Search - Beneath the Thirteen Moons

This is my third book by Kathryne Kennedy and I think I now understand her MO. She excels at world building and creating uniquely beautiful settings. For that reason alone she deserves a few stars from this review. Unfortunately, I love character-driven plots and her characters are never nearly as three dimensional as her settings.

In fact, Beneath the Thirteen Moons reminds me of a beautifully drawn Disney movie where the animation is awe-inspiring, but the main characters are dull, typical, and constantly upstaged by an anthropomorphic animal companion. Prince Charming has no character development and the reasons keeping our heroes apart are not all that believable or well defined. Plus our heroes get together sexually very early on and I just don't feel the kind of tension or anticipation that I expect from a romance novel. Nor is it a particularly good fantasy novel either. I kept wishing for less lust-filled moments between our heroes and more action adventure. Unfortunately this novel fails for me as either a fantasy novel or as a romance.

I had a really hard time reading this novel. It took me way too long and I saved it for occasions like waiting for my laundry to come out of the dryer to get through it.

Well written enthralling tale of a Wilding named Mahri Zin who is desperate enough to kidnap a Healer to help her family and the rest of the village when they fall ill. Unfortunately, she manages to capture Korl Comm'nder who is the crown prince of the Sea Forest and he is very ill-prepared to deal with a class of people that he only knows of from hearsay, let alone deal with an outlaw who not only smuggles zabbaroot but has used enough to kill a far larger entity but paradoxically seems to have gained additional powers rather than being totally incapacitated. The two of them have a mysterious destiny that the natives and her pet monkfish seem more familiar with than is realized by the beings who are sharing their world. A very imaginative and romantic tale.

This was not my favorite book by this author. The heroine rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn't quite put my finger on what bothered me about her. That being said I still enjoyed it and would like to see more written in the universe the author has created here.