8 December 2010

In Which I Maya Banks Messes With My Sleeping Habits. Again.

I should have spent last night going to bed early, as I am fighting off this truly awesome December sinus/cold thing that everyone seems to be passing around.

But, no. Instead the second Maya Banks KGI novel was delivered to the house, and once again crackaliciousness trumps sleep. And I don't really know why I'm surprised by that.

Sam Kelly has been moping around since his last mission to Mexico, where he had a thing with a local waitress possessed of the Magic Hoo-Hoo. He had been down there to take out a local arms dealer at the request of the CIA, but got slightly distracted by a pretty-little-blond (as you do) until the metaphorical shit hit the metaphorical fan.

So when Sophie shows up, knocked up and half-drowned floating next to the dock at the back of Sam's property, he and his brothers are pretty suspicious (as you would be), despite the fact that every alpha particle in Sam's body is screaming "mine." He also says it out loud on a couple of occasions, just to clarify things for his brothers.

Sophie is (of course) the daughter of the aforementioned arms dealer who had been sent to distract Sam from his mission (of course) but she herself had Other Motives (of course). And I don't want to get too spoilery when it comes to Sophie's actions post-Mexican-coital-glow with Sam, but let's just say it's not entirely unreasonable for her to show up when and where she does.

I really liked this book as much as one can like a crackalicious book of such calibre. Great sex, chest-thumping alpha-male, resourceful (if slightly vague) heroine. More sexy brother action. More "no one messes with the Kellys" speechifying. There were only a couple of moments (mostly involving mercenaries and pep talks) that had me cringing into my down comforter.

My main complaint about this book would be that once again, everything is half-baked. We're asked to take a lot of things at face-value (Sophie's rough life with her dad, her relationship with Sam, his lingering feelings for her after leaving Mexico) that it would have been better to experience. For example, we find out the really awful thing Sophie's dad did to her mom in the last third of the book, and his actual motives for doing it (way, way different than what Sophie had assumed) even later than that. Couldn't Sophie have reflected on this before she told Sam about it? For most of the book we're expected to believe that her issues with her dad are Bad, without ever hearing what exactly they are.

(And PS- remember my beef about Rachel's abduction being cleared up a little too quickly in the last book? Wouldn't it have been fun for the arms dealer to be responsible for her captivity? To carry over to this book? No? Oh. OK.)

(PPS- Looking back at my last review, I see that once again Maya Banks saves the day after a disastrous DNF. Maybe book crack is the cure for intense disappointment? Like comfort food? Very, very interesting.)

Anyway I'm still excited for the third book coming out in March. I'll be hoping for a DNF and a quiet work week around March 7.

1 comment:

  1. So you definitely told me to tell you to go to sleep last night...and I did. Where did we go wrong?

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