Review - Dominic's Star by Michael Mandrake

This book is part of a multi-author series featuring shifters, gargoyles and male pregnancy. Aside from the theme(s), there’s no connection between the books so it’s not necessary to read them all or read them in order.

Dominic is a man on a war-like planet of bear shifters. He wants to advance his military career, but his father’s mistakes are constantly held against him. In what he thinks is a bold move to show he’s not his father’s son, Dominic comes up with the idea to undertake a spy mission to a nearby planet his military is considering trying to take over. Renard is a gargoyle in G-Force. He’s trying to live up to his father’s expectations, but that just doesn’t seem possible, and Renard is getting tired of trying.

This second book of the G-Force Federation series, a concept where each book is written by a different author, is quite different from the first. The story line is quite interesting, with a classic plot line of two unlikely men on the run together who fall for each other along the way. Unfortunately, the initial set-up of events isn’t very well handled. The timing that brings Dominic and Renard together doesn’t make sense, and based on what we know about Renard before he first lays eyes on Dominic, his rescue of the bear shifter seems out of character.

However, once the two are thrown together, the story becomes a little better told. Renard and Dominic have distinctly different personalities, which come through in their time together. There’s just enough common ground for them to make a workable couple. The two actually are quite believable, within the world built by the fantasy of the series.

While it works reasonably well as a romance, the book is somewhat disappointing as science fiction. Shorter books like this tend to rely on the literary canon of science fiction works, yet this one seems largely ignorant of the generally accepted view of space travel. It doesn’t ruin the story completely, but does make the time Dominic and Renard share look more like an old fashioned road trip than a space journey.

“Dominic’s Star” is available from Amazon.