Zuvok by Athena Storm

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am Zuvok the Terror. Feared soldier of the Trident Alliance. And I will not do housework!

I relish the fury of combat. I love the adrenaline as I kill my enemies. Blood drips from my hands. 
Until I go too far. 
So my commanders send me a foe that I never expected. 
My bride. 

A comely, curvy, human woman. A princess. She must be insane. 
She has to be if she agreed to be my mail order bride. 

But I don’t want a bride. Zuvok the Terror will not be tamed. He will not be civilized!

He will not hang balloon valances on windows with pastel hued drapes. 
He will not dry dishes as she washes them! 
He will not sweep before he mops the floors! 

But then, this tiny human woman does something more powerful than a killing blow from an Odex wielding a power-blade. 

She gets on her tip toes and wraps her arms around me, squeezing herself to me. She coos. And giggles. 

And kisses me on my nose. 

And my heart melts for her. 

Zuvok the Terror? More like Zuvok the Terrier.

Damn humans.

Zuvok

Story was ok, but I didn’t like the writing!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎
Character development: ☹️😮😋
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

The Story: year 2338, humanity has become a space faring civilization and formed the interstellar human confederation. The Trident Alliance is composed of three races, The Ataxian Coalition has three other races and the two have been at war for a long time. There is also a League of Non-Aligned races and many races have created the Helios Combine which is located in the badlands between Alliance and Coalition, and they are a slave-based economy and capitalist caste system. Humanity ended up siding with the Alliance in the war and hasn’t fared well in the brutal war.

The Hero: Zuvok – he is one of the most highly decorated warriors of the Trident Alliance and is known as Zuvok the Terror. He recently became commander of a scientific vessel. The scientists are all scared of him and about have a heart attack every time he moves. He thinks he should be commander of a battle cruiser and figures this post might just be a punishment. His superior thinks he is not the brightest bulb in the pack and after he fires on a Coalition ship that is being used for Alliance training and war games, he is relieved of his command.

The heroine: Alundra – she is a princess whose parents died in a shuttle accident and her home went to her uncle Daniel. Now that she is at the age of adulthood, and he wants to marry her off to one of his associates. A seventy-year-old third cousin named Reinhold. She doesn’t have anything in common with him and the laws are against him. She can’t be forced into the marriage by law, though she really doesn’t have much choice, so she plans to get away without marrying Reinhold. She escapes to the spaceport and gets on a ship where she has signed up for the mail order bride program as she would rather be married to an alien than an old man.

Zuvok’s superior officer is able to get him out of the trouble he is in. It is worth it for them to keep him in the military, because the opposition fears his name. But they need him to settle down and have required him to get a bride. They want him to put his record to use and help make strategic decisions rather than being in on the action himself. Alundra is the bride that was chosen for him. Alundra isn’t too happy that the agency chose her an alien from such a brutal race. I did like Zuvok, though, he was actually pretty funny.

The book gets pretty steamy fairly quickly and the writing seems a bit too simplistic for my tastes. I was actually surprised when I looked at the list of books Athena Storm has written and found out she has written so many books already. I would have thought this was a book from early in an author’s writing career. Overall, the story and the action weren’t bad, it was just the way they talked that seemed not to flow as well as I would have expected. I kept thinking to myself that some of the things they said to each other sounded so silly, not like people would actually talk in real life.

I wasn’t sure I liked Alundra at first, she gets to Zuvok’s house and immediately starts making changes. Granted, the changes were needed, since he had quilts covering all his windows and he hasn’t kept up with any housekeeping. So, it was good that she wasn’t afraid to get down to it and do the work herself, but the way she just started yelling at him and putting him down from the get-go wasn’t the way to go about it. Though I did like her more as the story progressed.

This audiobook was told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Tristan James and Meghan Kelly. Tristan has a nice voice, and I like his narration, though he is a bit stiff and isn’t one of my favorite male narrators. Meghan Kelly isn’t one of my favorites either, she has a bit of a scratchy voice that I am not too fond of, though she does a good job.

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