Angela Romano

I am THE shallowest person ever. I brought this book due to the gorgeous cover by Anne Cain. OK, and maybe there was a star next to it at ARE. I like stars, they’re shiny! I am nearly 1/2 way through and I am still not sure who the main characters are as a lot of attention is on others. And plot? There is a lot of extraneous stuff that does not seem central to the story and I’ve found it a little difficult to figure out the story arc. There are no longing looks between anyone really and the occasional bit of dialog has had me cringing. But, boy does that cover rock my wee socks off.http://sharrow.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/shorts/… (plus d'informations)

Set in an alternate now, the main characters (a werewolf and a werefox) work for TASK, a government agency in charge of policing animalistic-mutated humans. With the scene set for government spy-type intrigues and cop-show style action, the book attempts a combination of action and drama. Unfortunately, it comes about in a series of brief battles linked with hurt/comfort hospital scenes and lovey-dovey stuff from secondary characters.

The author tells readers that the main characters are important to each other, but all we see is a sort of thrown-together pair of co-workers who make a team. There are a couple of comments about a "bond" between them, but it comes across more like plain ol' trust.

In my estimation, the biggest problem with this story is that it suffers from a character vacuum-- there are only about six named people in the entire 271 pages, plus two named villains. There are no friends of the characters, neighbors, or co-workers, no inobvious villains; there are only faceless, nameless crowds or bodies milling in the government halls.

I was bothered by the way the author kept telling readers how skilled TASK agents are, but every battle incapacitated the heroes for long periods of time and due to the character-vacuum, no other agent could finish the heroes' duties or take care of major agency-threatening issues.

The story also suffers from amateur choppiness, conflicting time signifiers, and incongruent details. The author kept slipping in phrases like, "two weeks had passed" or "two months later", yet the characters reacted as if incidents occurred hours earlier, and frankly, they should be dealing with the situations within hours and not weeks.

Toward the end, the whole thing became more and more far-fetched as only TASK agents mounted very limited search and rescue during a major warehouse explosion in a residential city block-- recovering two of three involved agents and leaving the scene. Despite previous battles in which they went to great lengths to recover missing persons, this time they just gave up! It was very dissatisfying and the ending was inexcusably abrupt, lacking meaningful explanation of "two years passed".

Overall, I urge you to find a different entertaining-looking book to read because this one is lousy.… (plus d'informations)

First of all this book has a wonderful cover, second this is not a romance. So if you start it with the idea to read a kinky story of furry lovers, with the cute boy in the cover as player, think twice. I'm not saying that the book is not good, I'm saying that this is more like one of those futuristic - sci-fic novels aimed to a very young target, or to who still likes to play with videogame and read manga, even if they are no more teenager.

Mourning Doves is the entertwined story of three couple; to par condicio, one couple is gay and one couple is lesbian, and the other couple is not a 'couple' in the common use of the word, and it's almost a shame, since they are the one on the cover and two I would really like to see together. Anyway the story start with Leander, a son of a genetically change, born half fox and half human, with the ability to shift in a full fox, but when he is in human form he remains with cute fox ears and tails; Leander works for a special agency, a paramilitary organization called TASK, and he is partner with Epsilon. On the contrary of Leander, Epsilon was born a full human, but he was subjected to some genetic experiments when he was still a child, and now he has even more powers than Leander; when he shifts, he becomes an impressive black wolf, but when he is human, he doesn't sport any evidence of his inner beast. Leander and Epsilon are actually the main characters of the story, but they are not life partner; they have a very strong bond, that could lead one of the them to death if forcefully torn apart from his partner, but there is not sexual sparks between them. On the other hand, nor Leander or Epsilon are searching someone else outside their couple: it seems almost like they don't have the normal urges that push men and animals to mate, like they are enough for each other even if they don't share a sexual bond.

The romance part of the book is slightly fulfilled by the other two couples; Wolf and Mercedes are long lost lovers that contingent events allow to meet again, and they are not sure if they have to take this second chance. There is some sparks between Wolf and Mercedes, even a sketchy sex scene in a shower, but nothing of explicit; nevertheless the reader knows that they are having a sexual relationship.

Even less details for the second couple of the story, Madison and Alexandria; they meet at the beginning of the book, Alex is the one who calls the Agency to help her with her former lover turned bad hunter; she is in danger and the Agency takes care of her... through an almost reticent Madison. Madison and Alex shares the only kiss in the book, and they are the sweet side of the story, even if, truly, their story is a fait accompli.

There is a lot of adventures, hunting parties, kidnapping, heroic gestures... but not so much love. I was really hoping in the last scene between Leander and Epsilon, and instead... maybe the author is planning to write something more? To finally give a romance also to them? At this moment, as I said, this one is for sure a good YA book or an adventure book for adults who don't care too much for the smushy parts (since here he will find very few of them).

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935192884/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (plus d'informations)