Good Morning, Readers! Today, I am going on a misssin with Dr. Draden Freeman and his GhostWalker team! Enjoy and don't forget to add Toxic Game by Christine Feehan to your shelves!

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On a rescue mission in the heart of the Indonesian jungle, Dr. Draden Freeman and his GhostWalker team need to extract the wounded as quickly as possible—or risk spreading a deadly virus unleashed by a terrorist cell. When Draden gets infected, he forces his team to leave him behind. He won’t risk exposing anyone else. He intends to find the ones responsible and go out in a blaze of glory....

Shylah Cosmos’s mission is to track the virus and remain unseen. Her enhanced senses tell her that the gorgeous man eradicating the terrorists one by one is a GhostWalker—and his lethal precision takes her breath away. When he’s hit by a lucky shot, she can’t stop herself from stepping in, not knowing that by saving his life she’s exposed herself to the virus.

There’s no telling how much time Draden and Shylah have left. Racing to find a cure, they quickly realize that they’ve found their perfect partner just in time to lose everything. But even as the virus threatens to consume their bodies, they’ve never felt more alive.

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Draden Freeman faces an enemy that he may not be able to overcome right when he discovers his mate in this exceptional, exhilarating and emotional Ghostwalker novel. Draden and Shylah are two bold characters that not only demand readers’ attention but capture their hearts while they face their toughest mission ever. The emotional draw of this story is strong and really captivates readers with how realistically the story plays out in regards to how Shylah and Draden handle all the stress and their goals after they are infected with the deadly virus. While the relationship hovers on a very suspenseful edge throughout the story, the romance between them of course is seriously hot and Draden pulls some sweet and romantic surprises out that readers can’t help but envy.

This story deals with some real-life events that could and probably have happened in the world of terrorists which adds chills to the story as Draden and Shylah and the Ghostwalkers race against time while trying to take down the enemies and unravel the clues to find out just who is really behind the evil plan. This fast paced plot steadily builds the adrenaline pumping suspense throughout the story with lots of exhilarating events and readers cannot put this book down no matter what else is happening around them.

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Author's Book Page - https://www.christinefeehan.com/ghostwalker/toxic_game.php

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uevVWOxFCJE

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40968474-toxic-game

BookLikes - http://booklikes.com/toxic-game-christine-feehan/book,13997984

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/books/toxic-game-by-christine-feehan

Riffle - https://www.rifflebooks.com/books/1027009

Romance.io - https://www.romance.io/books/5c7e34b101dbc864fb9b2940/toxic-game-christine-feehan

GBooks - https://books.google.com/books?id=w75mDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=christine+feehan+toxic+game&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8-dil_aXhAhUDca0KHXgcAKsQ6AEIKjAA

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Toxic Game is the 15th book in the Ghostwalker series

Author - https://www.christinefeehan.com/ghostwalker/index.php

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/series/41874-ghostwalkers

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G3FKB9S?ref=series_rw_dp_labf

1 Shadow Game
2 Mind Game
3 Night Game
4 Conspiracy Game
5 Deadly Game
6 Predatory Game
7 Murder Game
8 Street Game
9 Ruthless Game
10 Samurai Game
11 Viper Game
12 Spider Game
13 Power Game
14 Covert Game
15 Toxic Game

Shadow Warrior - #4 Shadow series - June 4, 2019

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42120861-shadow-warrior+

Dark Illusion - Dark #29 - September 23, 2019

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43193138-dark-illusion

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AVAILABLE in hardcover, ebook or audio

 Hardcover

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1984803492/christinfeeha-20

B&N - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toxic-game-christine-feehan/1103139964?ean=9781984803498

BaM - https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Toxic-Game/Christine-Feehan/9781984803498?id=7336664307300

WalMart - https://www.walmart.com/ip/Toxic%20Game/111170726

IndieBound - https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781984803498

BookDepository - https://www.bookdepository.com/Toxic-Game-Christine-Feehan/9781984803498?ref=grid-view&qid=1553816174265&sr=1-2

 eBook

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-GhostWalker-Novel-Christine-Feehan-ebook/dp/B07FZMX7T5/christinfeeha-20

B&N - http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3189328/type/dlg/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toxic-game-christine-feehan/1129201400?ean=9781984803504#/

iBooks - https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/toxic-game/id1419092551?mt=11&at=1010lJ7H

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Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/toxic-game

Audio 

Audible - https://www.audible.com/pd/Toxic-Game-Audiobook/1980010374

IndieBound - https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781980027966

Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/toxic-game-2

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I live on the beautiful Northern California coast and draw much inspiration from the beauty around me. I've always been a writer, for as long as I remember. My sisters were forced to read all of my books from the time I could write a story on paper.

