REVIEW: Alliance in Blood (e-book) by Ariel Tachna

Alliance in Blood is m/m urban fantasy with vampires and wizards, published by Dreamspinner Press. It's 210 pages on my Nook Simple Touch.

Review:

I was working on my “Best and Worst of 2017” post and realized I still needed to review this because it’s definitely going to end up on my “worst” list.

This is one of the Dreamspinner Press books I bought before I decided to boycott them for knowingly publishing P2P fanfic and then just sort of shrugging and doing nothing when they were called on it. I had given Tachna’s The Inventor’s Companion 3 stars when I read it back in 2011 and liked it just enough to give her books another shot. This turned out to be a mistake on my part.

I finished this a month and a half ago, so apologies if my summary has some issues. Alliance in Blood stars Orlando, a vampire, and Alain, a wizard. Vampires and wizards have been at war for a long time. Although wizards view vampires as dangerous monsters, they’ve decided that they need to try to form an alliance with them because the wizards are also at war with dark wizards and could use some help. The vampires agree to the alliance 1) because it would give them a chance at having the same rights as wizards and 2) because Alain and Orlando accidentally form a bond and discover that wizard blood might allow vampires to walk in the sun again.

The Inventor's Companion (e-book) by Ariel Tachna

This is a steampunk m/m romance novel. It can be bought in paperback form, but you'll likely pay more than twice the price of the e-book for it.

This book has 129,862 words, which translates into 338 pages on my Nook, not counting the author bio and list of Tachna's other books at the end. According to Dreamspinner Press's website, the paperback is 350 pages, so I guess, at least in this case, one Nook page is approximately the same as one print page. Good to know.

Synopsis:

Gabriel Blackstone, an inventor, knows his friends meant well when they paid for a companion's time for his birthday. However, as a member of the Caste Equality movement, he decides that all he will do is have dinner and a pleasant conversation - he does not want to be yet another person taking advantage of a companion's lack of say in who he or she has sex with.

As a companion, Lucio has had little opportunity to meet inventors, who are usually too poor to afford his services. Although his time with Gabriel is brief, he's fascinated by this man who refuses to use him for sex, the activity for which he was bred and trained. He doesn't expect to meet Gabriel again, so he's shocked and excited to learn that Gabriel will be at an aristocrat's party, trying to drum up more business for himself.

Gabriel and Lucio realize that their attraction to each other is mutual, but, as a companion, Lucio can't have a lover, only clients. The two men find ways to meet that won't arouse the suspicion of Lucio's handlers, who could see him punished or sent to the breeding barns if his rebellion is discovered. Gabriel works hard to earn enough money to buy Lucio's contract, since that is currently the only legal way he and Lucio can be together for more than a few hours. Can he free Lucio before Lucio's handlers discover their relationship? And will a man from the merchant caste even be permitted to buy a companion's contract?

Review:

After reading the book's official description and excerpt, I think I expected Lucio to be something like Inara from the TV show Firefly: elegant, cultured, and relatively in control of his life. Maybe he didn't always like his clients, but he could choose to leave behind and never see again any client who really crossed the line.

Yeah, not so much. Over and over, readers were shown how awful Lucio's life really was under its pretty, cushy surface. As long as they were offered enough money, Lucio's handlers seemed less than concerned with his well-being. They arranged for him to meet a client they knew would brutalize him, and then they expected him to get back to work before he was fully healed. The book's first sex scene involved Lucio and one of his clients (who readers were later expected to think of as Gabriel and Lucio's ally) and focused on Lucio's feelings of degradation, which he had never felt so intensely prior to meeting Gabriel. Unless Lucio met with clients and did what they paid him to do, he wasn't given anything to eat. The details about the breeding barns were icing on the horrible cake.

I read this book shortly after finishing Meljean Brook's The Iron Duke, and I think The Iron Duke spoiled me. I was hungry for another exciting steampunk novel. What I expected was another book set in a vivid, rich, interesting, and probably gritty world. What I got was thin and not nearly as satisfying.

Short reviews, with longer ones (hopefully) coming soon

I'm still behind on my writing - I haven't posted anything for The Iron Duke or Rabbit Man, Tiger Man yet, and I've finished more things. Ah well, I'll do my best. I expect to have some longer posts out soon, but, for now, here are the short versions for things I've finished in the past week.

• Psmith in the City (audio book) by P.G. Wodehouse, read by various people - There is much less cricket in this one than in Mike: A Public School Story, which I appreciated. Even better, this book contains much more Psmith. Psmith is awesome, although I have a feeling he views Mike more as an amusing pet than as a friend. I'm not sure Psmith is the sort to really have friends. In some ways, he reminds me a lot of House (from House M.D.). This was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to listen to the next book.
• The Inventor's Companion (e-book) by Ariel Tachna - Steampunk m/m romance. This could have been a much shorter book. Tachna dragged things out by bringing up the same issues over and over again (Gabriel's jealousy, Lucio's horrible life, see how different Gabriel is from Lucio's clients, etc.). I liked Lucio well enough but tended to be annoyed by Gabriel, and I saw certain problems coming long before any of the characters did. While I'm not unhappy that I bought and read this one, I'm not sure I can recommend it. That said, if you do want to read it, All Romance Ebooks is currently offering a 25% rebate for all Dreamspinner Press books (meaning that you still pay the full price for the books, but 25% of that price is given back to you in E-book Bucks, which you can then spend on other things).

As usual, I'm behind on my posting

Currently, I'm reading The Inventor's Companion by Ariel Tachna (m/m steampunk romance) and watching the second season of Rurouni Kenshin (historical action anime TV series). I'm mostly enjoying Tachna's book, but one of the main characters, Gabriel, occasionally makes me want to throttle him. Also, I'm a third of the way through the book, and the only sex scene is of the "my eyes, my eyes!" sort - it does not feature the book's romantic couple and is unpleasant, so I wish it had been less graphic. I've only finished one disc of the second season of Rurouni Kenshin, but it's going strong so far. However, the first season also started out strong and got less enjoyable as it progressed. I hope that won't happen with this season.

I finish books and DVDs faster than I write about them. Right now, here's what's waiting to be written about, not counting the manga volumes I finished and decided I'd write about after a future re-read.

• The Iron Duke (book) by Meljean Brook - This steampunk adventure had a lot of moments and details that confused me. I enjoyed it anyway, although Rhys is not everyone's cup of tea. Rhys and Mina reminded me a bit of J.D. Robb's Eve and Roarke, and I found the world Brook built to be really interesting. I plan on reading more by Brook and hunting down her other stories set in this world.
• Mike: A Public School Story (audio book) by P.G. Wodehouse - This is, I think, the very first British school story I've ever read/listened to, unless you count the Harry Potter books. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Because I know nothing about cricket, the only reason I finished this was because I was listening to it.
• Rabbit Man, Tiger Man (manga, vol. 1) by Akira Honma - Not for the kiddies, because it contains on-the-page sex, but also not very explicit. I'm still not sure what I think about this one. It had its amusing and cute moments, but am I rooting for the romance? I don't know. I'm also worried that, despite its humor, it's gearing up for a tragic ending.
• A Princess of Mars (e-book) by Edgar Rice Burroughs - I think I might have enjoyed this more in audio form. At times, this book was a bit like an ethnography of Mars. I eventually realized that what really annoyed me about it was its severe lack of dialogue. It does have dialogue, but only rarely.

Hopefully I'll write more about all of these before the weekend is over, but now you have the gist of what I'm going to write. Maybe I'll do short, quick write-ups like this more often...