The Dare

Rystani Warrior #2

by Susan Kearney

DORA WANTS TO MAKE LOVE

Specifically, Dora wants to make love with the handsome Rystani warrior-pilot Zical. But since Dora is a computer-albeit a sentient computer-she cannot experience touch, taste and true desire. Dora's logic functions refuse to accept this, so she uses the advanced technology of the 24th century to build herself a body specifically crafted to appeal to Zical, and downloads her computer brain into it.

But Dora's sassy attitude makes her too different from the women of Zical's culture. He's attracted to Dora, but he won't make love to her. And while it would be easy for Dora to adapt to his desires, she likes being smart and funny; she's becoming good at being human.

When Zical accidentally summons the ancient machines that protect the galaxy from invasion, Dora's mission is to intercept them and bring them back to the galaxy's rim. Fortunately for Dora, this puts her and Zical into very close quarters for a very long time. But much has changed, and as Dora learns more about human emotions and what they mean, she realizes that she doesn't just want to make love with Zical--she wants to love him. And be loved in return.

Genres: Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Futuristic, Paranormal, Futuristic Romance

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 28, 2005

About the author

Susan Kearney used to set herself on fire four times a day, now a USA TODAY—BESTSELLING author, she does something really hot—she writes paranormal romance and romantic suspense for Tor. She can apply the old rule of "write what you know" and never run out of ideas for characters and plots. An All-American and professional diver, expert in martial arts, sailor, real estate broker and owner of a barter business as well as women's fitness and three hair salons, she has enough material for a lifetime.

Kearney, a native of New Jersey, writes full time and has sold books to the industries' top publishing houses — Grand Central, Tor, Simon & Schuster, Harlequin, Berkley, Leisure, Red Sage and Kensington. As an award winning author, Kearney earned a Business Degree from the University of Michigan. Kearney's knowledge and experience spans throughout the romance genre, and her fifty plus books include contemporary, romantic suspense, historical, futuristic, science fiction and paranormal novels. She resides in a suburb of Tampa—with her husband, kids and Boston terrier. Currently she's plotting her way through her 54th work of fiction.

