Scan barcode
ednam0dewannabe's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Sexual content
Moderate: Blood and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Sexual harassment, Death, and War
mx_manda's review
4.0
Another anthology to rate! I will rate each story individually and average for the collection.
01: Drashar Aquatic Aliens of Sa'thulia by Harpie Alexander
3 stars. Not a bad start.
02: Ecstasy From The Deep-A Verona Mate Novelette-by Octavia Kore
✏︎ So many typosand massive formatting issues* with this story that were mostly missing from the others. This is a first offering from this writing pair, so I understand they're still learning the ropes, but it's super distracting to be reading a story and mid-way through a sentence the next word shows up a line lower and indented like a new paragraph. It happened so many times in here.
*It was brought to my attention the the formatting issues were not the fault of the authors but the formatter for the collection. There is one formatting error I caught in another story, but they all congregated in this one.
✏︎ Every character in this story makes no sense at all. We have a TSTL hero with a TSTL heroine and...it just wasn't enjoyable to read. Why does everyone want to feed me idiot sandwiches? Someone has to be somewhat sensible for these tales to work. Then he has a moronic bro who is mostly MIA except when conveniently most needed, and she has a hyper-aggressive bff who is a nurse of all things? I don't know. Nothing in these two pairings and dynamics worked for me. There's a lot of forced, "but oh, we mustn't!" going on in here that dragged out what could have been a much shorter story. My favorite character was the rapey Grutex in the beginning—described as a dragonfruit/Xenomorph hybrid—who at least had a good OTT Alpha talking game going. It was a shame he died so quickly.
This whole story feels like a first attempt at mimicking standard 150 page SFR fare. Which it was. I will definitely check back in with this writing pair after they have a few more stories under their belts and see how they develop.
2 stars: it didn't kill me to read, but I risked rolling my eyes out.
03: Opportunity's Chase-by Dani Morrison
This is the story of Natlea—an "augmented" human being—and Yael the Swift—an aquatic alien species called the Dyriixian, and man of mystery. We get dumped right into the middle of the action, one year into Yael's aggressive multi-planet pursuit of Natlea, his unsuspecting fiancee who keeps running despite being seriously attracted to him. It turns out that Natlea decided to skip all of the cultural seminars about their host planet and agreed to honor all of the customs she didn't bother to learn. WHOOPS? When the charming Yael gifts her with a tiny pearl, she has no idea that by accepting it she agrees to bond with him and goes on the run, shaming her human employers and screwing herself out her job in the process. Once Yael finally catches her and she stops running, they consummate the bonding. And that's when things get more confusing for her as she finally sees the full picture of what's going on and figures out who Yael really is.
This tale ends as abruptly as it begins, and we're left to speculate what will happen to the pair with a big event looming in front of them, but they both seem happy with the arrangement now that they're on the same page.
4.5 stars. Thank you for something completely different than I was expecting.
04: Sirei in Exile-A New Sirenx Romance -by SJ Sanders
This is a dystopian SFR story, but less horror and more sweet like SJ's Mate Index series. It follows the Sirei—a species who lost their homeward to a cataclysmic event 6 generations ago—and the new, much more water filled Earth—after a cataclysmic event has all but done away with larger land masses—that most of humanity is struggling to adapt to living on.
After 6 generations traveling space looking for a new homeward, the Sirei are dying out and no longer care if they exhaust their resources. Only 30% are mated, those matches are having difficulty breeding young, and they're all suffering from depression. At the very last minute for one of the pods—the one commanded by Ji'wa, a very reluctant captain—a suitable planet has been found. With no time to do further analysis, they set off the chain of events that will get the Sirei established in their new water-rich home. They know there are sentient beings on the larger land masses, but what will they find on the rocky islands that are necessary for their own survival?
Terra escaped the dangers of the floating city and has her own little island paradise. If only it would be kinder and stop trying to kill her. She's scraping by, but at least she's free. Survival is hard if you're on your own, and it's even worse for a woman due to size and strength disadvantages. If only the deeper water weren't full of massive nightmare creatures, she could bulk up her food stores and expend more energy on improving other parts of her life. Terra spends most of her time we're able to see trying to find food then fighting to eat said food. One day as she's shucking oysters, a fireball crashes into the waters not far from her home, sending a tsunami her way. After things calm and she goes out to explore, she sees something intriguing in the water and things play out from there.