I love family. I love my brothers and sisters, my children, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. My home was always full of kids and children give me so much joy.

I also love my "sisters of the heart", those friends who have supported me through my life, laughed with me, cried with me and loved me regardless of how crazy my life got. I am a strong supporter of women helping each other which is why I became a third degree black belt and taught self-defense to women who'd been abused.

I love people and dogs, good books and great coffee and I'm lucky to know just how blessed I am.

Website - http://www.christinefeehan.com/

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6268.Christine_Feehan

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/authors/christine-feehan

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/christinefeehanauthor

Twitter - https://twitter.com/AuthorCFeehan

InstaGram - https://www.instagram.com/authorcfeehan/

Pintrest - http://www.pinterest.com/authorcfeehan/

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The Ice King and the Black Widow

This is my revised review for the book. It's been a while since I read it, but I needed the time to coalesce my thoughts. I am pretty darn disappointed, to be honest. Yeah, I still gave it four stars, and I'll explain why later. 

I was loving the first 1/2 or so of the book, and it went downhill shortly thereafter. Trap was an ahole from the beginning but not in an intolerable way. I actually kind of liked him initially. I really enjoyed the banter on the scene at the beginning where the guys are hanging out in the bar. The GhostWalker camaraderie is one of my favorite things about there books. It was pretty fun how Trap was calculating how many peanut shells were on the floor and got the guys involved in, and then Cayenne had come up with her own estimates that were close to his. I felt like they had a pretty good meeting of the minds. 

Trap had his moments, but later in the book, he was a serious douche bag. I liked the initial love scenes, but towards the end of the book, the scene on the airplane was just freaking rotten how he treated Cayenne just because she was having a bonding moment with a member of his team and then the sex after that. I don't like any butt play, and I do feel that I was highly disappointed that Feehan chose to spring that on me as a reader. I know most readers don't care about that, but I am not into that and I try to avoid books that have it. A big part of my issues with the sex were his motivations. It was like some sort of possessive/masculine domination/punishment for making Trap feel jealous on the plan. That nearly made me throw the book against the wall. I think Cayenne deserves better. He knew how crappy her life has been. He is very protective of her, but then he seems okay with pulling jerk moves on her. He's a highly intelligent guy, but he acts like he's all testosterone and 100% caveman sometime. Apparently, sex is his main outlet besides his work, so I guess being kinky is part of his nature. The way he's treated his past lovers is questionable, and I'm not saying he gets a pass for it, but i would hope you would get a clue that you don't treat a woman you're suppose to love and adore that way. It's a big deal how he built his house for her and to make a place that she was safe. But then he gives her reasons not to trust and feel safe with him. It's sad because I really wanted to like Trap, but I think he blew it for me with his behavior.

Cayenne, on the other hand, I loved consistently. She was lethal and tough, but also tormented and emotionally vulnerable. I felt bad that she couldn't leave Trap, and although he couldn't leave her, he just needed to treat her better. I normally love the whole fated to be mated thing, but in this book, it seems like a bad thing. I really want to believe that people should be with someone because they are deeply loved in return and there is caring and trust between them.

I'm having a real issue with the escalation of erotic sex tinged with violence in the later books that Feehan is writing. I still love her writing and her books, but I'm really nervous now that she's going to go full bore with the stuff I'm just not into and have no desire to read. I had to skip some scenes in Fire Bound (not between the H/h, but when the bad guys were abusing a woman). I would have to have to start skipping H/h scenes in her books. I enjoy the plotting and the ongoing storylines too much to quit reading her, so my hope is that she doesn't keep escalating with her content. If it comes down to it, I may have to just read the non sex scenes when they get over the top.