Reviews

[Judy Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

CAPTIVATING, INTELLIGENT, IMAGINATIVE AND DELIGHTFULLY ENTERTAINING !!!
Title: The Dare
Series: Rystani Warrior
Author: Susan Kearney
Designation: Book Two of Series, Full-length Standalone Novel, NO Cliffhanger, HEA
My Rating: Five Riveting Stars*****
Last year, I received a promotion email from, I believe, Book Bub for a free ebook from Amazon entitled The Challenge by Susan Kearney. (Yes, this is actually a review for The Dare, not The Challenge, but just bear with me while I give a little history.) After reading some of the negative reviews, I was somewhat hesitant to invest my time into reading this novel and even more reluctant since Susan Kearney was a new author for me. It was difficult to make an informed decision since I had no experience with her previous work but the book was offered as a free download and I've always been a sucker for a free read, especially when it involves romance and science fiction. I was also quite intrigued after reading several of the comments from reviewers so I took the plunge and I'm so happy I did. I'm not a professional reviewer but I know what I like and what I don't... and I really liked it...a lot! I raced back to Amazon and purchased The Dare, the second book of the series. I have my own little checklist to rate books and obviously, it's different from other reviewers. I base my opinions/reviews on a combination of factors including originality, world building, scene depictions, plot and character development, craftsmanship, grammar, editing and cover art but the foremost element for me is how well the book holds my interest, how it affects me emotionally, and whether I actually enjoy what I'm reading. Did it make me smile? Did it make me laugh? Did it make me angry? Did it make me sad? Did it make me cry? Was I satisfied? Was I entertained? And the answer to every question is an emphatic yes! Now fast forward almost a year later and as it sometimes does, life happened and I realized I'd lost track of The Dare until a few days ago when I found it on my ereader. I liked The Challenge so much that I immediately remembered the book and its storyline. Now, I have to admit, I very much enjoyed The Challenge, the first book of the Rystani Warrior Series by Susan Kearney but I loved, loved, loved Book Two, The Dare. The Challenge was certainly good but The Dare is truly great! When I love a book, I'm able to tune out the world, all interruptions and immerse myself completely in the adventure and the world created by the author. And this story grabbed me right out of the gate, held my undivided attention and completely captured my heart. Additionally, I was impressed with Kearney's boundless imagination and remarkable creativity as well as her exceptional language and world building skills. Kearney's imagination is literally off the charts and she did a fabulous job of executing her vision for this story into a well developed and well-crafted novel. The narrative was skillfully written in the third person with multiple points of view but the two primary perspectives were from the two protagonists, handsome courageous Rystani Warrior Zical and Dora, a character who started life as a sentient computer but became a human woman in this story by transferring her consciousness into an artificially lab-grown body. (Remember, this is science fiction and takes place in the future.) The dialogue was smart, snappy, well executed and flowed effortlessly. The characters were well developed, captivating, engaging, sexy and at times, quite humorous. I found myself immediately drawn into this story by the two protagonists. I was completely captivated by Zical and Dora when they were introduced in the first book and was so excited to learn they would have their own story. I became completely smitten with these two unlikely lovers, a man who discovers he actually fell in love with a woman when she was only the voice for an artificial intelligence with self-awareness, a computer albeit a smart sexy one, and a computer who sees herself as female and discovers she has actual emotions and falls in love with a human Rystani male warrior. You can't get much more unlikely than that. I found myself empathizing with them, crying for them, cheering for them and urging them on, all the while hoping for them to find their happy ending. Some folks may feel this to be a wee bit far-fetched but hey, this is futuristic science fiction where anything and everything is possible. Heck, I don't have to be transported 300 years into the future to believe in the impossible. (We learn in the first book that the events of the story take place 300 hundred years in the future.) Things I thought impossible 50 years ago now exist. I can only imagine how my great grandparents would react to the luxuries we now see as everyday necessities, like cell phones and computers. Twenty years ago, who in the world would have ever dreamed there would be at least one computer in every household, if not several? I didn't. In several reviews for the first book, comments were made about the body suits featured in this series which were manufactured by a now extinct advanced alien civilization. I felt they were a unique and imaginative addition to the story. The suits were completely adaptable, always providing an endless element of fascination and wonder for me. So yes, I found them acceptable in the context of this story. If I can accept the possibility of traveling through time to an alien spaceship 300 years in the future to participate in a Challenge to save an alien planet, I can certainly accept and appreciate reading about a very advanced space age body suit that can function as clothing and body armor, providing protection from weapons, physical violence, heat, cold and even adjust for gravity, and controlled by the mind of the wearer. And yes, they take care of every need of the wearer including personal hygiene, body waste disposal, maintaining proper body temperature and even adjust for sex and normal bathing when desired. One reviewer criticized the author by commenting on the impossibility of having sex while wearing the suit but if we're truthful, I'm sure most of us have had sex at some point in our life while still wearing our clothes. I've found that people can become quite creative when sex is part of the equation. And FYI, Zical and Dora have lots of steamy sex in this story. Sigh.... SO dreamy! lol... And these suits were designed to adapt for any and all situations. I truly enjoyed the author's vision for this series and found it to be fresh and original. It was a beautiful and heartwarming love story that truly tugged on my heartstrings. Actually, that's an understatement, because at one point I sobbed liked a baby. If you love imaginative well-crafted science fiction with exceptional world building filled to the brim with vividly depicted details and descriptions, a riveting plot, captivating characters, heart-pounding danger, heart-wrenching angst, heartwarming romance and steamy, dreamy sex, then you will love this book. Did I like this book? No, I LOVED it... so much so that I raced back to Amazon and purchased the third and fourth books of the series! Would I recommend this book? You bet and I am but only for adult readers! Will I read this author again? Absolutely! I think I just answered that! I'm very eager to get started on the next book in this series. Was there anything I didn't like about the book? Actually, no. I loved everything! There were a few minor grammatical mistakes but nothing that distracted me from the story. And finally, was I entertained? Completely! I was glued to my seat, riveted to my ereader with my heart fluttering wildly in my chest as the pages flew as quickly as the time! I will conclude my review by saying, if you love heart-pounding danger, heart-stopping adventure, spine-tingling suspense, imaginative and intelligently written science fiction with wonderful worlds and clever gadgets, courageous dominant alpha male heroes, sassy, resourceful and very brave female heroines, steamy passion and dreamy romance, then you will most assuredly enjoy this series. Fabulous entertainment and an awesome read!

