Loading ...Insufficient Mating Material by Rowena Cherry
Well darlings, the Djinns have a problem. Seems none of their women do what their supposed to. Princess Martia-Djulia actually bails on her own wedding because of a one night stand she had. Now that one night of fun was part of a complicated assassination attempt in Forced Mate (2004). I recommend you read that one first so you can enjoy this one more.
Cherry’s veddy British sense of humor may lose some but I’m a fan of the BBC so I found her offbeat ways to be charming. And she gives us—gasp—an older woman heroine! Say it isn’t so! Princess Martia-Djulia has a bit of baggage and isn’t afraid to unpack it in front of God and everyone.
And everyone is the erstwhile Commander Jason from Forced Mate. I was delighted to find that he got his own story. He’s been tasked with mating with the princess. This ought to be a no-brainer since he really enjoyed that passionate night.
Of course Cherry isn’t going to make it easy for him, is she? She sets poor Djetth up by making him have to pretend to be someone else. Great gimmick that is so often the other way around where the heroine pretends to be someone else. This time the heroine doesn’t want to have a thing to do with this Djetth because she is mourning the death of the traitor Commander Jason.
Cherry continues her chess theme in this book which I began to enjoy more. It threw me in the novella then caught my attention in the second book Mating Net (which I read out of order—oh the horror!)
So now Djetthro finds himself in the untenable position of “insufficient mating material” which is a chess term for “you can’t really win without a big surprise now baby.” Ok so that’s my interpretation. You might want to check a book on how to play chess to get the real meaning.
Martia-Djulla is no push over and she’s ticked about the arranged marriage. Her brother, Tarrant-Arragon, shoots her down stranding her on a deserted island. In a type of “Lost” she and her companion, the man she can not love Djetth, must survive. And her brother is up to his ears in machinations. This is a futuristic that doesn’t try to make all the aliens nice and kind. These aliens are manipulative and chauvinistic, the nice thing is they do grow and change.
I look forward to the next in this Chess In Space series. No, that is not the name of the series. I don’t know if it has one. It should. It needs to continue.
Book Stats:
- Mass Market Paperback: 324 pages
- Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Company (January 31, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0505527111
- ISBN-13: 978-0505527110
To purchase a print copy of Insufficient Mating Material click here
Books in the series in the order in which they should be read:
Forced Mate
Mating Net
Knight’s Fork
To visit the author’s website go here.
To visit the author’s blog go here.
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Hi, Kate!
I love your discussion starter on what my series should be called!
In fact there is a formal and not-very-memorable name for the series, but several commentators have come up with something shorter, sexier and based on a common word in all the titles.
Knight’s Fork is projected to be the last of that series, and the first of “the forking books”.
Of course, that could change.
Rowena Cherry
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Insufficient Mating Material:
No matter how good your moves, and no matter how bad a player your opponent is, you can’t win.
Rowena
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