Review: Unique world, a touch of romance and lots of action
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 30, 2013
For a first book, I have to say overall I'm impressed.  The author built a unique and intriguing world filled with loveable characters waging a bitter alien race war.  It ended up being a much more serious book than I had anticipated and although there is sex, it's not the hot smutty alien sex one might think.  In fact, the only thing I found a bit frustrating between the world building, character development, interpersonal relationships, and alliances, was the actual romance. This book encompassed a lack of communication that encompassed almost the entire book and I was screaming in my head, talk, people, talk!Sandrea is kidnapped from earth by a brutal alien race who's picking off species from all over the universe to perform torturous tests on.  It's not quite clear what they're looking for in the beginning, but their experiments all seem to end in failure.  With little memory of how, Sandrea manages to escape and comes across a race of beings who are also captured and tortured.  She manages to rescue them and they rescue her right back by taking her with them.  When they realize earth is too far away to return her to her home, they hope she'll be able to adjust to her new life, especially one general in particular, who cannot keep her off his mind. It's a hard adjustment for Sandrea recovering from torture, isolation and loss, as well as landing in the middle of interplanetary war, but as she goes through the motions and helps in the effort, it may be that the experiments on her didn't fail after all.The great thing about this story is that there is an actual story and it's not just a lead to sex.  This is not your sit and relax beach read.  It's actually quite complicated with all the races, politics, games and battle scenes that take place.  The characters are slowly developed and wonderful that you can't help but build attachments to them. As I mentioned earlier, the only thing that dragged this book down was the over the top miscommunication.  It's clear there is attraction at first site, but instead of addressing it, there's quite a bit of what if he/she doesn't want me that went on for over 100 pages.  Even when it's clear they want each other, the author managed to bog it down with another 200 pages of insecurity. Overall, it's a great first book and there's plenty of room for sequels with great characters. I for one would enjoy reading future installments, sans the dreaded miscommunication, and look forward to what comes next.