Then one day, the book blogger got herself a twitter, and, recognizing the potential Twitter represented, she made friends with other bloggers. All was well in the land, and the sweet and innocent book blogger reveled in her new friendships, and the book recommendations they brought.

Then, one day, Katiebabs and another book blogger–our narrator cannot remember who–commenced a conversation on Twitter about The Cat Star Chronicles by Cheryl Brooks. Actually, the conversation was specifically about something found with alarming frequency in this series. No, I’m not talking about exclamation points, although those pop up quite frequently. I refer instead to… snard.

Before you ask, snard is what happens when a man in this series finds a woman that he likes very much. While smexing her, he usually emits excretions that taste, according to one of the books, like hazelnut. These cause spontaneous orgasms in the female.

Anyway, our erstwhile book blogger, being a fan of fiction of questionable taste, made haste to acquire the series and read the first four in something like a week, devouring the books the way she has also been known to devour whipped cream straight from the container. (This explains why our intrepid book blogger is not a small woman.) And the books were good. They were engaging, didn’t require a whole lot of brain power, and didn’t seem to take themselves all that seriously. The fourth book, especially, introduced our blogger to a tortured hero she just wanted to hug.

Months passed, and soon there was a new addition to the series, which our intrepid blogger eagerly dived into. And it is this book she–OK I–will review today.

First, a little background on the series. Apparently, the Zetithian race was destroyed a couple of decades ago when their planet was blown up. A band of Zethithian soldiers were captured, however, and sold into slavery. Each of these men endured a lot before finding a woman they were drawn to, women whom they gave their snard to on a regular basis. (And if you think I should be above random references to snard throughout this post… you obviously don’t know me very well.)

Anyway, in this fifth installment of the Cat Star Chronicles, Fugitive, Earth artist Drucilla has come to the idyllic Barada 7 to paint birds after a breakup with her latest gay boyfriend. Apparently, homophobia still runs rampant in Brooks’s future, which makes me sad. Anyway, she soon becomes aware of Manx, who is, you guessed it, a Zetithian. Manx thinks Drucilla smells wonderful and wants to boink her ASAP, but there’s a bounty on his head. So, needless to say, wacky hijinks ensue.

There’s a lot to like here–at least if you’re a reader like me who enjoys an element of cheese in her fiction. Manx and Drucilla are both quite likeable, and even though I didn’t buy the chemistry completely, I wasn’t sorry they ended up together. There are also great secondary characters, including couples from previous books, some precocious children, and a garulous alien. I enjoyed reading about all these people immensely, and am sad that I have no idea when the next book will come out so I can see what else Ms. Brooks has in store for them. Because there’s definitely a few loose ends I’d like to see explored. I hope there is at least one Zetithian female wandering around, because I really want to meet one. And the answer of who destroyed the Zetithian home world is still not revealed.

That all being said, I do have significant quibbles. In the first place, I feel that there was way too much going on, and that an editor could have been a bit more strenuous in tightening things up. There were way too many POV shifts to characters whose heads I didn’t need to be in. And I don’t actually want to read sex scenes involving previous characters. They had their books. It’s time to keep them out of the spotlight.

The other thing that bugged me was that the sex scenes were raunchy. I don’t read erotic romance for loving descriptions of how much the heroine wants the hero to smear her face and body with his snard; I don’t care how much like hazelnut the stuff tastes. And when I wasn’t reading raunchy sex, I was reading repetitive sex. I know there are only so many ways to say that nutella-flavored excreta has awesome effects. But surely saying so over and over and over and over and over again rather ruins the effect.

The result of all this was that, while I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, it took me a while to finish, and I didn’t think it had the same campy quality that the other books in the series had, which I liked so much. The end result is a mixed bag, and so I’m going to have to give it a C+.

Other Opinions

• The Bookgirl
• Kylee’s Journal
• Cheeky Reads
• The Book Binge

Sorry for the stream-of-conscious rambling style of this post. I can’t be bothered to write a coherent essay. I’ve been feeling low-grade nausea all day, and I’m really hoping I’m not about to get sick, because that would suck.

Around the blogosphere this week I’ve noticed a few conversations about cliques in blogland. To be honest, I think cliques happen no matter what community you belong to. It’s just how people operate. And I take a pretty zen view of the whole thing. I know I’m small potatoes in blogland, and I’m cool with that. I could probably increase my page ranking, do more contests, etc. if I wanted to. But I don’t really feel the need. And I consider a handful of bloggers and authors to be friends, but I don’t want to make my blog a popularity contest. I don’t have the time in the first place, and in the second, I don’t know what I’d do with minions and fangirls if I had them.

Of course, sometimes those sentiments are a little easier to maintain than at other times. For example, all the talk on the blogosphere about the book blogger convention does depress me. I am a poor college student. I simply can’t afford to go, and even if I did go, while it would be awesome to meet my fellow book bloggers, I’d still have to deal with the fact that I’d be going to New York. By myself. As a blind person. Even the thought makes my introverted soul weep a little. But man, it would be so much fun to get together and talk about books with other people who are as passionate about them as I am! And, since there aren’t many local bloggers in my area–if there are any at all–it’s never going to happen, and that thought does depress me, because I do feel like I’ll always be on the outside looking in.

Anyway, enough about that. I wanted to start keeping better track of what I’m currently reading, more for my own reference than anything else.

Books I need to review:

• Eye of Heaven by Marjorie Liu

Books I’m currently reading:

• Fugitive by Cheryl Brooks – I’m a little over halfway through this one, so I’ll probably finish it today I love Brooks’s cheesy futuristic romance series, but this one suffers from plotting that’s all over the place. Also, the sex scenes are increasingly unsexy.
• Bitterwood by James Maxey: This is a validation for Bookshare. It’s surprisingly good so far, but I’m not far into it.
• Love by Toni Morrison: I got this from the Library, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to finish it. It has an interesting premise, and God knows I don’t read enough books by and about people of color, but I’m just not in the mood for something so literary.

So that’s my Sunday. How are the rest of you? Read anything awesome lately?