Reviews

Blue Coral by Naomi Lucas

postmortem's review

adventurous emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

czgathers's review against another edition

5.0

Originally was not going to write a review but if you’ve somehow stumbled upon this before reading books 1 or 2, or if you’re feeling blah after those books, this is meant for you and past me. Kinda spoilery but not really?

I did not totally like Viper and I really didn’t like King Cobra. Those heroes were too much: too pushy, too demanding, too aggressive, teetering the line of SA in my opinion. The heroines were…blah.

With Blue Coral, we have a heroine of color, Shelby, (love a black woman from infinity to infinity…) who is CHILDFREE, in a series that has breeding as one of its main things. And our hero, Vagan, while driven by this instinct to procreate, is on board and is staying on board with a childfree life. He wants to be worthy of the heroine and keep her safe. Thinking of buying the physical copy because I liked it and want to reread, that’s my criteria for keeping/buying physical books.

Do I like how much trauma the hero and heroine had to go through just literally to live? No, and I don’t like that for our heroine of color either. Fighting for their lives every fucking chapter. HOWEVER, I don’t see their attraction as trauma bonding necessarily.

You get a lot of answers to questions you had in books 1 and 2, and I can see the set up for book 4 and beyond. I’ll keep reading, but gimme more Vagan and way less Vruksha and Zaku.


9/18/22 edit: bought the paperback, reread & changed my rating from 4 starts to 5.

sammijoanne's review

3.0

It’s not normally a type of book I’d read but I actually kind of liked it it was fun to read.

taramisu's review

4.0

3.5⭐
Vagan's a bit more alpha-holey than I like, but waaaaaay better than the nagas in the first 2 books and not bad enough to DNF. To be honest, the qualities of a book's MMC comprise 1/2 to 3/4 of my rating; and my motto is: "Nice Is Sexy".

alejandra_guerrero's review

3.0

I actually liked Vagan, he has been the least toxic of the nagas so far. Shelby, on the other hand... I hate her. She got better at the end, but she isn't a nice person. Also, why the hell did they have to lie to Peter about her being pregnant? Her freaking eyes are worth more than whatever the nagas could give, without them, they won't be able to do anything with the tech even if they find it, so, why tell him she was pregnant? How big of an idiot was he? Pilot? kind of repleaceable, with the spaceship near. Communications officer? Gemma wasn't particularly bright, so anyone could have done her job. The only tech able to scan and understand Lurker tech? Yeah, let's give that to the hostiles, why not? Seriously, how did this Peter guy made it to captain?
Another thing that bothers me is that nobody has last names. There are colonies, so I would assume there's at least about a million humans around (I mean, each ship has hundreds of thousands aboard), or more, it's not like there's only one Shelby, or only one Peter in the entire freaking universe. Or do they ban the name once someone has it? How do they identify lower caste's children? Since they seem to have a caste system (three books and it hasn't been explained), I would think they had a way to identify those castes, which would require family names, or at the very least caste denominators. But no.
Anyway, Death Adder was the one book I actually wanted to read, so let's see how the story progresses. We've got some answers, but still there are some questions left. Still interesting enough to keep reading.

laura_marie's review

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

christyjoreads's review

4.0

I have read three of these books in 5 days....and they keep getting better!

mahaliathenerd's review

2.0

Shelby's lie

Her lie caused the biggest ripple effect within the naga brides. She's suppose to be smart, but the entire time she was trapped with Vagan and Colin, she made dumb decisions left a d right. Colin is an ass hat too, but Shelby, in my opinion, is the type that messes up people's lives and doesn't take real responsibility for her lie.
All she does is cry and say she was manipulated! No, you're stupid, and you should have known better!

porcelainheart_'s review

5.0

I've been keeping up with this series since Viper, and Blue Coral has absolutely blown me away. I should start off by saying I'm familiar with Naomi Lucas' previous work. I read her series The Bestial Tribe a couple of years ago, and while it's only two books so far, it fell flat for me, especially the last book. But I'm really enjoying this series so far! It's a lot more fleshed out and in-depth compared to The Bestial Tribe, and I can tell Lucas' writing has greatly improved since then

Spoiler

the first book in the Tribe series came out in 2018, and the second one came out a year afterwards

. I've noticed with the first two books in this series that information isn't dumped all at once, but it's built upon throughout the series, and everything goes chronologically, so it's best to start this series from the beginning with Viper. As stated in the author's note, the first arc of the story reaches its conclusion with Blue Coral, and boy are you in for a wild ride.

