Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: The Baba Yaga’s Riders have gone missing, and Bella is on the case in this riveting third installment of the Baba Yaga series.

Opening Sentence: The early morning fog blanketed the area surrounding the fire tower, stippling the windows with condensation and cloaking the ground below in mystery.

The Review:

The Riders have gone missing, and the Queen of the Otherworld wants to know what happened to them. So, she assigns Baba Yaga Bella to the case. Bella is already in the area investigating who is behind numerous fires that have been set. During the course of her investigations, she meets Sam, a former firefighter who now makes a living watching for potential fires in the area. There’s an immediate attraction, but Sam is still hurting from the death of his fiancee and doesn’t want to get involved in a new relationship. This is fine with Bella, as she has always been more of a loner. As their paths continue to cross though, their attraction becomes harder and harder to deny. Will they both be able to let go of their pasts in order to have a future together? Will they be able to figure out who’s setting these fires? And most importantly, will Bella be able to find the Riders before it’s too late?

After reading the first book in this series, I was a little on the fence regarding how I felt about it. I then read the second book and enjoyed it more than the first, but I wasn’t hooked yet. With this third entry in the Baba Yaga series, I’m officially hooked. Almost all of the issues I had with previous entries were fixed here, leaving me with a very enjoyable and entertaining read. For some reason I can’t quite articulate, everything seemed more believable in this installment. Bella and Sam are a likeable couple, and I really enjoyed getting to know them in the course of the story. As a cat person, I also really enjoyed the addition of Bella’s Chudo-Yudo (dragon disguised as a cat).

One of my biggest issues with the previous books is that the villains were a little over the top, which made the scenes from their perspective hard to read. The villain in this installment, however, is completely believable (and 100 percent crazy), so the scenes featuring her were very entertaining.

The one weaker aspect in this series continues to be the romance aspect. This feels more like a paranormal romance series, with a different couple featured in each story, but the romance doesn’t seem like the focus when you read the book. This makes the romance scenes feel like they’re actually detracting from the story, which isn’t good. It ultimately didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story, but I felt it needed to be mentioned.

Overall, this is shaping up to be a very enjoyable series.This installment was fast paced and filled with great characters. I’m very much looking forward to reading the next book!

Notable Scene:

A faint glow from behind him made him turn around. The glass slid unnoticed out of his grasp and hit the floor, bounced on the braided blue rag rug in front of the sink, and rolled under the table.

She stood in the middle of the room – Heather, looking much as she had the last time he’d seen her alive, her fire gear draped over one shoulder, helmet tucked under the other arm.

Sam reached out one hand, and then pulled it back, clenched into a fist. It wasn’t her. He knew that. It wasn’t as though he didn’t believe in ghosts; of course he did, with the grandmother he’d had and all of her tales. In fact, he’d waited after the disaster, waited night after night for Heather’s ghost to appear. First in the hospital, then, figuring its antiseptic stink and hissing machines had kept her away, back at home. Waited, but she never came.

So why would Heather be here now? She wouldn’t, would she?

FTC Advisory: Penguin/Berkley provided me with a copy of Wickedly Powerful. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

Bella is one of the three Baba Yagas in charge of the United States. When she feels an urge to head to the forest in Wyoming, Bella is originally unsure if she is there to investigate the missing Riders, or to deal with the sudden fires that are occurring. Growing up as a Baba Yaga in training was hard for Bella and she found that never really fit in with humans and therefore now enjoys spending time by herself with her companion Koshka, a dragon disguised as a cat. The stakes her high but despite all Bella has to do, she finds herself distracted by the handsome but deeply scared, former hotshots fireman Sam Corbett. If that were not enough, when Bella finds Jazz, a runaway teen living rough in the forest, Bella realises that she cannot just leave the girl to fend for herself. Can Bella somehow handle it all?

By now, the Baba Yaga series has become pretty predictable. When Bella meets Sam and Jazz, there's never any doubt that all three of them will end up together living as a family. It's always only a matter of how it happens. That beings said, when Bella's fellow Baba Yagas show up to look for her, I was expecting Deborah Blake to bring on the awesome. I feel very much at this point that we were due, particularly given that this book was written largely by the numbers. Unfortunately, to say the big showdown was anticlimactic is to be kind. Blake didn't bring the epic and seemed rush to wrap everything up in a neat little bow, so that she could move onto writing about the Riders.

I liked watching Jazz and Bella bond; however, I wished that the bond had not occurred over the fact that they are both orphans and come from a history of abuse. I suppose at least for Jazz, there was no other way to have her living in a forest withput adult supervision. The issue for me is that suffering is used too often as a shortcut to characterization. The same issue occurred with Sam, with his PTSD, survivor's guilt and scared face. I never felt like I got to know Sam as a person and he really became was his loss and fears. The only good thing I can say is that while woo woo was used to cure Sam of his lung damage and scars, at least Blake had Sam acknowledge that dealing with his PTSD was going to take some time.

The antagonist is Brenna, a former Baba Yaga the queen had forced to retire. We met Brenna in Wickedly Wonderful; however Blake did a good job of explaining to readers where Brenna's anger stemmed from and her history with the Baba Yagas. If you have not read any of the other books in this series, you will not have any trouble following along with Wickedly Powerful. Brenna, is not pleased to have been forced to retire and she is further enraged that this means the loss of the Water of Life and Death, which slows down the aging process of the Baba Yagas and strengthens their powers. As her hair begins to go grey and bones begin to creak, Brenna is driven to kidnap the Riders and torture them until they lose their immortality so she that she can become what she once was - powerful.

Read More ( )

I am really enjoying this series. It's a fun and offbeat paranormal romance- these featuring the Baba Yagas (which is a job description rather than a name), and their romances.

This book- #3- finished up with the current crop of Baba Yagas, but there's a new kid in town- in a while- and meantime, the Riders are each getting their own stories. I look forward to these!

So far there's not an overwhelming plot arc; one that had started in #2 got finished here, but has repercussions. I like this, because the series that have a plot arc that extends to 5+ volumes tend to get too convoluted for me.

Very recommended, if you like this sort of thing. Including a dragon-cat! ( )

Not as sweet and soft as Becka and not as hard and fierce as Barbara, Bella falls right in the middle. I enjoyed getting to know the third American Baba Yaga and watching her get over her fears and fall in love. Bella has a bit of an attitude and I had no trouble liking her from the start. Sam was really easy to connect to and I really felt his struggles. I really enjoyed watching him open up and I liked how he was able to put his fear aside when it mattered the most.

One thing that all the Baba's share is that they are all extremely loyal to those they care about. I really loved that they were all able to come together—for a short time—in WICKEDLY POWERFUL and give us a taste of what it's like for them to work together. Bella's Chudo-Yudo was a lot of fun and a character all in its own. He brought a lot of spunk to the story.

If I am reading Blake's website right, there will be more books in the Baba Yaga series. Not sure who they will focus on, but I have enjoyed the series so far and will be picking up book four when it comes out.

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )

:) ( )