Shannon C.‘s review of Fire Princes’ Bride by Rebecca Airies
Fantasy erotic romance released by Ellora’s Cave 25 Jun 08
Fire Princes’ Bride had a blurb that compelled me, and was a bit of an experiment on my part. It’s obviously part of a series, and I know that I need to get over my compulsive urge to read everything exactly in order, so I picked this book up hoping the conflict would be entertaining and hoping I could follow along without having read prior books. It turns out that I could, although ‘entertaining’ is not precisely the word I would use to describe this book.
The quick and dirty premise is as follows: Callan and Tyral (henceforth referred to as Callantyral for the purposes of this review) are fire elementals. They have many enemies, and they end up magically stranded on a random planet. Along comes Karissa, an ice elemental, who joins them. Lots of fun sexoring is had by all, only Callantyral fail to let her in on the fact that she is their bonded mate. She goes home, but must return to their side, because otherwise her very life is in danger. Not that it’s any safer when she joins her men, because a faction in their realm wants her dead as well.
There was a lot going on in this story, some of which seemed overly convoluted. I didn’t ever really understand what an Aliara was, or why men should bond with their mates when they get to a certain level of power. I don’t know if this was explained in previous volumes of the series, but this was one of those rare times when I really wanted someone to go, “As you know, Bob, when X occurs, that causes Y.” That being said, I was definitely curious about the different kinds of elementals and how they worked, much less what it would be like to have a spirit of your chosen element living inside you. I also never really got why the princes had fangs, which was a detail that kept popping up but didn’t really seem to need to be there.
As for the characters, I had trouble with them. For one thing, Callan and Tyral were pretty much indistinguishable, hence my jumbling them together as Callantyral. The author does this a lot herself, having the men react of one accord. This took away from the dynamics of the romance for me, because essentially I felt like Karissa was with the same guy, but in two bodies, for convenience. Therefore, I didn’t feel the chemistry, and this book failed the litmus test by which I judge such things, since I did at one point fall asleep while reading a sex scene. Not only that, but Callantyral were the worst sort of alphas. There was a lot of “Now, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.” And whenever Karissa was angry with them, there was a lot of smiling indulgently and metaphorical patting her on the head and patronizing, “Awww, you’re so cute when you’re mad.” If anyone treated me the way those men treated Karissa, there’d be more than just an icy bath in the works for them. There would be two hot alpha men currently… well… not getting any. But that’s just me.
This book pretty much didn’t work for me. I suspect that readers who like M/F/M romances will find this appealing, but there’s no way I can wrap my head around making it plausible, particularly when the men are brothers. There’s enough here that could be interesting, but I can’t recommend a book where the heroes are two halves of the same uber-asshole jerk and the fantasy world-building is too complex for the story it tries to tell.
Grade: D
Summary:
One thing is universal in all the Elemental Realms — women are told when to seek a mate. Because of the power she holds, Karissa knows she will have to embark on that journey far earlier than most women in the Ice Court. But she does not expect to find her betrothed — especially not before her search has even begun. And she certainly does not expect to have two mates — let alone for those mates to be the Princes of the Fire Court.Twin brothers Tyral and Callan know Karissa is their mate as soon as they see her. They greet her with a carefree playfulness, wanting to give her time, but things quickly heat up between them. The Princes’ biggest challenge, however, proves not to be their opposing Elemental Spirits, but convincing Karissa to submit to their rules.
As Fire and Ice clash in the bedroom, an enemy moves in, plotting to destroy the Fire Princes’ future with their new bride.
Read an excerpt here.