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Kearney's The Dare contains two potentially great novels fighting to the death to see if one can win. Unfortunately, the two plots merely injure each other, leaving each storyline licking its wounds and the entire novel in need of medical attention.

Kearney does interesting world-building in her books, and is beginning in this novel to create supporting characters that are on the verge of becoming three-dimensional. Unfortunately, the world-building never fully happens. She shortchanges some of her plot, and, especially, short-hands the description and development of many bad guys, making them generically eeeeeevil rather than providing true motivation for their bad deeds.

The same issue exists with the love story. There is a certain amount of hand-waving done in order to progress the characters' relationship, which feels forced. The love story in general feels shoehorned in, as if she were really interested in a third character's secondary plot but was contractually required to deliver a romance with a happily-ever-after (HEA) ending.

Will I keep reading this series? Probably. The sci-fi plot of this book was more engaging than the last, and I'm curious about the world she's evolving. The books in this series have great potential to be better than they are, and like a viewer watching a mediocre first season of a television series, I'm hoping it finds its legs with the next episode.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, I love a good Sci-Fi novel. I love a good romance novel. I like good erotica. I thought this looked the perfect combination of all three - it wasn't!

I can except that a sentient computer yearns to feel love and wants to have sex with her rather handsome pilot. But she went on and on and on and on about it .... even when Zical is hanging from a mountain side. Now personally, that for me would make her slightly too obsessive to be allowed a body! But I stuck with it for a bit.

The next bit I could except was the telepathic suit that stopped the wearer from feeling too hot or too cold, or stops them plummeting to their deaths with some nifty anti-grav features ... but stops them getting an erection?

At that point I was laughing too much to really feel any empathy with the characters.

I think I'll keep my genres separate for the future!

[Gabriella · Rating 2 out of 5]

A computer that becomes human in order to experience human life and love. Now that would be a book I would have loved to read. The premise was there, but the execution wasn't. The writing and the world-building were good, but this wasn't a story about a computer in love and learning how to be human.
Dora had some minor issues, but they were either solved pretty fast or forgotten. Also as a love story this book was lacking, which is sad as it could have been so much better.
2 stars for a book there the story from the back cover and the real story are worlds apart and the romance was almost none existent.

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ignore the cover, it makes them look like they've been huffing irradiated spice.
This book is not nearly as bad as it should be, very readable and actually contains things that make it science fiction, like fancy computers and space and fancy technology made by aliens.

[Tory Michaels · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy crap, batman! I loved loved LOVED this book. I wasn't super psyched, though I enjoyed the first book, the Challenge (a 3.4/4-star for me), but this one just blew me out of the water. I'd loved the character of Dora, the computer who helped the prior heroine adapt to life in a new time/space, so I was ecstatic to see she'd gotten her own book. I had no idea how she'd get around the whole fact that she existed as simply (okay, not simply, but you get my meaning) as a computer, rather than a flesh and blood person and have a romance.

