Review: Overlord

 

✩✩

 

Pilot Mallory West is having a really bad day. She’s crashed on an alien planet, her ship is in pieces, and her best friend Poppy, the scientist monitoring the experiment, is missing. Dazed and injured, she collapses into the arms of a big, silver-eyed warrior king. But when her rescuer cuffs her to a bed and accuses her of being a spy, Mal knows she has to escape her darkly tempting captor and find her friend.
Overlord Rhain Zhalto Sarkany is in a battle to protect his planet Zhalto and his people from his evil, power-hungry father. He’ll use every one of his deadly Zhalton abilities to win the fight against his father’s lethal warlord and army of vicious creatures. Rhain suspects the tough, intriguing woman he pulls from a starship wreck is a trap, but when Mal escapes, he is compelled to track her down.
Fighting their overwhelming attraction, Mal and Rhain join forces to hunt down the warlord and find Poppy. But as Mal’s body reacts to Zhalto’s environment, it awakens dormant powers, and Rhain is the only one who can help her. As the warlord launches a brutal attack, it will take all of Mal and Rhain’s combined powers to save their friends, the planet, and themselves.

Genre: science fiction romance

Publication date: March 2020

Mature content: yes

Review: This book started out OK, but then in my opinion in went sideways. If I had to define the issues I had with it, I would put it as "too much, too fast".

The thing is, I expected this book to be a science fiction story with a dose of romance. Distant planets? Check. Romance? Check (even if that is also too much way too fast and some of the sex scenes feel a bit misplaced). Space travel? Check. Different civilization? Check (although some of the details deserved a better explanation). 

 

But then you mix in a father (Rhain's) who's had children (all males, lucky him) with women from three different planets. And all of those children are rulers of said planets (very well planned, it has to be said). And their father is intent on killing them because he wants to rule those same planets and his sons don't want to let him. Hum, does this start to feel a bit silly, not to mention illogical? Like, if he married the women, why not take possession of the planets right then and be done with it? 

And then...all his children have particular abilities. Rhain manipulates energy, which I found appropriate, under the circumstances. But one of his bothers is a shapeshifter and the other has some geological abilities we aren't given a lot of detail about. When I read this, I thought: seriously? We're mixing all kinds of science fiction and fantasy together. It's like the author wants to have a bit of each genre to appeal to all sorts of readers. And, in my opinion, ended up with something that has no genre at all.

 

So unfortunately, while I'm curious about what happens to Poppy (Mal's friend) next (I'm pretty sure it will involve a hot romance with Rhain's shapeshifter brother), I'm not really keen on reading any of the other two books in this series any time soon.

  

Happy readings,

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.