Review: The Beast Prince (Earthborn Book 1) by Marian Perera
Half human. Half earth. All molten-hot devastation.”
Katsumi Ito, captain of the guard, would give her life to defend her town. But as she trudges toward an abandoned outpost with a tribute-laden pony, she knows her rifle is useless.
The powerful elemental now living in the outpost can instantly transform from human to a landslide of cold rock or molten lava. His demand that she serve him sets her teeth on edge, yet she must obey or he could destroy everything.
If Prince Marus seems confident and commanding, it s because his new servant must never suspect he s lost his ability to shift into his earth form. Still, his desire for the warrior woman shakes him to the core. Especially when she offers her body in return for his patronage as he doesn t take unwilling bedmates.
Then a far worse danger threatens the town, and reveals Marus s vulnerability. Kat is fit to kill. But first she needs a miracle. That means joining forces with Marus and guarding her heart against a Prince who s fallen in love with her.
“Warning: Contains a beauty who s a crack shot with a rifle, and a beast who believes there s nothing worse than being a human even if he enjoys having them in his bed.”
Review:
I picked up this book on KU. The reason I did so was because the author pitched the arc of the second book to DA and it sounded interesting. So to decide whether I should grab the second one when it comes out on KU, I read this one.
I did not even read the blurb before I opened the book, which is something I almost never do. Imagine my happy surprise when the blurb sounded like an homage to Beauty and the Beast (and it was in my opinion) in SF settings with the guy being an earth elemental (whatever the heck that will turned out to be). I *love* Beauty and the Beast and read quite a few romance retellings.
I thought that both Katsumi (aka Kat, and I shorten her name only because the character says that friends call her that at some point) and Marus were well written characters in a sense that I could easily *see* them while I was reading the book. The mythology of Marus’s origins made very little sense to me though. Oh, I thought and I think that earth elemental is a very cool shape shifting ability but, for example, Marus himself talks about his parents being a sadist and a murderer. No, I am not going to go in details, because this will be very spoilerish, but how did Marus turn out to be so nice? Don’t get me wrong, I will be the last one to say that nurture does not matter in the person’s upbringing. I think it very much does, and person’s parents won’t always define this person’s future IMO, but who else influenced him? Any human or shifter or whoever, who was nice enough to people/beings around them that Marus could observe?
It is as if the character’s actions were influenced by the plot, rather than character was influencing the plot.
In fact, and I fully realize that this is the first book in the series, the whole world was not developed at all. It is possible that was an artistic choice or maybe it will be developed later, but if so this is not an artistic choice which I, as a reader, enjoyed.
Humans arrived here after some unknown catastrophe/war (something clearly horrible happened). They saved some mementos from their past life and built their life anew, with some remains of technology being intact (I think, I was not sure), but not many. I wanted more of the outside world.
I wanted more of the Marus’s brothers being explained.
I really liked Katsumi, I also thought they had good chemistry, but overall the settings felt too smothering for me, as I said I did not get the sense of the bigger world.
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“It is as if the character’s actions were influenced by the plot, rather than character was influencing the plot.”
Very succinctly put, and a pet peeve of mine.
@MaryK: Mine too :)