I'm still giving this four stars, because I love the GhostWalkers storyline so much, and I really, really enjoyed the first part of the book. I can't give it more because of how much of a cad Trap was and the butt plug stuff (eww).

3rd Reread Completed in October 2017.:

I think that Azami is one of Feehan's more complex GhostWalker heroines. She is definitely the most tortured. Like physically and emotionally. Whitney used her for experiments and operated on her repeatedly and then literally threw her away. She rose like a phoenix from the ashes, which is why her tattoo is so appropriate. I love how badass she is. Not only badass, but also very calm and soothing and has a sense of peace that took many years of discipline to cultivate. I think she's perfect for Sam.

Sam is such a sweetie. I love him. He's definitely lethal and capable of kicking butt big time, but he's also like a big cuddly teddy bear. He's so loyal. I was so glad to see he got a good heroine.

I loved how Sam and Azami connected deeply, and one couldn't even say it was because Whitney paired them. They share a history of having grown up in trouble surroundings and being adopted, and a craving for a real sense of family and home. It makes me so happy that they are together.

I like how much of the action in this book is Azami on her mission to cut off Whitney's espionage supply pipeline. She is ruthless about taking out her enemies, but I'm not mad at her.

One thing that bothered me this time as much as the last, Feehan barely mentions that Sam is African American. I would have liked more references to his skin color just as it was important to get a clear image of him in my head. I made up my own image. However, someone who picked up this book first probably wouldn't even know Sam was black.

As always, I love seeing Team One work together and joke around. I like how Feehan takes the time to introduce some characters she hadn't featured before, like Jonas and Kyle. I liked how much Ryland, Gator, Tucker, Nico, and Ian were in this, not to mention the ladies such as Saber, Lily, and Flame.

I never get enough of these book. This completes the reread of the books I have already read at least twice. Now I'm moving onto Viper Game, for my first reread.

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I used to play the Deadlands RPG when I was in high school. That was, well, long ago. Long enough for the game to be in its original iteration, no LCG or anything. Back when we used poker chips that could act as jokers, but we greedily kept them because the unused ones would turn into experience points at the end of the game. Yeah, that was quite a few years ago.

So I wanted to try and see what a novel set in the Deadlands universe was like.

Though I admit my recollections of the game are far and few between, I'm not sure the book exactly related. Some elements fitted, and had the "Weird West" feeling I tend to associate with that world, but they seemed to be thrown in more as add-ons than as true parts. (Dinosaurs, zombies, steampunk weapons, etc.) It was fun, sure, yet it also looked as too much being crammed in it... and at the same time, the novel felt too long for the story it had to tell.

It worked well enough as a "strange western"-like story in the beginning, in that the action started fast, and the tropes I was looking for were there: gunslingers, little town under the tyranny of a couple of rich white guys with their own militia of sorts, inhabitants trying to resist but being outnumbered... However, after a while, I began to lose interest, likely because of the repetitiveness of said action, and because the characters didn't have much depths, all things considered. Grey had a troubled past... but there isn't much more to him once this past is uncovered (he did work as a character thrown in that mess without much knowledge of what happened, as other people explaining things allowed the reader to discover them as well). Jenny was the mandatory brave female character with a shotgun, and her courage was commendable, yet out of this and her relationship with Grey, there wasn't too much to her either. The monk was forgettable, and the villain was... gloating?

A definitely problematic character was Looks Away, the Sioux guy who happened to be part of a circus in Europe, got an education there, and now throwns in "British" slang all the time. Making him a Sioux felt more like ye olde mandatory POC than like a real person, as basically he could have been a British scholar just as well, and it wouldn't have changed the plot in any way. (Granted, had the author gone overboard the other way, by making him a Native American cliché, it'd have been just as bad. But I believe in middle grounds.)

A good deal of the novel was also both boring and too over the top to fully belong. Characters discover awful weapon and enemies, fight them, manage to escape at the last moment, bit of deus ex machina here, rinse and repeat. (A corset stopping a bullet... Uh... Not sure about that, and if the explanation is what I think it was, it wasn't made very clear in the end.) As for the enemies, I could do with zombies (in the Deadlandsverse? Sure!), but the vampire-witches mqde me wonder what they were doing here, and dinosaurs was too far-fetched, seemingly added to the mix just because at some point, someone must've said "hey, why not put dinosaurs in there, too, they're cool." Odd.