I would love to see species art for the Sirei, since my mind kept thinking of some sort of a sea dragon with the tail and flaming billowing fins.
My biggest complaints about this story are due to the limited length. I think this would have been better as a full length book, and I hope that someday it will be expanded upon, because I really enjoyed what we were given here. But the conflict and resolution are really rushed compared to the pacing for the rest of the story, and the conflict came rather out of the blue.
4 stars, would read more of this series.
05: Under The Lake-by Diana Rose Wilson
This story reminds me a bit of Peggy Barnett's Lips Like Ice for reasons we'll get to in a minute.
We are introduced to the main characters after a violent conflict with parties unknown, and Darcy is trying to piece together what happened. She's heart broken and trying to work through exactly why that was and trying to understand why she was attacked by some men who were looking for her odd duck cousin who left her his house and property about a month ago. Some of the sedatives used while healing her up have left her memory fragmented. Things quickly become clear and we meet our other main character.
Wharkuz. Now, Wharkuz and his species are interesting. They start off as non-gendered/non-sexed "neutrals" and mature into male, female, or dual-aspect adults. But something went wrong with Wharkuz's maturation—his body never produced the hormones necessary to complete his transition— and while he is male gendered, he's non-sexed and viewed as a child despite being an of-age adult. He has the anatomy of a Ken doll.
OUCH.
And while Whar can feel affection, attachment, and a more innocent love, he lacks the hormones and drive for sexual desire. Which causes a huge problem for him and Darcy. While Darcy is of the pansexual persuasion and is painfully into Whar on all levels, he's unable to reciprocate in a sexual manner and it causes a lot of contention between them. Darcy wants to find where exactly the line is and get as much as she can from her relationship with Whar, and he's uncomfortable with things veering into territory that's not intended for him—but he's unwilling to stop seeing Darcy either, as he loves her dearly too. After she kisses him, they both fall seriously ill, and things get a lot more interesting from there.
Fans self. It gets really, really hot after Whar wakes up and a little light is shed on why he was ill.
✏︎ Minor niggle: Darcy is a veterinarian but doesn't know the difference between a virus and bacteria. She also should know that colds do not involve fevers, but keeps insisting her ailment is a cold anyway. It drove me absolutely batty. We never find out what she was infected with or if it was even important, but given that the commander she talks to specifically asked how she was feeling and hinted it was significant, it must have been.
I would have loved more of this story and
4.5 stars. I want more of this, thank you.
06: Waves of Desire -by Charity Wells
3 stars. Any more idiot sandwiches and I'm going to be sick.
Overall collection rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up.
I enjoyed the diversity in this collection and wish there had been a bit more, but it's overall a solid set of reads.
01: Drashar Aquatic Aliens of Sa'thulia by Harpie Alexander
Spoiler
Raschelle—an average bartender from a space ship—and Drashar—a solitary and lonely purple and green jellyfish-esque male— come together when Raschelle is attacked by another creature from his planet and he's compelled to save and nurse her back to health rather than eat her. But...inadvertently traps her in an underwater cavern. They come together over the course of several days, maybe a little over a week? Time was hard to gauge in this story because...underwater cavern with no daylight cues to count on. Then it skips ahead a couple of months to show them in a comfortable and amicable relationship/routine. This story looks like it will be expanded with another offering, but what was here is sweet and cute, despite how potentially lethal Drashar and his feeding arms are. It was enjoyable, but pretty standard SFR formulaic romance.3 stars. Not a bad start.
02: Ecstasy From The Deep-A Verona Mate Novelette-by Octavia Kore
Spoiler
Oh, dear. Where to even begin with this mess?✏︎ So many typos
*It was brought to my attention the the formatting issues were not the fault of the authors but the formatter for the collection. There is one formatting error I caught in another story, but they all congregated in this one.
