Ami's Hoard

I will say this – Nash Summers, whose first published story I read in April, has slowly become one of my ‘watch-out’ authors of 2014. She has written three shorter stories before and I loved them all. Now she released this cyberpunk romance novel, and boy, she just blew me away. Even days after I finished this … I still had no idea what I wanted to say. So let’s just hope this review makes sense somehow.

“Vices” is the first entry of duo-logy cyberpunk dystopian series, called Cold Hard Truths. Jones is one of the soldiers of ENAD (Enforced Necessary Arms Division), a division of state who does dangerous sometimes dirty mission. They are the state’s rottweilers. Seven years ago, Jones fell for another ENAD member, heartless cold-without-emotion Carver. And now Carver is back into Jones’s life, since he is the Jones’s team leader.

That was all I could practically tell you about the synopsis, because after that, you just had to be ready for a roller-coaster ride. It involved some emotionally fucked-up characters – and of course I just ate that ALL up – betrayal, conspiracy, some techno-nano-bots actions, GUN PLAY (oh, yes, people, there was ONE GUN-PLAY INVOLVED!! Wait, let me REPHRASE that, there was an angry-sex-more-like-dub-con-involving-gun-involved ... AND IT WAS HOT AND CRAZY AND I COULDN’T EVEN BREATHE!!), and oh delicious kind of unsolved-tension!! This was raw, and dark, and gritty … and I didn’t know if I could even call it a romance. But it was the one that just pull my heart out of its socket because I loved it when the characters were flawed.

Reading it wasn’t easy – this definitely wasn’t fluffy story – and I was dying to see how Jones could penetrate Carver’s wall. They were messed-up but beautiful in their imperfection. With the huge betrayal plot that had not resolved and an ending that didn’t even felt like HFN – I would say it was more hopeful for now, rather than HFN – I couldn’t wait for the conclusion.

Please, Ms. Summers, please say that you are writing book #2 now? Because I am definitely ready to go back to this world again...