Liquid Silver Books, $5.75, ISBN 978-1-59578-519-0
Sci-fi Romance, 2009
One thing I love about ebooks is that I can just copy and paste into my reviews the often long and sometimes ridiculous names and job titles of main characters in paranormal romances. In Leaving Earth, our hero is Daggar Torfa, Overchief of the Warrior Caste of the planet Delroi. As it is with such stories, we need a fancy word for “mate”, so it’s der’lan for the Delroi (heh, how’s that for a catchy tagline for an intergalactic matchmaking agency?). Because we also need a convenient reason to have alien sex, in this story the number of women on Delroi is dwindling so Earth women are viewed as prime commodity.
Women as breeding machines for precious sons and hormonal hoo-hah passed off as love – yes, this is a tried and true futuristic romance alright.
These Delroi people had once upon a time invaded Earth and forced Earth into signing a treaty with them. Not that this means those Delroi people are villains, of course, because what’s a little Earthly patriotism when compared to the baby-making power tools of the brawny virile Delroi men, eh? Colonel Kendall Marks, our heroine, arrive in Delroi to assist a friend in delivering a baby and she is also a Delroi groupie at heart. When she meets Daggar, it’s time for love, albeit in a familiar manner if you have read enough books by Christine Feehan and Lora Leigh to get a good hang of the way these authors operate. Some local intrigue will provide the characters some cool down time from their bedroom activities.
Still, despite the familiarity of the romance, the two main characters are likable types who do seem right for each other despite the various contrived ways the author sought to push them together. Daggar is actually quite reasonable for a hero of his type while Kendall isn’t a helpless silly goose heroine. If the story hasn’t followed a tried and true formula so faithfully to the point of being predictable, the main characters would have made this one a pretty good read.
Leaving Earth is a decent read, but I feel that the characters deserve a better story than the clichéd one they are thrown into.
