Dima Zales

All right guys where to begin?

I've had an odd fascination with SciFi Romance lately, having added quite a few to my Wishlist in YA as well as future releases in the Romance genre. This was available as free on the Kindle and I thought it sounded intriguing.

I wonder how others viewed this book through rosier lenses then myself. To me Korum is little better then the male heroes of past Bodice Rippers. You know the ones--the almost but not quite rapist romances? I think someone referred to them as Reluctant Romances at one point. He acknowledges and discusses the fact Mia frightened of him, he casually refers to her choice in the matter as moot and all but takes over Mia's life in order to KEEP that choice from her. I've read my share of "heroes" who do something shady in the name of lustlove. Its especially popular in paranormal romances--hiding secrets so that the female (or in some cases the male) doesn't realize they're about to have sex with a werewolf and mate for life.

Hey it happens.

My problem is how Korum went about it and how Mia found out about his deceptiveness. It never occurred to Korum to tell Mia that he was tracking her and when she calls him on it he shrugs and says 'too bad, so sad'. How Mia finds out was less about helping her and more about manipulating her and this doesn't seem to bother her either.

Then we get to the "romance" which is hard to label their relationship when neither side is a) being truthful and b) trusting. At least Korum had the support that his people viewed humans as basically lab rats (which to his credit he tells Mia right away and doesn't sugar coat it at all, though why he thought that bit of truthfulness would land him a bed partner is beyond me) and you don't taint an experiment by telling the subject all the nitty gritty details (this is not me condoning, this is me just pointing out the fact). Mia's excuse is fear basically.

A valid fear since the Krinar showed up, took over, told humanity you are living your lives wrong and then forced them to live their lives by the Krinar standards. It had only been 5 years since "K-Day" and while the changes the Krinar made were for the 'betterment' of humanity their heavy-handed tactics endeared them to no one. So yes, Mia had every right to be afraid of a man who admitted to stalking her, told her at pretty much every encounter he wanted to have sex with her and that his patience wasn't limitless.

And I can even understand why she would look for ways to escape the hell she unwittedly found herself in. If this book had been about Mia slowly overcoming her prejudice against the Krinar because Korum showed her they were different I probably would have been okay with it. I probably would have even been okay with Korum's heavy-handed tactics to seduce her as a cultural difference that Mia sorted him out on. Instead the book continues with Mia in abject fear/lust with Korum--her shame over how much she enjoys sex with Korum got tedious to read about even as she kept silently bemoaning how her body betrayed her and Korum pointing out at every possible second that she has no choice so enjoy it since he basically owns her.

The end, when the Resistance is utterly defeated, to no one's shock or amazement was weak compared to what Zaires could have done. Korum doesn't even make any good points about why Mia shouldn't want the Resistance to win. And the punishment meted out really only served to reinforce how dictatorial the Krinar could be.

So no, in the end this was not the book for me, nor will I read the others.

(and to give you an idea of how little I regarded this book, which I finished A DAY AGO I forgot the characters' name and only thought of them as the nicknames Meager and Krude)… (mer)

I am not quite sure when this series happens but apart from the MC, it has the same cast as the Sasha Urban series. It seems to begin sometime after the events of the first few books of that series.
This means it also inherited the flaws from the world-building as well as the cast.

My biggest issue was the supposed magic council or however they call themselves and the premise they force the MC into.
That bunch of dimwits is supposed to lead and manage the supernatural world in secret?
The entire premise of the book is just absurdly stupid.
The MC gets a basically impossible task she has to solve within a stupidly short amount of time.
There are an infinite amount of other, better options available to the council, but no, they force the MC into it who isn't even qualified for this.
This makes it really hard to suspend disbelief for the entire setup.
As the title suggests she is a dream walker and she is supposed to use this skill to go into the council's dreams to glimpse the truthfulness of their alibis and uncover the perpetrator.
That's the entire book.
There is lots of back and forth and people not being present or not sleeping or whatnot but for 80% of the book we are just waiting for one issue or another to be cleared up so the MC can dream walk another suspect. Intermittently we have a lot of redundant speculation about who it could be.
Over time we actually learn a few interesting things about various council members but there just isn't anything of substance.
It's not dull per see, something is always happening, but there is no sense of progress at all.
It feels more like what I expect from a 1.5 in-between book to fill in world-building and characterization with 100-200 pages but dragged out into a full book.

All the characters seem like they are new to the supernatural. For our MC this makes at least a little sense as she seems to have grown up in another world and was pretty sheltered even there.
But the entire council behaves like they have no idea what other people can do with their brands of magic.

The one other element that might have been interesting was the romance which was teased early on but there actually isn't any. Just the MC repeatedly trying to masturbate to the love interest in her dreams because he's hot but then getting interrupted every time. I think this was supposed to be funny but it didn't get much more than a tired smile from me after the second time.

There is a lot of nerd culture referencing going on but it was more annoying than anything for the most part. It was supposed to be relatable for fans of the culture but to me, it just came across as shallow. Constantly mentioning Nintendo game characters doesn't make a nerd.
I found this aspect particularly sad because it seems like the author isn't faking his love for nerd and gaming culture. I believe I recognize a genuine kindred spirit between the lines. But the references are dumbed down to make sure the majority of readers get this stuff which ironically comes across as fake. This is the trouble with having nerd characters. It's really hard to prevent them from boring everyone who is not into the particular brand of geek culture to death but at the same time doing it justice.

An honorable mention (to the Sasha Urban series as well) goes to proper tech. No bullshit throwing around random tech-sounding words, no "cracking the encryption codes" and "tracing the IP via VPN".
While it isn't very important to the story, in this case, everything regarding computers and tech that isn't magical is correct at least in a broad sense. I can't even remember when I read another series that did computer science and cryptography right, if ever.… (mer)