Dawn B. (dbaltezor) - , reviewed on 8/2/2009 + 29 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 13

I'm still not quite sure how I feel about this book. It was good, don't get me wrong. I just felt that there was so MUCH angst between Cabal and Cassa that it tended to overshadow everything else. At the end of Tanner's Scheme you really felt kind-of sorry for Cabal. How alone he was, and the guilt at the loss of Jolie. But in this book you find that his being lonely/alone is all his own fault. He has known who his mate is for eleven years. He has just refused to claim her. Not couldn't, wouldn't. I never truly felt his reasons for not claiming his mate became clear enough to sympathize with. At lease with Cassa, you could understand that her guilt over her then huband's betrayal of the breeds would keep her away from him. She truly believes that he blames her for the loss of his family/pride. There were a couple of places in the book where I felt that he was a bit cruel to her. Not in a punish her for the past sort of way, but anyone with half a brain and the past Cassa has with the dead husband would know she would most likely feel guilt. There is one coversation where Cabal tells her the reason why she is investigating this series of murders is that she is trying to make up for what her husband did. "You need to absolve yourself. That's the reason you've done this all these years. It's the reason why you've always fought to see the Breeds as heroes and victims rather than the killers we were created to be. It's why you put yourself in danger time and again for the Breeds. You can't make up for what Watts did." A few seconds later in that conversation, after she says that has nothing to do with this, he tells her: "It has everything to do with this, Cassa. You think putting yourself in the line of fire will make anyone else see you differently?" Now given the past revealed at the beginning of the book about Cassa, these comments strike of a truly DENSE man or one deliberately trying to hurt her emotionally. It's no surprise that she takes these comments to mean that the breeds blame her for her dead husband's perfidy in betraying the breeds, for not realizing what he was up to, and that they will always hold her responsible and nothing she does can change that. I just found him to not be as honest and forthright as most of the breeds, and that bothered me a bit. Also, in this book we find out that since his escape from the lab, he has know who his mate was. Known that Cassa was his mate, and still slept around like an alley cat. Lora Leigh has insinuated with this book that even though he knew from the beginning, and she knew fairly quickly later, by staying away from each other they managed to avoid the "mating heat" kicking in. She does a very good job of showing Cassa's struggle to deal with the guilt and feelings of responsibility, but I just don't feel for Cabal in this story like I wanted to given the information about him in the other books. He does finally admit that he was running from her because he was scared, but it just felt like a "too little too late" type of thing. I still have to say my favorite breed stories so far are Mercury's War, and Elizabeth and Cassie's story with Dash.

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