Warrior by C. Brooks

The second novel in the Cat Star Chronicles, Warrior by Cheryl Brooks brings us the story of another Zetithian warrior who has been sold into slavery…

Leo arrives on Tisana’s doorstep a beaten slave from a near extinct race with feline genes.  As soon as Leo recovers his strength, he’ll use his extraordinary sexual talents to bewitch Tisana and make a bolt for freedom…

Tisana, whose healing powers are legendary, already knows Leo’s the one who can help her fulfill her destiny…she can’t let him get away now.

Forced together on a dangerous journey, Tisana must reveal all of her powers, and Leo must give all of himself to gain his freedom…

I don’t normally include the book blurb in my reviews, but I had to for this one.  It sums up the story so well and yet the story really doesn’t do it justice.  After reading the blurb, I was all excited about reading this novel, but it never drew me in.  The relationship between Tisana and Leo is unusual, however the fact that Warrior could also be considered a Sci-Fi Romance explains the difference; but the chemistry between the two seemed a little forced.  On top of that, I really didn’t feel like there was any character development for Leo.  We’re introduced to Leo, and we do learn a little about his past, but other than the fact that he’s great in bed, we really don’t learn anything else.

Now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, I should mention that I did enjoy Warrior.  It started off a little slow, but once the conflict actually started, the pace picked up a lot.  Actually, the idea behind the world that Brooks create is kind of different.  The inhabitants of Utopia are descendants from those who fled Earth in order to live a better life in a new society.  The exodus happened so long ago, that they’ve forgotten a lot of the old ways and it seems like they’ve reverted back to the horse and carriage period.  It actually works and it made the story a lot simpler.  It allowed the romance between Tisana and Leo to be the focus and everything else was just more obstacles to their growing relationship.  The only thing I’m still undecided about is the whole conflict.  It wasn’t all that exciting and the resolution (or what happened afterwards) was never really explained.  It was very obvious that the entire novel revolved around Leo and Tisana and their relationship.

Overall, I liked Warrior, but it started off to slow for me and I never really got caught up in the story.  I will say, that never once throughout the entire novel did I ever feel like Warrior was apart of another series.  It wasn’t until the last chapter when the two main characters from Slave showed up that I was clued in to the first novel in the series.  While I liked Warrior, it’s not making me run out to find Slave, but I will say that if I came across it at the library or somewhere else, I would pick it up to read.

Read Order:
Slave
Warrior
Rogue (3/1/09)
Outcast (6/1/09)
Fugitive (October 2009)

Also reviewed by:
The Ginger Kid
Bitten by Books
Rikki Donovan