Maven tickles me in some ways, and makes me nuts in others.
She writes about love languages. Tickles me. She makes Naomi a 5'1, tiny, freckled female construction team leader. What the farts?!?!? She names the hero Gar (warrior/fighter). Tickles me. But then every other minute she uses the phrase 'eyes roll back in her head'. (((sigh.)))
In this book, she redeems herself after two really lacking efforts. I loved books one and two. Books three and four made me irritable... but book five is almost ALL amazing.
Gar is the grinch of the Draxonians. If his brother was the grump, he was five times worse. ((Which isn't hard, since Ward was *supposed* to be the grump, but Maven didn't follow thru. Whatever.)) Gar is suicidal, dark, emotionally tortured, and has a deeply buried thing for Naomi.
Naomi likes Gar. She's the puppy bouncing around his feet that he kicks and makes yelp, but she's back for more. It's almost toxic. She's also the tiniest to his biggest, freckled to his badly scarred, and best loved to his most reserved in the clavas.
When Gar sets off on a one-way mission to blow himself and a huge underground bad guy base up, Naomi stows away and tags along. Gar deliberately gets captured and brought into the base, and Naomi thinks she has to rescue him... botching up the plans. Except that she finds one of the Drix ships thought destroyed by the bad guys. With that, all plans change.
THIS. This excitement of escaping, stealing the ship, evading baddies... THIS is what's fun and thrilling. THIS is what made me love the first two. THIS was nearly a return to it. Except:
1. That poor control panel. Was anyone else worried about ship damage? Who has slamming, screaming, dripping sex all over a CONTROL PANEL in THE only surviving Drixonian ship?!?!?
2. If she's 5'1 and he's bigger than the gargantuan Drix warriors, HOW the hell is he having sexual penetration AND managing to kiss her way-down-there-somewhere breasts? Asking for friend.
3. You're telling me they have space-age capabilities, but no metal detectors that could locate a cloaked ship? I find it hard to believe the bad guys couldn't pick up its location with tech. It's a little out of the realm of reality, there...
I dunno. Maybe I'm too technically minded, r'something. But MOSTLY I absolutely did enjoy this one. Thank goodness - I was half afraid we were on a downward spiral, after the last two!