Review: Competence

Competence by Gail Carriger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Third in the Custard Protocol series, Competence follows Primrose Tunstell as the crew of the Custard float into the New World with a Templar assassin in their guest bedroom, the ship's captain and engineer making doe eyes at each other, and a question about vampires.

I was excited to have Prim as the main character, I love a highly competent person, and I love cats (read the book, you'll see). Sadly I didn't feel like I got to see Prim shine as much as I had hoped. I understand the need for a character to noodle over fundamental truth about themselves, but I found that having her mother's reaction to said truths as being the big sticking point, to ring a bit hollow. Unless becoming a Hive Queen has drastically changed Ivy, I can't see her reacting as horribly to Prim's realizations as Prim thinks she will.
I would have liked a bit more adventuring, I mean, I haven't seen Victorian Peru much less Victorian South America at all and would have loved to see more of that and a bit less noodling.
I was also excited to see more of Percy, although I found it strange that at the start of the book almost every third thing he said was in Latin, but that he stopped fairly quickly and no one commented on it. Also, being very familiar with a number of non-neurotypical individuals, which I got the feeling Percy is supposed to be, some of the reactions of both he and the other characters had me giving a bit of a side-eye. With the amount of love that Carriger writes LBGTQ characters I found some of the reactions to Percy a bit jarring, I'm hoping that in the next book which is reportedly going to be about him that those reactions will be challenged. His POV and such got much better toward the end of the book, so hope springs eternal.

The humor, as always, was solid. There are some great ruminations on gender and sexuality with the added lenses of history and culture, which were great to read. I only wish there had been a bit more adventuring.

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Review: Sixty Five Hours

Sixty Five Hours by N.R. Walker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Started out promising, the single POV from Lucas Hensley, advertising guru extraordinaire, was good in that we had just as much of an idea as to why his co-worker and son of Lucas's boss, Cameron Fletcher, didn't like him.
However once the two characters were dropped into their forced proximity plot you got a pretty good idea just what it was about Lucas that Cameron didn't like. Thus, most of the tension dissipated. The story is sweet, all the character are quite likable and there are enough sexytimes for even the most ravenous of readers.
The last 30% of the book is essentially just a sweet epilogue. I kept waiting for a 'but wait!' or 'oh no!' moment, but none came which I found slightly irritating. The other thing that bugged the hell out of me was how their big advertising campaign was for a company that dealt with condoms, sex toys, etc. and they even used the safe-sex angle in their advertising pitch, yet safe sex practices during the character's oral adventures were completely ignored. At no point did the character exchange the basic 'hey, I'm clean are you?' talk, which, ok, yes fantasy romance book don't want to lose the sexytimes momentum, but the discussion of safe-sex practices and the importance of them was a plot point in the advertising plot.

The book was a nice, light, amusing read, just a bit too long and with a few points that really threw me out of it.

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Review: Wilde in Love

Wilde in Love by Eloisa James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in a new series by James, and it's going to be a very long series if the allusion to how many siblings and family friends Lord Alaric Wilde has is anything to go by.

Lord Alaric returns to England after spending a number of years away traveling and writing about his adventures. He is surprised to find that his books have become incredibly popular and he has become a heartthrob of society. Although this seems to have more to due with a very popular play based on him than with his own writings. Seeing how the ladies of society fawn and obsess over him, James gives us a bit of a tongue-in-cheek look at what she thinks of fan culture.
So, of course the one woman that Lord Wilde wants is the one who hasn't read any of his books and is steadfast in her belief that he's underwhelming. Which, fine, that's a good solid trope which lends itself to some good banter, but as Miss Willa Ffynche has just finished her first season (where she killed it) and has her own fortune thus not needing to marry, I just couldn't get over the thought of 'Willa, you're like 19 and rich, go enjoy yourself a bit.'
There were a few times I found myself side-eyeing how Wilde pushed Willa's limits doing things that she had asked him not to, etc., not so much that I was throwing red flags on the field, but I was reaching for the yellow ones.

The best friends are delightful and I would have rather followed them around for a bit, and I did have to give Wilde points for the skunk. However, the villain is a little eye-rolling and you know that the bog is going to play a big role so you just sit there glaring at it the whole story.

Still pretty amusing and a fast read even though I didn't feeling like the two main characters really grew that much during the book, perhaps we'll see them grow a bit in the follow-ups.

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