Nowhere Else, by Felicia Davin

After struggling to read past the oh, 60% mark on Out of Nowhere for a few weeks (not the book, it was ::gestures at the world:: me; I couldn’t read anything for weeks!), I finally got back to it, finished it in one sprint, then immediately started Nowhere Else, which I inhaled in one greedy gulp. It may well be my favorite of the trilogy, to be honest.

Reader beware: some swearing, sex on page between two adult men, one of whom is dealing with PTSD from recent trauma; both characters had difficult childhoods, for different reasons.

Out of Nowhere, by Felicia Davin

The second book in the Nowhere trilogy, Out of Nowhere ratchets up the tension from Edge of Nowhere. I confess, I stalled somewhere around the halfway mark, not opening the book again for weeks. Eventually, trusting the author to fulfill the promise of a happy ending that’s the immutable part of genre romance got me over the emotional block.

Reader, beware: some sex on the page between two adult men, swearing, trauma from childhood and from recent forced experimentation, including starvation, and a bit of violence. The author has a very comprehensive list of warning and tags here, below the blurb.

Edge of Nowhere, by Felicia Davin

This is one of the many books that have languished in the digital TBR for far too long. Back in November, I saw on twitter that all three titles in the series were on sale, so I snapped the next two, and then finally read this one. And now, dear readers, you get to see what I thought about it.

Reader, beware: please note that there is graphic sex on the page between two consenting adult men, as well as references to past abuse in one of the characters’ childhood. There’s also some unethical experimentation that includes starvation, and a scene of accidental chemically induced high that almost leads to sex. (The author has a content guidance note here, below the book blurb.)

For romance readers: this story ends with a very hopeful HFN.

Allegiance of Honor, by Nalini Singh

Well, I finally read something, and it’s actually something new, so, yay.

Sadly, it really, really didn’t work for me.

Quick caveat: there’s some explicit language, there are a couple of explicit sex scenes, and it’s the fifteenth full length book in a series with pretty complex world building. Which basically means: all the spoilers for all the books that came before. Plus, a reader new to the series would be completely lost in a sea of in-world references and jokes.

Further, the whole point of this book, as stated in the author’s note at the beginning, is to be “a walk through the interconnected lives of many of the characters who’ve become important to us over the past books and novellas.” (This, by the way, turned out to be a rather big problem for me.)

Seriously, if you are not already a fan of the series, reading this novel first will put you off even trying any of the other books.

So, let’s get on with the review–which is long and somewhat ranty, by the by.

Allegiance of Honor, by Nalini Singh

I have had mixed feelings about this book since it was first announced, mostly because it was described at some point as a bridge between the first and second arcs in the Psy/Changeling series. In the first arc, the world is unveiled, and a number of conflicts between the three main factions are revealed and, mostly, solved. In each novel and short story, different aspects of the world and these conflicts are explored and revealed, while following the stories of a series of couples who are, in their own way, integral to the resolution of the overall story arc.

In this novel there is no central pairing or love story, and while there are a few (very thin) threads that advance the overarching conflict between the three human groups, it’s mostly composed of little vignettes about…well, almost every character that’s even been mentioned up to this point.

The blurb: