Friday, January 29, 2010

Reviews: Rogue, Outcast, and Fugitive by Cheryl Brooks

I started reading Cheryl Brooks's Cat Star Chronicles series at the end of last year. I picked up books #3 (Rogue) and #4 (Outcast) at the RWA conference in DC and thought they had a really interesting premise--the males come from a race with feline genes that give them unmatched grace, beauty, and sensuality. I don't usually read sci-fi romances, but I thought hmmm...

So, I started with Rogue which is the story of two Zetithian brothers, Trag and Tychar, who were sold into slavery when their world was destroyed wiping out most of their kind. When the story opens, they have been the pampered pets of a the Draconian queen for 20 years. Even though they are slaves, they haven't had a terribly hard life but they are the only humanoid males on a planet full of, basically, dinosaurs. Enter Kyra, a music teacher from Earth and things start to get interesting. I enjoyed Rogue, but I didn't love it. But I already had Outcast on my shelf, so I picked it up and I'm so glad I did.

Outcast is the story of another Zetithian male, Lynx, also captured and sold as a slave when his planet was destroyed. Unlike Trag and Tychar, however, Lynx spent the last 20 years as a sex slave for a harem full of women. He's free now, but he has less-than-zero interest in getting sexually involved with another woman ever again. But when he lands on Terra Minor, he needs work and he's sent to Bonnie's farm. Bonnie has been left high-dry-and-pregnant by her so-called boyfriend and she's trying to deal with the farm and the vicious livestock on it all by herself. Of the three books I've read in this series so far, this one was, by far, the most emotional. I loved it!

So when Danielle at Sourcebooks offered to send me an ARC of Cheryl's latest book (out this month), Fugitive, I snapped it up. Fugitive is the story of Manx. Unlike the other Zetithian males, Manx has never been captured, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's been living freely. There is someone in the galaxy that is intent on destroying all Zetithian males and there are bounty hunters out looking for them all the time. So when Drusilla, a Terran, shows up on Barada Seven Manx isn't sure that he can trust her. He does eventually come out of hiding and the two of them, along with a few other Zetithians (who were the subjects of books 1 and 2) who show up, outwit a band of the bounty hunters. Fugitive is also an excellent story. I'd highly recommend it.

Now I need to go back and read the first two books in the series, Slave (Cat and Jack's story) and Warrior (the story of Leo and Tisana). I see they're available for Kindle, but I'm hoping to find them in a version that will work on my Barnes & Noble Nook soon.

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