Review: 1st 3 books were much better
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 13, 2012
READ THE FIRST THREE BOOKS, IN ORDER, BEFORE READING THIS ONE.With that said:Book #1 The Dracon's Woman - I LOVED!Book #2 The Lobo's Heartsong - I REALLY ENJOYED!Book #3 The Katre's Summer - I LIKED.Book # 4 The Bearen's Hope - I KINDA LIKED but was also kinda disappointed in.Seeing a pattern here? Yep...I GET what the author was trying to do. Really, I do. She is bldg worlds/universes with alien beings, some good, some bad. I GET that she wants to make sure we understand the background. However, with each book she writes she's spending more and more time on the aliens/politics than on the main characters themselves.What I wanted: A sci-fi romance/ménage where the character's learn about each other, grow in their understanding, and finally come together with some serious chemistry.What I got: A lot of previous back-story / WAY too much info on alien bad-guys & their technology/  a non-relationship between the Bearen's & Hope  lacking in chemistry & fraught with misunderstanding once they did finally come together - which was more than  of the way through the book!The Bearen's had more chemistry with Ellicia than they do their own mate, Hope. I understand that they needed to build this relationship with Ellicia for a reason (which ticked me off, by the way) but COME ON, this is ultimately a romance NOT an alien political intrigue! I really feel the author fell WAY short on this one. The Bearen's themselves came across as more real in the previous books than in this one. Also, it's really hard to build chemistry between characters when you, literally, don't bring them together until the end.Instead of repeating what has happened in the previous books (for the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th times) she should have been concentrating on how to build the relationship between the Bearen's and Hope. I didn't feel it, at all. It simply wasn't there. Even the author seemed to `forget' who she was writing about when Hope suddenly became Saige somewhere around location 7909, or so. I know it was just a typo but it underlined the feeling I had that she simply didn't matter much.My final rant: I really, really, really disliked how the author handled Ellicia's story. I've been waiting on her story since book #1 and was so very disappointed in how the author chose to handle her and Harlan's story, such as it was, within this one.All that said. I DO like this author, and am holding out hope (ha, ha) for the Gryphon's book that comes next. Please, Ms. Phillips, spend more time on the relationship than all the other junk that really acts as filler. I spent many pages, just quickly paging through all the alien junk & back story, basically skimming to get to the parts that mattered.Please take us back to where it really counts, the relationship. We can still have an exciting storyline w/o so much concentration on the why's/wherefores of the rest of the galaxy.