Customer Reviews

Mercenaries

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The only reason I gave this book 4 stars is because other than Emma Holly, Angela Knight writes the BEST sex scenes. While other romance novelists' sex scenes make you giggle because they are so ludicrous and horridly written, Knight's scenes just flow. This book was no exception.

However, I thought this book really suffered from the short-story format. Also, I think the back cover was deceptive because it gave the impression that this was a full-length novel. The futuristic world Knight has created, including "cyber" humans with super-human strength, was really unique and interesting. A full-length novel would have given her more opportunity to flesh that aspect of the story. I would have especially loved more developed coverage of Cassidy's story. What fun to be so strong that you can kick the average man's butt with one hand tied behind your back!

So there was little meat (no pun intended!)to these stories, which was unfortunate, because I know this author is capable of much more.

While I personally think that Angela Knight could write a phone book & make it sexy, I wasn't that thrilled with this latest work. Mercenaries is a compilation of three related short stories that center around members of the mercenery starship Starrunner. The first story features Capt. Nathan August & his whirlwind love affair with religious planet cult member, Trinity Yeager. Trin is willing to to do anything to get off the zealots colony - including taking the captain up on his drunken bargain of passage in exchange for a night with both himself and Sebastion, his first officer, at the same time.

Quickly following is Sebastions story of falling head over heals for a dominant/submissive princess while the Starrunners merceneries are on a rescue mission.He's there bait, their spy to get into the palace. But can he handle being a submissive? Or does his captor really want to be captivated?

Lastly is the story of a female mercenery from Starrunner who made a cameo appearance in the first short story. During an interplanetary war where merceneries have been hired on both sides, Cassidy is embattled in a deadly dogfight against an opposing mercenery warrior. In a last ditch effort at survival she ditches onto a lonely planet only to be followed by her pursuer. When Rune sees that the impressive warrior is a woman he decides that in his culture - where women are scarce- she would make a perfect edition to his future gene pool.

All the stories had a spark & related well, but I just couldn't buy the concept that all 3 couples were ready to push their different cultures aside & marry after just 24 hours - 3 weeks. Real life is a little more complicated. But if your just trying to escape from said real life, than I guess kick back and enjoy yourself!

"Mercenaries" consists of three interconnected futuristic tales, reministent of AK's "Jane's Warlord". In the first story, "Trinity", we meet Trinity Yeager who is willing to do anthing, including being the love toy of Nathan August, rather than remain on Paradise. Paradise is governed by the Temple of Orville and women are forced to submit to their husbands; one woman is publicly whipped for burning her husband's dinner three times. In the second story, "The Thrall", Sebastian Cole goes undercover to Corvo, a dominality where women have the dominant role. Sebastian is trying to prevent a war by rescuing the son of a neighboring dominality from Corvo. Zaria Orva is one of the heirs to Corvo but she doesn't enjoy being dominant and fantasizes about a world in which she is submissive. The final story, "Claiming Cassidy", revolves around Cassidy Vika and Rune Alrigo, starfighters for opposing sides in a battle who crash each other and are forced to work together. Cassidy unwittingly loses to Rune in a Claiming Duel and therefore is expected to return to his ship and produce sons. The characters reoccur throughout the three stories and AK always produces a hot book. My only caution to readers would be that this book is more erotic than some of her more mainstream novels.

This book contains 3 novellas: Trinity (originally published as Mercenaries, Ebook short, heavily revised and substantially lengthened), The Thrall (also published as and Ebook), and lastly Claiming Cassidy. They are all set in the lost planets space. An interstellar war erupted and these planets have been cut off from the rest of humanity for 200 or more years. Some have been in contact for longer than others but all are somewhat skewed.

Trinity lives on Orville's Paradise and has been turning down all proposals of marriage (the local bachelors are more appalling than appealing) and the church elders are going to auction her off for mirage to the highest bidder. She finds Nathan (the captain of the mercenary ship Starrunner) and Sebastian his XO in the lone local bar (can't promote sin you know) and asks to join the ship. Nicely written plot some BDSM and Ds, humor as well as erotic scenes including a 3 some. This rewrite cleans up some inconsistencies from the original and shows how far the author has come as a story teller.

The Thrall takes place on Bedsem a colony founded by BDSM (note the phonetic match) aficionados. Al the rulers have titles based on dom. Sebastian goes undercover as a thrall (sub) to find the son of a ruler who has been kidnapped by another ruler because he turned her down on an offer of mirage to her oldest daughter. Nicely done BDSM, Ds, and erotic scenes as well as a nice plot and tongue in cheek humor.

Claiming Cassidy pits her (she's a fighter pilot from the Starrunner) against Rune a Dharani Tribesman pilot. They mutually shoot each other down (managing to craqsh on a habitable planet) and once Rune finds his opponent is female he decides he wants her for his wife. But he also realizes that he has to seduce her if he doesn't want to wake up one morning with a serious case of slit throat. This story is more romantic than the others but still has some nicely done BDSM, Ds, and erotic scenes and the story line is nicely done as well. The physics is a little off as Tachyons are not part of the standard model (particle physics and well accepted) but are beloved of the string theory folks. Tachyons have negative mass and move faster than the speed of light and are one of the puns that you get trying to reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Even if you don't care for this genre this book might be the one to change your mind as the characters through out the book are well drawn and appealing.

I was actually startled at the poor quality of the writing in this book, but then again I'm often surprised at what passes for 'good' erotic fiction. The character development is almost nonexistent, as is the 'romance.' This book is full of the current necessities of the genre: accessory items, a menage, and dominant/submissive (with of course the woman always being the sub). Yawn.

