The Kraken King (Part 1) by Meljean Brook

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
20645265
Grade: A
Hotness Level: Ember
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Steampunk, Serial
Series: Iron Seas #4.1 (Part 1 of 8 parts for this story)
Published: 4/15/14
Reviewed by Anne
78 ebook pages

So, I did something I swore to myself I’d never do… I started a serial.  I hate cliffhangers.  I’d rather wait a serial out and read the whole thing once it’s done!  But then I saw this one.  And it’s Meljean Brook.  MELJEAN BROOK!  And it’s in the Iron Seas world.  One of the coolest worlds I’ve read.  Best steampunk I’ve read.  And can I wait until August to read the whole thing??? No.  I cannot.  So here I sit, in the mess I made for myself, wanting more but having to wait until the next installment.  Because it was GOOD.

Zenobia Fox, author of the tales of Archimedes Fox and Lady Lynx has always lived in the adventures she writes.  Besides a couple kidnappings, she hasn’t traveled much.  But she’s off to see the world now.  She’s smart about it, though, as she’s travelling under an assumed name and taking her trusted body guards with her.

Not long into her journey, the airship she’s on is attacked and blown up.  She’s rescued by her bodyguards, her own coolheadedness, AND by the Kraken King.  Ariq, the Kraken King, goes by many names. He’s mayor of his isolated town and has been fighting off and investigating the group that took down Zenobia’s ship.  Zenobia and her friends take shelter in his town as they wait for another ship to take them on to their destination.

I don’t think there’s anything mind shattering about the plot as it seems to be standard adventure fare, but the book really shines in the relationship between Ariq and Zenobia.  They’ve got a lot of sexual tension and they don’t deny it! Acknowledging it doesn’t mean acting on it, necessarily.  They’re both smart, and they’re not going to make stupid decisions.  There is no TSTL in this story!  Zenobia not only depends on her bodyguards, but she listens to them!

I’m primarily a romance reader, so I appreciate the development of Zenobia and Ariq’s relationship, but the action sequences really rock, too!  The escape from the airship was a scene I could picture in a blockbuster summer movie!  Well written and exciting!  And I really want to see the dead Kraken on the beach!

My only complaint (besides the fact that it’s a serial, and that’s my own fault for being weak and not waiting it out…) was the misunderstanding set up in this installment.  I hope that’s cleared up soon.

I think this one would stand alone if you hadn’t read the rest of the series.  The characters are all new – Zenobia has been mentioned in other books, but not featured.  The world building is easy to catch on to.  So, go forth and enjoy!  Join me in the agony of waiting for the next installment!

Straight Shooter by Heidi Belleau

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
18808267
Grade: B+
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Moderate Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m, BDSM
Series: Rear Entrance Video #3
Published: 4/7/14
Reviewed by Anne
271 ebook pages

Austin Puett is hoping to be a professional hockey player.  Right now he’s on his college team, and that takes up most of his time and concentration.  Unfortunately some personal issues are making problems for him.  First of all, he’s been rude to one of his roommates and his landlord/roommate has given him the rest of the month to make things right with the newly cross-dressing roommate he insulted.  On top of trying to figure that mess out, he’s dealing with a recurring identity crisis.  He’s an uber-macho hockey player, but he gets turned on when his teammates insult him and call him gay.  

Austin can NOT figure out what is wrong with him.  And it’s not a simple thing.  It’s not just, do I like girls or boys or both?  Austin knows there’s more on the line.  No way could a hockey team, college or pro, accept a player as sexually messed up as Austin is.  Desperate to break himself of this boner-at-inappropriate-times issue, Austin decides that binge watching m/m porn would be a great way to return himself to normal.  It’s got to work, right?

This book is more Austin’s story than anything else, but there is a nice romance, too.  Austin is so convinced there’s something fundamentally wrong with him!  His attempts to cure himself are comical and tragic.  When his job at Rear Entrance Video leads to him meeting Puck, the star of his favorite binge-watching porn series, things start to take a turn for the better.

It’s a really good story of self discovery and thinking of sexuality not as something that’s black or white or even easily defined.  Watching Austin come to accept himself was both painful and hopeful!  I really loved how his acceptance of his friends led to him accepting himself. You could also see how not acknowledging who he was and what he liked could hurt his friends, too.

The story is told entirely from Austin’s point of view, which really works, since Austin has the most growing to do.  Heidi Belleau does a great job of cluing us into where Puck is at through the things Austin sees, even if Austin doesn’t seem to understand them. The author also gets mega bonus points for writing the first Dom I’ve ever read who doesn’t have magical psychic powers of understanding and predicting and isn’t perfect.  This made a lot of sense, because Austin really didn’t know what he wanted, either.  The way they worked through things when Puck was wrong about what Austin wanted was even more important than the sex they were having.

Austin’s kink (and I won’t say exactly what it is, because he doesn’t really even know it when the story starts) is not my favorite kink to read about, so credit to the author for still making it a believably affectionate relationship!  The only other issue I had with this book was that the ending was a little too much happiness and rainbows and HEA.  It seemed to me they had a lot to work through.  In my head they’re much more HFN, and I can accept that.

Heidi Belleau has put herself on my READ IT NOW list!  Her stories aren’t just entertaining, but they make me think and stretch my empathy to situations I just didn’t understand.  I know Kate also loves her The Professor’s Rule series of novellas.  I’m moving them up on my list!

To the Very Last Inch by Heidi Belleau and Amelia C. Gormley

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

To the Very Last Inch (The Professor's Rule, #5)

Grade: A
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: High Kink
Genre: m/m, menage, m/m/m, BDSM
Series: The Professor’s Rule #5
Published: 3/03/14
Reviewed by Kate
56 pages

This is the conclusion to the Professor’s Rule series, and it is everything that I wanted it to be!  We finally get some of Carson’s perspective and everyone finally starts actually talking to each other and…well, it’s rather obvious that I’m still really excited about this one (even a week after reading it).  Oh wait, I forgot…the ending.  It left me happy, but wanting more of Carson, James, and Satish.


If you liked the first ones in the series, you’ll love this one as well.  If you haven’t read the first ones and you like m/m with BDSM mixed in, I highly recommend this series.  They really need to be read in order though.  You could read the second one followed by #1, but the rest really need to be read in order.  I can’t wait to go back and re-read them back-to-back rather than having to wait until the next one is released.


I hope that this pair of authors teams up again.  I’m excited to see what they can come up with next!