Claim Now Storms And Stars Depicted By Neena Jaydon Displayed As Audio Book
lonely at the top for Commander Villam Elding, who has always ranked loyalty to the empire and career ambition over romance, He finds it easier to love ideas than people without military life, he's lost, Even so, it's his close relationship with Kardiell, a popular officer, that tears him from his life, Those with competing ambitions try to take Villam hostage to leverage Kardiell's soft spot for him, In the struggle, Villam crashes the small spacecraft he's riding, All hands perish except he and Luke, his kidnapper,
Luke Sicinik travels the galaxy performing dirty missions for money to send home, Born on a desert colony abandoned by the empire, he has no love for imperial soldiers, He spent his childhood in a monastery which taught the evils of anything impractical or sentimental, Yet when he crawls from the destroyed spacecraft, his first instinct is compassionate: he drags Villam's unconscious body free of the wreckage,
Stranded together on a wild planet, Villam and Luke know that survival means cooperation, A truce becomes trust, and trust turns to passion, as they struggle to find a new life together just the two of them against an entire world.
Personally I really liked this, It's slow and interesting but not for everyone, This book is a very nice surprise, More about two men from very different backgrounds surviving the wilderness, learning to trust each other and falling in love, than anything else, Very RobinsonCrusoe like with a war going on in the background,
.stars, rounding up to. Spaceships there may be but most of this is basically a survival enemiestolovers romance, Not the greatest scifi yet pretty nice an enjoyable read, overall,
Recommend. Enough in space so where can I get one to add a sixth star here
Admittedly I had trouble getting into the story with all the gadgets,gizmos and many characters introduced but it turned out to be my first favorite book in.
A SciFi novel of all things this is a contradiction if there ever was one, . . so not my prefered genre, . .
Perhaps I will write a bit more about the story and the two men I fell in love with later,but for now I must come back from space and recover from the shock first.
Very good and insightful review from MandyM sitelinkhere
"The fire you kindle for your enemy often burns yourself more than him"
Chinese proverb
The plot
Two enemies, in an alien hostile planet.
Commander Seventh Rank, Villam Elding
Severe, proud of his mission in The Imperial Majesty spaceship fleet, He is a man, with no fears, no regrets and endless courage,
Ittuluke tyv scinik, a Sigliuk
a monk, a life to pray, . . and in a mission, to his people salvation, He despise all imperial goats as he call them for their blind love for the oppressive monarchy,
Can the proud imperial soldier find his weakness Can the confused and angry assassin find peace
That's the plot, Villam and Luke, enemies, join force to fight, . . but to survive from what Fight for their lives, or fight to avoid their desires
It's a long story and it's NOT a instant romance.
Don't read it to see long and romantic scenes, Both men can't and don't want to fall in love, . . but their minds and hearts are not in accord,
The time in the planet almost bored me, I must be VERY honest here and say their long trip, to find a place to stay, and build their "home" were almost boring, . . yeah, almost but i wasn't, at all, boring, I'm saying it because there is a long part of the book describing just their walking, they discovering of what the planet their ship crash have.
It's in my view s a slowpaced, but ultimately rewarding reading experience,
Can I add a quotation to show you all, how amazing this book is I'll put it in a spoiler, No, it's not a "spoiler" meaning it's not something that will ruin your reading, . . but I think it's so amazing, and maybe you can not believe a stern man as Villam could say it, . but he did it's the last paragraph or this book, and I love it, For its simplicity and straightforwardness,
So yes, I certainly recommend it, to all scifi readers, and to romantic ones too, I know I said it's not a romance, but believe me, that last paragraph phrase It's IMO one of the most romantic declaration I ever read.
stars and I'm looking forward for more I hope there will be more!
