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emmelnie's review
4.0
Stolen by the Zandian is a lovely type of combined road and cabin romance. Khrys and Kailani spend most of this book traveling from the Kraa masters that Kailani escapes to Khrys’ home planet of Zandia, spending time together in close quarters on his ship. Khrys originally planned to buy Kailani when she’s about to be put up at auction because she’s been physically and mentally enhanced by the Kraa in ways that no other human has, and Khrys desperately hopes something in her enhancements will help cure the hybrid children of Zandians and humans, currently suffering from a new unique plague.
Khrys and Kailani are such likeable protagonists. Khrys tends to act first and think about it later, and it’s great to see this consistently deployed throughout Stolen by the Zandian and how the consequences of this come to haunt him. Kailani is learning what it’s like to be on her own for the first time—she’s spent her life enduring the surgeries required for her enhancements, so she’s discovering her humanity and who she is as an independent being. Following their story was a joy.
There are a couple of quibbles here—the disease is more of a McGuffin to drive the plot than anything else, and it’s resolved in way too quick a fashion for the danger it supposedly presented. Kailani has an addiction that conveniently ceases to be mentioned in the last part of the book, and that dangling plot thread was frustrating. A sentence or two addressing a cure for her in return for the cure she facilitated for others would have been welcome.
But this book flew by for me. I loved that the protagonists’ struggles moved in a nice, linear fashion: no circling back to earlier plot points, like magical villain reappearances late in the book (which tend to be irksome rather than logical). Instead, there’s intense focus on this couple, to the point that their bond makes sense when they finally interact with others. What a great entry by Rose and West in the Zandian Brides series!
Khrys and Kailani are such likeable protagonists. Khrys tends to act first and think about it later, and it’s great to see this consistently deployed throughout Stolen by the Zandian and how the consequences of this come to haunt him. Kailani is learning what it’s like to be on her own for the first time—she’s spent her life enduring the surgeries required for her enhancements, so she’s discovering her humanity and who she is as an independent being. Following their story was a joy.
There are a couple of quibbles here—the disease is more of a McGuffin to drive the plot than anything else, and it’s resolved in way too quick a fashion for the danger it supposedly presented. Kailani has an addiction that conveniently ceases to be mentioned in the last part of the book, and that dangling plot thread was frustrating. A sentence or two addressing a cure for her in return for the cure she facilitated for others would have been welcome.
But this book flew by for me. I loved that the protagonists’ struggles moved in a nice, linear fashion: no circling back to earlier plot points, like magical villain reappearances late in the book (which tend to be irksome rather than logical). Instead, there’s intense focus on this couple, to the point that their bond makes sense when they finally interact with others. What a great entry by Rose and West in the Zandian Brides series!
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