✏︎ Every character in this story makes no sense at all. We have a TSTL hero with a TSTL heroine and...it just wasn't enjoyable to read. Why does everyone want to feed me idiot sandwiches? Someone has to be somewhat sensible for these tales to work. Then he has a moronic bro who is mostly MIA except when conveniently most needed, and she has a hyper-aggressive bff who is a nurse of all things? I don't know. Nothing in these two pairings and dynamics worked for me. There's a lot of forced, "but oh, we mustn't!" going on in here that dragged out what could have been a much shorter story. My favorite character was the rapey Grutex in the beginning—described as a dragonfruit/Xenomorph hybrid—who at least had a good OTT Alpha talking game going. It was a shame he died so quickly.
This whole story feels like a first attempt at mimicking standard 150 page SFR fare. Which it was. I will definitely check back in with this writing pair after they have a few more stories under their belts and see how they develop.
2 stars: it didn't kill me to read, but I risked rolling my eyes out.
03: Opportunity's Chase-by Dani Morrison
Spoiler
This was one of my favorite stories in the anthology, because it deviates so far from the standard SFR formula and tone that it was engaging to read. It was refreshing and unexpected. I will be revisiting it in the future to see what else I can absorb from further readings, since I'm sure I missed some clues in my first reading. If you need everything spelled out from the beginning, this story will be hard to follow. You have to pay attention to it and piece things together, which is tricky, given what we learn about Dyriixian nature later in the story. You can't always trust dialogue.This is the story of Natlea—an "augmented" human being—and Yael the Swift—an aquatic alien species called the Dyriixian, and man of mystery. We get dumped right into the middle of the action, one year into Yael's aggressive multi-planet pursuit of Natlea, his unsuspecting fiancee who keeps running despite being seriously attracted to him. It turns out that Natlea decided to skip all of the cultural seminars about their host planet and agreed to honor all of the customs she didn't bother to learn. WHOOPS? When the charming Yael gifts her with a tiny pearl, she has no idea that by accepting it she agrees to bond with him and goes on the run, shaming her human employers and screwing herself out her job in the process. Once Yael finally catches her and she stops running, they consummate the bonding. And that's when things get more confusing for her as she finally sees the full picture of what's going on and figures out who Yael really is.
This tale ends as abruptly as it begins, and we're left to speculate what will happen to the pair with a big event looming in front of them, but they both seem happy with the arrangement now that they're on the same page.
4.5 stars. Thank you for something completely different than I was expecting.
04: Sirei in Exile-A New Sirenx Romance -by SJ Sanders
Spoiler
Let's face it, most of us came here because we knew SJ wrote a story and wanted to see what it was all about. I was expecting her to be the star of the collection but was surprised to find she was upper mid-pack this time. (Which I think says a lot about the caliper of the collection and is not meant as a dig on her.)This is a dystopian SFR story, but less horror and more sweet like SJ's Mate Index series. It follows the Sirei—a species who lost their homeward to a cataclysmic event 6 generations ago—and the new, much more water filled Earth—after a cataclysmic event has all but done away with larger land masses—that most of humanity is struggling to adapt to living on.
After 6 generations traveling space looking for a new homeward, the Sirei are dying out and no longer care if they exhaust their resources. Only 30% are mated, those matches are having difficulty breeding young, and they're all suffering from depression. At the very last minute for one of the pods—the one commanded by Ji'wa, a very reluctant captain—a suitable planet has been found. With no time to do further analysis, they set off the chain of events that will get the Sirei established in their new water-rich home. They know there are sentient beings on the larger land masses, but what will they find on the rocky islands that are necessary for their own survival?
Terra escaped the dangers of the floating city and has her own little island paradise. If only it would be kinder and stop trying to kill her. She's scraping by, but at least she's free. Survival is hard if you're on your own, and it's even worse for a woman due to size and strength disadvantages. If only the deeper water weren't full of massive nightmare creatures, she could bulk up her food stores and expend more energy on improving other parts of her life. Terra spends most of her time we're able to see trying to find food then fighting to eat said food. One day as she's shucking oysters, a fireball crashes into the waters not far from her home, sending a tsunami her way. After things calm and she goes out to explore, she sees something intriguing in the water and things play out from there.