DNF at
i really need to stop DNFing netgalleys but i just sigh
i didn't connect with the writing or characters at all, and the other POV of the soldier back at the empire or wherever he is was just distracting and offputting and made me want to read those bits as fast as possible to get back to what was happening with ittuluke and villam.
they kinda just seemed thrown in there like a spanner in machinery and it helped me lose the last thread of concentration i actually had,
i guess this just isn't for me i didn't find this engaging at all, The story did take quite a while to get going but overall I enjoyed this scifi fantasy and would love to read more about General Kardiell and his antics! This has to be one of the most romantic stories ever.
Loved it. A very well written scifi m/m romance adventure about a two enemies who crash on an uninhabited planet and have to learn to get along to survive along with dealing with feelings of deeper intimacy, especially when they find that they are not alone as they thought.
What I liked: The worldbuilding was really well done, Jaydon added a lot of layers to the societies that the MCs come from but did the reader the favor of not spelling everything out in big dumps of exposition.
Her writing is also very clean and clear and very easy to picture, and as Villam and Luke are surviving in the wild, the setting really resonated, and you can just feel the chill of winter seep in or the brush of rain when the planets first storm of the season started.
This book also has a lot of nice plot and story progression, For those who complain of books with all sex and no story, this is not that book, There is intimacy, but basically there are three encounters in the whole book, The focus here is on relationship, character, and story development, If youre looking to sink into a good scifi story that also has m/m romance in it, this will probably hit all your buttons,
The writing and creativity made this four for me even though I had some issues with the story,
The pacing felt very slow, and the relationship building and growth is also very slowly developed, Thats fine, especially for these characters, No instalove here, folks. This book is a good addition to the sitelinkGood Sexual Tension listopia list, I think the first encounter is aroundin, But the overall slowness made this a read that I had to push through, as opposed to a fevered need to find out what happens next.
For the firstof the book, Villam and Lukes trial of survival on the planet is interrupted with cuts to back to Villams ship and to some military officials trying to figure out the political conspiracy that caused the ships crash in the first place.
I understand why these cuts are thereto fill in the mystery and that action is happening even while Villam and Luke are living in their own separate world, but it hurt the pacing for me, and every time I started to feel momentum build up with Villam and Lukes story, it broke off to cut back to the military investigation.
These cuts lowered at around themark and didnt pop up again until much later, but I felt like it hurt the pacing for me, and made pushing through more of a drag.
The writer has a very specific style choice that kept pushing me out, The majority of the story is told through limitedrd perspective, Depending on the scene, youre locked in to one characters POV, But inside of that, youll also get the thoughts of that POV in first person speak, Ive read this before, and it usually works for me, but this time, I kept getting pushed out every time the switch happened, It happens within paragraphs too, Sentences in third person. Then some in first. Back to third. A paragraph of first person thoughts, etc, The first few times, I kept wondering if I ran into an editing error, like some dialogue was happening but someone forgot to add the quotation marks.
I wondered if the author had used italics for these first person POV shifts, if it would have been easier, But then again, I understand why the author didnt use italics since sometimes the first person POV shift was a whole paragraph, and whole paragraphs of italics isnt always fun to read.
It took me a while to get used to the style, and it kicked me out over and over, which also made this more of a push to read.
There was one time late in the book that I had to reread a section to better understand who the narrator was at that moment so I could better connect the sudden insertion of first person POV.
Im not sure if it was the pacing or the style choices, but I didnt feel as emotionally connected to the MCs as I wished.
I liked the worldbuilding, but I didnt feel as deeply connected to their trials or outcomes, This might be linked also to Lukes very intense societal and religious conditioning to distance himself from emotions, which meant he angsted a lot when he was feeling anything, but when the wall finally came down, I didnt feel a lot of catharsis.
Im happy that the MCs got a nice and satisfying HEA, but didnt have that deep feeling of satisfaction when finishing the book,
But in the end, its a very
creative, wellwritten scifi book with a nice romance about two opposites eventually realizing their attraction and deeper love for each other.
It already has a lot of good reviews, so my points above may not bother you at all, These were just the things that struck me, and your mileage may vary, If you like scifi in your m/m romance, this may be up your alley, .