Dora has always had emotions, and found herself more and more drawn to wanting to experience life, real life, as a human. She's attracted to the Rystani man, Rical, and spends a lot of time with him as he goes exploring, ultimately stumbling onto an old, abandoned site built by the Perceptive Ones (the oldest known race, who was responsible for a lot of the technology in use in the universe). She's so attracted to him that when she decides to download part of her mind to a flesh-and-blood body she's grown (having tweaked everything so she had no weak genes, etc.), she finds out what he likes in physical appearance and has her body look pretty much like that. That's just the kind of woman Dora is.

Rical is a typical, alpha, Rystani male. He's adapted to the changes in his life since the first book, which saw his people move from their original planet to Mystique, which is where he found the abandoned Perceptive One base. He's gunshy about Dora, or really any woman, becuase he was married before to a child bride and there was little attraction there. His wife and child died in an attack by the foe that ultimately drove his people from Rystan. He's a starship captain and trying to decide what he wants to do with his life now that his people are, more or less, safely transplanted and settled on Mystique.

This book looks at so much more than simply the growing relationship between Dora and Zical, it's impossible to sum it all up. But Dora, even as she's terrified after finding herself flesh and blood (thus, gasp, capable of DYING!), finds the courage not only to continue her pursuit of Zical in the face of his reluctance, but to risk her life to go with him and a band of adventurers to try to undo the damage Zical inadvertently did when he found the Perceptive Ones' base.

Terra and Kahn from the first book were here, along with the baby that was born at the end of that book, though he's now 4 and super-scary smart (and pretty tech-sneaky). The secondary cast doesn't overwhelm or get lost in the primary romance.

I thorough enjoyed this book and couldn't wait to gulp it down. I'm hoping Ms. Kearney releases all of her Rystani books through BelleBooks in the weeks/months to come. I know I'm ready, willing and eager to read them.

Total 5-star rating from me!

[Nath · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5 (D)

I really had a hard time getting into this book and finally, I decided it wasn't worth it and so, I skimmed through the ending...

Dora is a sentient computer who wants to become human in order to have sex with Zical, the only human being she found special among a billions. Dora gets her wish (as in, she becomes human), but adapting to life is not as easy as she thought...

And that about sums up the book. I don't know, after reading the blurb on the back of the book, I was really interested... but once I start reading it, it just lost me. Perhaps because this is the second book and I'm missing info on the world building. It just confused me a lot. Also, dare I say it's pretty stupid for a computer to become human simply because she wants to experience love-making?!? I mean, if she wanted to become human because she was in love, that would have been more interesting... in this case, she's so dense (so much like a real human) that she doesn't realize that she's in love with the guy. Euh, hello!!!! As for Zical, well he's well bleh... Didn't really like him, I mean, he's not very memorable, he doesn't sound yummy... he has some personal issues that keep getting in the way with his relationship with Dora, but at the same time, I thought the issues weren't that important and he was just running away... and there was all this mission about saving their planet that I really didn't get... sad no? Anyway, didn't really enjoy the book nor the characters... the story basically didn't grab my attention.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating 3.5 stars

While I didn't like this as much as the first book, it was still an enjoyable read. Set about four federation years after the first book, Dora, the funny and fiercely loyal sentient computer who had befriended Tessa, is near completion into growing a body. Excited about the prospect of finally having the capacity to experience the five senses, most especially touch, she has been smitten by the Rystani warrior, Zical since the moment she heard his voice.

This story was a bit out of the norm, but Kearney made it work and addressed issues that would come up in the circumstances presented in this book. For example you have a sentient computer who has existed for years with insurmountable data at the tip of her metaphorical fingers. Additionally that same being is able to multitask in a way that makes talking on the phone while making dinner, doing laundry, and balancing the checkbook seem less than child's play. While in a human body it restricts her in ways that make her fearful and it was an interesting evolution. I also enjoyed the personalities of the main couple in this tale as well as the progression of their relationship.

The overall plot in this book was a whirlwind of events. I felt so bad for the crew, hitting a brick wall at each turn. It kept me at the edge of my seat and constantly enthralled. The part that I didn't like was the hesitation of Dora, even after all was said and done. Although I have to admit that it made the ending much more sweeter.

