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A review by raspberrykisses
Born of Ice: The League: Nemesis Rising by Sherrilyn Kenyon
3.0
I don't normally leave reviews but man I have FEELINGS about this book.
I got this book in a romance mystery bundle, and of all the books in that bundle this was the one I was most hopeful for. A classic steamy sci-fi romance? Yes please! I so wanted to love this book.
But alas. The writing is very ungraceful and mildly misogynistic, and the dialogue is clunky and cringey, not to mention the number of times I read the words "cock" and "licking" in 300 pages was highly upsetting. It's like the worst kind of 'take-a-shot-when'. The first 100 pages alternates between actual writing and the main characters thinking about how much they want to have sex with each other-- I kid you not literally every other paragraph. I understand this book was written in the early 90's so I'll give it some grace for being part of the old school mass-market steamy romance class, as nearly all of these books had a spark of sexism and awful sex lingo. The writing though, you can do better. I liked the general plot, but there were a LOT of plot holes and a lot of moments when someone said so-and-so did x when 30 pages before it was actually the other so-and-so who did x. There were also too many convenient plot twists at the end, and I really dislike the end of this book because if they could do that all along to rescue somebody the whole plot is completely invalidated. It feels like the author was rushing the end of the book. I wish there had been more thought to how it wrapped up and there was less convenient endings and more consequences.
However, there are things I loved about this book. The world building was phenomenal, I was easily immersed in the environment within only a few pages. The characters were likeable and quirky, some definitely in an over the top exaggerated way, and the author put a lot of depth into the individuals she focused on. If you ignore the number of unnecessary inserts of the word "cock", the steamy scenes were all the right kinds of steamy.
I'll also leave this here for anyone else who is wondering: Yes, you can read this as a stand-alone. You won't be completely lost, the plot of this story exists solely in this book. However you may get a little lost in the frequent name-dropping. From what I understand there are a lot of books in this world and the author definitely wants you to know it.
I got this book in a romance mystery bundle, and of all the books in that bundle this was the one I was most hopeful for. A classic steamy sci-fi romance? Yes please! I so wanted to love this book.
But alas. The writing is very ungraceful and mildly misogynistic, and the dialogue is clunky and cringey, not to mention the number of times I read the words "cock" and "licking" in 300 pages was highly upsetting. It's like the worst kind of 'take-a-shot-when'. The first 100 pages alternates between actual writing and the main characters thinking about how much they want to have sex with each other-- I kid you not literally every other paragraph. I understand this book was written in the early 90's so I'll give it some grace for being part of the old school mass-market steamy romance class, as nearly all of these books had a spark of sexism and awful sex lingo. The writing though, you can do better. I liked the general plot, but there were a LOT of plot holes and a lot of moments when someone said so-and-so did x when 30 pages before it was actually the other so-and-so who did x. There were also too many convenient plot twists at the end, and I really dislike the end of this book because if they could do that all along to rescue somebody the whole plot is completely invalidated. It feels like the author was rushing the end of the book. I wish there had been more thought to how it wrapped up and there was less convenient endings and more consequences.
However, there are things I loved about this book. The world building was phenomenal, I was easily immersed in the environment within only a few pages. The characters were likeable and quirky, some definitely in an over the top exaggerated way, and the author put a lot of depth into the individuals she focused on. If you ignore the number of unnecessary inserts of the word "cock", the steamy scenes were all the right kinds of steamy.
I'll also leave this here for anyone else who is wondering: Yes, you can read this as a stand-alone. You won't be completely lost, the plot of this story exists solely in this book. However you may get a little lost in the frequent name-dropping. From what I understand there are a lot of books in this world and the author definitely wants you to know it.