The Falconer by Elizabeth May
Edinburgh 1844, Aileana is an heiress, a debutante and a suspected murderer. By day she is barely holding on to her reputation, while by night she hunts and kills fairies. This sound promising but swiftly turns into an idiot steampunk romance. Aileana is a feckless violent idiot who throws strops while two men (one human, one not) compete for her. This was a stupid, crappy, near unreadable piece of crap about a ’lady’ of good family but bad character.
Best Lines:
“If I do that, I’ll really be put in the asylum.”
“I can never let the real me show. If I do, they’ll all realise that I’m far worse a woman than they imagine me to be.”
~
An Officer’s Duty by Jean Johnson
The 2nd in the ‘Theirs Not To Reason Why’ series is not as good as the first. Sadly it is downright boring. Ia continues to manipulate events and create a cult of personality to ensure her galaxy will survive the four wars to come in the next 300 years. She faces down an idiot psychic, takes officer training, meets the one man whose future she cannot see and join the Border Patrol of the Salik Interdicted Zone. The Salik are a Lovecratifan like race who eat POW’s, psychic weapons are being made and Ia’s talents are revealed. Despite all this, the endless prattle about destiny bores. The foreshadowing of what is to come is interesting (more interesting than what is actually happening) and I hope ‘Hellfire’ is better.
Best Lines:
“Three hundred years go by awfully fast when you’re dead and can’t tell anyone how to stop a galaxy wide war.”
“It was a war. The politicians just thought that calling it a Blockade would sound more reassuring to the folks back home.”
“Something banged into the sealed doors protecting them from invasion.”
“What a real pity it will all be laid to waste, soon.”
“The destruction of all your people, and all your worlds, leaving you nothing more than a fading, pitied memory.”
“That was the Valley. That was the Exodus! I saw the Exodus.”
“They originally came from a galaxy that used to exist in an area the astronomers call the Blight.”
“To make sure my planet can survive two hundred years of isolation behind enemy lines.”