A great read, I have "The Ultimatum" queued up and ready to go.

[Krissys Bookshelf Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a long time fan of Susan Kearney and her work. Not once has any of her books ever let me down. Susan is a fantastic story teller with an amazing talent for creating worlds so real you'd think that she had some secret life somewhere out in the stars.
Susan creates characters that will amaze and frustrate you and make you fall in love all at once. Dora and Zical are no exception.
When Dora joins Zical's crew neither of them can deny each other and despite Zical's past he can't resist the all too tempting Dora and her human allure. Even in the midst of danger both Dora and Zical's clashing interests bring them closer together than ever.
What an exciting journey to follow all the way to the edge of the galaxy where even Zical and Dora begin to question even their own cultures as their feelings for each other grow.
If you haven't had the chance to read The Dare you have to give it a try. Because who doesn't dream of finding love in the stars?

[namericanwordcat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am thrilled that this book has made its way to e book form. It is a special book that examines what it means to be human and what it means to love through the eyes of a sentient computer who has made herself a body. The world building here is complete and engaging. The hero is someone you would want to make yourself a body for as well. The action adventure compelling and engorssing. The heroine amazing and oh so funny.

I highly recommend this book for any lover of science fiction romance. It and the series are classics that must be read.

I was given the ebook for my honest review but I already owned the hard copy and have read it and recommended it many many times,

[Summer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had so much potential! The feminist ideals were fabulous... of course, then it had to be completely ruined by a far too fast pregnancy. How on earth is this a happy ending? Dora and her child share a one year difference... I'm so glad the female lead gets a chance to learn her OWN body before being responsible for another. *Grumble*

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really my cup of tea. There were the occasional inconsistencies that were bothersome, character wise and plot wise, as well as a ridiculous stop on a planet with two new crew members who were never mentioned again. The story did not grab my attention and I ended up dropping the book for a few days and picking it back up to finish it and get it out of the way.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This not-so-trashy romance is a cut above the pack. I actually considered keeping this one. It starts out strong and actually made me keep turning the pages. The premise is delightful and refreshing. The characters are developed nicely. In conclusion, romance lovers might enjoy this work. =)

[Gema Wegrzyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Dora. That being said this was a slower read than the first one. I think this was because it involved a lot more politics and less interaction between the two love characters. Still a good read!

[Karen Desmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

5

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say I liked Dora better as a computer. These books are okay, but I can't bring myself to read the rest of them right now.

[Mara Reitsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book lying on a friend's shelf and once I opened it, I couldn't put it down. I HAD to find the rest of them.... I LOVED IT!!

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sentient computer finds a way to become human.

If that doesn't get you interested than I can't tell you about her unique personality and obsession with sex. Her yearning to create the perfect body, experience touch, kisses, love. Wanting to entice Zical into her arms. She set her sights on him.
He's stubborn though. Clouded by the past events he must find a way to tell that beautiful voice of a computer Dora that they could never be.
When things don't go as planned its up to him to teach her to be human while trying to convince himself he's not in love with her.

[Bee Mills]

I am wildly entertained both by this book and by the fact that apparently some people think that this is an original work.

Having read most of it, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that Dora's character in its entirety is cribbed from Heinlein. It could be either Gay from Number of the Beast of (more likely) Dora, Lazarus Long's spaceship AI, although to be fair they are both very similar to each other.

Are we 100% sure that SK is not actually Heinlein's secret identity?

[Sierra King-Council · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished the second book of this series! I read the first book years ago, and it’s always been a top fav for me. It’s my go to book to bring whenever I travel or want a good adventure with slow burn!

4.6/5 I love the story of Dora/Zical- it’s nice to see things come full circle!

Excited to read the third!

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline is great ex ept for the sadomasochism Thats whi I am giving a 3 star rating

[Noodle The Naughty Night Owl · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10: Good light-weight read, well done.