Disclaimer: The author offered me a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. She has commented on a few of my reviews in the past, but we don't otherwise know each other.

The other books by Buxton that I've read were all marketed as sci-fi, although they all had some romantic elements. I was interested to see what Saronna's Gift, her first book marketed as sci-fi romance, would be like.

This book takes place on Krueger's World, which was colonized by Adolph Krueger. Krueger started off as leader of a fundamentalist Christian group and, from there, sort of became the head of his own cult. The people of Krueger's World rejected a lot of Earth history, technology, science, and medicine. Women  basically became property – if it wasn't possible to marry them off, their patriarchs could sell them. If I remember correctly, men could only have one wife, but they were permitted, even encouraged, to have multiple women.

When we first meet Saronna, her father is taking her to the off-world quarter to meet Vladimir Trushenko, a prospective buyer. To Saronna's dismay, the sale goes through, and she learns that Vladimir intends for her to be his son Duncan's woman. Just one thing: Vladimir didn't bother to tell Duncan about all of this. Duncan is horrified to learn that his father bought another human being for him, and learning that Vladimir primarily intended Saronna to be company for Naomi, his native girlfriend (sort of – it's complicated), only mollifies him a little. Since he can't send Saronna back to her family without risking that she'd be punished, he tells her she can stay as long as she wishes and he won't ask anything of her. She can leave anytime she likes, and he'll even help her get the education she'd need in order to live independently among off-worlders. This is all well and good until the two begin to fall for each other.

This was a risky premise for a romance, to say the least. According to the laws of Krueger's World, Duncan owned Saronna, whether he wanted to think of it like that or not. He assumed that the signs Saronna liked and was attracted to him were real, but, for all he knew, she could have been faking it so as to keep her protector/owner happy. Could a believable, non-icky romance actually develop in this situation?

There were some promising initial signs. I liked that Duncan recognized that telling Saronna she could leave his household anytime she wished wouldn't mean much if she didn't have a proper education. Also, he didn't force her to learn things she might consider to be heretical. Instead, he gave her options. After he found out she could read, he gave her access to his family's library, recommended a few books to her, and told her he'd hire a tutor if she wanted one. Saronna was unusual for a woman of Krueger's World, and she adapted to her new life fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, there were a couple times late in the book when Duncan let his own hurt pride/feelings trump Saronna and her situation. When Duncan finally realized that Saronna had telekinetic powers and had probably been using them against him (reducing his arousal), instead of actually talking to her about it, he took an aphrodisiac and made her think he intended to enforce his rights as her owner and rape her. Even if he'd had no intention of going through with it, she didn't know that. His behavior was so awful that I was stunned.

He did admit that what he'd done was wrong, but I didn't like the way his actions were presented as being on the same level as Saronna's. Yes, she telekinetically manipulated his body without his knowledge or consent, but it was literally her only protective measure in a world where men were legally permitted to rape their women. Duncan wasn't a native of Krueger's World and didn't think the same way they did, but he kept forgetting that Saronna's worldview might not be the same as his.

Later on, Duncan screwed up yet again when he learned about the secret women's religion that prompted Saronna to keep him at a distance even though she cared for him. Once again, instead of  sitting down and talking to her about it, he let his hurt pride dictate his actions, barged into her room, and searched through her things as she shouted at him to stop. I admit, I had little sympathy when, after that, he nearly drank himself to death.

I found Vladimir to be more appealing than Duncan. He was just as dense about certain aspects of Krueger's World, but he was also far less likely to allow his emotions to rule his actions. His relationship with Naomi, a native woman he purchased several years before Saronna to save her from being traded by her husband in a card game, was surprisingly sweet. Although their relationship was very much secondary to Duncan and Saronna's, I enjoyed the way the story examined and addressed the disconnect between his viewpoint as a ThreeCon man and her viewpoint as a Krueger's World woman.

In general, I liked the women in this book. Saronna was strong and soaked up the new knowledge she gained in the Trushenko household like a sponge. Naomi was more of a traditional Krueger's World woman, but I found myself caring about her enough to fret over the situation between her and Vladimir and to wish he could see the world through her eyes for a bit. Vonda, Duncan's mother, was brittle and a little mean to everyone but Duncan, and for some reason I liked that about her. The bit where Saronna verbally fought back against her was great.

