Renee and Rebel are back with the latest book in their Zandian Brides series with Kept by the Zandian. This series takes place on Zandia, after the Zandians have taken it back. Human women are in high demand to be brides, so escaped slaves work hard to get to Zandia, and Zandians will go out and rescue women. The goal is to repopulate Zandia, and since there aren’t that many Zandian women of breeding age, it’s a really good thing that humans are compatible with the Zandians. Eventually, I think that this is going to be a problem. I hope Zander is prepared. Of course, with Lamira around, he’ll probably be ready for anything.
So, this one is Drayk and Taisha’s story. Drayk is a Zandian warrior and captain of his ship. He will do anything his king asks of him. On top of being a warrior and a ship’s captain, he is also a judge on Zandia. He takes that responsibility very seriously. He wants to do everything he can to make sure that he is impartial and doing his best for Zandia. Because of that, he’s never going to take a mate, especially not a human. Human women tend to make the Zandian males more emotional and less logical. He can’t be impartial if his emotions are overly engaged.
Taisha has been a slave all her life. But the woman who was in charge of the house in which she lived told her that it was time to escape. Not only that, she told Taisha how to escape, what ship she should get into, and everything else she needed to know. She also gave Taisha some poison that could take down the Occretians nearly immediately. She manages to escape onto Drayk’s ship.
I like Taisha. I felt really sorry for her that she felt like she had to keep proving herself, no matter what. I think that she was smart, capable, and insightful. She saw so much that other people didn’t see, and that allowed her to make choices and decisions that most people wouldn’t have. I think that her intuition serves her quite well. I don’t blame her for anything that she does, for so many reasons. One is that she was raised a slave, so she is going to make particular choices that Drayk wouldn’t understand.
I like Drayk, most of the time. I think that he’s a good male who really does value his planet and his people. He is very dutiful, which isn’t a bad thing. However, he did make me really mad at him a couple of times. I just wanted to smack the big, purple, horny dude because he doesn’t seem to have the sense his mother gave him sometimes.
It was nice to check in with some old favorites and to see how they are doing now after all the changes.
I love what happened when Taisha went to get the records. I hope that this is a good sign of things to come.
OK, that’s all for today! Go check it out! Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 