Soul of a Warrior by Denna Holm

2 Stars

The writing and editing was clean in the ARC version of the manuscript, with no typos that I found and pretty sentences. The world building was excellent, with the world Lavina coming to vivid life. The characterization was competent, if a little flat. The heroine was sympathetic, though the romantic hero was a bit of a cipher. The development of the romantic relationship was terrible, with the hero and heroine spending at least 60% - 70% of this novel separated. There was no watching these two fall in love, because they were literally on separate worlds for the majority of this novel. The plot and pacing was okay, but as a romance reader, I was mostly impatiently reading it to get to the parts where the hero and heroine were on the page together interacting. There was medium-high angst on the heroine's part, with her being suicidal and feeling very sorry for herself after she is forcibly converted into a vampire. That part was a bit of a trial for me to get through, even though her feelings were understandable. The stakes were very high throughout this novel, which helped the pacing somewhat even though the hero and heroine spend almost the whole novel apart. This novel also had no on page sexy times between the romantic couple, which I felt vaguely cheated by as a romance reader. This novel was a good long length, so at least that was a plus? Many self published sci-fi romances are far too short, in my opinion. This novel used the Fated Mates trope common to paranormal and speculative fiction romance. It also had a whiff of Enemies to Lovers. The world building was four stars. The plot was three stars. The pacing was three stars. The characterization was two stars and the development of the romantic relationship was one star. As a science fantasy novel this book would be three to four stars. As a science fantasy romance novel this book is one star, due to the egregious error of the romantic protagonists being separated for the majority of the novel. I split the difference and gave this book a combined score of two stars. This novel ends on a Happy Ever After ending instead of a cliffhanger, so that is a plus. I recommend this novel to readers of science fantasy, but I do not recommend it to readers of speculative fiction romance. I do not particularly want to read the next book in this series, even though I have loved this author's Raiden Warriors sci-fi romance series. I will not buy myself a keeper copy of this novel.

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

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