Customer Reviews

Mine to Take (Futuristic Romance)

5 star:		(136)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book was great! I read the 2nd of this series first (Rejar) and liked it enough to buy the other two. I have now read all three and this one is my favorite. Not only do I find Dara Joy a master of sensual writing, I also am quite taken with her vision as far as the sci-fi aspect of these tales. Familiars. Gee, I wish I'd had that idea. They sound absolutely delicious. Where else, but in a Dara Joy romance would you actually believe that there is a race of gorgeous men who would die horrid deaths rather than be untrue to their mates. I am now waiting with baited breath for Traed's story (even though he isn't Familiar). I think I would rate the four men of these three novels in this order: Traed (be still my heart), Gian Ren, Lorgin and Rejar. I do however, wonder about the poor, wounded man in Mine to Take. What of Dariq (or however you spell his name)? Will the kindly old lady nurse him back to health? Will he be physically or emotionally scarred for life? What exactly happened to him anyway? Was he beaten, drugged? What strong woman will be able to heal his heart? And will he find his way back to Aviara? Please Ms. Joy, give me Traed's and Dariq's stories. Hurry, Ms. Joy! I can't wait much longer.

Mine to take is the third in the Matrix of Destiny series and continues the fun! The book begins with Gian Ren Guradian of the Mist and King of all Familars in a cell. (familars are those half cat/half man types who are very senusual and mate for life) He was captured after going on a quest to try to find a young familar Dariq. Now he's drugged and not at his full senses. While trying to figure out a way to escape a woman appears with a very interesting proposal.

Jenise is the next in line to rule her step fathers kingdom. She doesn't want to however she wants to be free and travel to different worlds but she will be forced to rule if she is in her maiden state. She wants Gian to fix that problem for her and she will help him escape. The plan is that they will part at the next world.

Of course we know something Jenise doesn't Gian recognizes Jenise as his mate and speaks the ancient words that make her his. The first time they make love Jenise tells Gian that she wants no pleasure and he takes none for himself because of it. As they escape we get to see far off worlds, with plenty of adventure and danger this book is fantastic. Plus plenty of steamy scenes as Jenise starts learning that maybe a little pleasure isn't so bad.

We also get more of the Matrix of Destiny characters this book. Gian ren is related to Rejar! While you can read this book alone I recommend the other Matrix books. When you read all three of them in order there are things your able to appreciate more.Plus you meet all the characters and see them develop! A story that any sci-fi or romance fan will be proud to own!

This is the third book in the futuristic Matrix series (the follow-up to Knight of a Trillion Stars and Rejar) and I absolutely loved it. I can't wait for Traed's story.

The book's hero, Gian, escapes from captivity with the heroine's help. He takes the heroine, Jenise, with him to his home planet and the adventure they encounter en route was well written. The different cultures, peoples, and planets they encounter while journeying from A to Z were well developed and described by Dara Joy.

The only "disappointment" I had with this book is that I felt like the hero and heroine weren't well suited. The heroine sort of faded into the woodwork against the character of Gian. Joy should have written a spunkier leading lady (like the heroine in Knight of a Trillion Stars) for Gian. Other than that, this was a great read.

Well as you can see this book was HOT!. This is the story of Gian Ren a Familiar, a man who is also a cat, and Jenise, a Frensi woman. He is being held captive by a man who wishes to use him to ruin Jenise and take away her rightful place as ruler of the planet Ganakari. She helps him escape with his promise to help her gain her freedom in a most unusual way. Together they must overcome nature's deadly enemies as well as man's. The have a long journey where they helped by a friends along the way. The love scenes in this book are amazing to say the least. They were very hot and steamy and also tender and loving. There is humor throughout the book which made me laugh and smile. I know understand the book "Rejar" better and I look forward to reading others in this series. Dara Joy is becoming one of my favorite authors.

This book is a much-better-than-average romance novel. Its plot gives one a dubious insight into the mind of the kind of women who say "I don't need a lover, my cat is my best friend #and# my lover" and really mean it. That said, it's good in a cheesy sort of way, and extremly vivid. The sex scenes, especially, are written with a nice eye to detail and astonishing, don't get repetitive despite their number. (whoo hoo!) The number of italicised alien words sometimes gets irritating, but thankfully there is no must-read glossary at the back. The two main characters are well drawn, and the heroine (for once) is fairly upstanding. She is still decieved by her male, but takes it out of him verbally in a satisfactory sort of way. And, surprisingly for a novel of this type, you actually begin to worry somewhat about the two main characters - ie their charm extends beyond the bedroom. Ms Joy hasn't written Pride & Prejudice, but hey - that's already been done. Anyway, if you wanted that kind of intellectual engagement you probably wouldn't be reading a book with this kind of cover.

