Death Defying (Blood Hunter #3) by Nina Croft

Science Fiction Romance/Space Opera

From Goodreads:

Part snake, part human, and—some would say all bitch—Captain Tannis of the starship El Cazador has one goal in life—to earn enough credits to pay for the Meridian treatment to achieve the immortality she craves. And one last job will get her there. The assignment: protecting the most powerful man in the Universe.

Being leader of the known universe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, it sucks big time. And after five hundred years, Callum Meridian, founding member of the Collective, is bored out of his mind. But as things are changing, he’s changing—into what, though, he isn’t sure. Callum is determined to discover the truth, and he’s employed the crew of El Cazador to help him do it.

Not everyone agrees with his plan, though. His own people will stop at nothing to prevent the truth coming out, the Church is taking advantage of the confusion and attempting a coup, and even the crew of El Cazador seem close to tossing him out the airlock without a space suit. But defying death has never been more dangerous, sexier, or more fun.

I loved the first two Blood Hunter novels.  They were the kind of Science Fiction Romance and Space Opera that I love.  I put Death Defying on pre-order as soon as I saw it.  It appeared on my kindle several days ago and went to the top of by TBR list.  I expected the same level of enjoyment I got from reading the first two books and I was not disappointed.

Death Defying did several things. The prologue goes back 15 years and tells how Rico and Tannis met.  I got to catch up with the crew of El Cazador again.  There was additional world building as I learned more about the Collective, the Church and the Rebels.  Death Defying has one very important new main character, Callum Meridian.  He was a side character in previous books but moves to center stage here.  Tannis get her own chance for a HEA but not without a lot of problems.

The plot starts out simple and becomes more complex as the story progresses.  Callum hires the El Cazador and its crew to take him on a journey of discovery.  For Callum it is more of a journey then he expected.  He starts out as an arrogant spoiled man who has to face some hard facts about the man he has become.  How the mission plays out depends on how much he can change.

This is book three in the series but it does a good job standing alone.  For maximum enjoyment read Break Out, book one, and Deadly Pursuit, book two first.  When you finish all three there is Temporal Shift and Blood and Metal coming out in March and April of 2014.

Entangled: Edge published Death Defying by Nina Croft in 2014.