Sekhmet, the Destroyer, has arisen again from her long
imprisonment by her father, Ra. And she’s taking up her old task, what she was
made to do, to end the world itself.
Which falls to the Amazons to stop her, as they would any
Ancient running amok. Gina, the Air Amazon, is assigned to protect Zach,
technological genius whose invention could hand Sekhmet the keys to the apocalypse.
Not that Zach knows it – or about magic, amazons, gods or
the strange guys who can shock him to death with just a touch of their hands.
After the second time he’s rendered unconscious, it’s going to be difficult for
Gina to explain.
Especially since he may be the one for her – her soulmate
just as her sisters have found. Which is going to be hard to pursue with the
jealous and angry Richard, complete with his own agenda and his own ability to electrocute
with a touch
One thing I liked about the relationship in this book is
that we got away from having a male love interest who was an authority figure
over the Amazon – which meant we had less of the orders and instructions that
didn’t work for me in Impetuous Amazon and made Reluctant Amazon so very
dubious. Gina can talk to Zach as an equal, even a superior because of her
greater knowledge and power.
Yet, the relationship was far more annoying to me. We
have the extremely fast-forwarded falling in love from Gina and Zach which is
accompanied by lots of excessively describing how distracting the other is
though they never ever ever feel like this for anyone else, not even women Zach
is sleeping with because her presence for the last few days is just so much
more special than any woman ever. And, yes, she is a 26 year old virgin.
The primary source of conflict was brought by Richard,
Son of Gaia and also crushing hard on Gina. So he and Zach hate each other. They
hate each other form the very beginning, since Zach is established as Richard’s
“competition” so quickly. They call each other childish names, they constantly
bite at each other and they actually physically come to blows. Richard even
tries to kill Zach in a moment of supremely ridiculous pettiness. Gina makes
her choice clear over and over and is constantly ignored. This makes for
endless interactions ruined by pettiness, jealousy, big strong he-man growling and
other testosterone poisoned scenes. We even had a convoluted misunderstanding
scene for extra jealous flounce.
The Amazon series does a good job about calling out a lot
of sexism – like Gina referring to the misogyny in her old work place and
objecting to being called “chick”; but then puts up with a whole lot of alpha
male jealousy bullshit from the love interests.
Note that while these 2 men are locking antlers over
Gina, there is a goddess of destruction trying to bring about the end of the
world. This is what annoys me about a lot of paranormal romance with big dramatic
background: your characters look petty if they pay each other’s humpable
potential more attention than the actual end of the world.
Some of the plot is also a little dubious – Zach is
working on a device that allows nuclear weapons to be deployed remotely. An
interesting idea since the reason behind it is that DoD simulations pointed to
soldiers refusing to obey orders to launch WMD. Except – knowing what he’s
making how can he have a shocked moment where he realises what nefarious
purposes his inventions could be put to? He’s SHOCKED that his inventions could
cause vast death while working on a remote WMD trigger? Does he not understand
what WMD are? For that matter, why is his office – and he himself – so completely
and utterly lacking in even the slightest pretence of security?
Gina is also bad at her task. She fails, dismally. Not
because she gets him hurt but because her plans are non-existent (“Brazen”
doesn’t mean “shameless” in this book, it means “complete fool who never makes
any plans or thinks things through. I think the word “brazen” is just
inaccurately shoe-horned into the text because “impetuous” has already been
used and to give it a romance book title). She has absolutely no cover story
for interacting with Zach and just relies on an endless “you have to trust me,
oh complete stranger”. It’s clumsy, it’s amateurish and it’s silly. And the
only reason it works is because Zach is controlled by the author so sees
absolutely nothing wrong with hiring a security company he’s never heard of or
checked up on, for an unspecified sum of money, to an unheard of, unseen threat
that only she knows about. While handling top-secret DOD projects he keeps safe
by means of a locked filing cabinet.
It doesn’t work. The story is clumsy, not thought out or
planned and is just there as a vague wallpaper background to the romance and
when you look close you see the bubbles and where the sheets haven’t been lined
up properly
Inclusionwise, this is another book with no GBLT
characters – but we do have a return of a particularly ugly piece of homophobia
from Reluctant Amazon. The utter worst thing you can do to Gina, the worst
insult that will leave her mopey and upset and in need of lots of comfort and
reassurance – is call her a lesbian or imply she’s a lesbian. The very idea is
utterly devastating to her and an insult that cuts to the bone – which is
similar to what we saw with Sparks reaction in Reluctant Amazon. Being thought
of as gay is only offensive if you think being gay is offensive; Gina’s over
the top reaction coupled with it being a repetition in the series speaks of
real contempt and derision towards lesbians.
We also have a lot of really silly and immature
conflation of being masculine or a tomboy with being a lesbian and the fact
that Zachary’s house is neat means Gina thinks he’s gay – with the added oddness
of Gina not really dressing in a manner that differs that much from, say, Megan.
The whole thing combines to reek of homophobia
Sarita and Ix Chel both played a much larger role in this
book than they had previously which leads to a much greater involvement from
the POC in the series. Ix Chel isn’t as major a part of the story as Frejya and
Rhiannon were in the past 2 books, but part of that is because Ix Chel isn’t
bad tempered, childish and petty like the other 2 goddesses so we don’t have
endless scenes of them snarking and sniping at each other. I do really wish the
author would strike the word “exotic” from their vocabulary though - it’s
severely overused.
While Gina’s transient childhood brings in a new angle
and more character development, I found it irritatingly unnecessary especially
since the mission receives so little attention already. And while I don’t mind
a wandering parental figure, I don’t agree that this can be put down to her “gypsy”
blood. Even aside from using “gyspsy” rather than “Roma”, this idea that the
Roma travel all the time because it’s fun and romantic and in their blood
ignores a) the vast majority of Roma who don’t travel and b) the fact that
Roma, historically, weren’t travelling because it was fun, but because they
were running from persecution or moving before the locals tiny store of
tolerance expire.
On the whole this book is a disappointment. The world is
broad and has potential, a lot of potential that we’ve seen some powerful hints
of in Reluctant Amazon and Impetuous Amazon. This potential wasn’t met and the
general improvement of the last book was set back by the generic cliché ridden
blah of this book and shoddy plotting that didn’t do the world, the setting or
the imagination behind it justice.