Hopefully the other books in this series will live up to this one. Conclusion: Definite cheese, but of a superior variety - Emmenthaler rather than processed orange.

PS No one ever listens to me, but with some Hercules-style special effects this would make a terrific late-night B movie on Channel 5.

PPS If anyone #is# listening - don't cut all the sex scenes!

Dara Joy has a remarkable knack for taking the improbable and make it believable. I first fell in love with the charl knights and the shapeshifters in "Rejar". She has managed to tie up a lot of loose ends with "Mine to take". She has taken the shapechangers' abilities only hinted at before and expanded on them . In this she gave us a glimpse into a culture not even the charl knights knew the half of. Not to mention she has created another absolutely gorgeous hunk of a male character in Gian Ren. I must say Dara sure knows how to create them. Thank God she also creates them with unique personalities.They are really quite complex. The women are just as spectacular. The descriptions of these faraway places and the steamy occurrences in them are quite detailed but never crass. Get the book You will thank yourself later.

OK, like a cat, I was curious when another reviewer...wrote that this book's "basically the same book as Hearts Lair by Kathleen Morgan...Everything is similar." Even though Morgan's book is hard to come by these days, I bought it and read both just to see for myself. The reviewer was wrong; They are two very different books! So, to keep others from "killing the cat with curiosity..." let me set the record straight.

Admittedly, there are some similarities, but NOT "everything". Both heros are half-cat-half-human with green eye(s) and royal bloodlines. Karic, the hero in Heart's Lair, is heir to the Cat-Man throne and has shoulder-length hair and two green eyes with some gold in them; Gian Ren, in Mine to Take, is the reigning King of all Familiar, has a waste-length mane, one gold eye, and one green eye with 3 gold flecks. Both virgin heroines come to their heros while the men are chained captives, although only one is on a bed at the time; the other has all four limbs bound, forcing him to stand spread-eagle in the middle of the room. In both books the bad guys have "new secret weapons" but in one it's a drug that proves effective against Gian Ren and in the other it's a mind-controling machine that proves ineffective against Karic. And that's where the similarities end!

In Hearts Lair, Karic's first site of Liane is while she's nude, bathing in a pond, not while he's a drugged captive as in the case between Gian Ren and Jenise in Mine to Take. The methods of escape are completely different between the two books. No where does Karic make such an electrically-charged illuminated transformation from man to cat like Gian Ren, nor does Karic benefit from it's healing properties. And Gian Ren doesn't have "retractable claws" or "visual cloaking" capabilities while in human form like Karic.

But the strongest difference is the first sexual exchange between the main characters of both books. In Hearts Lair, it's rape, with a strong touch of beastiality. In Mine to Take, Jenise demands he take her virginity as part of a bargain, and although Gian Ren complies, technically speaking, he refuses to "take his pleasure" because --circumstances notwithstanding-- she won't allow him to "pleasure her first." ... Hello? BIG difference!
In Hearts Lair, you spend much of the rest of the book watching the two who had loved one another, although not yet admitting it to each other, struggle to overcome that one brutal night. In Mine to Take, the struggle is over the fact that unbeknownst to Jenise, Gian Ren actually "marries" her that first night through his native ceremony that she's unfamiliar with... no pun intended ;).

While I enjoyed both books, and was glad to see two talented writers handle the Cat-Man-type characters so differently, I felt the better of the two is actually Ms. Joy's Mine to Take, with its humorous bits of wit (The Wee-Chuck-Chucks are priceless!!!) and warmly erotic love scenes. Although, you may disagree if you don't like cliff-hangers. Mine to Take is part of an ongoing series so threads of the plot are left untied, while Hearts Lair has closure.

