I read a lot of genres: history, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. Science fiction is really my first love, but I’m no fan of nasty, whiny, possibly evil main characters. Or general hopelessness. There was a spell where if you read science fiction that’s what you got. So when I try a new author, I always feel a pang of trepidation.
The spell is broken! Wow, wow, wow. I just finished the Vixen War Bride series. What a saga! The two main characters are actually heroic. Noble, too. This does not mean they get to have an easy time of it. Far from it.
No, instead they marry each other and one of them doesn’t even know it.
After all that build up, you probably want to know what it’s about. Well. The fox-like Va’shen started a war with the human race, wiping out our hero’s homeworld, and otherwise behaving poorly. Humanity wins, and the books starts with Ben Gibson, an Army Ranger, being assigned to run a fueling station on the defeated world of Va’Sh as part of the occupying forces. A priestess shows up confessing to war crimes and demanding to be executed to protect her community from human retaliation. Between her lack of English, and the sole human translator’s ignorance of and inexperience with the Va’Shen language, they wind up married, only Ben Gibson doesn’t know it. For a long time.
Things get stranger from there.
The whole series is wonderful, with danger, heart, humanity, humor, and what the romance writers call a very slow burn romance buried in all sort of action and cultural confusion. The tension in the final book is truly terrifying. The supporting characters are great, with two of them the source of much hilarity.
The best thing about it, however, is that there are good guys, and they are trying to Do the Right Thing. And, it’s hard. Especially when so much gets lost in the fog of translation, like, you know, a marriage.
What I’m trying to say is, I highly recommend these books. They’re a rip-roaring great read, and the end of the sixth book left me with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face.
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