TEST
Surviving Demon Island would have made a wonderful series romance. Unfortunately it is padded with so much mental lusting in the first half and so much sex in the second half that I soon grew weary. The premise of the book is interesting, but the execution is clumsy.
Gina Bliss is a successful kick ass action heroine whose movies are all hits. However, even a kick ass heroine needs a break, but when it’s time for her vacation, Gina decides to take a busman’s holiday. She signs on to a reality series to be called Surviving Demon’s Island where she and her teammates will stalk and shoot “demons”. It sounds like it will be a bit like paintball and Gina is ready to play.
When she gets to the island and meets her team leader Derek Marks, the mental lusting begins…and goes on and on and on. Derek is a smoldering hunk of hotness and eminently lust worthy, but the constant (and I mean constant) lusting on the part of Gina and Derek got to be tiresome in the extreme and I contemplated giving this book a D as a result.
Then the Demons showed up and kicked things into high gear. After their first episode, there’s a violent attack that kills a couple of the contestants and Gina and the others find out that this is no game. There are real Demons (Sons of Darkness) in the world and they want to wipe out mankind. It was a Demon who stole Gina’s mother years ago and they used her to produce half-breed Demons that are stronger and meaner than the pure bred Demons. Working against this horde of Demons are human fighters (the Realm of Light) who dispatch the baddies with high tech weapons. Derek is among the strongest of the fighters, and Gina eagerly joins forces with him and the others. But the Demons are fast, they are strong, and their leader knows a secret about Derek that might jeopardize the entire mission.
As I said, the first half of the book was practically non-stop mental lusting. I got so tired of it, I almost tossed the book, but I persevered and was glad I did. The Demons are really nasty baddies (they even smell bad) and they are strong enough to give Gina and Derek a real fight. Gina more than holds her own even when in true action hero cliché, her gun jams in the middle of a big fight. Derek is cunning and strong as well and he and Gina make a really kick ass couple. The scenes where they were fighting the demons were lots of fun.
Actually, I liked Gina and Derek better when they were kicking demon butt and not groping each other’s respective butts. The mental lusting in the first part of the book becomes physical lusting for both of them and, in between slaying demons, they boink each other silly. These scenes go on for pages and pages and once I read the first one, I knew what was coming and skipped a lot of the subsequent boink scenes. They added nothing to the character’s development, and actually slowed the pace of the book down to a crawl.
There’s a plot point that is left dangling and it will be taken up in the sequel, Hunting the Demon to be published in the fall. I might check it out. The premise of Surviving Demon Island is lots of fun, and Derek and Gina are a great action couple, but if this book had only been shorter, the plot tightened up a bit, and the author had lightened up on the lust, it would have been a really good read instead of an average one.
Grade: C
Book Type: Fantasy Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 15/02/07
Publication Date: 2007
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.