To Kill a Badger by Shelly Laurenston: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

To Kill a Badger by Shelly Laurenston

This is book six in the Honey Badger Chronicles of a group of borderline insane honey badger shifter women who wreak international havoc when they’re not playing basketball. In this book, the last of the women, Nelle Zhao, the youngest daughter of a rich and influential Hong Kong honey badger family, finds her mate in Keane Malone, a Siberian tiger shifter who only cares about football, his family, and getting revenge on de Medici lion shifter coalition. Not necessarily in that order.

In the previous book, de Medicis released a drug that can kill honey badger shifters who are pretty much indestructible otherwise. In retaliation, Charlie, the oldest of the women, delivered a message, the dead body of the de Medici head of the family. In this book, de Medicis retaliate. Too bad they go after the wrong group of insane honey badgers. Now the previous generation is involved too.

Nelle, the fixer, needs to fix things before an all-out war breaks out—or before Charlie meddles again, because she’s not subtle. She heads to France to negotiate with influential honey badgers to form a coalition against de Medicis, and takes Keane with her. Things don’t go exactly smoothly, but the two end up bonding.

This was a great book, maybe the best in the series. Like always, there are several POV characters, some for only a half a chapter or less. Several things happen at once, but they were fairly easy to follow for a change. And as always, things were chaotic and bat-shit crazy, as some characters enjoy stirring shit. (Looking at you, Max.) The crones were highly annoying, but unlike in the previous book where they were just thrown at the reader who hadn’t read their series, they were properly introduced and given their separate identities.

Romance isn’t the driving force of the plot and is mostly on the background, like in the earlier books. However, the couple actually spends a lot of time together here and the reader can follow their bond forming. Nelle and Keane made a really good couple and their chemistry felt real, so that by the time they end up in bed together, it feels earned. Nelle wasn’t half as annoying as she’s appeared to be in earlier books and Keane was absolutely delightful for a grumpy, constantly angry tiger. Theirs might be a true union, unlike the other girls’ whose mates basically ended up as background characters the women barely interact with.

I think this is the last book. All the women have now found their mates and the Malones have had their revenge. If that is the case, the series ends with a high note and leaves things in a good place. However, the ending sets the stage for a new story, so there could be a spin-off in the making too. I would love to read that, or anything the author writes under her two names (I’m still waiting for more Crows), as no one does insanely violent women like Laurenston/Aiken.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Born to Be Badger by Shelly Laurenston: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Born to Be Badger by Shelly Laurenston

Born to Be Badger is the fifth book in the Honey Badger Chronicles that follow a group of basketball playing honey badger shifters who moonlight as thieves, killers and rabble rousers. They’re borderline sociopaths and a reader can never be sure how they react in any given situation (other than with violence.)

In this book, the playoffs that brought the girls to New York in the first place are still going on, but while it’s mentioned several times, not a single game is played. Instead, the group learns of a new poison that might be the only thing in the world that can kill them. Not that it worries them long. The story progresses to a violent ambush and a declaration of war among shifters. All in a day’s work for the girls.

The romantic (sub)plot is between Tock Meyerson-Jackson, the bomb expert of the group (not that she blows anything up in this book), and Shay Malone, a tiger shifter footballer. Like in previous books, the romance is sort of in the background, isn’t terribly romantic or emotional, and kind of just happens. There’s no inner monologues or other indications about why they like one another, let alone love, so it’s mostly about attraction and lust until it isn’t. The best interactions by far and scenes where both characters come to life are when they deal with Shay’s daughter Dani. In the end, she’s as good a reason as any for the two to become a pair.

Like always, the cast of characters is large and the reader never really knows who is important. Some appear for a scene, others clearly have elaborate backstories and might show up again. Some are characters from author’s earlier series that were given more than necessary airtime, but since I haven’t read those books, their appearance and tendency to take over wasn’t so much nostalgic as it was annoying.

