Unbound by Kay Danella
Erotic/Futuristic Romance
October 5, 2010
Trade Paperback, 320 Pages
Berkley Trade

Today I’m happy to have Lynette from Lynette’s Two Cents guest reviewing!!

LYNETTE’S TWO CENTS:

Back in January of this year, my local Waldenbooks aka Borders was going out of business so all their trade paperbacks were 60% off. I used that opportunity to stock up on trade paperbacks of author’s I hadn’t read before but whose stories caught my eye. Ms. Danella’s previous release FLAMESEEKER was one of the titles that I picked up. I read that book and it was freaking awesome. I wanted to have babies with that book. I think I read it straight through three times over the weekend, which is weird as FLAMESEEKER is a fantasy romance and a ménage and I’m not normally into fantasy, or ménage novels. But despite that, I loved, loved, loved FLAMESEEKER, I totally bought into the characters, the situation, and the world. It’s is one of my top reads this year.

When I saw Smexy post on Goodreads that she had a copy of another Kay Danella novel that she was about to read, I harassed her until she sent the book to me and graciously allowed me to review it for her. I told her that no biggie, I LOVE, LOVE Kay Danella, I’ll read it in like a day and have the review to her in no time. Umm, that was a month ago.

I can’t help but wonder if I had FLAMESEEKER built up so much in my mind, that I expected so much out of UNBOUND and was let down that it wasn’t as awesome as I expected. I know I’m kinda rambling here, but if it makes sense, FLAMESEEKER was my Thriller album and nothing else could compare to Thriller right?

Ms. Danella is a terrific writer and what I like most about her is she has that J.K. Rowling view on world building. By this I mean, this is my world, it’s the way they live, its second nature to them, so if you want to understand what’s going on, you’re just going to have keep reading or get left behind because I don’t have time to explain why wizards, goblins, ghosts, dragons, etc are normal right now. I love that. Too many authors try to explain too much of their world when these things are second nature to their characters. Ms. Danella does not do that and I love that fact.

In other words, when I opened UNBOUND I was instantly deposited into Asrial’s world. She is the daughter of a deposited sovereign who is now a rim-rat or relic hunter. Her parents were killed several years prior to the books opening, when their space ship was boarded by pirates. Her parents died trying to make sure she wasn’t discovered and killed as well, so Asrial is naturally affected by that event. She hates injustice and her family is important to her. When her uncle is injured she does what she can to make sure her uncle still retains his dignity while helping him to support his family. That’s why it’s imperative that she make a big find. When she finds a hidden cavern on a planet that’s previous been explored she finds more than what she’s bargained for when she finds and touches a rare vase. Selling this vase could finance the repairs she desperately needs for her space ship and her source of support for herself and her family.

Romir has been trapped inside the vase for an eternity, forced to obey his evil master’s whims. He’s felt extreme guilt for what he was forced to do, and feels that there is no way that he’ll ever escape his fate even though his masters have disappeared eons ago. When he meets Asrial he’s humbled by her desire to do whatever it takes (umm, it takes sex for him to not be forced back into the bottle) to keep him free. As the two of them work to find a way to forever free him from the bounds of slavery, friendship turns into love and they’re Romir’s unsure if he can ask her to make such a big sacrifice to set him free, when doing so means that Asrial will have to return to her home world and confront the people who are responsible for overthrowing her father’s government and making her family exile’s.

Okay, it’s obvious that I suck at plot descriptions huh. Let me tell you what I liked and didn’t like about UNBOUND.

As I stated before, I loved UNBOUND’s world-building and the characterization of Romir and Asrial. Romir and Asrial were two fully developed characters that you couldn’t help rooting for. However, the pacing was a little off for me. The story didn’t pick up to me into they returned to Asrial’s home world. I felt as if it took a little too long for the action to start. I wish that some story lines were more fully explored surrounding Asrial’s homeworld. The ending confrontation and resolution regarding the situation on Asrial’s homeworld personally left me feeling is that it? And it made me look closely at everything in the novel. I realized that the only conflict to me in Unbound was if Romir was going to be free, since UNBOUND was so skillfully written and layered, I expected a lot more and was disappointed when there was not.

Despite my issues with this book, it wasn’t enough for me to never want to read the author again or trying to get her next release by any means necessary. Her writing, characterization, and world building skills made up for the other flaws that drove me a little crazy.

Rating: 3.5/5

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