Ravings of the Semi-Lucid

Title: The Warrior's Gift
Author: Bonnie Dee

Summary: In Katya's world, villagers sacrifice their daughters as sex slaves for a sect of
warriors who keep their lands safe from invasion. When Katya herself is chosen as
a "bride", although she's always questioned the arrangement, she submits for the
sake of her family. She has no idea what to expect from the warriors, and not much
more idea when it comes to sex.
Blessedly, her Warrior, Turan, turns out to be a sweet, gentle giant of a man, despite
being raised in ignorance of anything but fighting and killing. He knows as little
about sex as Katya herself, but his primal passions burn hot.
Together they learn the pleasures of the flesh...and incite a revolution that changes
their world forever.

The Good: There's a lot to recommend it about this ebook. Dee does a wonderful job with introducing our characters and the society in which they live. Katya is the rare character in romancelandia, a feisty female character who is, you know, endearingly feisty and not too stupid to live. And, oh, Turan. I have a huge soft spot for the gentle giant archetypes, and Turan is a refreshingly nice guy with a wonderfully naive view of the world. And also, I do love it when we get a virgin hero in one of these books.

The Bad: The premise requires a bit of suspension of disbelief. I had a hard time accepting the fact that everyone lived under the strict control of the Guardians, who are basically the ones who train the warriors. Apparently, nobody's thought to revolt before Katya showed up, which I found a little strange. I also thought the ending wrapped things up a little too neatly and simplistically, which is too bad because the setting could have been a lot of fun if explored in greater depth.

My verdict: I do recommend this book. It's a quick read, with a couple of likeable characters. If it weren't for the things about the story's actual premise, it'd be an A book for sure. As it is, I'm still giving it a B.
ETA: I have no idea why my HTML foo sucks.

I read a lot while I was gone, since I didn't have the Internet to distract me during my downtime. I'll see if I can remember everything.
( Click for the list )

I think those are all the books I actually finished. At the moment, I'm in the middle of several other books.

Oh, and I have to mention that a couple of ebook authors made it onto my never read list again:

• Jordan Summers: Her stories are about five close female friends who all stupidly go off to the jungle for haut smexing. I never made it to the hot smexing part, because I couldn't get past the fact that the heroine of the first book freely admitted she knew nothing about the outdoors, yet was happily galavanting around the jungle.
  
  
• Charlotte Boyett Compo: In the book of hers I tried, her male character refers to a woman's secretions as tasting like boiled potatoes... which took me out of the story and made me collapse into hysterical laughter for a long time. Seriously... WTF, boiled potatoes? Not romantic.