First, a brief recap of the events in the first two books. 1500 years in the future, humans are fighting an intergalactic war against an alien species called the Ketts. They're gelatinous and blob-like in appearance, extremely difficult to kill, and have an appetite for human flesh. Earth as we know it was destroyed 1500 years earlier when an alien race that had been friendly to and allied with the humans, called the Lurkawathians, suddenly turned on them. They began exterminating humans en masse before retreating to the stars from which they came. The Lurkers, as they are known by humans, left behind defunct technology and weapons from their time on Earth. But there's a caveat - only a Lurker can utilize any of it. The heroines from the first two books

Spoiler

including Shelby by extension

came from a planet that surviving humans had settled on following the near genocide that took place on Earth, and are part of a military team that land on Earth with a single purpose -

Spoiler

find working Lurker technology to utilize in the war against the Ketts

.

Unfortunately, when they arrive, they soon discover they are not alone. An alien species known as nagas, which appear to be humanoid snake men, have taken over the planet in the humans' and Lurkers' absence. Zaku, the King Cobra

Spoiler

and the H in the second book

is the first to approach the humans and facilitates a bargain with the captain of the team, Peter. In exchange for simplistic Lurker technology

Spoiler

that only the nagas seem to have access to and are able to use

, Peter agrees to give the nagas three of his female team members

Spoiler

which were Gemma in the first book and Daisy in the second book

. However, when the exchange took place on the plateau, the third woman - Shelby - was not present. According to her co-worker and one of the men who facilitated the exchange, Collins, Shelby had discovered she was pregnant with his child and gestating. This made Shelby ineligible for the exchange, but a certain naga doesn't take Shelby's absence very well...

Fast forward to the start of this book. Shelby is excavating underneath the ruins of the facility in which their team has landed, hoping to find remnants of Lurker tech and/or weapons. The events from the previous book have fueled her hatred for Peter

Spoiler

because she not only believes Daisy died, she places that death squarely on her shoulders, because she encouraged Daisy to escape and Peter made the call that got her killed

and her frustration at Collins

Spoiler

because Collins has aspirations of being a captain one day, and he adamantly refuses to openly defy Peter or even alert their Central Command to the exchange he conducted with the nagas

. And to make matters worse, Peter keeps pressuring her to take more tests to confirm her pregnancy

Spoiler

subtly implying that if she turns out not to be pregnant, she'll be tossed to the nagas in the surrounding wilderness

. What Peter doesn't know is that Shelby not only isn't pregnant

Spoiler

and physically can't get pregnant anyway, due to a hysterectomy

, but Collins has a hand in furthering the lie

Spoiler

that Shelby told in an effort to spare herself from whatever fate awaited Gemma and Daisy after the exchange, by doctoring pregnancy tests. This in turn makes her feel incredibly guilty because she knowingly lied and she's stressed that this lie will eventually come back to bite her

. Shelby and Collins are discussing their predicament when the excavation site suddenly shakes uncontrollably, causing the ground to cave in. Shelby is spared from near death when a certain naga rescues her just as they fall through the Earth...

Enter the h, Vagan. A blue coral snake, he first spotted Shelby when the team landed on Earth. Her eyes

Spoiler

which mimicked his own blue coloration, and which he would later discover were surgically implanted after her own eyes were removed, and allow her to see and record things otherwise hidden

captivated him, and he has coveted her ever since. So it's easy to picture how enraged he became when the exchange took place at the plateau, and Shelby was not among the females presented to the nagas. This obsession almost immediately morphed into insanity that came to a violent head

Spoiler

when he breaks into Zaku's castle in the second book and attempts to hold Daisy hostage until he can get Shelby, which results in Daisy stabbing him repeatedly in the stomach and Zaku nearly finishing the job

, but soon Vagan finds Shelby at the excavation site, where he keeps a watchful eye on her. After rescuing her, Vagan and Shelby find themselves deeper underground than she thought was possible. Collins survival from the cave-in and his joining with them causes tensions to rise between all three, and soon it becomes clear to Collins and Vagan that only one of them can have Shelby...

There's a lot of back and forth and out-right competition between Collins and Vagan when it comes to Shelby. Both vie for her affections and both believe they are worthier of her than the other. And Shelby, to her credit, doesn't let any of it slide. She's quick to put the both of them in their place when they get out of line

Spoiler

even going as far as to make Vagan promise her that he won't kill Collins, because despite everything, Collins is still a close friend to her and as she later puts it, the closest thing she has to family

. Vagan's possessiveness of Shelby is a given, since he has been smitten with her since he first saw her when their team landed on Earth. And some of Collins' dialogue is almost uncomfortably possessive, and it becomes clear that he's head over heels in love with Shelby

Spoiler

and even clearer that Shelby doesn't reciprocate his feelings

. At first, I didn't see the point of the bickering and fighting between the Vagan and Collins

Spoiler

considering Shelby admits that her relationship with Collins was contractual, she has no romantic feelings for him, and was not interesting in being in a relationship with him again after their assignment

, and I half expected one of them to pull the "if I can't have her, no one can" card, but I was not expecting the ending that we got.