THIS IS THE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I'VE READ. IT IS MY FAVORITE IN THE SERIES. FOR SOME REASON GIAN MAKES ME SHIVER, HE'S SO SENSUAL AND STRONG. I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HAVE A PICTURE OF GIAN'S FAMILIAR SELF ON THE FRONT COVER (LIKE REJAR DID). I THOUGHT THE LOVE SCENES WHERE EROTIC AND EXCITING, ALTHOUGH A BIT LONG. AFTER READING THIS BOOK I HAD TO READ REJAR AND KNIGHT OF A TRILLION STARS. ALTHOUGH I READ THE BOOKS BACKWARDS, MINE TO TAKE THEN KNIGHT OF A TRILLION STARS AND FINALLY REJAR, I FOUND THEM COMPLETELY ENTHRAWLING. THE STORY IS EASY TO FOLLOW AND COMPLETELY FUTURISTIC. I WOULD LIKE FOR MS. JOY TO CONTINUE TO WRITE THE SERIES, AS I NEVER WANT IT TO END. I FEEL LIKE I'M VISITING FRIENDS EVERY TIME I RE-READ THE SERIES. (IN ORDER THIS TIME). ALTHOUGH I WOULD EXTREMELY LIKE IT IF TRAED HAD A HAPPY ENDING OF HIS OWN! HE DESERVES ONE. MAYBE A MOTHERING TYPE OF WOMAN WHO CAN GIVE HIM THE LOVE AND CARING HE NEEDS. BUT I THINK MINE TO TAKE WOULD STILL BE MY FAVORITE OF THEM ALL. EXCELLENT STORYLINE, SEX, AND CHARACTERS. DARA JOY IS TRUELY A ROMANCE NOVELIST PRINCESS!

This book wasn't bad. The characters were fun, the sex was frequent and compelling, and the story had a halfway decent plotline. I don't think it quite deserved the insane level of adulation and adoration that has been heaped on it by the other reviewers here, but I still think it's a good read and worth the money you'll spend to buy it.

However, I do believe there may be a special level of hell reserved for its bone-lazy editor/proofreader, who appears to have done next to no work on it. There are numerous punctuation errors, one paragraph is printed twice in a row, and they let this line into the book: HE STOOD IN THE MOONLIGHT, WALKING TOWARDS HER. Huh? So which is he doing: standing or walking? He can't do both! I mean, he's talented...but not THAT talented.

I must admit, I did lose a lot of faith in this book in several places. Firstly, there's the scene in which a knight pulls out a light sabre. Seriously, the author seemed so keen to rip off--I mean, pay homage to--Star Wars, why didn't she just go the whole hog and say JEDI knight? Secondly, when the hero and heroine have to get through a huge tract of deadly plants, I was forced to wonder: I know this is a simple society, but even ancient hunter gatherer societies from time immemorial have used fire as a means to control plant growth. How has no one living there ever thought before now: 'Hmmm. Dangerous plants are growing rather close to our settlement. Why don't we burn them back a bit?' Seriously! There are more flaws, but it would take all day to list them. Sadly, it was the flaws that made me laugh far more than the actual 'witty banter' in the book, which really only made me smile a little.

In spite of any of my criticisms, however, I quite liked this book. You probably will too, especially if you like men and cats (and let's face it, who doesn't!) Buy it, by all means. But expect it to be like a man--it's kind of nice, you'll be glad you have it around, and you'll even accept its flaws, but it'll annoy you sometimes, and then you'll really wish you could change it!

By the way, if any of you Dara Joy fans are wondering why no sequel to this book has yet been published, you might want to read why on Dara's website www.officialdarajoy.com. When you read that, I am sure you will join with me in wishing Dara Joy good luck in future with sorting out the unfortunate problems she is facing.

Hi, I would have given this book five stars, but I had to take away at least two because she allows the heroines in this series to become complacent in their situations. The "heroes" manipulate, kidnap, and disimpower all of the heroines, they are then placed in situations where the only way they can benefit society is to become good breeders because, once imprisoned, they are in a situation where they have no skills and can't even read the language.

This tendency of this author is the only thing that irritates me about her books. Maybe that's because I don't suffer from bondage/Stockholm syndrome fantasies.

I enjoy science fiction and would enjoy Futuristic Romances more if the authors didn't give into the temptation to transfer the me-babarian/ you-sex-slave historical romance plots into futuristic settings. After all, who would want to give up ALL of their freedom and virtually all of their self-worth for good sex?