Review – Samurai Game by Christine Feehan

In an underground club, a high-ranking public official spends his secret nights indulging in fantasies as exciting as they are depraved. For a seductive employee of the Dungeon, it’s her job to fulfill them. But she’s playing a far more dangerous game—one of blackmail, politics, and murder that reaches into the shadow world of the Ghostwalkers, and the creation of a spectacular, one-of-a-kind new weapon of defense.

But when a dictator makes his own catastrophic moves, the Ghostwalkers have no choice but to bring in two major players—a man and woman both driven by passion and revenge. Both expendable. Both with nothing left to lose.

 

 

 

If you have been following the Ghostwalker series, you may remember this heroine. Thorn was mentioned briefly in Predatory Game. Saber was forced by the evil genius Dr. Whitney to stop little Thorn’s heart repeatedly as an experiment.

Thorn is now an adult. After Dr. Whitney decided she was dying from his experiments (torture), she was tossed into the streets to die and was found by a wonderful man who adopted her, gave her a family and a new name. Azami Yoshiie. Azami’s entire purpose in life is to cut Whitney off from his support and stop him.

When the Ghostwalker teams contact Azami and her brothers to purchase their cutting edge technology, Azami sees her chance to find out if the teams are supporting Whitney and giving him more children to experiment on. She didn’t plan on Sam Tucker and the instant attraction she feels for him or for the ambush that is waiting for them all.

The beginning of Samurai Game was great. I loved catching up with all the members of the first Ghostwalker team and seeing what their lives were like now. Azami was a fascinating heroine, strong, deadly, and vulnerable, who still has nightmares of her childhood. And it was really lovely the way Feehan incorporated Azami’s Japanese culture into her character. Sam is not the typical uber-alpha Feehan hero. He’s brilliant and can kick butt but he respects Azami’s strength and finds her knowledge of weapons hot.

Unfortunately, it started to lose steam somewhere near the middle and never really picked it back up. A lot of that can be blamed on the info dumps, excessive details, and repetition. For example, the first love scene is interrupted for a three page discussion on nanotechnology that read like a dry textbook. After they finally stopped talking and moved back to the romance, I had hopes that it would improve and it did for a while. Then the repetition started, such as the numerous times a secondary character’s “Florentine gold eyes” were mentioned or how Sam was a genius. Then we’re back to the excessive details like when the author lists every single weapon and gadget all members of the 8 man team will carry into battle. By this time, all the details were becoming blah blah blah in my mind and I started skimming those large sections.The one thing that wasn’t repetitive or excessive were past events. In fact, very little time was spent on information about the secondary characters and their experiences that play a significant role in Samurai Game. If you haven’t read all the earlier books in the series, I believe you will have a very difficult time following this one.

The anticlimactic end made this promising book an even bigger disappointment to me. Feehan is the author that introduced me to paranormal romance many years ago and I loved her books. I keep hoping to find the book that revives that love. Samurai Game wasn’t it.

 

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Release Date: July 3rd, 2012
Format: print and digital

Preorder:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

 

 

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DFRAT: Lure of the Mummy by Janis Susan May – Excerpt

In a daze Bert went straight back to his rooms and collapsed at his desk, elbows propped on his wonderful new translation of the stele.

A translation he could never use.

The scholarly world was small. If he suddenly came up with a translation on something no one knew he had been working on right after the official translator was murdered and his papers stolen… It would be regarded as concrete evidence of guilt, whether he had done it or not.

Tears poured down Bert’s pudgy face as he slowly ripped all his work sheets lengthwise into strips, then crosswise into confetti. Three nights without sleep to translate this son of a bitch, a work that could have made him noticed… and once again Rick spoiled everything for him by getting himself killed.

“I didn’t want him dead…” Bert muttered, which was not altogether true, “just out of my way. Nothing ever goes right for me. Nothing!”

Digging out his trusty lighter Bert burned every scrap of paper in the enormous ashtray, then crushed the ashes and flushed them before leaving the silent building for home. He wasn’t guilty of anything except ambition and skill, but no one would ever believe that.

Egypt was a Muslim country and liquor wasn’t allowed… unless one knew where to find it. Bert had always thought that ridiculous. The ancients had enjoyed both beer and wine and they had ruled the world of their time. This modern world made no sense. Bert knew where to find liquor and kept a bottle of decent Scotch around at all times. He was an infrequent drinker, mainly because the stuff cost so bloody much.

Today, however, was an exception. It was a wake of sorts, in spite of it still being a while before noon, a wake of his hopes, and like all good wakes it deserved to be celebrated. He had one glass quickly, then another which he sipped and then a third, which he took time to enjoy slowly.

Maybe all wasn’t lost. Maybe – after a decent amount of mourning for ‘dear old Rick’ he could talk to old Thornberry about having the stele assigned to him. He should have had it to begin with, anyway; he was senior on staff and the best hieroglyph man the WALRC had. He could recreate the translation easily and amaze everyone… But not too easily. He didn’t want any possible connection between his translation and Rick’s death.

Damn Rick! Even dead he was still messing Bert’s life up!

The heat of the day was at its worst; Bert seldom spent any daylight hours in the flat and he always forgot how hellishly hot it could become. He staggered around, still sober enough to realize how much he was staggering, opening the windows to their widest and turning on fans, even though neither really helped all that much.

Then he noticed the fallout of dried linen on the floor. Maybe the fans were more powerful than he thought, to be able to scatter wrappings off a mummy…

The mummy was lying face down on the desk, its body covering the center of his workspace. It was surrounded with a drift of linen dust.

Carefully avoiding the painful claws and teeth, Bert set the mummy upright, then jumped backwards in shock as the mummy looked back at him. The glass toppled over, spilling the precious Scotch onto the desktop where it puddled before the mummy as if it were an offering.

The last few wrappings over the head had gone and the indisputably feline skull was now almost bare. The crown was clean bone, but a film of leathery skin surrounded the empty eye sockets and the closed mouth which, combined with a tilt of the skull, gave the remains a quizzical expression.

It was chilling, Bert thought.

Worse still was that from the depths of the empty eye sockets came a gleam of triumph.

 

www.janissusanmay.com

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Cover Goodness – Dire Wants by Stephanie Tyler

DIRE WANTS

Book 2 of The Eternal Wolf Clan series

The supernatural world is rising up against the human one. The weretrappers want control, and only the immortal Dire wolves stand in the way of total destruction. Stray, a Dire, and his long-lost brother, Killian, emerge as the leaders of their pack. To keep themselves and the humans safe, the Dires need a witch as powerful as Seb, who betrayed the Dires to work for the weretrappers.

They find what they are looking for in Kate, a human who survived a horrible car accident that left her back scarred with a handprint no one else can see. Stray senses Kate’s abilities as a witch and recruits her to help the Dires—all the while knowing she is so powerful they will need to kill her once she helps defeat the weretrappers.

Stray doesn’t expect the powerful connection that he feels with Kate, or his irresistible need to protect her. They cannot hide their feelings or each other, and what once was taboo now seems inevitable…

Available November 6, 2012

www.stephanietyler.com

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