Thursday, October 29, 2015

Dark Horse by Michelle Diener

I have a book rec for you today. I loved, loved DARK HORSE by Michelle Diener!! It kept me up way too late last night. It's a science fiction romance with great worldbuilding and a wonderful romance between two characters I truly liked. The blurb is below and here's a link to the book's Amazon page - you can click the cover to look inside the book and read an excerpt.
Any of you already read it? What did you think?
DARK HORSE
Michelle Diener

Some secrets carry the weight of the world.
Rose McKenzie may be far from Earth with no way back, but she’s made a powerful ally–a fellow prisoner with whom she’s formed a strong bond. Sazo’s an artificial intelligence. He’s saved her from captivity and torture, but he’s also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided.
Captain Dav Jallan doesn’t know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he’s not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead, all except for one strange, new alien being.
She calls herself Rose. She seems small and harmless, but less and less abou
t her story is adding up, and Dav has a bad feeling his crew, and maybe even the four planets, are in jeopardy. The Class 5’s owners, the Tecran, look set to start a war to get it back and Dav suspects Rose isn’t the only alien being who survived what happened on the Class 5. And whatever else is out there is playing its own games.
In this race for the truth, he’s going to have to go against his leaders and trust the dark horse.

13 comments :

lill said...

Absolutely loved it!

Kristal said...

Sounds interesting.
I'm glad that the Sci-Fi Romance genre is getting more and more good authors lately. Till the last couple of years (5+), the majority of the sci-fi rom books were erotics with little to no plot at all.
Here are some good Sci-Fi Romance authors, if someone is interested:

S.E. Smith - (Great characters and world building. Recommend that you start with the Valdier, Cosmo's Gateway, Lords of Kassis or the Spirit Pass (Time-Travel) series, because most of the others are either spin-offs or have links to these main series.)

Laura Jo Phillips - (Wonderful plot, characters and world building. The first series is called The Soul-Linked Saga (9 books, 8+novella) and although the pairings are F/MMM [1 woman for 3 brothers (triplets)], I consider the books more mainstream romance than Erotic. There is a spin-off series M/F [The Orbs of Rathira (3 books)] that follows after events in book 5. Currently she's writing the sequel to the Soul-Linked series called (The Hearts of ICARUS series, 4 books so far) that is a mix M/F and F/MMM.

M.K. Eidem - (Great characters, story and world building. Grim and Cassandra's Challenge are the first books in her current series.)

Michelle Howard - (Interesting characters and plots. My favorite of her series is the A World Beyond, about an Earth that has more women than men, how they become "space brides" and what happens next.)

Sherrilyn Kenyon - (Although she writes more Paranormal Romance, she also has a good Sci-Fi Romance series called The League. It's a great series, but sometimes the timelines get a bit confusing, so I recommend reading them in order of publishing.)

Bethany Aan - (So far only the first book called Hearts of Ishira is out. It's an interesting idea and I can't wait for more to come out. This is more pro Erotic side and has ménage/poli relationships and some may say a more slow action, but the plot seems good and gives great expectations for the following books.)

P.S. - Except for Sherrilyn Kenyon, I think that all these are Indie/Self-Publish authors.

Anonymous said...

Have read dark horse.
A very good story, I wish it was a series

Kristal, I have read most of the authors you have recommended on your post, except Bethany Aan.
I agree, that they are all good. Couldn't get into the league as much as some of Sherrilyn kenyon's other stories though.
Hannah

Anonymous said...

Got this on kindle unlimited and loved it as well!!

library addict said...

Sounds good, but doesn't appear to be available at Kobo or ARe. I'll add it to my list and hopefully can buy an ePub version in the furture.

Anonymous said...

I would like to read this story but it isn't available for Nook. I agree with library addict and hope that this book will be available in e-book format soon.

While waiting for the book to be in e-book format, I may visit my local bookstore to see if I can get the book.

Thanks for recommending this book, Nalini.

Patricia S

kat said...

Yes! Another book to add to the TBR pile.

Another awesome sci-fi author: Linnea Sinclair... loved Games of Command.

Sarah said...

Fabulous recommendation. It destroyed my day yesterday because I couldn't stop reading it.

brendab said...

yup, loved it. also agree with the mk eidem recommendation. loved all of them. i had assumed there would be more after dark horse, bane needs some freinds and ther are 3 more ai's after him. i will try out the se smith. i

ddsun.rm said...

I loved it too!

I'd add Linnea Sinclair to the list of authors with good romantic SF.

Anonymous said...

Loved the recommendation - thank you! I just finished it last night. If anyone has more scifi romance recommendations to share, please post.

DJ said...

I'm so glad I took your recommendation and read this book. It was fabulous!

Kirsten Wallace said...

It's available for kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Z9R1W9W?keywords=dark%20horse%20by%20michelle%20diener&pebp=1447292378748&perid=2012ZA506KJDJ404BD0B&qid=1447292378&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

I really really liked this book. Thanks for the recommend, Nalini :)