shane and Addison’s romance, too, and the way both proud and abrasive characters opened up to one another, partly because of its deftly handled influence.

There are some great romantic moments, and I began hoping for Addison and Shane once they begin sleeping together—in the completely mundane sense—and find that they need one another’s company despite themselves. The author captures the contented, somnolent feeling of cuddling up to someone you are newly in love with.


The ugly

Unfortunately I think some of this unravels further on. Triptych, thanks to a character perspective near the beginning about taking a psychic child away from their parents, sounds like an oppressive holding pen for psychics and other similarly talented individuals. So when I read about Addison in the hallway wearing nothing but a nightgown, only to encounter Shane and have a grope session, I wonder as to the regulations on this place and the behavior of the people within it. It only became clear to me later that Triptych was less totalitarian and more Machiavellian.

This kind of muddled writing is a continuing theme throughout. I feel as though the author has some great ideas, but that they lack cohesion throughout the work. When magic is included as part of the plot to foil Addison and Shane’s relationship, it’s jarring because it isn’t mentioned as part of Triptych before that moment. It ends up feeling as though the author included things as they occurred to her, but did not go back to weave them in seamlessly from the beginning.

The biggest problem I see is that I am still not sure what the point of breaking Addison and Shane up is. It seems as though the experimental child Addison is carrying is the motivator, since he’s Shane’s only offspring and Triptych wants to test alien human hybrids. The enemies to the relationship use a variety of methods to drive them apart, presumably to get control of the baby, but then Addison and Shane retain custody of him and it doesn’t seem to matter, after all.

I admit, I like my romances to have a lot of plot and action. Addison and Shane are more like a drawn out hurt comfort tale. It spans twelve or so years, which I felt was too long. The initial break up is the classic misunderstanding that could be fixed if only they listened to their gifted daughter about sensing the spell responsible. (that’s the other thing. I can’t figure out why two psychic parents would so quickly dismiss the concerns of a child said to be gifted in those same areas.)

I didn’t see the need for the deus ex machina plot the children use on their parents to get them back together, either. I wanted Addison and Shane to get over themselves on their own, like they did in the beginnings of their relationship. I wanted to see them be more proactive, and I wanted them to come back to each other a lot sooner.


Final Thoughts

If you enjoy sensual, heavily interpersonal romance, I suggest you give this book a try. The paranormal elements are interesting and the characters manage to interest despite what should by all rights be cliché. There are some moments of true sweetness here that are worth a look.

my review of Broken

Upcoming from .


Broken by Susan J. Bigelow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am lucky enough to have an ARC of Broken, the upcoming release from e-publisher Candlemark & Gleam, on my Kindle. Thank you to Kate for giving me a chance to read this upcoming title.



I read this book in a single sitting. I’d already whetted my appetite for it with the sample chapters available on Candlemark & Gleam’s website (include link), and couldn’t stop thinking about them. So, I approached the book with a hunger that had to be sated all at once.



Michael Forward sees possible futures. Most of them include him being given guardianship of a young child, a child who can either make or break the world. His visions also include Broken, once Silverwyng, a former super hero turned street rat. He promises her that, should she help him, her lost ability to fly will return.



With only that dim hope to guide her, Broken decides to throw her lot in with Michael’s, and they journey with the baby they name Ian towards the future, the future where Ian brings all warring factions together in peace.



Of course, there are many forces who want Ian so they can raise him to be the great dictator they prefer, and therein lies the thrust of the novel. Michael, Broken, and eventually Monica dodge government enforcers, make friends with crazed revolutionaries, deal with hunger, cold and the challenges of having a child in their care on their journey towards the idyllic planet Valen and the shining future

Michael can still see for Ian there, no matter the challenges he and his friends face.



What truly stands out to me about this book is the atmosphere. Sparsely detailed, the scarcity of description feels deliberate rather than like an oversight. The sense of snow and deepening twilight skies hangs over everything. The tension is likewise pervasive, subdued, building quietly so that the few exultant or frightening moments you do get are all the more powerful.