Their findings in the underground facility are what led me to shelf this as a horror story, because what they discovered and the events afterwards were truly horrific in nature.

Spoiler

Shelby, momentarily separated from Collins and Vagan, takes an elevator that leads her to an underground bio-dome containing a dense forest. She thinks she's safe, until a living Lurkawathian finds her and nearly kills her before Vagan rescues her. Later, when Collins rejoins them and they venture to another part of the facility away from the forest containing the Lurker, Collins finds an orb containing video footage of human scientists experimenting with a chemical substance called Genesis 8, and Vagan watches over his unaware shoulder. The last experiment was done on a human male, Patrick Holds, and both watch in horror as he transforms into a Lurker after being injected and goes on a murderous rampage. Holds was later cited as the first and only human male to survive the injection of Genesis 8 (every female injected died shortly after), and the origins of the nagas existence is revealed - they were created by splicing human DNA, reptilian DNA and Lurker DNA, which makes them part Lurker and thus capable of utilizing Lurker tech and weapons. Shelby discovers all of this herself, using her eyes to decrypt a file on nagas she finds on an old computer. The implications of revealing her findings are not lost on her - the nagas would be hunted down and likely killed for their potential and abilities, and it becomes an outcome she wishes to avoid completely, even at the cost of humans losing the war against the Ketts.

And if that wasn't horrifying enough, Collins eventually snaps and makes a decision that irreversibly alters his life forever

Spoiler

by injecting himself with Genesis 8, much like how Patrick Holds was injected, after witnessing Shelby and Vagan having sex. The transformation affects his thinking, and in a moment of weakness, he attacks Shelby by ripping at her clothes and physically biting off a chunk of flesh from her arm. After several attempts to kill him, Collins eventually awakens long after Shelby and Vagan have made it to the surface. Although he's now a full Lurkawathian, he still has his memories from when he was a human. He reminisces that he only injected himself because he wanted to be good enough for Shelby, he wanted her to feel for him the way he felt for her. The end results were disastrous, and honestly, it was hard not to feel sorry for him. He genuinely cared for Shelby, he wanted to be with her, and ultimately he was unable to accept that she didn't feel the same for him. Seeing her and Vagan having sex sent him over the edge, which caused him to inject the Genesis 8 into his chest. But in a great show of development on his part, Collins concedes that Shelby is better off with Vagan, and he's eternally grateful that Vagan was able to do what he was not - get Shelby to the surface and save her life. By the end of the chapter, Collins is clawing his way out of the Earth from which they fell through, hellbent on finding Peter and making him suffer for everything he set into motion.

By the time they find rescue

Spoiler

in the form of Gemma, Vruksha, and Krellix outside of the tunnel that collapsed on them

, Shelby learns that their ship, the Dreadnought, left Earth shortly after the cave-in, effectively stranding her. While it gives her the potential to build a future with Vagan, it doesn't erase what happened to all of them.

Spoiler

By this time, Collins is clawing his way out of the tunnel and onto the surface, hellbent on destroying Peter for what he did, and I believe the assumption is the Dreadnought left Earth for good.

The book ends with a short blurb about the start of the next arc, Death Adder. While it's really short, it explains that a ship touches down near Zhallaix's den to the south west

Spoiler

with a woman on board, surrounded by soldiers

. It could be assumed that this ship is the Dreadnought, and since Zhallaix has an aversion to technology in any form, he wouldn't know what the Dreadnought looked like because he didn't meet with the humans, he wasn't on the plateau and he was not included in the exchange from the first book.

Overall, I give this a 5/5 stars. The story is really coming together, and I'm anxious to see how Lucas is able to humanize Zhallaix, whom appeared as a monstrous individual with a horrible past.

lisa_readsromance's review

5.0

THIS IS MY ABSOLUTE FAVE BOOK IN THE SERIES!!!

Loved Shelby and Vagan!!

I loved that Shelby was portrayed as a black woman (or maybe that is just how I read her). Whatever it was great. I hated the way she wanted to be colin's salvation, like lets BFFR dude sucked and you should have cut ties the momment you knew your feelings even if you were denying them..or idk when he wanted to murder the very person who saved your freaking life, just saying. Dude was dead weight. Also The frack was with her not eating...like huh!! But all in all my fav story and couple.

VAGAN HAD MY HEART...WOULD HAVE LET HIM KEEP ME ANY DAY...HAHA!!!