Beth Williamson
Entangled Amara
(The dates are confusing; the paperback is currently available on Amazon, but the ebook isn’t available until 7/22/2019.)
Blurb: The universe is a tough place to make it as a female cargo ship captain, and Remington Hawthorne fights every day to scrape by. A sketchy deal goes south, and although she doesn’t want anyone else to touch her ship, she’s forced to accept help from the stranger who calls himself Max Fletcher. He’s hot. And he’s trouble. Big trouble. But she’s out of time, out of money, and every crooked cartel is on her tail.
Max Fletcher has spent his life running from his past. So he has no idea what makes him offer to bail out tall, gorgeous, sassy Remy when she needs a pilot to get her illegal cargo to its destination—the last place in the universe he ever wanted to land again.
One thing’s for sure, it’s gonna be a helluva ride.
I considered adding Steel Coyote by Beth Williamson to my DNF pile but I struggled through it and was rewarded with the last quarter of the novel where there was action and sentence clarity. That last quarter did not substantially raise the rating of this review, but it certainly made me feel better.
I’m not going to belabor this review.
The writing was clunky. Some sentences meandered in confusion. The word choice frequently left me scratching my head. A character trait would be introduced but never again revisited. (Max supposedly sometimes talked like a country boy, but that happens only once and to tell you why it doesn’t work would be to spoil the story.) Thoughts and passages become repetitive. Frankly, this felt like a second draft of a novel and not a finished product, most particularly because of the writing.
So to say I was disappointed would be an understatement because the Entangled Sci-Fi novels I’ve read in the past have been really good.
Now, the ending was good. It was action-packed. The writing was tight. I just wish the rest of the novel had read this way.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
rating:
2 butterflies and a ladybug out of 5 butterflies
Can I just say that the cover bugs me? If the MC is a woman, WHY is there only a guy on the cover? Sorry, that is just one of those things that irritates me about cover art.
I know. I like the fact that some authors always have both on their covers. Now there’s this new thing about having a man either he’s in the midpoint of taking his shirt off or his hand and below the scene near his crotch which seems just so desperate.
I’m noticing more and more that certain covers or themes on covers are starting to irritate and annoy me. It is beginning to make me feel like an old prude, but can we please have something besides the half naked dude eye candy or the half naked, skinny, ripped chick holding a sword? Don’t get me started on the steamy romance genre covers. I don’t know, maybe because those covers and themes feel lazy and like something of a cop out because every other book on the market has nearly the same cover.
I heard from some publicity people that the shirtless men sell books. Personally my favorite was one of Pippa Grant’s with this dark-haired guy with these beautiful blue eyes–America’s Geekheart. I guess I like the nice face, eyes, and smile more than the six-pack. haha
I think part of my issue with these is because artistically, they feel… less creative I guess? Like there wasn’t any effort put into attempting to represent the story in an artistic way. Instead, it was like what you said. It sells. I get it logically from a marketing standpoint, but I dislike it from an artistic one. If that makes sense.
I agree. I tend to like prettier covers or ones that are obviously about the story (like Ilona Andrews’ covers). I am not a fan of raunchy covers and definitely try not to have any of them on my blog because some of them look like they’re a centimeter from porn. They do have their audience. It’s just not me.
I’m not a huge fan of those either. I can appreciate aspects of it, especially the ones that lean more towards something like edgy artistic photography, but only because of that type of art form.