I would love to see species art for the Sirei, since my mind kept thinking of some sort of a sea dragon with the tail and flaming billowing fins.
My biggest complaints about this story are due to the limited length. I think this would have been better as a full length book, and I hope that someday it will be expanded upon, because I really enjoyed what we were given here. But the conflict and resolution are really rushed compared to the pacing for the rest of the story, and the conflict came rather out of the blue.
4 stars, would read more of this series.
05: Under The Lake-by Diana Rose Wilson
Spoiler
This was my other favorite story in the collection, likely because it too strayed from the expected SFR formula and tone and did something interesting with the space allotted to it.This story reminds me a bit of Peggy Barnett's Lips Like Ice for reasons we'll get to in a minute.
We are introduced to the main characters after a violent conflict with parties unknown, and Darcy is trying to piece together what happened. She's heart broken and trying to work through exactly why that was and trying to understand why she was attacked by some men who were looking for her odd duck cousin who left her his house and property about a month ago. Some of the sedatives used while healing her up have left her memory fragmented. Things quickly become clear and we meet our other main character.
Wharkuz. Now, Wharkuz and his species are interesting. They start off as non-gendered/non-sexed "neutrals" and mature into male, female, or dual-aspect adults. But something went wrong with Wharkuz's maturation—his body never produced the hormones necessary to complete his transition— and while he is male gendered, he's non-sexed and viewed as a child despite being an of-age adult. He has the anatomy of a Ken doll.
OUCH.
And while Whar can feel affection, attachment, and a more innocent love, he lacks the hormones and drive for sexual desire. Which causes a huge problem for him and Darcy. While Darcy is of the pansexual persuasion and is painfully into Whar on all levels, he's unable to reciprocate in a sexual manner and it causes a lot of contention between them. Darcy wants to find where exactly the line is and get as much as she can from her relationship with Whar, and he's uncomfortable with things veering into territory that's not intended for him—but he's unwilling to stop seeing Darcy either, as he loves her dearly too. After she kisses him, they both fall seriously ill, and things get a lot more interesting from there.
Fans self. It gets really, really hot after Whar wakes up and a little light is shed on why he was ill.
✏︎ Minor niggle: Darcy is a veterinarian but doesn't know the difference between a virus and bacteria. She also should know that colds do not involve fevers, but keeps insisting her ailment is a cold anyway. It drove me absolutely batty. We never find out what she was infected with or if it was even important, but given that the commander she talks to specifically asked how she was feeling and hinted it was significant, it must have been.
I would have loved more of this story and
Spoiler
newly matured Whar is hot as hell. OMG. I was not expecting that given how mild mannered he was before the hormones came in. I love how delighted he was to finally be able to act on those more innocent feelings.4.5 stars. I want more of this, thank you.
06: Waves of Desire -by Charity Wells
Spoiler
Sigh. Another bland formulaic SFR. We have to instantly smitten and rather adorable main character who has a tail, fins, and golden eyes. We have the TSTL heroine who seems way too young to be doing her job and is grossly inept at it and keeps almost dying in the process of simple tasks. He stalks her, viewing it as romantic gestures. She denies her attraction for the sake of it despite the fact that there's literally no one to judge her for it. She has no personality except mood swings to be cranky about stupid small things. Rando rapey asshole shows up and... sea monsters. Yeah, that's about it. Was definitely underwhelmed by this one. It was entertaining but nothing special.3 stars. Any more idiot sandwiches and I'm going to be sick.
Overall collection rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up.
I enjoyed the diversity in this collection and wish there had been a bit more, but it's overall a solid set of reads.
poplora's review
2.0
So some stories were alright, some were definitely not my thing and I skipped because they grossed me out, one made me hopeful and then super sad :(
The one that I was hopeful about features an asexual (at first) intersex (at first) love interest. And then we have an MC whose pressuring the poor dude for sex when he really does not want it. Then it's magically fixed just so the MC can have sex. It says multiple times in there that sex /= love but man. :( I was so hopeful for accepting somebody as they are but no lmao. Had to be 'fixed' so that they could have a normal regular relationship. Go figure lol
The one that I was hopeful about features an asexual (at first) intersex (at first) love interest. And then we have an MC whose pressuring the poor dude for sex when he really does not want it. Then it's magically fixed just so the MC can have sex. It says multiple times in there that sex /= love but man. :( I was so hopeful for accepting somebody as they are but no lmao. Had to be 'fixed' so that they could have a normal regular relationship. Go figure lol
rivensbane's review
2.0
CAWPILE rating: 2.7/10
STAR rating: ★★
The quality of each short story varies - most of them were just meh, others were quite bad.
