Review: Labyrinthian by Sunny Moraine

Author: Sunny Moraine

Publisher: Samhain Publishing

Pages/Word Count: 289 Pages

At a Glance: Unfortunately, this one missed the mark for me.

Reviewed By: Lana

Blurb: A hunter should never fall for his prey.

Still nursing his latest post-mission hangover, bounty hunter Theseus jumps at a high-paying, high-risk job that sounds ridiculously easy. Yet from the moment he nabs the alleged supersoldier with sedative gas, nothing is as it seems.

On the run from the facility where he was created and raised, Taur is desperate to locate his genetically engineered brothers and sisters. To rescue them—and himself—from slavery. Waking aboard Theseus’s ship, his fury is tempered by curiosity about his captor.

Despite his doubts about his prisoner, Theseus figures it’d be risky to let Taur go—until they’re thrown together by a shared betrayal. They declare a tentative truce as they flee from a shadowy and immensely powerful organization that will stop at nothing to find them.

But as they wrestle with their growing feelings for each other, Taur and Theseus face an even greater danger. A lethal threat lurking inside Taur’s own body, waiting to explode…

A story set in the Line and Orbit world.

Review: Labyrinthian is another sci-fi story set in a far off universe, with bounty hunters and genetically engineered humans. Unfortunately, this one missed the mark for me. It was mildly enjoyable but in the end, not satisfying. I love reading sci-fi, and I’ve only come across a couple of m/m books I’d consider good sci-fi.

The plot was interesting enough, but the pacing and overall storytelling was slow and a little boring for me. Theseus is a bounty hunter and, according to him, a damn good one. While enjoying some downtime on a space station, he takes a job no one else wants to touch: capturing a human male who’s dangerous, and only three-years-old. Taun is on the run from a scientific facility where he was born, raised and trained as a killer. He just happens to be on the same space station and literally runs into Theseus. He gets captured; Theseus gets double-crossed by his employers, who are the same people Taun escaped from. They join forces and the rest is history. This alone should make a great story, but for some reason the execution wasn’t right.

The story was too long and needed to be cut down. The plot was a bit convoluted and again, better editing and plot structure would have helped. The MCs just didn’t do it for me. Usually these boys are what I like to read about but here, I wasn’t engaged and couldn’t get emotionally involved in their actions. There were a couple of cute interactions between them but overall, for me, they just didn’t mesh. I didn’t feel the sexual tension, and that’s what I wanted but didn’t get.

What makes you like a story is very subjective. Two people can read the same book and have different reactions. Labyrinthian was not a horrible story, but it just didn’t do anything for me.

You can buy Labyrinthian here: