Review: The Hot Zone (Rainshadow, #3; Harmony, #11) by Jayne Castle

The Hot Zone by Jayne Castle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is another book read for a book club, and quite possibly the straw that broke the camel's back. I can't keep clogging up my reading time with this tripe. My to-read is 773 items long, for crying out loud.

This is the third book in a series, the eleventh in a larger series. It follows Sedona Snow, recent kidnapping escapee, and Cyrus Jones, guy in charge of an organization Sedona has every reason to mistrust.

Maybe I'd've liked this better if I'd read the earlier books. This gave very little context. I managed to glean that they were on an alien world, that the world brings out psychic abilities in everyone, and that Lyle is some otherworldly critter whose abilities are whatever the plot needs him for, called a dust bunny by all the characters. Beyond that, I just had to trust that all the world-building elements had been established in earlier books. So, if nothing else, this book showed me the importance of catching a reader up in a series as if they haven't been following from the start.

The book might've worked on the strength of the relationship between Cyrus and Sedona, but, no. It's pretty formula romance: circumstances throw them into close proximity, there's tension, there are reasons to resist, they're all over each other, then they're in love. A lot of their reasons for being drawn to one another hinge on their psychic abilities, so it was beyond me.

The writing stood out as clumsy and artless, too. For all their "as you know, Bob," dialogue, the characters might've bothered to catch me up on what I needed to know about the world. Instead, they clunked around about a mystery I didn't particularly care about, and that doesn't come into play until the last 50 pages. The pacing needed work.

Normally, I might've gone back to read earlier books, to pick up on the context I missed. I won't punish myself with more of this author. This is one, in all her various pseudonyms, to stay far, far away from.

At least now I can say for sure I've tried out paranormal romance, and it's definitely not my thing.


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