I think I also need to give up on standalone short stories/anthologies bc I don't seem to gel with the format; like my fiction a little longer and better-developed.
STAR rating: ★★
The quality of each short story varies - most of them were just meh, others were quite bad.
I think I also need to give up on standalone short stories/anthologies bc I don't seem to gel with the format; like my fiction a little longer and better-developed.
amanda_p's review
4.0
Another anthology to rate! I will rate each story individually and average for the collection.
01: Drashar Aquatic Aliens of Sa'thulia by Harpie Alexander
Raschelle—an average bartender from a space ship—and Drashar—a solitary and lonely purple and green jellyfish-esque male— come together when Raschelle is attacked by another creature from his planet and he's compelled to save and nurse her back to health rather than eat her. But...inadvertently traps her in an underwater cavern. They come together over the course of several days, maybe a little over a week? Time was hard to gauge in this story because...underwater cavern with no daylight cues to count on. Then it skips ahead a couple of months to show them in a comfortable and amicable relationship/routine. This story looks like it will be expanded with another offering, but what was here is sweet and cute, despite how potentially lethal Drashar and his feeding arms are. It was enjoyable, but pretty standard SFR formulaic romance.
3 stars. Not a bad start.
02: Ecstasy From The Deep-A Verona Mate Novelette-by Octavia Kore
Oh, dear. Where to even begin with this mess?
✏︎ So many typosand massive formatting issues* with this story that were mostly missing from the others. This is a first offering from this writing pair, so I understand they're still learning the ropes, but it's super distracting to be reading a story and mid-way through a sentence the next word shows up a line lower and indented like a new paragraph. It happened so many times in here.
*It was brought to my attention the the formatting issues were not the fault of the authors but the formatter for the collection. There is one formatting error I caught in another story, but they all congregated in this one.
✏︎ Every character in this story makes no sense at all. We have a TSTL hero with a TSTL heroine and...it just wasn't enjoyable to read. Why does everyone want to feed me idiot sandwiches? Someone has to be somewhat sensible for these tales to work. Then he has a moronic bro who is mostly MIA except when conveniently most needed, and she has a hyper-aggressive bff who is a nurse of all things? I don't know. Nothing in these two pairings and dynamics worked for me. There's a lot of forced, "but oh, we mustn't!" going on in here that dragged out what could have been a much shorter story. My favorite character was the rapey Grutex in the beginning—described as a dragonfruit/Xenomorph hybrid—who at least had a good OTT Alpha talking game going. It was a shame he died so quickly.
This whole story feels like a first attempt at mimicking standard 150 page SFR fare. Which it was. I will definitely check back in with this writing pair after they have a few more stories under their belts and see how they develop.
2 stars: it didn't kill me to read, but I risked rolling my eyes out.
03: Opportunity's Chase-by Dani Morrison
This was one of my favorite stories in the anthology, because it deviates so far from the standard SFR formula and tone that it was engaging to read. It was refreshing and unexpected. I will be revisiting it in the future to see what else I can absorb from further readings, since I'm sure I missed some clues in my first reading. If you need everything spelled out from the beginning, this story will be hard to follow. You have to pay attention to it and piece things together, which is tricky, given what we learn about Dyriixian nature later in the story. You can't always trust dialogue.
This is the story of Natlea—an "augmented" human being—and Yael the Swift—an aquatic alien species called the Dyriixian, and man of mystery. We get dumped right into the middle of the action, one year into Yael's aggressive multi-planet pursuit of Natlea, his unsuspecting fiancee who keeps running despite being seriously attracted to him. It turns out that Natlea decided to skip all of the cultural seminars about their host planet and agreed to honor all of the customs she didn't bother to learn. WHOOPS? When the charming Yael gifts her with a tiny pearl, she has no idea that by accepting it she agrees to bond with him and goes on the run, shaming her human employers and screwing herself out her job in the process. Once Yael finally catches her and she stops running, they consummate the bonding. And that's when things get more confusing for her as she finally sees the full picture of what's going on and figures out who Yael really is.
