Fire Season

Tales of the Darkworld, Book 3

By: Lex Valentine

Narrated by: Chip Wood

Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Black dragon Holden Antaeus isn't looking for a mate. His life is filled with family, work, and dating. Women adore him and he's never short of offers for sex, but a relationship isn't something he's interested in. When Holden's brother Sean hires a new executive for Antaeus International, Holden's whole world, and everything he's ever believed about himself, is blown to bits. Garret Renquist is a green dragon, intelligent, witty, bi-sexual, and hot for Holden. Despite the fact that Holden is positive he's heterosexual, the moment he meets Garret, something happens inside him. What follows is a journey through stereotypes and ingrained beliefs as Holden struggles with the fact that his destined mate is a man.

©2009 Lex Valentine (P)2013 Lex Valentine

Really Good!

This is an extremely well written m/m parnormal romance... I totally loved it... I wish all of the books in the series was on here.. Please Audible.... invest in this series... There is very little decent m/m romance on Audible, and this series is a mixture of both m/m and m/f paranormal romance...

Credit well spent... Narration was pretty good too...

OK STORY

Nice story not too much to it but hot, hot ,hot sex between the two main characters, two guys that are mates one straight and the other Bi sexual in the end come together and admit their love and need for each other.

Insta-mates trumps "I don't swing that way"

Two hours in - did not finish. I listened to this on the Romance Readers Package.

So... MM Romance is my favorite genre. This is my first listen from this author, and number 3 in a series so I cut a lot of slack for that. From what I've listened to I would categorize this more as erotica that romance, lots of hot action with just enough plot to frame the story.

Two hours in the major conflict in this story is that Holden, a 70+ year old dragon (shifter?) has just found that his destined mate is Garret, a male dragon. Holden has NEVER had any attraction to males but if he doesn't mate with Garret they will both suffer physical consequences from denying the bond. The consequences are... not really well explained since I can't remember how dire they might be but wasting away to death seems to be what we're looking at. Also, a lot is made of the fact that Mating is not just the physical act, but it seems to be a difference without a real distinction. The explanation is incredibly thin.

So apparently the major trope here is "We must have sechs or die, but I don't wanna, cause that's ichy." Not a lot of plot to hang 5+ hours of story on.

Again; caveat that I only listened to 2 hours.

I didn't find anything in the story to like. The characters were shallow and stock with no apparent depth. There were too many characters mentioned that I didn't have any connection with - probably from the earlier stories in the series that I haven't read. The billionaire playboy angle didn't add any interest for me. The dragon shifter angle seems to be used strictly to justify the insta-mates plot device, no-one shifted to dragon forms, or evidenced any dragon traits other than enhanced sense of smell and magical clan tattoos. I've read another review that mentions "seduction in their dragon forms" so maybe I just didn't hang in there long enough. Most disappointing for me, there was no humor at all.

Unfortunately the reader didn't add anything to the thin story. His performance was too continually tense to build any drama or allow any relief. He did try to give Garret the British accent he's supposed to have, but it sounded off to me.

I hate to leave bad reviews, but this one wasn't for me.

Little substance; too easy

This story was too easy in every way. Most essentially, the author scripts Holden as moving from being interested in and only having sex with women for 70 years to having a male mate and accepting this with very little struggle. Un-freaking-believable! And this aspect, t his ease, is replicated throughout the entire book. Therein is the lack of substance and reality and the unfortunate ease that absolutely detracts from the story. The ease was present in the too quick sexual encounters that sounded mechanical and with the absence of sensuality. During the sex scenes, as well as throughout the book, the author tells and doesn’t show. It’s was frustrating and depleting as I wanted and needed so much more. An example of a major dislike is this quote: “Way too much TMI.” Isn’t that redundant and an unmitigated error of social and grammatical understanding. To add to that, the author uses rape—albeit during an angry tirade about a business takeover—in a disturbing manner with no listener stating that rape is never anything to joke about or play with. The statement went, “…even if you have to rape them in the ass.” Really?! That’s out of poor taste, at the least, and offensive and disturbing at the most. On the story, the last item of dislike is the disagreement between the m/m couple near the end of the story. It seemed to be an attempt by the author to add drama or a much-too-late, but desired, degree of complexity in this too-easy and non-substantive story. But it failed. It added absolutely nothing to the story, and, instead seemed manufactured. With all of this, the narrator was okay but little help. All of the male characters sounded alike except when he added a British accent. Ah, this was my first purchase by this author and is, unfortunately, also my last. Crap! There’s no believing Amazon book reviews anymore. This is happening way too often now.