Still, I would’ve like if the main pair was given as much space and as good descriptions as the guests. Now it wasn’t until half-way to the book that I realized that Tock is Black and Shay—the guy with Irish name—is Asian. Maybe earlier books brought that up, but I can’t remember things from that far. Their ethnicity doesn’t play a role in the story, but details like this are what bring these stories alive.

Compared to earlier books, the story advanced in a rather straightforward way. Like always, events and violence sort of spring up, and the plot happens in the background, moved by forces that aren’t shown, and the girls simply react to events. But side-plots were kept to minimum, and we sort of finally know who killed Shay’s father, so that’s progress. The ending promises more violence to come. I don’t really read this series for the romances, so I found this entertaining in a totally bonkers way. I’ll likely read more.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Breaking Badger by Shelly Laurenston: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

Breaking Badger by Shelly Laurenston

I’m a fan of Laurenston’s work as G. A. Aiken, all those dragons and especially the Scarred Earth Saga. But Breaking Badger is the first book as Laurenston that I’ve read. It’s the book four of Honey Badger Chronicles urban fantasy series about batshit crazy honey badger shifter women, with some romance thrown in the mix.

The book description (and cover) is highly misleading. This isn’t a paranormal romance, and it doesn’t merely follow the two persons mentioned there, Mads and Finn. It most assuredly isn’t a cutesy book, like it gives to understand (“utterly irresistible kitty-cat”, lol). And it isn’t a stand-alone, like paranormal romances often are, even when they’re part of a series.

There’s a large cast of characters that each get screen time, plus a bunch of other characters that only make brief appearances for a point of view change. The main trio, Charlie, Max, and Stevie, are sisters with a traumatic past. Their stories were told in the first three books, but they continue here too. Mads is Max’s friend since school and they play pro basketball together, with three more women who also feature heavily here. Finn (as far as I know, not having read the first books) and his brothers make their first appearance here.

None of the characters are introduced properly. I have no idea how old they are or what they look like, let alone more important things, like their backstories. Much of what I know about them is conjecture, though I did read the prologues of the earlier books just to make a bit more sense of what was happening here.

Mads, a honey badger, has been abused by her hyena family all her life. Basketball is the only thing that matters to her, as is her team, which doubles as a tactical unit that kill those who abuse shifters. She’s an efficient killer, but the mere mention of her family makes her lock up. One storyline follows her finally standing up to them. But since this isn’t a cutesy romance, it’s done with a wholesale butchering, not with handholding and hugs.

Finn is a Siberian tiger, huge and lethal. He’s trying to find out who killed his father, a mystery that no one seems willing to talk about. In a cast of characters of borderline psycopaths, he’s sort of steady and normal. Mads catches his attention and the ‘romance’ sort of happens from there. In the end, the best that can be said about it is that he has a steadying influence on her.

There’s a lot going on in this book. All sort of plotlines and events that either continue from the earlier books or spring up out of blue here. Some of them are seen to their conclusion, one way or another, some aren’t. We don’t learn who killed Finn’s father, for example, and we don’t see the consequences of Mads standing up to her family. Some events are ignored completely. Like, no one seems to care who lured the honey badgers and tigers to a trap in order to butcher them all.

What this book has is batshit craziness from start to finish. At first I tried to keep up, but in the end I just let the book take me on a ride. It’s a highly entertaining ride too, if you have a high tolerance for graphic violence for comedic effect. The honey badgers are a bunch of violent psychopaths (no matter what Max’s shrinks claim), and there’s absolutely no predicting their reactions to any given situation. But I loved them all, how they’re allowed to be exactly like they are, and not ‘softened’ by love or other conventions of romance. They’re not apologising and they’re not going to change.

Unfortunately the mayhem isn’t quite enough to make this a great book. There’s no emotional payback. The romance is very low-key, and Mads dealing with her family isn’t really dealt with either. There’s a lot of action and then the book just ends.

Since this a middle book in an ongoing series, I presume that everything will continue in the next book. If it fell into my hands, I’d read it, but I won’t go out of my way to get it. Meanwhile, I’ll just wait for the next G. A. Aiken book. We’re due a new Scarred Earth Saga, aren’t we?

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.