Samurai Game - Christine Feehan

(Opinião em português, como de costume, no fim do artigo)

 

This is the last of a the three books I read in London (I finished it in the plane on my way back). This one isn't even published in Portugal, nor do I think it'll ever be.

 

This is number X (9? 10? 11? no idea) in the Ghostwalker series by the author of the Drake Sisters series (these are being slowly published in Portugal) and of the Dark Carpathian series . I've read all books published in each series, and I think Samurai Game, will be my last experience with Feehan. Maybe the author is loosing her ability to surprise me, maybe I got tired of this kind of book, or changed my tastes, because I no longer enjoy reading them.

 

This is a series about a group of people with special mental abilities, experimented on a genetic level by brilliant mad scientist Whitney, who is atempting to create a perfect army for the USA. He mixes their DNA with animal DNA to give them certain physical abilities, and enhances their mental ones to make them special. He experiments on orphan / abandoned girls since childhood, and on men when they apply for the army. He also pairs couples through feromones and stuff, according to their genetics, to "fall in love" and produce enhanced offspring. He experiments in his own adoptive  daughter, also a brilliant scientist and great person. Once she finds out what her father is doing, she runs from him, and that's where the story begins, in book one: with the help of the soldier she's been paired with, she finds other Ghostwalkers and they form a number of special army units, still linked with the americam army, but not with Whitney. They manage to get a large isolated property to live in, that they protect very eagerly. They search for lost enhanced girls (who have become women), they go on supersecret missions for the government, they try to find out how to counter some of the stuff Whitney has done to the girls, such as reapeatedly giving one of them cancer to see how far her enhanced body would resist, and they try to beat and kill Whitney, who is also planning to control the White House. Above all, they try to stay alive and free, and to prevent him from ever getting his hands on the women and children of the group-family.

 

The idea is great and I really enjoyed it all in the beggining. Of course each book centers in a "pairing", there was always a strong love story, but there was also a lot of military, scientific and other stuff. Or maybe I was just enthralled by the idea and didn't notice that there is way to much love for this type of book. There certainly is to much of it in this one.

 

Thorn/Azami (the woman) was abandoned by Whitney in Japan (she's Japanese) at the age of 8 because he though she didn't have any powers. He deemed her useless but still used her to experiment on how much pain the body could withstand - by operating on her several times without anaestetics, for example. She is found and adopted by a samurai who is also the rich owner of a computer company, educated and trained in the way of the samurai. She looks sweet and demure, but is highly intelligent, a gifted warrior and able to hide her Ghostwalker powers. She could already do it as a child, that's why Whitney never realized she was in fact one of them. She's famous because of ther business, but is also secretly trying to find and kill Whithey, by industriously assassinating everyone linked to him.

 

I'm not telling you how she meets the Ghostwalkers. But she does, in their home, and of course she's paired to someone, or falls for him, or whatever. There's some nice science, there's great fighting, there's a dangerous military mission and some very well planned assassinations throughout the story, but there's waaaayyy toooo much loving there to please me. Don't ge me wrong, I like the loving and the sex, it makes it interesting. But in this particular book I found myself skipping paragraphs, because THEY KE PTREPEATING THEMSELVES!! I don't need to be told more than once... or twice, or thrice... whatever, how perfect they are for each other, or that he / she is a great fighter but also a great person and that's why he / she loves him, or how surprised they are by how they felt... you get the picture. It got boring and irritating. It also annoys me how much "in heat" they seem to be, they can hardly touch eachother or look at each other and they are burning and he gets a huge hard on  - the idea of the pairing through feromones could explain that, but he keeps repeating that they couldn't have been paired. Yet, when they finally get to do it, it takes pages and pages and pages of indecision and ceremony and talking and "you are perfect", "give yourself to me" (another caveman???) and "I can't hurt her, she's so damaged"... Meh.

 

By the end of it I was dying to see it done and over with. Major disapointement.

 

Tenho seguido esta série da autora da serie das irmãs Drake (publicada em Portugal) e dos Dark Carpathians (que não está nem deve vir a ser publicada cá), mas creio que é o último destes livros que leio. Os primeiros misturavam muito bem ciência, com acção millitar, com questões humanas, com amor e sexo, ou pelo menos eu fiquei tão interessada na ideia deste grupo de Ghostwalkers com poderes geneticamente realçados, e "emparelhados" através de feromonas e DNA, que não reparei nos excessos.

 

Este livro tem uma boa promissa: uma rapariga que o cientista achou inútil por não lhe parecer que tivesse poderes, mas cuja capacidade, entre outras, era escondê-los. O cientista experimenta nela o limiar da dor (opera sem anastesia várias vezes) e depois abandona-a, aos 8 anos, para morrer nas ruas do Japão ou ser aproveitada para o mercado da pedofilia, mas ela tem a sorte de ser adoptada por um samurai rico e importante no mercado informático. Cliché, certo? Mas aceitável. O pior foi o excesso de amor depois de conhecer os Ghostwalkers e se apaixonar de caras por um... sim, à primeira vista, e depois parecem estar em cio (o que faria sentido se eles próprios não excluíssem a hipótese de terem sido "emparelhados"). Quando chegou à hora HH, porém, demoraram páginas e páginas... e páginas a decidir-se.

 

Pior ainda foram as repetições - ela é maravilha, ele é perfeito para mim, o meu pai era o melhor homem da terra, eu sou tão imperfeita, eu não ou suficientemente bom para ela, mas vou fazer o que pder porque é minha, etc, etc, repetido até à exaustão - que me fizeram saltar páginas. A autora estava distraída, ou isto foi para encher chouriços? Chega, seja como for. Chega.