The Novel Approach

Lesser Evils: Infected Book Six by Andrea Speed

Monsters are real … They live inside us, and sometimes they win. – Stephen King

Cliffhanger! The lemon juice to my paper cut. I kind of love them. Not paper cuts. Cliffhangers.

If you want Holden Krause to have his own book, please raise your hand. ::raises hand:: Okay, maybe it’s just me, and maybe I don’t even want him to have his own book because then he wouldn’t be Roan’s cynical, pragmatic, ultra-scary smart, ethically flexible, wickedly loyal, human/hybrid doppelganger anymore. Maybe I just want him to have more page time in the Infected series. Maybe I love him like Donald Trump loves his crispy-dried-comb-over. Yeah, I love Holden a lot.

And yes, Holden’s all human…in a matter of speaking. All human from the standpoint that he doesn’t transform into a big, scary cat every month, but there’s still something about him that’s evolved into a rather animalistic quality. He is utterly feral and adaptable to his environment, and will viciously defend his territory, and is dangerous when provoked. He’s also self-aware that he is two entities living in one body, and most everyone underestimates him and dismisses the fact that neither of him is someone you want to mess with. And Holden’s got Roan’s back, which is good for both the Lion and the Fox because it keeps them both human in an oddly connected sort of way, because Roan’s got Holden’s back too. And now there’s Scott Murray, of the Seattle Falcons Murrays, and where the hockey puck does he fit into Holden’s life? That’s a very fine question. Clearly neither of them is boyfriend material. Or are they? No. No? I’m watching and waiting…

Roan’s definitely not all Human, though. In fact, it’s looking like he’s becoming more lion with each passing day. He’s caught in the cross-species crosshairs of the cross he bears, and in this installment of the series, his burden just got a whole lot heavier, emotionally, physically, psychologically. The question now is not if he’s going to survive it (Andrea Speed couldn’t possibly be that mean!), but how he’s going to survive it. One thing appears certain; Dylan, as much as he is torn by his love for Roan and his own sense of self-preservation, will be there every step of the way. Yes? Yes. Gods, I hope so.

There was a lot going on in Lesser Evils, not only with the big cases Roan took on, cases that threatened the foundation of his special breed of people, but also in the health and welfare and wellbeing of my favorite biology-bending shifter. Damn, he’s got some enemies, both from within and without. But he has some amazing friends too. And while they all seem to have an opinion about Roan, no one has any answers about what to do for him or how to fix what’s drowning him in his own virus-laden gene pool. Maybe that’s for the next book. I’m watching and waiting…

If I had any niggles where this book is concerned, they are small and they would be this; there were times when I felt there were too many characters involved in the great Roan opine, and that, at times, bogged down the pacing of the story for me because everyone seems to be of the same opinion that the guy’s in some deep doo-doo. So yes, that got a bit repetitious, but that’s okay. I still love him, love that he loves so fiercely and so fiercely protects the people he loves. And I love that he has people who want to protect him right back.

Next.

You can buy Infected: Lesser Evils here:

Infected: Shift (Infected #5) by Andrea Speed

No. No, no, no. A book cannot just end like that.

Okay, apparently it can, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Okay, apparently that’s not true either, because I loved it, which I suppose means that I more than liked it. ::sigh:: I think I get too involved with the characters in the books I read, which may or may not be entirely normal. The jury’s still out.

Is it just me, or does this series keep getting better? Roan McKichan keeps getting more complex, even as what he is and how (or if) he’ll survive it becomes more questionable. The love of his life, even in death, is still so much a part of him that Paris emerges as Roan’s conscience/subconscious/the light in Roan’s shadows to force him to confront and decipher what he feels. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but it helps to have a subliminal voice and conscious presence that aren’t afraid to swat you on the nose from time to time for your hubris and shortsightedness. Roan may find he needs that more and more as he evolves.

His boyfriend Dylan is so much a part of Roan that he keeps him tethered to what makes Roan human—his ability to love and the need to protect and to be connected to someone in a tangible way. The most difficult aspect of it to puzzle out at the moment is what does Roan want more: to die and be with Paris or to live and be with Dylan? Not only is Roan a hybrid of species, he’s also a hybrid of existence, balancing between life and death, conflicted by whether he’s a man with lionesque tendencies or a lion with human tendencies. The scales seem to be tipping toward the latter, but only time will tell if he will be able to find some symmetry between the two. Dylan and a growing circle of friends who have lain claim to Roan, a circle of friends who want to protect him in spite of how capable he is of protecting himself (maybe they’re protecting him from himself) may be the greatest equalizers. That is, if the noose that is Roan’s virus doesn’t yank the chair out from under him first.

