Something a bit different

I took a bit of a break from the vampires. I saw a review of this on a site and read some of the customer reviews over at BN.com, and was interested enough to give it a shot. It was a good shot. This was a nice, fun read.

Write up:


In a realm beset by natural disasters, only the bonded Pairs--Source and Shield--make the land habitable and keep the citizenry safe. But can Dunleavy Mallorough and Lord Shintaro Karish put aside their differences to defeat something even more unnatural than their reluctant affections for each other? 

This was a fun. Not all deep and life-changing or anything, but good light fun to read on a rainy afternoon. I loved both Lee and Karish, and their bickering and snark kept be chuckling throughout the whole book. In this world, there are a lot of natural disasters: earthquakes, cyclones, Tsumani's, etc that can cause an untold amount of damage and death. But there are some people born with the ability to feel when these disasters are approaching and can somehow channel their forces away or make them weaker. These people are Sources. But this ability is an enormous strain on the person and many can die without someone there to provide a buffer against the forces they worked with...that person is the Shield. From a young age both are taken from their homes and trained in their abilities, and when the appropriate time came they were matched up for life with their partner. But this is not something they control. It is accomplished through a bond. The bond chooses, not the people. Before there was an academy that monitored and trained the Sources and Shield...many would meet and bond spontaneously causing all kind of problems due to lack of training. Now they did it under a controlled environment. So this is where we meet Lee, the day she was to find out, first if she were to be Chosen and by whom.

Lee, we learn, likes to pretend she is modest and wants a quiet life with a serious, hard- working shield. To that end, she has already made a list of who she would like to be bonded with and who she most definitely didn't want. From the first chapter, we can see that she is the type of person whose favorite words are duty, and responsibility. She frowns at frivolousness. She would be rather insufferable if she existed in real life. I know many people have met someone like her in their real life, and probably resist the urge to smack them often. But due to her personality, one thing she knows for sure: she does not want Lord Shintaro Karish to pick her. He has a reputation of being not only concerned with partying and drinking, but by all accounts is a shameless whore as well. But he is also known as one of the most powerful sources out there...and is not shy with his abilities. He is popular and widely sought after by other Shields to be bonded to. But Lee wants nothing to do with him. She wants the quiet life, or so she says. But the bonding happens by itself, there is no choice...and to her horror she is chosen by Sintaro Karish. That's when the fun begins, because she can barely hold back her disappointment and disgust from him. Their relationship has a rocky start. He can't understand why she doesn't like him, and she is annoyed that he can't grasp that not everyone is going to drop at his feet. Much to her horror again, her quiet life is further disrupted when almost right away, they are sent to the hardest assignment in the realm: High Scape. Unheard of for novices. Once again, the "Hero’s" fault for being so damm good and legendary.

Once in High Scape the main mystery begins. A force has been attacking the city that feels different than normal and, after one attack, it kills the other bonded pairs, and incapacitating another pair, with only Karish and Lee coming out mostly unharmed. Lee tries to get to the bottom of it while also dealing with her reluctant good feelings for Karish. But she will never admit to herself she even remotely likes him. But he proves to be both more than and exactly as she expected. The more time she spends with him, the more she realizes there is more to him than meets in eyes, and that there are many things in her world that she never questioned before, that she has begun to now. If strange attacks on their City wasn't enough...it seems someone is trying to kill Karish, and then he disappears. Lee despite convincing herself she still can't stand him...goes after him, and findS herself  and the realm in a whole lot of trouble. She learns that the one person she convinced herself was unreliable and that she couldn't trust...was perhaps the only person she could trust the entire time. She and Karish find themselves in the position not only to save High Scape, but the whole realm as well from a bunch of disgruntled and bitter Sources and Shields bent on their version of "freedom" from theis worlds version of the man: Triple S, the group that controls and trains the Sources and Shields.

All in all I liked this book. Lee and Karish and their sparing were highly entertaining. They both got more than they were expecting and in the end you see that they are more alike than they want to admit. The bond apparently did not lie. I liked the world building and back story of who their system began, though there were a few questions not answered and left open, but it seems deliberately so as there are more books that follow their further adventures.  All in all...this was fun reading and I am interested in reading more.

Overall grade: B+