Bound

The Silverton Chronicles, Book 2

By: Carmen Fox

Narrated by: Brian Callanan

Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Bound by blood. Bound by loyalty. Bound by love.

Florian has it all: excellent fashion sense, a kickass job with his best friend, and a hard-won place among Silverton's werewolves. When a pack of females pads into their territory, Flo's alpha dispatches him to handle a merger. Total cakewalk. Except Keely, their alpha, has no intention of submitting her wolves to Flo's larger pack. Worse, a single glance from her baby blues sends his eloquence on vacation and his heartbeat into overdrive. His flirtations seem welcome too, but there's a snag. She doesn't know he's a vampire.

While Flo struggles with his conflicts - obey his alpha or win over Keely - his estranged sire blasts into town with a catalog of radical ideas. And hanging out with unsophisticated werewolves didn't make the list.

With violence in the air and all sides testing his loyalties, Florian must bite back, even if showing his fangs costs him the girl.

©2016 Carmen Fox (P)2016 Carmen Fox

Exciting Listen

This was an excellent listen. The narration was perfect and the pace steady. There was plenty of action, heart wrenching moments and of course explicit sex scenes to round the whole story out.

"This audio book was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of Audiobookboom"

One heck of a book

Where does Bound rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is the first one.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Floridian, he's a vampire but still connected to a werewolf.

What about Brian Callanan’s performance did you like?

He was a good audio reader.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Not really. I just liked if it.

Any additional comments?

This is a great book, by an even greater author. You will love it but it's best to read book 1 first.

Fantastic

Loved this fantasy book. Has all the story necessary to keep you listening. The characters were just great together. Made listening a delight

Werewolves and vampires

some friends some foes the Silverton pack must sort through which is which in this epic book.

I received this book free in return for a unbiased review.

feminists should probably avoid it

Look, I realize that not every book is going to be a feminist masterpiece. But there are times when a reader who is even remotely aware of stereotypical representations of women in fiction reads a book and can’t help but notice when a woman is pigeonholed in a patriarchal way. And there are times when this is done so drastically or repeatedly that it becomes an all-encompassing distraction for said reader. That is the case with me and this book. I was so often side-eyeing it with a ‘why does that female character act that particular way’ or ‘why is that women treated this way’ that it blotted out most of the rest of the story.

This book was infuriating. As far as I was concerned it’s basically a litany of ways to subtly to say ‘subservient to a man is a woman’s true place.’ Everything from the older female vampire who couldn’t stand up to her maker, while the younger brother was a “full grown male” so he could, to the ultra powerful Guardian who could only do her duty because her husband allowed her to, to the female alpha who didn’t really want to be an alpha, but “just a girl” (not woman mind you, but girl) who gives responsibility to someone else (a man). And of course she also happened to like to be tied up and spanked, another way to give away her power. And of course she was treated as unreasonable because she didn’t want to submit. And of course the solution the book comes to in the end was actually subservience to a male dressed up as something else.

But there’s more. There’s the vampire sister who really liked to clean up after her brothers and iron the clothes and domestically slave away for them, instead of pursuing her own career. And a whole boatload of victimized women who are treated as a commodity. But mostly, it’s just a ton of subtle little snipes that put men above women. And that’s without my getting into how dehumanizing I thought their constantly being referred to a ‘the females’ was. None of whom had names or personalities. They might as well have been ‘the vases’ or the ‘vehicles’ or ‘the incubators.’ It drove me crazy.

But stories that paint women as secretly wanting to place themselves in the hands of a man, instead of being responcible for themselves isn’t uncommon. The thing in this book that irritated me, but isn’t so common was the treatment of Ollie (maybe Ali, can’t tell with an audio version). Unless he gets an M/M book next in the series, I’m going to have to call that whole thing nothing more than queer bating. There is just no reason for Florian and Ivy to be bound to ‘mates’ in the same ceremony and one lead to a romance without readers expecting the same from the other. And there isn’t any reason to set this up with a man except queer bating. You might say it was so that Florian could get out of it to meet his mate here, but it simply wasn’t necessary in the first book, so it’s not necessary here. Queer. Bating.

Lastly, the whole thing was very predictable. I found it annoying that no one was supposed to see the obvious machinations. And I found the little bit of bondage and spanking irrelevant. It wasn’t well incorporated and felt unnatural in the sex scenes.

The thing is, this is a second book in a series and I had a lot of the same sort of problems with book one. So, I can’t say I’m surprised. But I really wanted to have this read and off my TBR. The mechanical writing seems fine, but the authors version of what should make women happy makes me gnash my teeth. The narrator, Brian Callanan did a fine job with it though.

Great Paranormal reality

This is my first book in the Silverton Chronicles so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Turns out this was an awesome story and I shouldn't have worried. I didn't have to read the first book to understand this one. I'm betting that story is worth reading though too. I loved all the twists and turns that the story took. Then there was the heat between Keely and Florian and man was that steamy. This really was a great book and had an amazing narrator to make it even better.

Outstanding

Any additional comments?

This is a very good book with a unique twist. This is book 2 and I haven't listened to book 1 yet, but I plan to do so now. This book is full of action and the narrator did a very good job.

I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.