All in all, the sociological stuff was fascinating, but unfortunately I ended up liking the secondary romance between the book's more mature characters than the primary romance between the book's younger characters. I liked Saronna, but Duncan had some maturing to do before he was ready to be a decent romance novel hero.

 

Rating Note:

 

My notes for this book give it a rating of C-/C/C+, which is anywhere from 2.5 to 3.5 stars. Had it not been for the scene were Duncan acted like he was going to rape Saronna in order to trick her into demonstrating her powers, I'd probably have settled on 3.5 stars, because everything else worked pretty well for me.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Today I did something I have never done before: when an author direct messaged me to ask me if I would like a copy of their book to review, I said "yes."

 

This author has mostly written social sci-fi with romantic aspects - this is her first sci-fi romance. I've liked most of the other books by her that I've read, so I'm really looking forward to this. I just need to finish She's Gotta Be Mine.

What attracted me to this book was the author's description of it – multiple interesting-sounding characters whose paths intersect, plus lots of potential for political intrigue. Sadly, although it did turn out to be an interesting read, it's probably my least favorite of Buxton's works so far. The main reason for that? Two words: rape fatigue.

One male character was raped, but, for the most part, women had it worse. In this book, if you were female, you were probably either raped or threatened with rape. On-page rape was relatively rare and I don't recall any of it being graphically described. There were just so many references to rape, period. A woman in the Emperor's harem who tried to run away was raped by a monster as punishment. Antonio, the Emperor's son, wasn't fit to be around human beings – not only was he a rapist, he was an incestuous rapist. Maddy, the captain of a merchant spaceship, was threatened with rape by one of her crew members. Girls in villages like the one Alexander, one of the Emperor's Own Corps of Guards, grew up in all lived with the threat of rape and were sometimes scarred by their own parents in an effort to avoid being captured and put to work as prostitutes. The list goes on. It probably didn't help that I started reading this shortly after I stalled on the first season of Game of Thrones, outraged that the writers had inserted rape scenes where the book had had none.

Moving on. The book takes a while to get going, and I thought the second half was more interesting that the first. By the second half, all the players were finally in motion and (mostly) had all their cards on the table for readers to see. There were several storylines, but they all tied together in one way: could the Emperor be overthrown without throwing the Empire into complete chaos or putting someone worse in his place? Readers got a look at the players involved in pretty much every aspect of the conflict: the rebels, those aiding the rebels, and the Imperial family. The various storylines could, for the most part, be mapped to the book's various romantic relationships.

Initially, my favorite romantic couple was Maddy and Thad, because of all that lovely romantic tension brewing just under the surface. When they became an actual couple (sort of), I grew less interested in them and eventually came to prefer Peter Barranca and the mystery woman he was required to sleep with in order to hide the fact that his marriage was a sham. In general, Peter was my favorite character, and probably another reason why I preferred the second half of the book to the first.

Although having all those characters in the book meant that readers had lots of “favorite character” and “favorite hated character” options, one drawback was that the characters weren't explored in the kind of depth I would have liked. I felt like I knew many of the characters in only a surface-level kind of way, with Alexander being one of the biggest exceptions. I understood Cassandra a little better near the end of the book, after she told Alexander a little about how the way she grew up affected her, but I would have liked to have had more of that earlier on.

Antonio, Vinitra, and Paznowski were other characters I would have liked to understand better. Okay, so Antonio was a human cesspool, but was he always that way? He was clearly worse than his father. Vinitra was unbelievably passive and so bent to Antonio's will that she might as well have been his puppet. How did Antonio manage to warp her that badly, considering that the Empress did everything she could to stand in his way? And Paznowski. There was an attempt to explain him and his devotion to Antonio, but I didn't buy it. He seemed too smart to put himself under the thumb of a guy like Antonio. It didn't help that I couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of a relatively undamaged person being at all attracted to a guy like Antonio.

I actually expected more intrigue and betrayal than I got – for a good chunk of the book, I steeled myself for either Vinitra or Paznowski, or both, to suddenly reveal that they weren't as devoted to Antonio as they seemed. With Vinitra, I think I was hoping she'd become something less pitiful. Paznowski was just a disappointment. He was far more cunning than Antonio, and the way his story ended was a huge waste of potential.

