Heroes Adrift by Moira J. Moore
When I first picked up Heroes Adrift and read the back, I felt a sudden pang of ‘uh oh’. Okay, I don’t read Moira J Moore’s work for the extremely complex plots. I read her work because it’s entertaining and funny, because I like the characters, and because her occasional bouts of dry irreverence for our genre just tickle me pink. But she always manages to hold her own enough in the plot department that it works with what she’s doing.
With Heroes Adrift, I’m not so sure about that anymore. The plot is thin enough that our heroes, Lee and Taro, spend pretty much the whole book wandering around on a parody of southern isles in fantasy that I don’t find as funny as I think I should. And they’re wandering with a traveling circus, basically. Still, this offers some really entertaining moments and delivers some laugh-out-loud lines, just as I’ve come to expect from Moore. It just… doesn’t quite seem to be enough.
Nothing ever fully seems to come together. I used to like Lee, to understand her and empathize with her, but now I find myself nodding in agreement whenever she cites one of her flaws, rather than giving her credit for realizing them. I just found her whole attitude beginning to grate on my nerves. And I doubt I was the only one happy to see some sort of resolution to Lee and Taro’s relationship (my romance readers thought I was evil in that department? Ha! They have no idea). Yet I wasn’t happy with Lee’s assumptions about the relationship, nor with the fact that none of that is cleared up at the end of the book.
Heroes Adrift wasn’t bad, really, but it wasn’t up to what Moore is capable of. I enjoyed some of it, but much of it just left me feeling confused.
The Hero Series — (2006-2013) Publisher: In a realm beset by natural disasters, only the bonded Pairs — Source and Shield — make the land habitable and keep the citizenry safe. But can Dunleavy Mallorough and Lord Shintaro Karish put aside their differences to defeat something even more unnatural than their reluctant affections for each other?
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