Saturday Shorts

I haven't done one of these in ages, but I've had a couple of review requests for short stories/short novellas so I thought I may as well do them together as a 'shorts' post.


The Tea Demon by Cornelia Grey
This steampunkish fantasy story begins in an electrifying way.  Semi-retired professional thief Eric is approached by a stranger in a bar who wants him to steal something for him.  After a passionate kiss followed by a bar brawl, Eric accepts and is amazed to discover that he's working for the notorious Tea Demon, scourge of the skies.

This story is a sort of humourous pastiche of pirate/steampunk stories and as such is a little light on some of the details that fans of steampunk usually enjoy.  There's enough to set the scene with vertigo inducing towers and platforms and sky ships/boats which defy the laws of gravity but that's it really. I didn't mind this because the fun is more in the relationship between Eric and Jonathan, and in the amusing heist type story where they may not 'blow the bloody doors off' but they are not far off!  The romance is a mix of hot and oddly touching with a sweet scene at the end which suggests a HFN rather than hammers it home.  There are some amusing secondary characters in Jonathan's crew but background detail on all of the characters is a little sparse and I would have liked to know a little more about Jonathan especially.  That wasn't enough to spoil the story for me though, and I can happily recommend The Tea Demon with a grade of 'Very Good' for those looking for a fun steampunkish story.

Buy this book HERE.



Between Hell and El Paso by Derek Adams
Those of you who have read a few Derek Adams' stories will know that he often writes main characters who are, to put it bluntly, as thick as two short planks.  In the case of this book the academically challenged hero is Trinity who, after he is seduced by his boss, is run out of town. He arrives in the city and is taken under the wing of a group of go go dancers at a gay bar.  One of the dancers has tickets to the rodeo and it is here that Trinity meets Charlie, a gorgeous rodeo star.

Despite the fact that Trinity isn't too bright, I rather liked him.  He's very naive, almost to an extreme, but I didn't mind that so much and found the whole situation rather amusing.  The author plays on Trinity's innocence to the extent that his naivety causes good things to happen to him, and so he finds himself in all sorts of situations where he bumbles along, trying to please and doing very well out of it.  For example, landing in a strange city and just happening to stand outside a gay bar to get his bearings whereupon he's discovered by one of the gogo dancers and gets an instant job.  This is part of the humour of the story, I think.  It's not meant to be realistic so of course nothing too bad happens to Trinity and everything is wrapped up with a solid HEA at the end.  Actually for me this was the part that let the story down a little.  Trinity and Charlie have a big old 'together forever' moment at the end of the story but they've only known each other for two days, and most of that time is spent apart.  However, this is a particular bug bear of mine and may not put some readers off.

Many of the stories from this author have raunchy, dirty sex scenes, and there was a little bit of that here, but mostly the story is rather sweet and romantic. I would have liked more of Charlie and Trinity together to be secure in the HEA which is imposed on us but this was still a pretty good read with a nice blend of humour, action and sex.  If you like innocent heroes who get into scrapes because of their general cluelessness then you will enjoy this one.  Grade: Good.

Buy this book HERE.

Hope you all have a good weekend!