Silent Blade [Format Kindle]

Its honestly not an exaggeration when I say that this story made me tear up. Look I have read a lot of romance novels (and I do mean a lot) in my life. Everything from early Harlequin romances to yaoi and I can name on my one hand the amount of books that have made me so happy that HEA's exist in romances. Silent Blade made the list.

Meli and Celino were both defined and restrained by who their families were. What it meant to be kin, the sacrifices you had to make to keep the family strong. I'm also fairly certain that neither of them had families worth sacrificing for, but that's just my opinion.

The world that Andrews creates is brutal and devestating and neither of them are completely innocent. Its dog eat dog, where ruthlessness will win you more brownie points then mercy. This isn't to say they are evil doers killing the innocent and such, but they have a certain pragmatic viewpoint of the world. You hurt mine, I'll hurt you.

Meli's revenge is poetic and says much about who she is. I'm not entirely certain why her family put the hit on Celino--I doubt they waited 12 years to administer payback for what he did to Meli--as that was a gray area unexplored. Meli didn't question it, her father and brother weren't offering the reason and no one seemed overly concerned if Meli turned it into a personal vendetta against Celino.

I'd be lying if I didn't say I wanted to read more about this world of theirs--where its practically Mafialand in the future, but this small taste proved again why Ilona Andrews should be a must buy for anyone and everyone.

Meli Galdes is ready to retire. She's dedicated her life to her family as an assassin and kinsmen, using her genetically enhanced skills as a melder. Her world is a tough one, where greed and power go hand in hand with the abilities of the kinsmen. Her family has one last request of Meli, however, one that will send her back into her past memories. Can Meli kill Celino Carvanna, the man who broke her heart and set her on her current course?

Ilona Andrews crafts a darkly alluring world in which death and assassination are merely par for the course in the business world. I wasn't sure how I'd like such a bleak and harsh world, but Ilona Andrews does a marvelous job at pitting the characters against their world. Meli and Celino have fought their own inner demons and sought to find their own ways in a world where the family decides everything. It's hard not to admire those traits in them, even as their mindset about killing is so foreign to me.

SILENT BLADE is an unusual story. Ilona Andrews takes a seemingly unlikable world and concept and makes it both sensuous and likable. I can only hope that this is the start of a series as I want to see more of the world of the kinsmen! Highly recommended!

COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES

I'm not a reader of short stories, I don't read romances, and haven't read much sci-fi, so when the opportunity presented itself to read not one, but two short sci-fi romance stories then I jumped at the opportunity to do so, obviously. Ilona Andrews is one of my favorite urban fantasy authors, top 3 easily, and actually my favorite author duo. There's no competition what so ever, bar none, they're at the top. So yeah, I took a chance to read something outside my comfort level since they are worth an hour or so of my time at the very least.

Both Silent Blade and Silver Shark are set in the same world, in a series that's called World of Kinsmen. Far in the future humanity has colonized planets, and through technological advances they have enhanced their genetic make-up to gain "superpowers". These people are called kinsmen. Seeing value in exclusivity, they started controlling their numbers and sabotaged research into the technology so that their descendants and themselves would be the only ones to benefit from these technologies. So now we live in a world which kinsmen control, and they behave as the mafia would including family loyalty as the most important of laws, which if broken penalty is often death.

Much like the era of kings and queens, families use prearranged marriages as tools of creating alliances and consolidate power. Such is the case in Silent Blade by which our main character, Meli, has had her life ruined because of one of these arrangements ended in catastrophe for her family and herself. Years later she excised herself from the family to live in the shadows and became their assassin as to create deniability of involvement of her actions. Using her unique and rare talent as a kinsmen, she has just performed her final act as an assassin when a request is made by her family to kill the very person who ruined her life. What ensues is a romantic plot, mixed trickery, spy games, and hidden identities. The book opens up with a very cool action sequence, but after that it's pretty much dominated by the romance aspects which I have little to comment on. While sci-fi, the science focus is minimal, it's more character driven which is the way I like it. One thing that shows though is Ilona Andrews' talent to create likable sympathetic characters which has been true in everything I've read from them so far. In all, an enjoyable read, but certainly not my type of reading material. Had it not been a romance, this would surely be a story I would have liked very much. That said, the romance here was to my liking, as much as I'm capable of enjoying it. Story is written in 3rd person from two points of view, published in 2009.

Very much worth checking for all Ilona Andrews fans, particularly those that have enjoyed their The Edge series. Much like their other books, this story focuses on powerful female and male protagonists, which is something I like very much, and as mentioned before, likable characters. And they're fun. I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but I think if you're a person that likes a lot of science in your fiction, then this will probably not work out for you, but for those that like character driven stories with a science-fiction setting as a backdrop, then this should be to your liking. Even so, I would welcome more stories set in this universe, romance and all, and I'll surely read them as soon as they come out.