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kzimm2024's review
4.0
This was a scorcher. Apparently Eris has many genres she writes from since I went from contemporary to Vampire fantasy to Other Worlds fantasy.
And as I struggled with the names and language (I eventually got it so its not that hard), it seemed like everyone but the 2 main characters were getting action. Warning to some: pretty intense F/F scenes (like more than 1) and the others are M/F.
I liked the world, the different people, but some things were a little vague. Like- how did we get to 2 weeks until the eclipse and then we were at 2 days? The timelines did not add up very well at the end.
Who in the world is Fish and why didn't we see much interaction with him the next day? Instead he randomly pops in.
And man, I was so disappointed to learn it was not a stand alone book. It ended well enough tying up some loose ends but I would have had Bellora come clean about the blackmail and get that little issue solved. Unless she didn't WANT too...hmmm
I think it was written in 2017? So not sure if I should hold out for the series to continue. Oh well.
And as I struggled with the names and language (I eventually got it so its not that hard), it seemed like everyone but the 2 main characters were getting action. Warning to some: pretty intense F/F scenes (like more than 1) and the others are M/F.
I liked the world, the different people, but some things were a little vague. Like- how did we get to 2 weeks until the eclipse and then we were at 2 days? The timelines did not add up very well at the end.
Who in the world is Fish and why didn't we see much interaction with him the next day? Instead he randomly pops in.
And man, I was so disappointed to learn it was not a stand alone book. It ended well enough tying up some loose ends but I would have had Bellora come clean about the blackmail and get that little issue solved. Unless she didn't WANT too...hmmm
I think it was written in 2017? So not sure if I should hold out for the series to continue. Oh well.
andypeloquinauthor's review
5.0
I found this to be a HIGHLY engaging read, one of the best fantasy novels I've read this year.
Make no mistake: I'm not real big on sex/erotica in novels, and this had it in spades. Perhaps a tad too much focus on the sex and all for my tastes, without as much focus on the story.
But the world is bright, colorful, engaging, and well-described, with vivid details that make it an absolutely enthralling read. The backstories are interesting, and I was so disappointed that I didn't get to find out more about the antagonists and protagonists. Thankfully, there will be two more books for me to get more details on what's going on.
If you like fantasy and erotica, this is a book you'll definitely enjoy!
Make no mistake: I'm not real big on sex/erotica in novels, and this had it in spades. Perhaps a tad too much focus on the sex and all for my tastes, without as much focus on the story.
But the world is bright, colorful, engaging, and well-described, with vivid details that make it an absolutely enthralling read. The backstories are interesting, and I was so disappointed that I didn't get to find out more about the antagonists and protagonists. Thankfully, there will be two more books for me to get more details on what's going on.
If you like fantasy and erotica, this is a book you'll definitely enjoy!
serialromancelibrarian's review
5.0
A Different World
Edit: *reread and changed to 5 stars
This author has a wonderful imagination. This book was interesting, however I skimmed a bit as some of the plot seemed disjointed to me. We have a multitude of characters yet they don’t have the level of depth that other Adderly books develop. I am reading everything by this author. This romance is sweet. I like the pragmatism of the heroine. The hero is a real gentleman. It’s an interesting premise, but didn’t hold my interest quite as much as some of her other novels.
Edit: *reread and changed to 5 stars
This author has a wonderful imagination. This book was interesting, however I skimmed a bit as some of the plot seemed disjointed to me. We have a multitude of characters yet they don’t have the level of depth that other Adderly books develop. I am reading everything by this author. This romance is sweet. I like the pragmatism of the heroine. The hero is a real gentleman. It’s an interesting premise, but didn’t hold my interest quite as much as some of her other novels.
see_sadie_read's review
3.0
Ho, I found this book beyond frustrating. Because I almost loved it. I would have loved it, except the sex! Now, before anyone calls me a prude and asks me why I'm reading sexy fantasy if I don't like sex in my books, let me say I have no problem with sex. I read quite a lot of it. Outside of the rapes (which I do generally try to avoid in the books I read for fun and sometimes get pissy about), I don't even have a problem with any single element of the sex in this book. It's just that the sex the book contains doesn't AT ALL fit the story the book is telling.