This tale ends as abruptly as it begins, and we're left to speculate what will happen to the pair with a big event looming in front of them, but they both seem happy with the arrangement now that they're on the same page.
4.5 stars. Thank you for something completely different than I was expecting.
04: Sirei in Exile-A New Sirenx Romance -by SJ Sanders
Let's face it, most of us came here because we knew SJ wrote a story and wanted to see what it was all about. I was expecting her to be the star of the collection but was surprised to find she was upper mid-pack this time. (Which I think says a lot about the caliper of the collection and is not meant as a dig on her.)
This is a dystopian SFR story, but less horror and more sweet like SJ's Mate Index series. It follows the Sirei—a species who lost their homeward to a cataclysmic event 6 generations ago—and the new, much more water filled Earth—after a cataclysmic event has all but done away with larger land masses—that most of humanity is struggling to adapt to living on.
After 6 generations traveling space looking for a new homeward, the Sirei are dying out and no longer care if they exhaust their resources. Only 30% are mated, those matches are having difficulty breeding young, and they're all suffering from depression. At the very last minute for one of the pods—the one commanded by Ji'wa, a very reluctant captain—a suitable planet has been found. With no time to do further analysis, they set off the chain of events that will get the Sirei established in their new water-rich home. They know there are sentient beings on the larger land masses, but what will they find on the rocky islands that are necessary for their own survival?
Terra escaped the dangers of the floating city and has her own little island paradise. If only it would be kinder and stop trying to kill her. She's scraping by, but at least she's free. Survival is hard if you're on your own, and it's even worse for a woman due to size and strength disadvantages. If only the deeper water weren't full of massive nightmare creatures, she could bulk up her food stores and expend more energy on improving other parts of her life. Terra spends most of her time we're able to see trying to find food then fighting to eat said food. One day as she's shucking oysters, a fireball crashes into the waters not far from her home, sending a tsunami her way. After things calm and she goes out to explore, she sees something intriguing in the water and things play out from there.
I would love to see species art for the Sirei, since my mind kept thinking of some sort of a sea dragon with the tail and flaming billowing fins.
My biggest complaints about this story are due to the limited length. I think this would have been better as a full length book, and I hope that someday it will be expanded upon, because I really enjoyed what we were given here. But the conflict and resolution are really rushed compared to the pacing for the rest of the story, and the conflict came rather out of the blue.
4 stars, would read more of this series.
05: Under The Lake-by Diana Rose Wilson
This was my other favorite story in the collection, likely because it too strayed from the expected SFR formula and tone and did something interesting with the space allotted to it.
This story reminds me a bit of Peggy Barnett's Lips Like Ice for reasons we'll get to in a minute.
We are introduced to the main characters after a violent conflict with parties unknown, and Darcy is trying to piece together what happened. She's heart broken and trying to work through exactly why that was and trying to understand why she was attacked by some men who were looking for her odd duck cousin who left her his house and property about a month ago. Some of the sedatives used while healing her up have left her memory fragmented. Things quickly become clear and we meet our other main character.
Wharkuz. Now, Wharkuz and his species are interesting. They start off as non-gendered/non-sexed "neutrals" and mature into male, female, or dual-aspect adults. But something went wrong with Wharkuz's maturation—his body never produced the hormones necessary to complete his transition— and while he is male gendered, he's non-sexed and viewed as a child despite being an of-age adult. He has the anatomy of a Ken doll.
OUCH.
And while Whar can feel affection, attachment, and a more innocent love, he lacks the hormones and drive for sexual desire. Which causes a huge problem for him and Darcy. While Darcy is of the pansexual persuasion and is painfully into Whar on all levels, he's unable to reciprocate in a sexual manner and it causes a lot of contention between them. Darcy wants to find where exactly the line is and get as much as she can from her relationship with Whar, and he's uncomfortable with things veering into territory that's not intended for him—but he's unwilling to stop seeing Darcy either, as he loves her dearly too. After she kisses him, they both fall seriously ill, and things get a lot more interesting from there.
