Review: Some sweet romance/exciting world building.....BUT
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 6, 2012
Warning:  spoilers in this reviewThis book could have gone to a 5 star review for me if the author had:- not had the rape scene.  It is just too disturbing to think about and then the way the main character was able to recover from it so quickly felt callous to real world rape victims, ignoring how traumatic and devastating such an experience like that is.  The author doesn't go into detail about the rape, but for an escapist romance story, no one wants to know that the heroine had to endure that during the story- the main character is introduced as a top-in-her-class engineer employed to examine alien technology.  She came across though as a lousy engineer when she's on the trader's ship for weeks and does nothing to understand the ship better.  She had a talking computer for gosh sakes - she could have tried to uncover tons of information about the ship, other worlds, whatever!  It isn't until they land that she starts employing her intellect.  I really hate it when the heroine is depicted as such a dummy- the 4th guy added to her dance card.  Hmm, that could have worked if the heroine knew more about his personality and not just for the sexual attraction. Otherwise, she just  comes across as a whore.  Daeman came across too crude for me with his derogatory name calling.  I could see there being a 2nd book developing this relationship with him and the author is certainly talented enough to even add the other two demon looking guys to the "harem" and making it look right. I've noticed that the author consistently rushes the ending, like she runs out of inspiration and this affected this 4th relationship.Okay, now that I have all the negative out of the way.  Why the 4 stars - because there was something incredibly sweet about the Hirachi gladiators treatment of her.  I know some of the reviewers found the "you Tarzan, me Jane" dialogue frustrating, but for me it just made them seem that more sweeter.  The world building was great as usual with this author.  If, and I hope there is, there is a part 2 to this story, I would definitely buy the book.