Review: Fearless by K.M. Fawcett (Survival Race #2)

Fearless (Survival Race #2)
K. M. Fawcett
Published: Jan. 7, 2014 (Forever)
Purchase: Book Depository or Amazon
Review source: copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

Reviewed by: Mary

Rating (out of 5): 3 stars

To Myia, a shaman-apprentice, life is simple: help those in need of healing and live the primitive village life. When Myia’s village gets attacked, the options for invaders are either: Highlanders, who are ex-slaves, turned rebels, looking to force recruits into their army against the Hyboreans or the Hyboreans themselves, looking for fun pets to add to their human menagerie. It’s a lucky day when the highlanders drag you back to their castle, complete with their version of Wi-Fi, and you at least get some opportunities to network.

Once Myia is taken to the highlander’s headquarters, she immediately gets to work as only a shaman can; healing the anger and hurt from the people in compound, many of whom were former slaves of the Hyboreans and have plenty of anger.  She meets her match in the group’s leader, Kedric, who will only let her into his soul, if he can get into her body. This trade off gets more and more tempting as Myia spends more time around Kedric.

However, once Myia learns Kedric’s plan to go to war against the Hyboreans, she’s convinced that the only way to save everyone in the compound is to stop Kedric. Not everyone is on board with Kedric’s plan, but with his sister and father still in slavery to the Hyboreans, Kedric really doesn’t care as long they follow his orders. With Kedric hell-bent on destroying the Hyboreans, Myia has to work fast to figure out how to save everyone, including Kedric.

Not having read the first book in this series, I had a lot of trouble picking up this book and understanding what was going on. Fearless has a very complex world, with almost no backstory to help you understand how the characters came to be on a different planet. I figured that if I just kept reading my questions would eventually get answered. No such luck. I’m not sure if this is information readers got in the first book or if it’s intentionally left out.

Fearless is really much more of a science fiction tale than a romance. Not being my genre of choice, it was hard for me to get into a story that features futuristic gladiators who dress in kilts and live in a highland castle on another planet. They use advanced technology and are at war with a race that are described an awful lot like polar bears who walk upright.

However, you really have to hand it to a book that can combine a historical paranormal romance with a futuristic post-apocalyptic story set on an alien planet. There is certainly something for everyone in a story with a world that is so big. In the end, I think that the overall story suffered and became muddled because the setting was too complex.

Even given my issues, there were still some fun and redeeming moments to Fearless. Myia spends most of the book trying to convince Kedric to let her heal his soul, while Kedric spends most of the book trying to get up her skirt. After a rather complicated situation leaves him almost dead, her attempt to heal him gets them both what they want. This one gives new meaning to ‘sexual healing’, folks. Seldom do you read a book that has better dream sex than the real thing, but this one manages quite nicely.

If you are looking for something completely different and don’t mind a story that is a little bit out there, try this one.

Sexual content: Graphic sex