Fans self. It gets really, really hot after Whar wakes up and a little light is shed on why he was ill.
✏︎ Minor niggle: Darcy is a veterinarian but doesn't know the difference between a virus and bacteria. She also should know that colds do not involve fevers, but keeps insisting her ailment is a cold anyway. It drove me absolutely batty. We never find out what she was infected with or if it was even important, but given that the commander she talks to specifically asked how she was feeling and hinted it was significant, it must have been.
I would have loved more of this story andnewly matured Whar is hot as hell. OMG. I was not expecting that given how mild mannered he was before the hormones came in. I love how delighted he was to finally be able to act on those more innocent feelings.
4.5 stars. I want more of this, thank you.
06: Waves of Desire -by Charity Wells
Sigh. Another bland formulaic SFR. We have to instantly smitten and rather adorable main character who has a tail, fins, and golden eyes. We have the TSTL heroine who seems way too young to be doing her job and is grossly inept at it and keeps almost dying in the process of simple tasks. He stalks her, viewing it as romantic gestures. She denies her attraction for the sake of it despite the fact that there's literally no one to judge her for it. She has no personality except mood swings to be cranky about stupid small things. Rando rapey asshole shows up and... sea monsters. Yeah, that's about it. Was definitely underwhelmed by this one. It was entertaining but nothing special.
3 stars. Any more idiot sandwiches and I'm going to be sick.
Overall collection rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up.
I enjoyed the diversity in this collection and wish there had been a bit more, but it's overall a solid set of reads.
01: Drashar Aquatic Aliens of Sa'thulia by Harpie Alexander
3 stars. Not a bad start.
02: Ecstasy From The Deep-A Verona Mate Novelette-by Octavia Kore
✏︎ So many typos
*It was brought to my attention the the formatting issues were not the fault of the authors but the formatter for the collection. There is one formatting error I caught in another story, but they all congregated in this one.
✏︎ Every character in this story makes no sense at all. We have a TSTL hero with a TSTL heroine and...it just wasn't enjoyable to read. Why does everyone want to feed me idiot sandwiches? Someone has to be somewhat sensible for these tales to work. Then he has a moronic bro who is mostly MIA except when conveniently most needed, and she has a hyper-aggressive bff who is a nurse of all things? I don't know. Nothing in these two pairings and dynamics worked for me. There's a lot of forced, "but oh, we mustn't!" going on in here that dragged out what could have been a much shorter story. My favorite character was the rapey Grutex in the beginning—described as a dragonfruit/Xenomorph hybrid—who at least had a good OTT Alpha talking game going. It was a shame he died so quickly.
This whole story feels like a first attempt at mimicking standard 150 page SFR fare. Which it was. I will definitely check back in with this writing pair after they have a few more stories under their belts and see how they develop.
2 stars: it didn't kill me to read, but I risked rolling my eyes out.
03: Opportunity's Chase-by Dani Morrison
This is the story of Natlea—an "augmented" human being—and Yael the Swift—an aquatic alien species called the Dyriixian, and man of mystery. We get dumped right into the middle of the action, one year into Yael's aggressive multi-planet pursuit of Natlea, his unsuspecting fiancee who keeps running despite being seriously attracted to him. It turns out that Natlea decided to skip all of the cultural seminars about their host planet and agreed to honor all of the customs she didn't bother to learn. WHOOPS? When the charming Yael gifts her with a tiny pearl, she has no idea that by accepting it she agrees to bond with him and goes on the run, shaming her human employers and screwing herself out her job in the process. Once Yael finally catches her and she stops running, they consummate the bonding. And that's when things get more confusing for her as she finally sees the full picture of what's going on and figures out who Yael really is.
This tale ends as abruptly as it begins, and we're left to speculate what will happen to the pair with a big event looming in front of them, but they both seem happy with the arrangement now that they're on the same page.
4.5 stars. Thank you for something completely different than I was expecting.
04: Sirei in Exile-A New Sirenx Romance -by SJ Sanders
This is a dystopian SFR story, but less horror and more sweet like SJ's Mate Index series. It follows the Sirei—a species who lost their homeward to a cataclysmic event 6 generations ago—and the new, much more water filled Earth—after a cataclysmic event has all but done away with larger land masses—that most of humanity is struggling to adapt to living on.
After 6 generations traveling space looking for a new homeward, the Sirei are dying out and no longer care if they exhaust their resources. Only 30% are mated, those matches are having difficulty breeding young, and they're all suffering from depression. At the very last minute for one of the pods—the one commanded by Ji'wa, a very reluctant captain—a suitable planet has been found. With no time to do further analysis, they set off the chain of events that will get the Sirei established in their new water-rich home. They know there are sentient beings on the larger land masses, but what will they find on the rocky islands that are necessary for their own survival?
Terra escaped the dangers of the floating city and has her own little island paradise. If only it would be kinder and stop trying to kill her. She's scraping by, but at least she's free. Survival is hard if you're on your own, and it's even worse for a woman due to size and strength disadvantages. If only the deeper water weren't full of massive nightmare creatures, she could bulk up her food stores and expend more energy on improving other parts of her life. Terra spends most of her time we're able to see trying to find food then fighting to eat said food. One day as she's shucking oysters, a fireball crashes into the waters not far from her home, sending a tsunami her way. After things calm and she goes out to explore, she sees something intriguing in the water and things play out from there.
I would love to see species art for the Sirei, since my mind kept thinking of some sort of a sea dragon with the tail and flaming billowing fins.
My biggest complaints about this story are due to the limited length. I think this would have been better as a full length book, and I hope that someday it will be expanded upon, because I really enjoyed what we were given here. But the conflict and resolution are really rushed compared to the pacing for the rest of the story, and the conflict came rather out of the blue.
4 stars, would read more of this series.
05: Under The Lake-by Diana Rose Wilson
This story reminds me a bit of Peggy Barnett's Lips Like Ice for reasons we'll get to in a minute.
We are introduced to the main characters after a violent conflict with parties unknown, and Darcy is trying to piece together what happened. She's heart broken and trying to work through exactly why that was and trying to understand why she was attacked by some men who were looking for her odd duck cousin who left her his house and property about a month ago. Some of the sedatives used while healing her up have left her memory fragmented. Things quickly become clear and we meet our other main character.
Wharkuz. Now, Wharkuz and his species are interesting. They start off as non-gendered/non-sexed "neutrals" and mature into male, female, or dual-aspect adults. But something went wrong with Wharkuz's maturation—his body never produced the hormones necessary to complete his transition— and while he is male gendered, he's non-sexed and viewed as a child despite being an of-age adult. He has the anatomy of a Ken doll.
OUCH.
And while Whar can feel affection, attachment, and a more innocent love, he lacks the hormones and drive for sexual desire. Which causes a huge problem for him and Darcy. While Darcy is of the pansexual persuasion and is painfully into Whar on all levels, he's unable to reciprocate in a sexual manner and it causes a lot of contention between them. Darcy wants to find where exactly the line is and get as much as she can from her relationship with Whar, and he's uncomfortable with things veering into territory that's not intended for him—but he's unwilling to stop seeing Darcy either, as he loves her dearly too. After she kisses him, they both fall seriously ill, and things get a lot more interesting from there.
Fans self. It gets really, really hot after Whar wakes up and a little light is shed on why he was ill.
✏︎ Minor niggle: Darcy is a veterinarian but doesn't know the difference between a virus and bacteria. She also should know that colds do not involve fevers, but keeps insisting her ailment is a cold anyway. It drove me absolutely batty. We never find out what she was infected with or if it was even important, but given that the commander she talks to specifically asked how she was feeling and hinted it was significant, it must have been.
I would have loved more of this story and
4.5 stars. I want more of this, thank you.
06: Waves of Desire -by Charity Wells
3 stars. Any more idiot sandwiches and I'm going to be sick.
Overall collection rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up.
I enjoyed the diversity in this collection and wish there had been a bit more, but it's overall a solid set of reads.
More...