The least plausible of the three was the first story in which Trinity has a pseudo-menage with two mercenaries in exchange for their transport off of her home planet. The story starts out with the beating of a bound woman for burning her husband's meals -- which, while glossed over, I found repellent and off-putting and not an appropriate 'warm up' or foreplay to the main event. The planet is run by the worst of anti-female repressive abusers and Trinity not surprisingly wants out. The problem I found with the story was three-fold. (1) As other reviewers have noted, the 'romance' developed so quickly as to be non-existent and what Trinity's man saw in her other than a quick and submissive screw is lost to me. (2) I didn't believe for a second that a woman raised in this environment and whose sole sexual experience was a painful loss of her virginity years before would suddenly transform into a multi-orgasmic submissive who can't get enough of hard and rough sex with two men using her like a blow up doll. (In fact, I'm quite tired of all romance novels which use the virgin/near virgin who instantly transforms into an insatiable sex fiend.) Moreover, this change seemed especially unlikely given the fact that she is physically bound. Isn't that what she found so horrific she was trying to escape? (3) As a matter of personal taste, I don't like the use of accessories such as the gag/ring that kept Trinity's mouth open for the men's use. Again, I found it ridiculous to imagine that a woman seeking to escape enslavement would 'love' the use of such devices. Finally, the menage was barely that -- there was almost no interaction between the two men whatsoever except to get off on watching them screw the woman.

The second story involved one of the two male partners in the pseudo-menage in the first story who is placed 'in thrall' to a female dominant. Of course, yawn, she is really a submissive after all. Heaven forbid a man have to go out of his comfort zone. If it's so powerful to be a submissive, as this story states, then why do the men never seem to want to experience that power? By having the 'traditional' male dominant, female submissive in the second story too, the author missed the chance to do an interesting contrast with the first story, delve even lightly into the nature of gender, power and sexuality and thereby rescue this book from being thinly-disguised porn without plot.

Quite honestly, I think if you are interested in sex stories of this type, you can probably find this level of quality for free on the internet.

My goodness! This is not just a book, it's really porn, with a plot (I guess that makes it girly porn). Ha!

Here we have three novellas. All are related in that they are members of a crew on the starship Starrunner. In the first one, we have a crazy colony where all the men get off whipping their errant wives for burning dinner. Until Captain Nathan arrives. In the second, the second mate seduces the princess with a little S & M. In the third, one crewmember is stranded with the sexy enemy and a waterfall. Ha! I want to bust out laughing just writing this because it is so corny. Yet, I really enjoyed it. Angela Knight made it work. Her sex scene (which were numerous) were well written and vivid and there was a definitely workable plot that kept the story interesting and fast paced. I'm looking forward to reading more. For those who were comparing her to Anita Blake -- PLEASE! Hamilton needs to take pointers. Hamilton ain't got nothing on Knight.

BEWARE! The digital version is only a 46 page novella, which is only one of the stories contained in the paperback. For those of us who like the convenience of digital downloads, this is a clear rip-off. I would not have minded paying more for the complete work as described, but was not advised by Amazon that the digital version was different. Now, if I want the other two novellas, I have to buy the paperback which includes the story I have already paid for. SHAME AMAZON!

Angela Knight has compiled three of her e-stories into one trade paperback book. These are great stories. Each one of them tells a brief, highly erotic, sci-fi love story. The first is the story of Trinity Yeager and her effort to leave a backward, demented religious society. Nathan August is the mercenary pilot who gives her safe passge for a very sexy price.
The second story is about Sebastian Cole who goes undercover to free a kidnapped dominant prince. He encounters Zaria, a royal dominatrix with a seemingly shameful secret.
The last story is the best one as far as I am concerned. Cassidy Vika is in the middle of fighting a war when she is shot down by enemy pilot, Rune Alrigo. He doesn't want to kill her though, he wants to claim her. Their courtship is brief but intense.
I loved the pacing and the characterization in all three short stories. Ms. Knight seems to hit a home run every time.

In Angela Knight's anthology she combines two older stories and then ties them all together with one new one. They are a little more.. hardcore, I suppose is the word I'd use. That doesn't detract from my enjoyment of each decadent page. Plus her heroines are always up to the challenge, physically, sexually and most of all verbally. (Smarta$$ is as good Kick A$$ in my book!)

I would compare the book to an ice cream sundae.
There is the deep dark rich chocolate of "Trinity" (hint her name is a clue as two what sorta happens in this one)

Then, you have the strawberry and cream concoction of "Thrall" with the BDSM world and all the trimmings. Whips chains and leather ooh yeah. The content is saved from the darkness by heroine's sweetness and the hero's snarky inner dialogue. Loved it!

Finally with "Claiming Cassidy" you have the vanilla portion of the book as it was written for Berkley. However, this is the sort of vanilla made with the heaviest, richest cream, the most exotic vanilla beans ever imagined and laden with some wickedly hot sex and even hotter action. As for Rune.. Hubba Hubba..

It sizzles, it simmers, and then it all explodes. This is a wicked delight, without the calories. In fact, the way my heartrate goes up while reading AK's books, I figure it's a cardio workout all its own.

Some have complained that the characters fall in love too quickly. These are short stories, of course they do! It's an anthology, a sampler of wicked deliscious delights that doesn't disappoint this slightly non-fudgy fan. I'm a vanilla, but hey, I've never minded a bit of chocolate sauce in my books now and then.

I actually really liked this book. But for those of the faint of heart or those expecting her Jane's Warlord this book is very spicy. She uses explicit language and explicit sexual situations. Also, this book is mostly about BDSM - (very tastefully done). I think you'll really enjoy this.