Monsch has created a truly unique and fascinating world in her Entwined Realms series, I absolutely loved our gargoyle hero in book, Esh is just as Alpha as Terak, and hes come a long way, Hes no longer a starving orphan living on the streets, fighting for scraps of food, Hes the undisputed cage cage king and has reached legend status, He seems to have it all, except the girl he lost when he refused to come to the aid of her brother who died in a cage fight,
Five years later, Nalah is back, Now member of the Guild, she needs help to retrieve a magical ring that's been passed down from her mother for generations, The ring is currently in the possession of the elusive and dangerous operator of the cage fight tournament, Beylor, Esh is determined not to lose her for a second time, He offers her an ultimatum, his help in exchange for a place in her bed for the duration of the tournament thats being held at a undisclosed location,
As usual, Danielles world is engaging, but I must admit I felt Esh sometimes was too forceful in his pursuit of Nalah, I missed Teraks romantic protectiveness, On a personal level I am not very interested in the world of cage fighters either, However, Eshs hidden legacy was definitely interesting, and I will continue to read and look forward to Danielles new books in this series, I give this novella,stars, rounded up tobecause I love the Entwined Realms world building, although this story wasn't a personal favorite, I had higher expectations for this book after finishing the first book of the series, It was a good read listen but the drama and level of craziness that proceeded it in book, . . was lacking here.
Maybe its just me, but I was expecting there to be more boom or something, The story was good, a little confusing at times and a little anticlimactic a few times, I was like, “really, thats all” But then we get to the pale lady and things pick up a notch or ten,
Discoveries are made and now, Im anxious to get to book, See what the guild has in store for us next, To the Victor belong the Spoils, and as the Ruler of the Fight Scene, all the spoils belong to Esh Money, Fame, Power, . . Everything, except one woman who disappeared five years ago,
Now Nalah is back, a member of the Guild and in need of his help to get access to the greatest Cage Match in the New Realms, To Nalah, this is nothing but an assignment, Esh only a tool to be used to collect a magical artifact of great power, and she will not will not allow the fire that has always burned bright between them to reignite, no matter how much Esh tempts her.
Five years ago Nalah left, and in that time she may have forgotten something, something Esh will remind her of when The Cage King fights, he always wins.
okay , once you have understood why he did what he did in the past is okay, . and i give him
the reason, . . is a GOOD book i mean he super alpha , but oh well, . . the book is really good ! it is sexy and sometimes is was frustrating for me because with just a kiss she forgot everything but then again i got it, . . and he is sweet and well, . . read it ! This novella was disappointing compared to the rest of the installments that I've read so far, It isn't because it's short, Monsch put out a short story that was aboutpages and it was great, No, this story had a whole different set of problems,
I love the world that Monsch creates, Having a magical realm fuse with the presentday Earth is an interesting concept, This story focuses on Nalah, who begins the story as a poor kid living on the streets whose brother has just been murdered, She blames Esh, his best friend and, incidentally, her boyfriend for not interfering, While pawning a ring, she gets wrapped up in Guild issues and starts working and studying under them for the next five years,
It's present day and she is assigned a job in which she must work with her exboyfriend to reclaim her ring and save it from falling into the wrong hands.
I have some issues with this setup, First off, because you don't get a feel for the dynamics of Nalah and Esh's original relationship, Esh comes off as this domineering asshole of a boyfriend, He's aggressive and pushy and I would absolutely hate being in a relationship with him, He doesn't respect Nalah as a grownass adult because she was onlywhen they were initially dating, The conflict between Nalah and Esh is resolved pretty quickly and the sex scene was really rushed and not very sensual, especially for their first time, It seemed really slapdash.
I realize this is a novella so a lot of the plot has to happen in a shorter amount of time but really there was enough plot here to warrant a full novel length book.
Cramming it into a novella makes it appear sloppy, A lot of the situations weren't clearly explained and motivations weren't apparent,
I kept reading because I was curious to see what Esh actually was, I am also completely smitten with Fallon and Laire's relationship, I had this issue with the original book, as well, Fallon and Laire are hilarious and I want to read a regular urban fantasy story about them specifically and the hijinks they get into, They didn't play as large a roll in this novella, Sadness.
Really this book could have been better if it was longer and the characters more developed, Well for starters I was expecting something connected with bookStone Guardian Entwined Realms Bookand this was not it, This book takes place in the same universe but the two stories are not connected in any way I could see, maybe I missed something,
This was a combination of a paranormal romance between Esh and Nalah, Esh is The Cage King the title refers to and Nelah is a bit of a long lost girlfriend for lack of a better term.
The other part of this story is a mission to recover a lost magical object that originally belonged to Nelah but through a series of mishaps that you will be told has been lost to her but is needs to be recovered to keep some evil types from getting it.
Esh is written as you would expect a cage fighter to be, rough around the edges and even though he is written honestly it takes a lot to get to the point where I liked him much but it does happen.
There are several small surprises and a great story but some things are built up to a point and resolved a bit too quickly it seemed and one of the primary characters in this plot Fallon is kind of dumped on the reader without much explanation and even less is revealed during the book she is really only present at the beginning and ending chapters and becomes one of the most interesting characters and we know very little about her, maybe the next book The Dream Crafter will expound on her and this world a bit because this could have been the beginning of a totally new series for all that it resembled Stone Guardian Entwined Realms Book, somebody told me Fallon was in bookso maybe my memory is worse than I thought, I don't remember her.
Bottom Line: Great story, excellent characters, too short in some respects but then again I felt the sex overdone in a way but not really you have to read it to understand that one.
The two main characters were great by the end of the book but tedious for a good bit of the beginning, Highly recommend but don't expect to get any enlightenment for anything in book, great story that stands pretty much on its own, Lots of grammatical booboos made this an occasionally difficult read, but the excellent tension between the MCs Nalah and Esh made up for it, Oh the feels, the feels!! The Cage King should be catnip to any PNR fan who also enjoys the occasional cagefighter romance, I already made a review on my kobo, I really love Esh and Nalah, Esh has entered on my list of book hotties, I wish it was longer and hope to read more about them again, I basically read all in one shot, Nalah has been estranged from her love but not quite lover Esh, who she holds responsible for her brother's death, In the years they've been apart she's become a Guild trained Magic Breaker and Esh has become the unbeatable fighter, The Cage King, When Nalah is sent on a mission to retrieve a magical object stolen from the Guild, one of personal significance to her, she needs Esh's help to to get close to the item.
But his help will cost her and if Esh has his way the price will be Nalah's body and her heart,
I really liked this story, I haven't read any of the other books in this series, but for the most part that wasn't a problem except for the fact that Monsch didn't really recap her world in this short we're just plopped into it.
At the start I was thinking that the setting was a fantasy world because of magic and swords, but later on there's motorcycles and jeans which threw me a bit.
I actually went back and read a couple reviews of the first book after I finished, so now I have an inkling of why those things exist together and I am intrigued enough that I will be pulling the other two stories off the pile.
But back to this story, I really liked Esh, he's powerful and intense and determined to win Nalah back whatever it takes and I really like what he ends up being, The chemistry between him and Nalah is really good and I liked that, even though she's drawn him into more danger than she realizes, she is able to use her knowledge to save him at one point.
Probably my only nit with the story is that the ending feels a bit unresolved and it doesn't really look like the next book picks up and solves the problem left hanging here.
But still I did like The Cage King which did a great job of making me want more stories from the Entwined Realms,
ARC via Netgalley, .