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Healing In His Wings (2010)

by Ariel Tachna(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1615814086 (ISBN13: 9781615814084)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Dreamspinner Press

series

Healing

review 1: I liked the idea a lot, but I found the writing difficult to followWarning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS. Rating: 6/10PROS: - I like reading about the alien races and unusual planets and gadgets and such that sci fi and fantasy authors come up with. Particularly interesting to me was the concept of a humanoid race with wings. Tachna does a good job of thinking about how wings would affect a person: Juo wonders, for example, how Ryan manages to balance without them.- Some of the differences that result from Juo and Ryan’s different upbringings are adorable. I loved how fascinated they each are with peculiar features of the other’s anatomy.- I think Juo in particular is a really likeable character: he’s naturally nurturing, and once he ... morefalls for Ryan, that quality intensifies. He’s also very considerate about Ryan’s inability to fly on a planet where all the inhabitants can do so. Many of the buildings are multi-level but have no stairs because the Petari all simply fly from one floor to the next, and Juo is mindful of such things every time he thinks of Ryan.CONS:- Juo comes from a society that values courtship rather than immediate, impersonal sex (and I loved that about him), but the story skips past the majority of that courtship period: in one chapter, Juo is fighting his desire to just throw Ryan into bed because they don’t know each other well enough yet, and in the very next chapter, they’re lovers.- As is the case in a lot of books published by Dreamspinner Press, this one doesn’t limit scenes to the point of view of just one character. One paragraph will be from Ryan’s perspective, and then the next paragraph will be from Juo’s. What makes these scenes even harder to follow, though, is that there are a few select chapters that ARE from just one character’s POV--and sometimes we get SEVERAL paragraphs from one character before switching to someone else’s perspective. This also causes a bit of a delay in some of the action: something will be described in one paragraph and then that same character will do something else or begin a conversation before we see the original action again from another character’s POV.- The Petari characters have an interesting naming convention, which is that their short name (“Juo,” for example) is followed by a combination of added suffixes in formal situations--that is, only close friends can call them by their short name. What I couldn’t figure out, though, was the rhyme or reason behind how and when the suffixes get added to their names. Different characters are called by a variety of different names, which didn’t seem consistent to me: there’s Name-ta, Name-ta-da, Name-ta-da-ri, Name-ta-ri, etc.Overall comments: This is a pleasant little story, but I wanted to see more of Ryan and Juo’s interactions. I think I would have loved it if it were longer and more fleshed out in parts. There’s some decently graphic sex here, but I didn’t particularly like those scenes: there’s quite a bit of flowery (rather than frank) description: “most private flesh,” “velvety passage,” “moist haven,” “snug ingress,” etc.
review 2: I wanted to like this, I really did... and in some respects it was a lovely story. I truly enjoy Ariel's characters, love her historical work, so I was excited to see an SFR from her.I just wish there had been more SF. The initial premise is so intriguing - an alien race with medically gifted wings - that I was looking forward to some solid world building, some serious culture clashes, some intersting differences in anatomy. It never quite panned out. There really wasn't a wide divergence from Earth in any serious way. Cities. Restaurants. Familiar job structures. Familiar furniture and plumbing. The aliens are essentially human in most ways, males having oddly identical equipment to their human counterparts, down to the prostate, which probably bothered me most.But, I'm an old SF geek, and these things are important to me. They most likely wouldn't be to others. I just fell that if you're going to set a romance on an alien world, there should be some ...alien-ness. All that said- the characters are sweet and their tender courtship quite touching. The healing, of course, refers to more than just the physical of which Ryan is in desperate need. As with all of Ariel's characters, it was hard not to get attached and I did root for them despite all else I've said. less

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