The first one is full on m/f master/slave kink play with spanking, anal pegging and anal sex. Involving a character we'd just met long enough to have a work conversation going home to have sex with his wife, who is only introduced for the purposes of him having sex with her (and she basically isn't in the book in any meaningful way after). Nothing in the book, up until that point, was even remotely erotic. The scene literally came out of nowhere. I spent that whole VERY LONG sex scene (12 pages) wondering what the point of it was. The characters were not important ones. The reader wasn't invested in them or their relationship. The sex wasn't stitched into the plot. The whole thing was jarring and out of place.
The second scene was a m/f gang rape. The third was coerced f/f sex, in which one was straight and the other basically owned her. The fourth was (m/f) forced fellatio, so rape. The fifth was another f/f scene, in which the previously straight woman ostensibly entered willingly, but only because she was told someone would kill her nieces if she didn't seduce the other woman—so, basically another coerced scene. And the last was finally a sweet, gently love scene between the main characters (the only sex scene between the main characters).
The point I'm making is that the main couple basically have a very sweet VERY LOW STEAM romance and then the author shoved all this jarring, unpleasant sex into the plot with other characters. They didn't fit together even a little bit. It's not even that they were badly written. They weren't. It just felt like the author took the sex scenes she wrote for an entirely different book and shoehorned them into this one in order to make it steamier and IT RUINED THE BOOK.
I can't even reason that maybe she was trying to create a purposeful contradiction because nothing in the story or plot supports it. So, I'm just left scratching my head and super frustrated.
Outside of the ruinous sex, I really enjoyed this book. I liked the characters. The world is complex and multilayered. There's some humor. The writing and editing is good. I would have 5 stared this book if the author hadn't forced it from fantasy romance into erotic fantasy. (Not erotica necessarily. The sex isn't the point of the plot. But definitely a higher erotic rating that the story needed or, more importantly, supported.)
The first one is full on m/f master/slave kink play with spanking, anal pegging and anal sex. Involving a character we'd just met long enough to have a work conversation going home to have sex with his wife, who is only introduced for the purposes of him having sex with her (and she basically isn't in the book in any meaningful way after). Nothing in the book, up until that point, was even remotely erotic. The scene literally came out of nowhere. I spent that whole VERY LONG sex scene (12 pages) wondering what the point of it was. The characters were not important ones. The reader wasn't invested in them or their relationship. The sex wasn't stitched into the plot. The whole thing was jarring and out of place.
The second scene was a m/f gang rape. The third was coerced f/f sex, in which one was straight and the other basically owned her. The fourth was (m/f) forced fellatio, so rape. The fifth was another f/f scene, in which the previously straight woman ostensibly entered willingly, but only because she was told someone would kill her nieces if she didn't seduce the other woman—so, basically another coerced scene. And the last was finally a sweet, gently love scene between the main characters (the only sex scene between the main characters).
The point I'm making is that the main couple basically have a very sweet VERY LOW STEAM romance and then the author shoved all this jarring, unpleasant sex into the plot with other characters. They didn't fit together even a little bit. It's not even that they were badly written. They weren't. It just felt like the author took the sex scenes she wrote for an entirely different book and shoehorned them into this one in order to make it steamier and IT RUINED THE BOOK.
I can't even reason that maybe she was trying to create a purposeful contradiction because nothing in the story or plot supports it. So, I'm just left scratching my head and super frustrated.
Outside of the ruinous sex, I really enjoyed this book. I liked the characters. The world is complex and multilayered. There's some humor. The writing and editing is good. I would have 5 stared this book if the author hadn't forced it from fantasy romance into erotic fantasy. (Not erotica necessarily. The sex isn't the point of the plot. But definitely a higher erotic rating that the story needed or, more importantly, supported.)
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