Showing posts with label ellen bard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ellen bard. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Blaize and the Maven (The Energetics Series #1) by Ellen Bard



Blaize has just finished her first chakra trial and is an adept for fire – Manipura – and is now moving on to train her secondar chakra, Ajna, with renowned dream walker and prophet, Cuinn

However, Cuinn has had a terrible history with his previous adherent and is definitely not ready for another one. Especially since his dreams have been hinting at a terrible future he needs to uncover. The last thing he needs is an adherent under his feet

But Blaize may be an important part of the prophecy – and their enemies seem to think so when they target her.



This book is, firstly, a paranormal romance, it was how it was marketed and labelled. And that normally makes me look at the people who sent me this book and asking them if they’ve made any effort to examine Fangs because, in all honestly, we’re not a big fan of many of the paranormal romance we read

But I liked this book

The story works extremely well in addition to the romance. Yes, there’s a romance there, but there’s  plot there that exists above and beyond the romance. I have found a lot of paranormal romances have a plot line in addition to the romance, but it often exists just to further the romance – and you can tell. It’s generally shallow, under-developed and with plot holes you could drive a double decker bus through. Here the plot and the romance weren’t co-dependent on each other (which, when we think about it, makes a lot of sense. Romance may be important to the character, but it’s unlikely their love life is really going to have that much influence on the fate of the world etc. No, not even with the earth shattering orgasms).

There were some clichés to the romance I didn’t care for, or I’ve just seen so many times that I just don’t have patience for them any more. Both characters have past issues that make them reluctant to venture into a relationship (both of which are a little dubious). Both have tragic or semi-tragic pasts. Both get over said tragic pasts in such an unseemly length of time that I’m left wondering why the author felt the need to have them there at all. It’s like someone looked up a trope list and decided “hey, we need to have X, Y, and Z, put them in”. And, really, if you’re going to give your characters a compelling developed reason why they avoid relationships… fine – but actually have them avoid relationships. If it takes them 3 days to resolve these terribad issues before getting to the humping then maybe those issues shouldn’t be there