Wednesday, September 2, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha


Deal with the Devil is the first in a new series by Kit Rocha - a psuedonym for authors Donna Herren and Bree Bridges.  They're mostly known for their long running post apocalyptic erotic SF series "Beyond", and this novel is the first in their "Mercenary Librarians" series...which is also post apocalyptic romantic SciFi.  I've read one half of the Rocha on twitter a bit and have come to really enjoy romantic and sexy parts of the genre, so despite originally skipping over this novel, I decided to give this one a try and put on a library hold.

And Deal with the Devil is a blast - a sexy as hell post apocalyptic romp as a pair of sets of super soldiers - 4 mechanically augmented men and 3 biologically engineered women - go on a journey through a post apocalyptic US and their leaders try desperately not to act on their own attraction....and well, fail utterly.  The book is incredibly fun and quotable, and yes, very damn sexy, with two strong main characters to go with a solid support cast, who it appears will be explored as main characters of subsequent books.  And yeah I'll be there for sure (I've also downloaded the first in Rocha's erotic series because well....yes).


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
2086 America is a grim place - the country's infrastructure was already in tatters before the solar flares hit in the 2040s, destroying it and the weak government behind it, leaving the people of the country to fend for themselves.  Naturally the powerful corporations that had been eating at the government became the strongest powers out there - and used their powers for their own purposes, offering things to the people only to bind them to their power.

Nina was created artificially by one such sort of corporation, a super strong and agile soldier through biological engineering.  But after tragedy struck her, she escaped, and she and two fellow escapees from similar circumstances - the always remembering Maya and the painless warrior Dani - have made their home in Atlanta, where Nina tries to help the local people by providing food, shelter, and best of all information and books for them to gain enjoyment in this dismal world.

Knox joined the Techcorps as a teen, thinking he'd allow them to make him into a soldier to do good for the world.  But when he and his team of mechanically augmented supersoldiers were asked to cross his line of morality, they fled...only to find themselves dying due to their failing mechanical implants.  His only hope is a hacker who could fix him up....except she's been kidnapped by an unknown party as a hostage to his good behavior.

To get the hacker back, and to save his squad's lives, Knox is tasked with bringing in Nina to a secure location.  But not only is Nina and her team just as capable and deadly as he is, Knox also can't seem to fight his attraction to her and her attempt to be a leader for good.  And as Knox and his team try to lead Nina and her crew towards a big prize - with the intention of betraying them for their own safeties - he and Nina begin to feel something more towards each other, an interest that could threaten both of their lives......
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Deal with the Devil is somehow the second scifi novel featuring a pair of supersoldiers in a sexy romantic scifi romp.  And I keep using "sexy" here for a reason, while this novel may not be full on erotica, it's very much about the mutual sexual and romantic attraction of its two protagonists, with one long full on sex scene in the middle and other such moments occurring afterwards.  The novel features occasional asides to the perspectives of the side characters - Nina's teammates Dani and Maya and Knox's teammates Gray, Conall and Rafe (all but Conall of whom seem to be pairing off) - but for the most part it splits its time between Nina and Knox's perspectives as they do their dance of attraction, fighting, and betrayal.

And it's soooo much fun to read.  It helps obviously that both Knox and Nina are very enjoyable and solid characters.  Nina feels guilt over being the only survivor of her sisters, and has as a result formed her own family and decided to help others around her as her primary goal, refusing to see everyone as cynically as she might otherwise do - as someone else puts it in the plot, usually if her giving someone a chance turns out wrong, she's strong and powerful enough to make up for the mistake before it costs her.  And her goodness and need to protect others, and her family first and foremost, bleeds out into everyone she meets.  And then there's Knox, who thought he could do good, and had that beaten out of him by working for the Techcorps until he couldn't do it anymore, and figures the only thing worth doing at this point is saving his team who followed him down this path.  He's not the wholly cynical man whose heart needs to be melted by the woman with the heart of gold - this story isn't quite THAT tropey - but the ticking time bomb of his implants and what he has to do to survive has driven his good hearted nature deep inside to the point of denial.

But of course, the plot doesn't let him stay so cynical as he and Nina find others who need help, as well as other bastards who want to exploit/harm them, and the two teams take action against such foes.  And thus the two cannot avoid seeing each other, and feeling for each other, until their attraction is too much to hold in.  It culminates midway through with a tremendous (I think some other reviewer I saw listed it as 9 pages long) steamy sex scene that is fantastic, and then the remaining part of the book is all the other issues coming to light and the two having to deal with the conflict that emerges.  Spoiler:  they do.  This isn't quite a romance because it doesn't quite end on a Happily Ever After - it's a shitty world still, and there's a cliffhanger twist after the satisfying ending - but it does end happily for now for the main pair, and I was so happy about that.

Beyond the sex, Rocha does a phenomenal job with the dialogue and minor characters to make this story incredibly fun to read.  The flirting and not flirting between the teams, as well as their familial bonds, is a lot of fun to read, resulting in me quoting the book in like ten tweets on twitter as I was reading it, and I was tempted to do a lot more.  The pairing up of the side characters also works really well, although neither pairing goes all the way (nor does Conall, the gay man who doesn't get paired up get a full pairing on the side, tho he makes a move on some man at some point apparently), with that seemingly being left for the sequels.  And well, I'll definitely be back for those, because this is a blast.

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