Stoan by Kate Rudolph
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An alien spy…
Stoan
Unless he finds his mate, Stoan will die when he turns thirty, which makes him willing to take the most dangerous jobs. When he spots the human woman who awakens the denya bond within him, he knows they can never be.
A shattered woman…
Reina Draven almost lost everything at the hands of a warlord’s ambition. As she’s pulled into a world of danger and intrigue, her only stable force is the closed off blue alien assigned to be her partner on a mission she’s been drafted into undertaking. Though the flame of desire sparks hot between them, she doesn’t know if she’s ready for romance, and he seems determined to keep away from her.
A bond too strong to be denied…
Their mission takes them deep into enemy territory, and Reina and Stoan need to learn to trust one another or face fatal consequences. As the danger heats up, so does the spark of their bond. But when a surprise from Stoan’s past throws a wrench in the works, their future is threatened by something even more dangerous than a brutal general’s attention.
Will Stoan choose to step into the future with his denya? Or will his secrets swallow him whole?
Strange world!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💚🖤💙
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: ☺️😮🙂
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual/Duet Narration
The heroine: Stoan – he had betrayed his boss Commander Nina and had to pay the consequences. He had been hired to do the job her normal operatives couldn’t do. He took on extremely dangerous missions since he was 26 years old and hadn’t yet found his fated mate, his denya. Males of his species died soon after turning 30 if they were unmated, though mated pairs can live up to 200 years or more.
The Hero: Reina – she was in the process of divorcing her husband when she got word that her husband was killed by the warlord General Drascas. Her husband Lex sent her a transmission that implicated the general in a scheme to steal from Nina. Later Reina and her brother were attacked and her brother was kidnapped. He was now safe and recovering from his injuries.
The Story: Commander Nina wanted Stoan to go on a new mission and he was to take a new partner, Reina. He knew as soon as he saw her that she was his mate, but he had already made his choices and he would never be able to be with her. However, the bruises on Reina stirred his protective instincts. They are to take something from the General.
Reina is attracted to Stoan from the start, and though she had no love for her husband by the time he died, she still didn’t think it was right to feel what she was feeling so soon after his death. Stoan had to restrain himself since he planned to ignore his bond to Reina.
The story was a bit strange as it didn’t explain well why Stoan didn’t want to mate and assure himself that he would live a long life. It seemed he though his childhood friend Inrit that he lost touch with would somehow grow to be his denya. It seemed he just wanted to keep up that belief despite his connection to Reina, it just seemed stupid to me.
This book was told in a narration style I haven’t heard before and was narrated by Jennifer Gill and Ian Gordon. I have to admit I hated the narration. Ian Gordon is not a good narrator, very monotone and he doesn’t have a pleasing voice at all. Jennifer Gill is not much better to my ears.
The narration on this was strange, at first it was in Stoan’s POV when Stoan was talking to Nina, it was duet narration, then it switched to Reina’s POV, but Ian was still narrating Reina’s thoughts, though Jennifer narrated when Reina actually talked. Very odd indeed, kind of like partly dual narration and partly duet narration.
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