Marrying A Monster

Jaiya #1

by Mel Dunay

New, professionally edited edition! Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here, humans ride trains, drive cars, and use cell phones, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows… As a favor to her parents, Rina agrees to come back to her hometown and take part in an old local a symbolic marriage between the town’s women and the Mountain King, a mythical guardian spirit no one really believes in. But the Mountain King really a monstrous being that feeds on fear and suffering. Rina's only hope for survival may be Vipin, the dashing scholar hunting the Mountain King, but Vipin is hiding a few secrets of his own... Rina and another character are friends with or related to a few characters from the later books in the Jaiya series, but Monster is meant as a standalone.

Genres: Paranormal, Fantasy

148 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2016

About the author

I've traveled all over the world, but now I live in the American Midwest with my extended family. I have no cats, only a vacuum robot named Minnie, who probably would not play nicely with the feline species. My hobbies include bookbinding, film-editing, and finding useful writer support tasks for AI. I prefer to do the actual story drafting myself though.

I write plot-first fantasy and science-fiction, where my characters fight tyrants and other monsters, escape murder charges and slavery, and occasionally save civilization as they know it. While they're having these adventures, they also forge strong emotional connections with their comrades, but they come from cultures that do not treat physical intimacy lightly, and with all that danger around, they usually don't have time for it anyway. If you like a little humor, a little romance, lots of adventure, and no explicit content, welcome! You've come to the right place. I write for readers who want meaningful romantic subplots without explicit content, and adventure that never gets sidelined by the love story.

Reviews

[Gypsy Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not too sure who the girl on the front cover of the book is since Rina seems to always be clothed in saris and other Indian garb. And that was one thing I found so fascinating about the book, how much it drew from the colorful Indian culture and customs. And how much rustic life on the mountain differed from the modern life we live now. The scifi aspect with the aliens didn’t seem like it blended all that well with the book, as almost a half-finished add-in idea. Sad that, since the aliens were fascinating and I was looking forward to seeing how they interacted with the other elements in the book. But they were practically a cameo appearance. Just the scene in the beginning and then popping up briefly toward the end. Most of the book was spent on the journey up the mountain, visiting all of the towns and communities along the way, each one distinctive in its own way. The characters were all fleshed out nicely. From our main character Rina, who had a lot of humor to her, and cynicism as she dealt with Amita, as well as inner strength and willingness to entertain different ideas that maybe there were more to the rural customs than meets the eye. And mysterious Vipin who also had humor to him and warmth, and heroic protectiveness, even if it was just standing up to a guy on the bus harassing Rina, while still calling himself a book geek, with a love of understanding different customs, and not above playing tourist with a guide book. And Amita, frivolous, out for herself, petty, flirty, and doesn’t shy away from throwing other people under the bus figuratively. I loved the moments where Rina had to deal with Amita or the fallout of Amita’s actions, and how exasperated she was with her so much of the time. (And I loved Vipin’s reactions to Amita). The whole story had a good sense of foreboding as it visited each town, until we could work our way up the mountain. And there was a sweet romance, though still constrained by Indian culture. Where I thought the book fell short was the final confrontation. After working up to it for so long, it was resolved within about 3 pages. The end wrap-up was longer than the climax confrontation. Still, I’m dying to see more of this world brought to life (maybe bringing in the aliens more who we really didn’t get to see much of in this book, even though their arrival changed the world.)

[Gail Branum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unusual, yet entertaining.

Not my normal reading material, but very easy to follow and understand...even when things from this other world were not the same as earth. Fun book to read, and even though you know that the good guys will win in the end, you still keep reading to see how they do it. Nice afternoon's reading material.

[Queen Talk Talk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting folktale fantasy.

This is a well written glimpse of a different culture. It had the feel of a "Monkey Magic" episode. PG rated for violence.

[Bonita Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking forward to the sequel...

I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting, flowed well and I liked the two main characters a lot. The reason I didn't go with a higher rating is because of the uneven editing. While most of the basic grammar and spelling was correct, the frequent repetition of various phrases and words (as 'she went went quickly to the seat') really pulled me out of the story line. In fact, at one point about half a page ending one chapter was used word for word as the introduction of the next chapter.