All the King's Men - Alex Powell
Rounded up to 3 stars

I can divide this book into three parts, and THAT is less to do with the development of the story itself but with my personal feeling about it. I liked how it started, it was much better than I expected, and I enjoyed the ending.

The idea sounds very interesting: A little group of revolutionaries under the guidance of King meets each other regularly in the Cerebrum, a virtual reality network, to discuss their next mission. Their main activity is detecting secrets and make them public. No wonder that they have many enemies who rather see them dead. But it is not that easy: It is not enough to defeat a person in the mindnet, you have to get his BODY too, and it could be EVERYWHERE, where there is a link-in.
(For more information you can read the blurb or the book itself).



The first third of the book was pretty good and even if I didn't completely get how the Cerebrum worked, I found it very entertaining. My problems began as the story unfolded, actually with too many of private domain. It appeared like 10 times pro page. I started to lose interest. Had I been a gamer or a passionate science-fiction reader, maybe I could have enjoyed this world building more, who knows. But somewhere in the middle on the story it started to become a serious issue to me. I considered even to DNF. But I didn't want to start my new reading year with a DNF, it could be a bad Omen. So I forced myself to go on.

I'm actually glad that I finished it, because the ending was good, it switched from the Cerebrum to the RL. AND. I got my answers.

I think
1)I can better deal with such stories in form of movies (like Matrix), and
2) it is impossible to create a cyber world in a beautiful prose.
To make it REAL an author has to use THIS special language, and it is not my cuppa.



**Copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Libs is an (almost) 500 year old vampire. His kind was hunted, murdered, tortured, experimented upon for as long as he can remember. Barely escaping with his life from a research facility, he now lives on an officially abandoned space station/mine colony.



However, Libs is not alone. Plenty of other people live here, too. Mostly outcasts, outlaws and just your average criminals and crime lords, anyone who wants nothing to do with the authorities and the law for whatever reasons.

Libs is in employ of a local crime lord, Jane, who rules the largest out of three settlements with an iron (and very bloody) fist.



Now, Libs is not a bad guy, it's just that he was blackmailed into the servitude by this tiny itsy bitsy puny human female. Jane knows his "secret" and so Libs bends backwards for her.

Newsflash, Libs!!! You are a vampire and a damn good sniper! You should have been able to take her out in the first paragraph and then in each and every damn paragraph (save a couple maybe) after that. I never use TSTL tag, never. But this? How did Libs survive for 500 years? How? Natural selection should have put him down centuries ago, yet he was allowed to linger to annoy the hell out of readers :/

The only two people I rooted for in this book were the badass bartenders.





Others? I can't care less if Janes offs them all and dies of her own stupidity, which she did anyway.

1.5 stars.

Dear Libby, stop bitching.

 

All your problems are self-inflicted. You could have done away with Jane eons ago, looong before Rory showed up. But you chose not to. So suck it up (literally or figuratively or whatever tickles your 500 year old berries) and join forces with your toy boy. Unless you're enjoying the abuse, of course. 

This book is heading for 2 stars :/

3.25 stars.

 

Liberty, who’s a vampire, still remembers how cruel life was to his kind. That’s one of the reasons why he avoids the government and works as an assassin on a space station. He just can’t imagine another life. But then a Ranger appears on his station and all hell breaks loose.

 

Rangers Over Regulus started out to be a really great read and I was totally convinced that I would enjoy every page!   

 

But at some point, something changed for me. The story lost this special feeling it had at the beginning. I can’t really put my finger on it, maybe it’s because Liberty and Rory morphed into two lovesick guys, who would rather make out than fight – which isn’t exactly a bad thing… but I wanted a little bit more. Or it was Liberty and his reluctance to change sides. He’s a vampire with superhuman powers. And his boss? Totally human. And even though she knew his “secret” it wasn’t really reason enough for me to make the story believable.  

 

This may sound like I didn’t enjoy the book at all – which is not true! The setting was great and the combination of western and sci-fi was also a winner. There were just some things I didn’t like as much as others. 

Very nice story building, I would have liked to have known more about both species but what information was provided was good enough to paint a picture. Xin-jian shyness was kind of cute and I liked the playfulness he had with Tierna.