The Book Gourmet

A high-blood (a.k.a. freak) has escaped Valhalla in desperate search of normalcy and knows just who to go to—genetics expert Angela Locke, and Nikolo Bartev is dispatched to keep the scientist safe.


This was a rather weird read for me. Not in terms of genre, but in terms of story-telling, I guess. I've never read a book (long or short) with such clear delineation between the two halves of it as this one.

In the first half the world-building was good, making this "new" universe interesting without seeming rehashed, the pacing was solid, the character of Angela, although naïve and a little bit needy, rather nice, and the villain and the hunt for her intriguing.

Then came the second half, and Angela turned a little annoying, then the supposed romance came into play with little to no indication to it in the previous half (making the hero appear calculating by using the heroine's attraction to him and sex to bind her), and the paying went haywire first by halting due to the "romance", then speeding up with the final confrontation...And then it was over.
Also, I didn't appreciate the info dump toward the end about the binding or whatever the hell that was about. Not because of the info, but because of the "lack of finesse" in the dump, compared to the gradual world-building (and info providing) of the first half.