The author has a tendency for taking the expected and remaking it to her own ends. We learn that Broken, a super hero who has since lost her ability to fly and fallen on hard times, loves cats. Normally I think I would find this device cheap, but in Bigelow’s hands I find myself empathizing with Broken when she finds a cat, murdered by the antagonistic Black Bands, in an alley.



Bigelow continues in the tradition of Watchmen and some of the grittiest Batman graphic novels, creating a dystopian super hero future (where aliens, alien politics and traditions also complicate matters) rather than subscribing to a more idyllic notion of those with extraordinary powers. There is no shining Captain America here, even if Sky Ranger, the head of the Extrahumans, strives to be like him. (and mostly fails)



In Bigelow’s world, the fascist regime has the power, those super heroes still conforming to their regulations acting more like government enforces than the vigilante dispensers of justice we’ve become used to in other works. The thread of identity is a delicate but complete thread throughout the book, as one of the most basic concepts of the genre, the super hero identity, is assigned in this world rather than chosen.



It is clear from the tone and what happens to the main characters that there is no safe place for those who want to live outside those rules, but one of the masterful things about this book is that as soon as you are about to become bogged down by hopelessness and tragedy, Bigelow gives you a little shining moment of peace, like the familiar golden glow from the windows of a home where you might rest for the night. I think it is important to give readers a place to breathe, and this book does that very well.



Michael Forward, the man who helps drive the story along with the eponymous Broken, is a classic example of the hero who does not want his destiny. This is summed up with an exchange between Broken and their friend, Monica, when Monica asks why Michael cares about saving humans when he doesn’t seem to get along with most of them. Broken simply replies that he does so because he can. The power of individuals to affect change is also a well realized theme here, and it is what keeps us cheering for our ragged band of main characters.



HERE THERE BE SPOILERS











The pacing is both good and bad. In places it is just right, choppy flashbacks interspersed with current reality in a way that is gripping. The beginning is wonderful, crammed with details that inspire further reading. However, towards the end, once Michael makes his decision and the major plot points are mostly resolved, we descend in to details that, frankly, I think could have been cut. Some of the tension—will Broken really fly, as Michael has seen in his visions?—is lost because this section drags in to mundane details.



I would have liked to see more of a connection with the man the women eventually give Ian to. The narrative never explains him, so he is simply convenient. In a way this works with the story, which is all about being disconnected from one’s self, other people, the divide between alien and human, but I would have liked some of that connective tissue to carry through here.



Some of the visuals are beautiful. As Broken begins to remember her past, she recalls the moment she realized she had super powers. Her healing factor comes about when she is pinched by a crab and her finger regrows, and that sky blue crab looms larger and larger in her memory with each recollection. Because the scenery otherwise is so gritty, it stands out for us too, sky blue in a setting otherwise made up of gray concrete and slush.



The subtle creepiness in this story is nicely shown when Michael, Broken and Ian meet Jaenene, a woman able to project an aura of peace. However, it is all too easy for Michael to sink in to that aura and lose sight of his goal. This is a nice analogy for how many people give up their freedoms to fascist governments, lulled in to a sense of security by empty promises.





***





All of Bigelow’s main characters, often heroic against their wills and desires, have feet of clay. But some rise above, realizing that in the struggle between freedom and fascism it isn’t the relative comfort of the people that matters, but rather our right to do what we like with our futures. Michael’s power of prescience shows us that there is no preordained straight path, only possible ends that are always in flux.





Broken is a smart, readable book, and despite some minor pacing issues I recommend it. It’s a well thought out contribution to dystopian super hero fiction, and I encourage everyone to immerse themselves in the thoughtful landscape and characters that, despite their rags and alcoholism and other trappings of desperation, manage to make you invest in them not in spite of these flaws, but because of them.











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