The ending is written as being a primarily happy one. I kind of wish there had been a “X years in the future” ending that at least showed the fate of the empire, since I wasn't convinced that its many years of corruption had truly ended. The way the various couples' romances were resolved worked for me, though, even when they were resolved in a more open-ended way.

Other Comments:

• I really, really could have done without Antonio and Vinitra's on-page sex scene. It was definitely a brain bleach moment.
• Although her sexual "policies" weren't my cup of tea, some readers may find Maddy's views on sex to be refreshing. She feels free to have sex as often as she likes, and what happens in the bedroom doesn't need to affect what happens at work. For example, she can have sex with a crew member one day and reprimand him for screwing up on the job the next. She's consistent enough that no crew member expects her to behave otherwise.
• Those who are particularly sensitive towards representations of autistic characters may have issues with parts of the beginning of the book. I've only ever met a couple autistic people, so I'm not the best judge, but I was bothered that several characters seemed to equate "stupid" with "autistic," even after they said they didn't.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

After finishing The Sixth Discipline, I wanted to try something else by Buxton but didn't feel ready to read the book's sequel, No Safe Haven. I spent some time looking through descriptions, and Tribes sounded like it had one of the biggest things that appealed to me about The Sixth Discipline: an exploration of a fascinating sci-fi/fantasy culture. I was also intrigued by the bit about Jahnsi being from a fighting tribe.

The cultural stuff did turn out to be really interesting. I liked finding out how everything worked, from the planet's justice system, to tribal badges, to the service every tribe member was required to do. While I found the world interesting as a whole, I particularly enjoyed the little details that showed how the tribal system affected the way native Mariposans thought and behaved. For example, Jahnsi thought of LuAnne as “the Mingo” because, to Jahnsi, a person's surname is their tribe. Also, their tribal name automatically tells others what their gender is. It wasn't necessary to specify that someone was female if you said they were a Han-Lin, so the idea that a Mingo could be male or female seemed odd to Jahnsi.

Speaking of Jahnsi, I liked her. As a Han-Lin, she knew how to fight, but she wasn't a dark, gritty warrior heroine. I think that, to her, fighting was often just a job. She was very practical about it. There was always a risk of getting hurt, but she was experienced enough that she had a fairly realistic idea of what her risks were. There was one part where she decided to take on a job involving a dispute over an order of uniforms that weren't the right color. She viewed the job as a good, fairly low-risk way to earn money, because it was only going to involve hand-to-hand combat. Hob, on the other hand, was much more worried about the possibility she might get hurt.

While I wouldn't call this book a sci-fi romance, it did have some romance it in. I thought Jahnsi and Hob's relationship moved at tad fast. Hob had spent his entire life as a slave, and a good chunk of that time as a sex slave. Because the drugs the other slaves were given didn't work on him, he was fully aware of everything he was made to do. Granted, Jahnsi was different – she forced nothing on him. I still thought things went a little more quickly and smoothly between them than they should have. They were a couple after maybe eleven days (or less?). LuAnne and Forest's relationship also started fairly quickly, but it was more believable to me because neither one of them had gone through the lifetime of abuse that Hob had gone through.

I spent much of the book very curious about what would happen once LuAnne found Hob. Would he be willing to go to his aunt? Would he be forced to go if he wasn't? What was going to happen between him and Jahnsi? I absolutely did not expect what did happen, not even with the hints (like Hob's brain implant) that there was a little more to the situation than just an aunt looking for her long-lost nephew. I wasn't really happy with the way things developed. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but...well, it felt a little Borg-like and creepy. And the romance-loving part of me was disappointed by the ending. I suppose some people might feel that things end on a positive note for Jahnsi and Hob, but I had serious doubts that their relationship was going to last long, since there was already strong evidence that Hob felt the duties of his new life took precedence over his own wishes. I could easily imagine his aunt forcing him into an arranged marriage, and I seriously doubt Jahnsi would be willing to stand by and be his mistress. LuAnne and Forest's relationship was actually more satisfying to me than Jahnsi and Hob's – an unusual feeling for me, since I tend to identify more with younger couples in books than older ones.

