Death Adder (Naga Brides IV) by Naomi Lucas

 GREETINGS STACK WORMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's not talk about how long it's been since I last visited this series nor the weird way I reviewed the first three books. From here on out each book will be reviewed separately. If I ever do a re-read of the first three again I'll give those their own separate reviews as well. 

Today's Review is: Death Adder by Naomi Lucas

As always, I give my honest opinion in each review. However, I never claim that my opinion is law. If a book I review at all sounds interesting to you I will encourage you to read it. Why? Because I will always encourage people to read. Whether it be by audiobook, graphic novel, manga, books, or tablets. Read. Read. Read. 

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Duh...

TRIGGER WARNINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Graphic Sex

-Monster Sex

-Alien Sex

-Just a lot of horniness in general

-Graphic Violence

-Death 

-Gore

-Blood 

-I don't think Stockholm Syndrome applies here, but just in case 

-Alien pregnancy 

-Some heavy language (again if you can't stand swearing you shouldn't be here)

-Talk of rape

-SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!! 

-Pheromones 

-snakes (sad that I need this as a trigger warning. snakes are amazing animals)

-scar kink 

-a little bit of masochism 

-human caste system (it was a trigger for me so it might be for someone else)

-Scalies 

-Talk of War 

PLOT:

Captain Celeste Bardot is on a rescue mission for Captain Peter. Captain Peter is the bastard that traded the girls in his squad for tech in the first book. She's ordered to bring him and whatever tech he found back. During their trek to get Peter's abandoned vessel, Celeste's part of the team encounters the titular (and very purple) Death Adder, Zhallaix. 

At first Celeste's team sees him as a "hostile" entity and end up getting into a scuffle. I say scuffle because Zhallaix takes gunshots like a champ. When he realizes that it was Celeste who fired upon him, he likes it a little too much. 

Zhallaix decides to follow Celeste and ends up saving her from one of his half-brothers, whom he thought he'd wiped off the face of Earth. Seeing as she is now cut off from part of her rescue team and two of them are dead she decides to go on another rescue mission. She must bring her team and Peter home. If any of them were still alive. 

Zhallaix agrees to help Celeste find her team, in which they find two more alive. They also find Peter alive...more or less but they gotta put the man out of his misery. They encounter Collins (another book character) now a partial Lurker because of a drug called Genesis-8, which he says that Celeste is infected with. This is why she's been wanting to have sex with a snake man. 

In the end she doesn't give a damn if that might be the reason she likes Zhallaix, they'd been through so much together that she felt bonded to him. Enough that she does eventually mate with him on the way back from killing Collins (and Peter). Zhallaix finds Celeste to be incomparably brave and her scent intoxicating.  

For a while she hem-haws on whether to go back, but being shot kind of makes the decision for her. While back on the colony ship the Dreadnaut she finds out she's preggers and has to escape the ship if she wants to keep the baby. With a hella lot of credits and help from a friendly doctor she's able to escape back to Earth. 

And we finally get to have Zhallaix take Celeste to his nest. Yay! Everyone's happy. 

LIKES: 

-Zhallaix and Celeste's relationship near the end finally grew on me

-The lore on Genesis-8 and more information about lurkers and their tech

-we get to learn about their colony ships a little more 

-the fact that Zhallaix kind of likes Celeste hurting him in the beginning. He admires her being able to do it. 

-Getting a little more time with Krellix 

DISLIKES:

-I was kind of hoping that Zhallaix and Celeste would have kind of roughhousing kind of relationship. Not like BDSM just kind of like friends being a little rough with each other. Not to hurt each other of course, just like teasing. When they didn't I got a little sad, but I'm happy with what we ended up with. 

-My dear author, next book I'm doing a count of the words "roar" and "shunt" because you used them way too much in this. Especially, shunt. If you've ever watched the horror movie called Society, you'll know why I can't take that word seriously. 

-I found Celeste to be a little too indecisive but in the end we got where we all wanted to be 

-I absolutely HATE the caste system in the book. This isn't so much I dislike the book for, I just don't like the fact that their society is like that. 

THOUGHTS:

I know I seem a little harsh on this book but I do like it. Not as much as I enjoyed the first three, sure. I give it 4 stars out of 5 on Goodreads and Amazon. I plan on reading the other books of course, I'm too deep to stop now. If I didn't like a series, I wouldn't create OCs for them. 

I have Zora a female anaconda that I thought would be cute if she found a female mate that was basically a body builder that used her for bench presses (female anacondas are bigger than the male counterparts so she'd be rather curvaceous). She'd be a bright mint-green with coral markings around the eyes and down the body. Then there would be Brax a male bushmaster that is basically spoken of like he's a ghost, the kind of tale you tell your children to make them scared to misbehave. He'd be white with black eye markings and beads (because a bushmaster has beaded skin instead of smooth). 

See I've given it kind of a lot of thought. 

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to where the story will go. Thank you, Naomi Lucas for writing such a fun and enjoyable series. 

Here is the music I picked for this book:

Have you read the book? What did you think? Would you agree or disagree with me? Did you like the review? What can I do to improve the reviews? Is there anything you'd like to see done for a future review? Remember I always encourage constructive criticism. Thank you for reading!! Toodles, luvs! 

-Bug