Elaine White's Life in Books

Book – Checkmate
Author – Nicki Bennett, Ariel Tachna
Star rating - ★★★☆☆
No. of Pages – 294

Cover – Intriguing!
POV – 3rd person, multi POV, omnipresent
Would I read it again – Probably not.

Genre – LGBT, Historical, Magic, Spanish Inquisition, Romance, Adventure, Hired Sword


** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK, BY THE AUTHOR, IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW **
Reviewed for Divine Magazine



This was an interesting read and I'm of two minds about it.

On one hand, it's really, really long, with not a lot to show for that length. I mean, about 40% was about the adventure aspect and the other 60% was the romance, which I'm not sure was strictly necessary. But, saying that, a lot of my issues with the book were because there was a lot that wasn't “strictly necessary”. On the other hand, I did enjoy the overall story, but it's not something that I'd rave about to a friend or bother to read the next two in the series, either.

First off, the omnipresent POV. I've got a lot of experience with it, but this time it was just unnecessary. Half of the omnipresent POVs – by which I don't mean when whole scenes or chapters were occasionally dedicated to one character – were pointless and added nothing to the story that couldn't already be known or shown through their actions and words. Here, I'm specifically thinking about St Denys, Esteban and the times when Teodoro and Christian are in the same scene; we don't need both their POV's.

Omnipresent, in this case, is a problem for two reasons. 1 – we get told things twice; once in one paragraph that is Teo's POV and again in Christian's POV which is the next paragraph, literally. 2 – one paragraph reveals something to us which, in the next, we're not supposed to know. It makes it hard to follow the story and keep track of what each character knows or thinks. Particularly when the two MC's often have alternating paragraphs; Christian, Teodoro, Christian, Teodoro. When you get into a rhythm of that, it's okay to follow, but more often than not, it happened for one solid chapter, then changed format in the next and again in the next. It was constantly confusing and difficult to keep track of what POV the paragraphs were supposed to be told in, when not immediately made clear, until halfway through the paragraph/scene.

Half the space taken up by this constant repetition and re-experiencing of a situation through both (and sometimes triple, when Esteban is involved) sets of eyes makes the book much, much longer than necessary. It's also pointless. Half the time we already know what is going on, who feels what and so forth. I'd much rather the author(s) showed us these varying perspectives in either one whole scene/chapter dedicated to one character's POV or by SHOWING us through their words and actions. This constant telling grew old very quickly.

St Denys, as a baddie, was tame and boring. I mean, we got one chapter which included his POV (unnecessary) and after that, he was referred to as this big, bad villain, but he was never seen and did nothing that actually put the characters at real risk of danger. The same could be said for the el conde de la Rocha, who was nothing except an off-page tool to spur on the action, but only entered the story for about a page.

And, quite honestly, St Denys POV at the beginning ruined part of the story – as did the blurb. How? Because the big revelation of St Denys plotting to kill the King is a major plot arc, which is haphazardly thrown into the blurb, so that it's neither a surprise or all that shocking to the reader when the “big revelation” is made. Which jars with the fact that the author(s) make it very clear throughout the story that this is supposed to be a huge surprise to the readers. Except that St Denys' POV and the blurb remove all mystery, giving far too much away in a story that, shockingly, goes to painstaking lengths to keep this information from us until the big reveal. It makes absolutely no sense.

On top of that, there were no translations. This book is littered with Spanish phrases and not one of them is explained. There also isn't a glossary anywhere in sight, that I could turn to while reading. If I were to highlight all the Spanish terms, to look them up later, I'd be highlighting half the book. Instead, I chose to remain ignorant and look up the most confusing (in that they held some sort of meaning to the characters) when I was done. If I hadn't done that, I would have been putting this book down every five minutes to check Google Translate. As it was, the scenes would have made so much more sense had I known what they were talking about, but I've never even flirted with Spanish, so I had no hope in hell of ever guessing what all those curse words and endearments meant.

To keep going with the negative, but be a little more brief with it -
there were continuity issues, e.g. someone was standing, but was talked about as though they were seated
spelling and grammar issues, as well as mis-placed punctuation. (A good example is when Esteban and Gerrard are both, at different points, mentioned as “the Esteban” and “the Gerrard”)
unbelievable abilities, in terms of being interrupted in flagrante after a big build up (and one MC with a lot of serious injuries), only to immediately jump up, with no problems, and be able to talk freely. Also an issue is their ability to be free with movement, have sex and jump out of bed with no issues, after being tortured with whipping and the rack, at least.
facts were skimmed over that were important. Often they weren't mentioned at all, until well after the fact, when it was thrown in as though we should have known it already. (the best example is St Denys)
there was so much sex that I got sick of it. I literally began skim reading the sex scenes to get to the next big of dialogue or storytelling, because one they got together it was excessive and...again...unnecessary.
the story ends at 94%, with the cover, blurb and excerpt of book 2, cover and blurb of book 3 and a long list of books by the author(s) that I could just as easily look up online, if I were so inclined. Which I'm not, at the moment.

~

Overall

I could absolutely sum up this book with one word – unnecessary. The actual plot was great, as were the characters, but the execution of putting those two things together didn't work. The biggest issue was the omnipresent POV, which caused a lot of the more serious problems I encountered. On top of that, the actual plot aspect – the threat to the King – was so easily resolved that it almost felt...you guessed it...unnecessary, to have a book of nearly 300 pages tell the story. I mean, I could easily have cut 200 of those pages without impacting the story at all. That's how little drama, danger etc there really was, though it was all made to feel very important and dangerous. It just...wasn't.

Though I enjoyed it, it was more along the lines of – Meh. I could have not read it and been just as happy with how I spent my day, but reading it didn't exactly kill me, either.

In another POV, this could have been fantastic, without all the head hopping and repetition, without the excessive sex and the over-exaggerated danger. I'm giving it a 3 because I enjoyed it and, overall, Christian was my favourite character, but the fact that I didn't understand 30% of the words in the book (which were Spanish) really detracted from that enjoyment. On top of the other issues, nothing over a three would have been appropriate.

And, no. Sorry, but I won't be reading books 2 and 3. I'm happy with how things ended, even for Raul, so I don't feel there's a need to read about his story in book 3 and I barely saw a glimpse of the main character for book 2, so I'm not really sure why I'd be super excited about going ahead to read about a guy who had about three lines of dialogue, was introduced at the end of the Epilogue and had no impact on the story or me, as a reader, whatsoever. Even if I was interested in Raul, I wouldn't be tempted enough to force myself through book 2 just to get there.