In Which I Review Rebel by Zoe Archer

I write this in the final throes of my Buffy marathon.  Hear that?  That's Boy Scout throwing a parade because he won't have to deal with Sarah Michelle Gellar for at least another year... Little does he know that the college angst will go up to 11 when I start my Felicity marathon next week.  HA!

But in the meantime, I did finally manage to finish the book that I tragically left at Scout Camp last week.  Nothing like a little Kindle for iPhone and a long weekend to ensure that the job gets done one way or another.

Rebel (while most excellently awesome) was not my favorite of the Blades books so far.  I got to this book around the same time Wendy Pan was getting to it in her marathon, and in retrospect I'm glad she read it before I did; if I had read it first, I would have spent a lot of time worrying about whether or not she would like it.  See Wendy Pan really doesn't go in for "traditional" paranormals, up to and including vamps and werewolves.

Nathan Lesperance, it turns out, is not just one of the first (and only, I assume) Native attorneys in Victoria.  When he comes out to the Northwest Territory to collect the belongings of a deceased client, he meets the former Blade Astrid Bramfield and very shortly thereafter determines that he's shapeshifter who can turn into a wolf.   Long story short, his transformation is enough to get the attention of some Heirs, and Astrid isn't enough of a "former" to be able to turn down a magical being in need of assistance.

Astrid has been living in self-imposed isolation since the murder of her husband, Michael, on a Blades mission several years ago.  She's icy cold, and knows the minute she meets Lesperance that he's trouble with a capital T.  Of course sparks fly, and Archer does a most excellent job of thawing Astrid gradually and realistically.  There isn't a whole lot of time for Astrid and Nathan to get to know each other and to discover their hot and sweaty feelings, but the intensity of the attraction is so immediate and so well paced that it is in no way unrealistic.

As with the other Blades novels, it's fun to read about a new culture, and to see the icons of that culture woven into the mythology of the book itself.  To give more details is to give away major spoilers, so I will not say anything further about the plot.

Except for this.

Nathan and Astrid piss me off just a bit.  They're really gross together.  Like, they're that couple you're friends with who you're embarrassed to go out in public with because all they do is make out and grope each other under the table.  They make out in front of tribesmen.  A poor Blade (who shall *spoiler alert* remain nameless) has to sit alone by the campfire and listen to them have sex.  And now I'm about a third of the way through Stranger (Catallus Graves... how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways...) and they are still annoying, all having-of-a-connection, having-loud-sex-across-the-hall, can't-even-spend-one-night-apart (and not in an "awwww, cute" way).

I can't fault the writing.  It's vivid and matches the characters, even.  But I don't like it, and I'm not sure I like them as a result.