Apparently I read this book during the outage and forgot to post any updates about it. That should tell you how memorable it was. 

 

The blurb promises a reader a fast paced romp through Tudor England full of intrigue and conspiracy. Both of those things were true. However, at some point the author started to focus less on the mystery at hand and more on when Susanna and Parker were going to end up in bed together. It was obvious from page two that this was the author's end goal. I have zero problems with that considering the duo were actually married at some point in history.

I found the de la Pole story intrigue to be quite good. It definitely held my interest. The minor plot about Henry VIII being a Cesare Borgia devote was a little hard to digest. It was only meant to raise the readers eyebrows. At the end, it was very well done. The author sort of forgot about it and wasn't really able to tie it back in to the rest of the story. 

The constant innuendos and the will they/won't they, would have been tolerable if it weren't for the characters themselves. These characters were flat. Especially the villains. From their greasy hair to their hooked noses, they checked off every box on the stereotype list. Don't even get me started on George Boleyn. I don't understand why he was even introduced if for no reason other than to have the author point out she's not a George Boleyn fan.

A lot of things made sense when I got to the author's note at the end. It would seem the author's only source of research was Alison Weir. Any Weir fans will more than likely enjoy this book as the author's style is much like Weir's but with a little more blood. 

 

There are two and a half other books in this series. I won't be reading any of them. Unless maybe I find them at a used store for 50 cents, which is how I came to own this book.

 

 

Book read 1/8/2020-1/11/2020

 

 

Some secrets carry the weight of the world.

Rose McKenzie may be far from Earth with no way back, but she's made a powerful ally--a fellow prisoner with whom she's formed a strong bond. Sazo's an artificial intelligence. He's saved her from captivity and torture, but he's also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided.

Captain Dav Jallan doesn't know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he's not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead, all except for one strange, new alien being.

She calls herself Rose. She seems small and harmless, but less and less about her story is adding up, and Dav has a bad feeling his crew, and maybe even the four planets, are in jeopardy. The Class 5's owners, the Tecran, look set to start a war to get it back and Dav suspects Rose isn't the only alien being who survived what happened on the Class 5. And whatever else is out there is playing its own games.

In this race for the truth, he's going to have to go against his leaders and trust the dark horse.

Sky Raiders - Michelle Diener Garek was assigned guard duty for one year walking the walls of Garamundo but after the Sky Raiders showed up his one year was extended to two years. All Garek wanted was to return home to be with his beloved Taya. But unbeknownst to Garek the Sky Raiders took Taya along with other family members and friends to the planet Shadow to mind the ore there that is more dangerous to the Sky Raiders than it is valuable.

Taya and the other prisoners on Shadow have no clue what the Sky Raiders want with the ore but they know how afraid they are of it. Taya is a very smart and resourceful girl and has a plan working in her mind for escaping and for how helpful the ore is going to be for them.

Taya thinks about her home planet Barit and Garek every night while looking up in the night sky. She wants to return home so she can be with her friend and lover Garek more than anything. She knows that Garek is out there looking for her but she knows in her heart and mind that there is no way he will ever find her.

After two long years Garek finally returns home only to find everyone gone and that the Sky Raiders are responsible. Garek has no idea where the Sky Raiders have taken Taya and the others but he will not stop until he finds them no matter how long it takes. But Garek is a very resourceful man as well and he has a plan too.

When I read the summary for Sky Raiders and saw that it was about people living in outer space and traveling to other planets I thought Star Trek and then I just had to read it. It did make me think about Star Trek, Captain Kirk and Spock visiting other planets. I really and truly loved the world the author created for Sky Raiders with the aliens and taking the people to another planet. Taya is a very smart and strong person who is not afraid to stand up and fight for not only herself but especially for others no matter what the cost to own self.

I would like to recommend Sky Raiders to anyone who loves to read about space and spaceships or who just loves science fiction or anyone loves Star Trek. Sky Raiders turned out to be way more than I thought it would be.

The Duke of Wittaker has been living a lie...

He’s been spying on the dissolute, discontented noblemen of the ton, pretending to share their views. Now he’s ready to step out of the shadows and start living a real life...but when the prime minister of England is assassinated, he's asked to go back to being the rake-hell duke everyone still believes he is to find out more.

Miss Phoebe Hillier has been living a lie, too...

All her life she's played the game, hiding her fierce intelligence and love of life behind a docile and decorous mask. All it's gotten her is jilted by her betrothed, a man she thought a fool, but a harmless one. But when she discovers her former fiancé was involved in the plot against the prime minister, and that he's been murdered, she realizes he wasn't so harmless after all.

And now the killers have set their sights on her...

The only man who can help her is the Duke of Wittaker--a man she knows she shouldn't trust. And she soon realizes he's hiding behind a mask as careful as her own. As the assassin steadfastly vows he acted alone, and as the clock ticks down to his trial, the pair scramble to uncover the real conspiracy. And as the pressure and the danger mounts, Phoebe and Wittaker shed their disguises, layer by layer, to discover something more precious than either imagined–something that could last forever. Unless the conspirators desperate to hide their tracks get to them first.

The first time I read this, I stayed up until 3am before accepting that I needed to stop reading and actually get some sleep.

The second time around, I stayed up until 6am before crashing and spent most of the morning drooling on my Kindle and dreaming about being an AI in outerspace. Woke up and immediately finished reading.

I FUCKING LOVE THIS BOOK.