Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Strange Little Band by Nancy Brauer and Vanessa Brooks and The Morcai Battalion: Invictus by Susan Kyle

Science Fiction Romance

I just finished two SFR books that use pregnancy as one of the main issues in the plot.  The stories and the plots are very different and I was struck by how an author can use the same plot element and arrive at such diverse stories.

As Strange Little Band opens Addison Harris is pregnant, “ A Petri dish, catheter, and a thinly veiled order from Triptych VP Daniel Gibson are responsible for Addison’s condition.” Shane Myers, another Triptych employee, does not know he is the donor for Addison’s baby.   What follows when he learns is a very different romance.  Much of the time neither Addison nor Shane are nice people.  Both however are great parents.  Triptych is not a nice company to work for and does whatever it can to cause trouble between the two.  The mix makes for a dark love/hate romance that spans years. 

I first read about Strange Little Band on Galaxy Express.  When I followed the link I found I could download the first half of the book free.  I found the story fascinating and had trouble putting it down so I purchased the full book from Smashwords.  The title comes from something Erma Bombeck wrote where she talked about a family being “a strange little band of characters”.

Smashwords published Strange Little Band by Nancy Brauer and Vanessa Brooks in 2010.

The Morcai Battalion: Invictus is the third and in my opinion the best book in this series. Dtimun, the commander of the Morcai Battalion and Madeline Rusze, the Medical Chief of Staff return with a new challenge.  A visitor from the future tell them that that they must rescue their enemy, Rojok.  The only way to land on the planet where Rojok is requires them to go through a bonding ceremony where Madeline will become pregnant.  Nothing works out as planned.  Invictus is a more traditional SFR.  There is tension, danger, overwhelming obstacles and many surprises.  Susan Kyle is better known when she writes as Diana Palmer.  The Morcai Battalion: Invictus can be read as a stand-alone.  If you have not read the two previous books they are The Morcai Battalion and The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit.

Luna published The Morcai Battalion: Invictus by Susan Kyle in 2009. 

I purchased Strange Little Band from Smashwords and The Morcai Battalion: Invictus from Fictionwise.

2 comments:

Nancy Brauer said...

Thanks so much for recommending Strange Little Band! Having trouble putting the book down is exactly what Vanessa and I were going for. Yay!

Would you please make one small correction? A few characters are missing from the first SLB Smashwords link. It should end with 29539.

Happy holidays!

JC Jones said...

I did not catch that the first link did not work. Really strange because I used the same link to paste. It should work now.