Divided into two separate books, Shift and Bloodbath, the stories involve unrelated cases but are unified by the continuing storyline of Roan’s relationship with his Self, his virus, and with those who care so much whether he lives or dies. The contingent of those who’d like to see him dead seems to be growing, evidenced by the fact that they’re becoming bolder—much to their own idiocy. But the list of those who want to see him live is growing too, much to Roan’s benefit. Now he just needs to believe he’s worth their efforts. I can’t help but believe that the more people who want Roan to live can only make him want to live more. Either that or it’ll make him want to push them away for their own good. Roan’s stubborn like that.

There’s an Arabian proverb that says, “Death was afraid of him because he had the heart of a lion.” I hope Roan’s happy ending proves that proverb to be true.

I also hope I don’t have long to wait for book #6.

Buy Infected: Shift HERE.

Infected: Freefall (Infected #4) by Andrea Speed

Title: Infected: Freefall (Infected #4)
Author: Andrea Speed
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 350
Characters: Roan McKichan, Dylan Harlow
POV: 3rd Person
Sub-Genre: Urban Fantasy
Kisses: 4.5




Blurb:

In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds.

Conceived bearing the lion strain of the virus, Roan is the only fully functioning virus child in the country—maybe in the world. But that doesn’t mean he’s okay. He’s still struggling with the death of his husband and the guilt of finding new love; his old enemy, the Church of the Divine Transformation, is becoming increasingly hostile; and he’s taken on a tragic cold case involving a long-missing boy.

As Roan fights to control the lion inside him, his world explodes with all kinds of trouble. The leader of the church is ramping up the violence against him, calling Roan out as a traitor to his kind. There’s a loose Infected terrorizing the city. And Holden, male prostitute and Roan’s unofficial assistant, brings him a case involving the suspicious death of one of Holden’s clients, which puts Roan far too close to a murderer for his state of mind….

Review:

Roan McKichan is a man in free fall, his body doing little more than floating along in a gravitational pull between grief over the loss of Paris, and the virus that continues to morph inside him in unexpected ways. He is a man who has jumped from an airplane at fifteen-thousand feet and can’t seem to decide whether it’s worth the effort to pull the ripcord on his parachute. Roan is a man reincarnated—but it seems, at times, he might have forgotten to come back from the dead.

The thumbnail overview of the fourth installment in the Infected series is that Roan’s life is at a turning point, and, honestly, I have no idea where Andrea Speed will take him. Freefall brings the series to an arc in which the focus is on whether Roan can find a reason to keep living, or whether he should just give up and join Paris in the afterlife—and whether his virus would even allow him to do that, as it seems as though it’s becoming its own entity.

Roan’s conflict and the depressive state he currently calls home give this book a rather mournful quality, which works perfectly as a foil to everyone around him—his lover, Dylan; his ex, Dee; his assistant, Fiona; his could-be-good something or other, Holden—who are trying desperately to help a man who isn’t sure he wants to be saved.

Roan is still going through the motions of life, but his private investigating and the cases he accepts in this book take a secondary role to his personal struggle, except for the two instance in which the case and his private life directly intersect; the first being when the Church of the Divine Transformation, the cult that equates the virus with divinity, decides that Roan is a threat that needs to be eliminated; the second being when Holden hires him to investigate the death of a john, which lands Roan in the hospital, for better or for…worse? We shall see.

Freefall leaves some loose threads to be tied up as the series moves forward, not the least of which is what exactly is Roan becoming? And will it be good or bad for him, in the end? Will Dylan be the man who can inspire Roan and convince him that a future is worth fighting for? And how will Holden Krauss fit into the scheme? Makes me wish book #5 was ready to hit the presses, like, yesterday.

In spite of the sense of doom and gloom in this installment, Andrea Speed manages to infuse the story with plenty of her trademark humor—gotta love the fact that, regardless of what Roan is going through, his smartass is always residing somewhere just beneath the surface, maybe somewhere in the neutral zone between the human and the lion. The man truly is a hybrid.

While I can’t say this is my favorite book in the series, to date, I can say that it’s not to be missed.

Reviewed By: Lisa

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