Jartok (Warriors of Kaleth Book 2) by Celeste King

3 Stars

The writing and editing of this novel in the ARC version of the manuscript had typos on almost every page, which unfortunately detracted quite a bit from my enjoyment of an otherwise fun and funny novel. The world building is sly and funny. The use of the alien culture's enjoyment and appropriation of Earth entertainment media made me laugh out loud. The characterization was surprisingly deft and thoughtful considering how the novel made no attempt to take itself too seriously. The development of the romantic relationship was fun and charming. The plot and pacing was clever and quick, with lots of action sequences to make reading it fly by. There is little angst and very high stakes in this novel, which tends to be one of my preferred narrative structures for a romance novel. This novel used the Kidnapping trope and the Algorithm Matched Bride trope common to sci-fi romances. The world building was three stars. The plot and pacing were four stars. The characterization and development of the romantic relationship was four stars. Normally, that would mean that I would give this novel a combined rating of four stars, but I detracted one star from the combined rating because of the plethora of typos on every page that really detracted from the overall enjoyment of the reading experience. It is a shame, because the story itself would have been delightful. That means that the combined score for this novel is three stars. This novel ends on a Happy Ever After ending instead of a cliffhanger, so that is a big plus. I recommend this fun, funny sci-fi romance for anyone who is currently down or having a tough time emotionally, because it was a real mood booster for me and left me with a happy glow. I look forward to reading the next book in this series when it releases, and hope that in the next book the quality of the editing improves. I do not currently plan to buy myself a keeper copy of this novel, because of the multiple editing issues.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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