Hmm, what else? This is a bit spoiler-y, but I loved that Andre Ortega got what was coming to him. He was horrible. Also, I was not a fan of the number of times (two, I think?) that Hob had his ability to make choices for himself taken away from him by people he should have been able to trust. Especially considering his history as a slave, he didn't hold this against those people for nearly as long as I thought he should have. And, ugh, Jahnsi's reaction after she found out the shocker that was the identity of one of Hob's former customers. Hob didn't deserve that, although at least she realized pretty quickly she was out of line.

All in all, Buxton's turning out to be a good author for me when I need a "interesting sci-fi culture" fix. Her characters sometimes act in ways that make me rage at them, but I still get a decent-to-good read overall.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I found this book to be kind of slow-paced, but still decent. The main thing keeping me from buying the sequel, No Safe Haven, is residual anger at Ran-Del and, to a certain extent, Francesca. More on that below.In the first third of the book, readers learn about city dweller and Sansoussy culture through the eyes of characters who know as little as they do. Although Ran-Del has been kidnapped, Stefan wants him to come to like living in the city, so he's perfectly willing to answer whatever questions Ran-Del may have. Then, when Francesca stays briefly with Ran-Del's people, she gets to ask basic questions about Sansoussy life. I appreciated that neither city dweller life nor Sansoussy life was depicted as wholly “good” or “bad,” although it seemed like the book paid more attention to the nitty gritty details of Sansoussy life than it did city dweller life.While I liked Ran-Del and Francesca's question-and-answer sessions at first, I eventually got to the point where I wished Buxton had incorporated information about the different cultures into the story more smoothly. I was happy when the story moved on to its next big phase, Ran-Del and Francesca's marriage. Unfortunately, that part became increasingly frustrating and stressful for me, to the point that I checked whether there was a sequel just so I could find out whether Ran-Del and Francesca were still married by the end of the book without actually looking at the last few pages.When I first started reading the book, I felt more sympathy for Ran-Del than any of the other characters. I gradually grew to like Francesca, though. She did what she could to make it easier for Ran-Del to get back to his people, and I loved that, when things started to get a little steamy between her and Ran-Del, she stopped things enough to give Ran-Del an opportunity to decide whether he really wanted to go further (Sansoussy people only have sex after marriage, so Francesca was more sexually experienced than Ran-Del). I couldn't imagine Francesca and Ran-Del getting married and actually being happy together, but I did come to like and sympathize with them both.After they made their marriage 100% binding for both their cultures, things changed, and I began to get more and more frustrated and annoyed with Ran-Del and Francesca, but mostly with Ran-Del (I can't reveal my reasons for getting upset with Francesca without including a spoiler, so I'm just not going to go into that bit). Ran-Del had made such a big deal about Sansoussy marriages, and how Francesca needed to realize that she couldn't sleep with other men, and how he of course would never even think of sleeping with any woman but her. And then he proceeded to spend a lot of time with Janis, a woman who he knew was interested in him and didn't care that he was married. He got angry when Francesca felt jealous, conveniently forgetting that, unlike him, Francesca couldn't read his emotions and know for a fact that he wasn't cheating on her.There were a few times I came very close to hating Ran-Del for the way he handled the situation between himself, Janis, and Francesca. I wasn't sure what sort of ending the book was moving towards – since this was a science fiction novel, and not romance, a happy ending wasn't guaranteed. Although the description of the sequel told me that Ran-Del and Francesca would still be married by the end of the book, I couldn't imagine how Buxton would make me believe in the longevity of their relationship. I didn't really want them to stay together, but I didn't know how Francesca would deal with the threats against the House of Hayden without the aid of Ran-Del's special abilities.Surprisingly, Buxton did manage to convince me that Ran-Del and Francesca's marriage could work. I wish the deciding moment hadn't come so late in the book, and I wish I could believe that Ran-Del and Francesca would handle future bumps in their relationship better. If I do get the sequel, it will be some time from now, because the idea of reading more about the two of them still stresses me out a little. I loved the book's exploration of two very different cultures, and I liked both Francesca and Ran-Del as individuals, but as a couple they were kind of nerve-wracking. I might take a look at some of the other books Buxton has written, instead.(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)