A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Vyr, son of the famous blue dragon Damon Daye, is the reviled and extremely dangerous red dragon. Due to many exciting events which I missed as I read this out of order but which are helpfully recapped in this volume, he is currently separated from his beloved crew and imprisoned in a hellhole prison for worst-of-the-worst shifters; I feel that it's not really a spoiler to say that illegal and immoral experimentation is also going on.

He is SUFFERING and DYING and they are in the process of KILLING HIS DRAGON, an excruciating process after which shifters tend to commit suicide. Because of this, one of his eyes is a DEAD DRAGON EYE. He's in solitary confinement IN THE DARK. But he is voluntarily not breaking out, which he absolutely has the power to do, because to do so would harm his friends, make all shifters look bad, oh yeah and also DESTROY THE ENTIRE WORLD because he can't control his dragon.

Enter Riyah, a telekinetic telepathic psychic therapist who has been recruited by Vyr's mom to pose as a prison counselor and so find out what's really going on in there, save his life, and possibly break him out. She is horrified by prison conditions and what they're doing to Vyr specifically. They can't speak freely because they're constantly monitored, but since she's telepathic they can have secret conversations, including when she's back home. This leads to one of Joyce's hottest sex scenes, conducted entirely long-distance. This is all much less objectionable than would normally be the case as they both know she's not really his therapist.

Typical Joyce characters, made extra fun by Riyah's powers and almost the entire romance occurring sub rosa while the hero is in prison.

Vyr's inability to control his dragon has an unexpected outcome. ( Read more... )

Dead, Dead, he's good in bed.

Dead of Winter, the most uncouth of the bucking bull shifters, reveals a sweet and sensitive side that will only be surprising to someone who's never read a T. S. Joyce book. Her heroes talk trash, come on strong, and fight each other a lot, but they are unfailingly kind, gentle, sweet, and supportive with the women they love (and women in general), once you get past their rough defensive shields.

The heroine of this book is Raven, a goth cow shifter raised by humans who does funeral flower arrangements, who was branded at birth and still bears the scars. Dead sweeps her off her feet, gets her to attend an autograph signing with him where she reveals a lot of managerial skill, and takes her to go mudding (driving around spraying your opponent's car with mud) and spend the night with him in his camper while making it absolutely clear in advance that he no matter how dirty he talks, he will 100% respect her right to say no as well as yes.

Dead is a really fun hero, but the star of the book is Raven's inner cow, Hagan's Lace. She is a purebred longhorn who hates everyone and everything, which makes her perfect for the rodeo. (Unlike, say, Zoe Chant's inner animals which are reflections of the characters' truest selves, Joyce's inner animals are "monsters" who are viewed as separate from the people who contain them.) Hagan's Lace only gets a little page time, but it's worth the entire price of the book.

Fuck that man. And fuck that glow stick.

Dead of Winter (Battle of the Bulls Book 2)

This one was a misfire for me, surprisingly because I really enjoyed the first.

The heroine, Sadey, just found out that her husband Dallas had been married to her schoolfriend Maris the entire time he was dating her. I am very confused by how she could have not figured this out for literally years given that Dallas and Maris lived together and owned a ranch together!

She dumps his sorry ass and apologizes to Maris in a bar. Sadey expects Maris to hate her, but she’s actually very nice. Dallas comes in and is a dick. Maris is there with her mate and the werewolf brothers, Hunter and Wes. Hunter goes absolutely nuts on Dallas and has to be dragged away and shoved into a truck before he turns into a wolf in public!

Wes orders Hunter to stay away from Sadey, since she clearly makes him insane. Hunter does, but writes her a letter by cutting and pasting magazine letters, which she calls a “serial killer letter” but is charmed by, and writes him a letter in return which he has her read aloud because he reads so slowly/poorly. This is actually pretty cute.

In the previous book, Hunter came across as the quiet, good-natured, scholarly one, as opposed to his brother Wes who’s a lady’s man, hot-tempered, and kind of a dick. In this book, he has a total personality change and is portrayed as having a cognitive disability caused by brain damage from birth, which means he talks and acts like a werewolf Forrest Gump. He can barely read or write, only Joyce had previously set up that he was the one who read all the books to help Maris survive so he inexplicably has all these books that he reads and understands, but he can also barely read a letter and has an extremely limited vocabulary.

It turns out that Hunter is dying of a broken heart which has magically turned his blood black and given him wounds that won’t heal, because his brother left him for dead in the previous book. He nevertheless has sex with Sadey. Their whole courtship is weird as it ping-pongs between being so cute it’s twee and the angst of him dying, which makes the whole thing just bizarre. Especially as no one really does anything about him literally dying for ages even though they all know about it for most of the book.

Finally Wes decides to fix him, and Sadey moves across town. The entire emotional crux of the story, in which Hunter is healed, happens off-page and without the heroine’s involvement. Wes and Hunter reconcile, oh yeah and Sadey and Hunter are an item, yay happy ending! And then there’s a hook for the next book, which is more interesting than anything that happens in this book.

The book had a lot of noticeable typos, missing periods, the hero’s name not capitalized, etc. It clearly wasn’t proofread at all.

The hero really did not work for me. He’s very passive and under his brother’s thumb. The cognitive disability was portrayed like older books write “simple” characters. He’s big and strong and nice, but the whole package was really, really not my romantic fantasy. And the heroine comes across as childish and immature.

The climax not only happens off-page, but isn’t about their relationship at all, which is weird in a romance. Genre romance is about the romantic relationship; there can be other important relationships as well, but they can't displace the romance. Even if reconciling with your brother is hugely important, normally the heroine would also be present for that scene, or have talked the hero into doing it, etc.

On the plus side, Maris and Sadey's relationship is nice. Joyce usually goes out of her way to portray friendships between women, and manages to do so here even despite using the "most women can't be shifters" trope that normally works to prevent that.

Make Her New (Kaid Ranch Shifters Book 2)