Writing style: long descriptions (of which I quickly get bored), and a tendency to veer into very short sentences/3-word long paragraphs that worked sometimes, and were jarring at others.

Conclusion: Some interesting ideas, but the characters need to be fleshed out, and the novel to be trimmed down when it comes to descriptions.

This book was very kindly provided by Tor through Net Galley in return for an honest review.

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Let's get this out of the way first -- I love Deadlands.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Deadlands is a tabletop RPG combining the Old West setting with the mad science of pulp novels and the creepy horror notes of Lovecraftian and zombie tales. In addition to its own system, has also been converted to a number of more common tabletops over the years. I personally have the original book and the sourcebooks for both GURPS and Savage Worlds. They're generally the only source books I will take down and thumb through just for fun. Deadlands was one of my favorite games to play, one of the first ones I ever GMed and retains a spot in my heart as my favorite tabletop setting ever.

So when I heard Tor was putting out a series of books based on the setting, I'm pretty sure I couldn't have been more excited. So, if that matters to you, keep it in mind - I'm a fan, who thinks this is a spectacular setting for storytelling.

So, how about "Ghostwalkers" - is it good?

Yes. Yes, it's good. If you know Deadlands, it has most of what you want it to have. If you don't know Deadlands but think the idea of Cthulu showing up in a spaghetti Western would make for a heavenly bit of reading, you'll probably like it as well. It's an entertaining adventure with a cast of colorful characters, a bestiary of incredible creatures and a hero on a rough and rocky journey toward redemption.

Our main character is Grey Torrance, a man on the run from his past who can't quite stop himself from doing the right thing. When he comes upon a posse chasing after a Native American, the odds of six against one strike him as a bit off, so he involves himself. In doing so, he meets Looks Away, a Sioux scientist searching for a colleague, and gets set on a path toward a bigger destiny than he ever wanted.

As is almost required, Grey is a gunslinger - the sort old Roland of Gilead would probably say remembers the face of his father, even if he won't admit it. He finds himself tied up in the danger to a town called Paradise Falls, in the Great Maze of California, and from the moment that starts, the book is a pretty relentless runaway train, action piling into action until it reaches the wild final conflict where guns and philosophies cross.

If there's a definable weakness to this book, it's the beginning. The scenes are all interesting, xploring these new characters and the world around them, but there's something a little bit... I don't want to say episodic, not really. Disjointed maybe? The narrative smooths out quite a bit once they reach California and from that point the brakes are off. Also, this isn't a book you're going to read for the language, but it does sometimes manage to get quite evocative, bringing the oddities of this Old West to life. Still, there are some issues with the writing that you might notice - phrases that get returned to again and again, and a focus on certain types of description. If you're sensitive to that sort of thing, be warned.

Grey and Looks Away are both interesting characters, friends and at odds with one another in the same paragraph. Their interactions were my favorite part of this whole story. I'd honestly enjoy reading the continuing adventures of Grey and Looks Away. :) You will find they're not the most complicated and deeply developed characters in the world, but they're not really meant to be for the type of story this is trying to be.

The rest of the world is likewise filled with the sort of wonderful, colorful and broad characters you expect from a weird and violent western. There's corrupt lawmen, sharp-shooting rancherwomen, greedy rail barons, priests and honest cowboys and evil men trying to drive good folks off their homesteads.

And for those who want to know how it stacks up as a Deadlands story, they have you covered there too. There's weird and deadly mad-science devices, undead and Harrowed and Manitou, creatures that have no business in the modern-for-this-book United States, ghosts, the Great Maze and, of course, ghost ore to drive it all. The book explains it all for the benefit of people who aren't familiar with these terms and concepts, but I never found that the explanations took away from the book for me. I could have done with a huckster or some shamanistic magic, but there's two more books and I can be patient. :)

So if you want an adventure and love an old west setting with a twist, I really recommend this. It captures the mix of grit and romanticism of the old west, adds in a relentless villain who hangs like a shadow over the whole thing, and keeps the action piling ahead like a stampede. It's pretty much exactly what I wanted from this book.