Shield Mate - Eressë Vaeren and Ranael's story. Previous appeared at the end of book 5.
Different from others that this focuses a bit more on military than politics or diplomacy. Both are soldiers within the Ylandre army. Therefore their relationship reflects that. Also focuses a good amount on social status and the distension and bias between social hierarchy.

The ending was very nice and not overly sweet. Liked I said this was a bit different than the previous stories. There is the angst and riff between lovers like in the previous books in the series but like the other stories there is resolution.

I enjoyed it and seeing how well it fit in with the other books in the series and am looking forward to seeing whose story will be next.

I'm not usually a fan of high fantasy but this one captivated me. What a delightful tale! I might be inclined to read more in this series.

DNFed at 35%. My rating is for that part only.

Nothing happens in the first third of this "fantasy". The book itself is a huge info dump of useless history, descriptions of unimportant things (plumbing) and family liaisons.

The language is pretentious and heavy, trying to camouflage as an "old charm".

The characters.... *sigh*

Rohyr the King is a push-over and a suck up, bending backwards in order not to upset his evil uncle.

Lassen is a "breeder", someone who can bear children. He is a hermaphrodite, identifies himself as male but acts like a female. Why not make him a woman from the beginning? Is it just for the sake of mpreg tag?

*

I made a list of important events, that transpired in the first 35%. Don't hold your breath.

1. Young Lassen finds himself given away to the king (Rohyr), in exchange for military protection of the province where he lives. Rohyr makes Lessen his whore concubine (never to be his consort), even tho the boy is underage at 28, because breeders do not reach sexual maturity until they are past 30.
(Long life span).

2. Lassen lives with Rohyr in his castle and every once in a while they run into each other and suck face and other body parts.

3. 10 years later (smack out of nowhere - not a warning, not a hint, nothing!) Lassen finds out that Rohyr's evil uncle has an evil plan at hand.

This is it.

All around and in between these three events we have:

- a lot of unnecessary history and geography lessons,
- lectures on Rohyr's extended family relations,
- overload of random alien names that for the life of me I can't remember past the sentence they were introduced in,
- lengthy descriptions of things in no way important to anything in the book - see me bitching about whimsical plumbing in the comments.

Once again, that's 35% of the book, and the book is not short.

1.5 stars.

Let me sum up the events of this fantasy so far. The lass... sorry - Lassen, moved in with Rory... sorry - Rohyr by the way of worm-hole. They had sex and before the happy couple - and all of us - knew, 10 years was gone in a super-nova flash of light. A time-space continuum clusterfuck... and that's about it.

...... awkward....

I strongly dislike the pretentious language the author is so fond of.

 

Proclitics are overused. Instead of providing an old time charm 'tis a major annoyance. Top it with very frequent info dumps that tell you absolutely nothing you need to know (like plumbing - who gives a crap where and how they did their #1s & #2s. It's not relevant to anything, so wth?) and you find yourself dozing off every 3-4 pages.

 

 PS What's with the cover and overlapping heads? Escher much?

 

 

Oh... oh.... I forget - they bend space.