I am not the target audience - not near enough technicals, somewhat weak characterization, suspense was light - romance was adult - won't read more by author ( )

This book was not at all what I expected and I'm not certain if it was for the better or the worse. Basically, the hero and heroine meet in a run down burger joint in the space station before going back to the hotel room for a quickie. The heroine, not ready to have anything more than a one night stand, parts way with the tall hansom man only to overhear a conversation about a plan to murder him. She rushes to him and together they escape the station and flee into space. Neither the hero or heroine were battle drawn soldiers but they both work for assassin guilds. The heroine was dumped as the guild as a child and forced into the training to become an assassin but she lacked the stomach and will to kill other people so instead she now investigates the targets for other agents. The hero had a mirror image for his childhood only he was dumped off at the rovers, an organization with less 'rules' than the guild when it comes to choosing targets. They are so much alike in was scary. Though the heroine did have a bit more knowledge about ships and how to deal with dangerous situations, For an assassin investigator, the hero was lost when it came to knowing how to survive. I liked that about him, it takes a real man to show fear and the hero was afraid when he learns about the kill out on him. I will say that the pacing for the story was very slow and honestly not much happened. If you are expecting a high pace, action packed space adventure, this book is not for you. But neither was it an in-depth study of human nature and relationships. It was a fun albeit light, fluffy read without anything truly remarkable about it. I did enjoy the main characters though I wished something more happened to make their love affair more interesting. Most of the time they were making love in different parts of the ship. I kept waiting for a spark but I never felt it. But it was a fun read. Loved the hero and heroine respectively. ( )

That blurb is very misleading, no memory of that happening...

Ok girl eat at a shady burger joint, in comes hot guy. Girl is a bit lonely, she is a spy after all without any friends. Girl and boy ends up in bed. Boy is a spy too from another organization. Soon boy and girl are running and falling in love and lust. Now that is what this book is about.

Sky is a bad assassin who turned spy. Jack is good at finding things so he turned spy too. Set in a distant future where assassins are for hire and nothing wrong with that. Which makes this into a sci-fi romantic suspense story. If you are not into sci-fi then do not worry, you can take a few ships and sonic showers. If you like sci-fi then good, you will get some romance too thrown in. And of course the suspense part as something fishy is going on and someone is unhappy. Which means run you fools!

It was interesting to see them fall cos they fitted each other well but Sky had her issues. A lone wolf. While Jack, oh I do like when I guy falls first.

It made me wonder about book 1 too, sounds quite interesting too.

A spy novel set in space and a promise of passion. ( )

Reading this book was a mistake.

It wasn’t because it’s a romance. That’s obvious from the cover and description. It’s not a genre I read, but I’ve liked some of the work of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the author behind the Kris DeLake pen name. This is a follow up to Rusch’s “Skylight”, a short story explaining the origins of the novel’s heroine, Skylight Jones.

I wanted to see if more was done with the idea, from that story, of an interplanetary civilization where inadequacies in the legal system lead to a system of legalized assassination as a remedy.

Unfortunately, I got no more details about this story’s background.

In fact, there are no real details about much of anything except the characters’ feelings and some of their meals.

I get this is a romance. Complaining about the amount of space devoted to dialogue and internal monologues in a romance is like complaining about way too much crime going on in mystery novels. It’s the defining content of the genre.

And I’ll even grant the lame plot coincidence of the two main characters just happening to have the same basic job and oh too conveniently mirroring other characters in the Assassin Guild series -- which I will not be reading any further in.

But it’s the lack of detail on everything else that greatly annoyed me.

Apart from some talk about burgers, we get little detail on what the characters eat, what the characters wear, and the places they go to. The science fiction paraphernalia is of the most generic kind: laser pistols, vaguely described computer systems and databases, augmentation to bodies (mechanical? biological? unknown), and space yachts. The vagueness of it all reminds me of a writer not having the time to write short, so she wrote long. The dialogue and pacing may be competent, but the whole thing reminds me of a generic plot dusted off and slotted into science fiction with a few appropriate nouns. Minus the whole enabling legal premise, I can almost imagine this taking place on a conventional yacht and involving pirates.

There isn’t even that much hot sex.

I know romance writers often have a lot of restrictions placed on them by publishers, but does this publisher really insist on this kind of bland merger of romance and science fiction? Somehow I don’t think the popular Catherine Asaro or Lois McMaster Bujold write this way.

The worse thing is that Rusch knows how to write good, interesting science fiction. DeLake doesn’t.

It’s very likely I’ll read Rusch in the future.

It’s very certain I won’t be reading any more DeLake. ( )

A Spy to Die For was a pretty awesome read.

A quick word of warning: A Spy to Die For takes place concurrently with Assassins in Love, the first book in the Assassins Guild series, and references events in that novel, so you definitely want to read that first. It’s a neat storytelling device — and one I don’t think I’ve encountered before — and it helps provide some more context for the events that take place in both novels. And it’s really neat to see more than just one approach to handling the problem in question.

I think I actually enjoyed A Spy to Die For a tiny bit more than Assassins in Love because I really fell for the characters. Sky’s was an unexpected sort of character — not hard enough to be an assassin but beholden to the Guild, she works as something of an intelligence gatherer,checking out targets to make sure that they are indeed appropriate targets for the Guild. It’s a solitary lifestyle, which has contributed to Sky’s lack of trust, but not as much as her parents, who kept leaving her behind when she was a kid. Jack is also an experienced intelligence gatherer, though not for the Guild. They initially start off as a one-night stand but realize that they have a strong connection. (Sky is a bit more reluctant to admit it than Jack, which contributes to the fun of reading A Spy to Die For.)

There’s also a nice bit of action since there are folks trying to kill them. You can expect some stealthy action, some overt action, and an explosion or two, which should please all of the readers who appreciate a good battle or fight scenes.

All in all, A Spy to Die For is a great read. I’d definitely recommend it. But I think you’d enjoy it more if you read Assassins in Love first since it’ll give you a better grounding in the world. DeLake’s Assassins Guild series is a great sci fi romance series and I think you should be putting it on your TBR list if you haven’t already!

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