Reading Wilde is a guaranteed good time for me, so every story was enjoyable. But "The Canterville Ghost" stood out as an exceptional piece - a story about how Americans aren't even classy enough to be scared of the traditional English ghost who rattles his chains menacingly and leaves fake bloodstains laying about. They instead offer him lube for his chains and clean up the "blood" with nary a terrified whimper. It's surely enough to drive a proper ghost 'round the bend, which is exactly what happens.

1.5 stars.

Ho-hum. Disappointing. Not every comic needed to be hilarious and pithy, but definitely some of them should have been! There's also a handful of errors that make it worse - honestly, misspelling Ford Prefect's name? For shame.

Solid three, mostly for the setting and Gabriel Rose, the dashing English dandy with some serious knife skillz. I appreciated the fact that Roux didn't play off the connection between Gabriel and Cage as instalove, rather a chance meeting between two men of complementary character.

Cage's struggle when faced with a past friend and lover was an interesting conflict in the overall plot, but it lacked depth. We were already led away from empathizing with said past lover by a unflattering portrayal of his character traits; Cage's wavering conviction without any explanation other than nostalgia was less than persuasive.

I could have done without the US Marshals and their storyline, to be quite honest. It added nothing for me. On the plus side I did learn what an Arkansas toothpick is, so, y'know, silver lining.

3.5 stars, rounded up because reasons.

As many other reviews mention, there is a lot of military jargon in this novel, though much of it is explained fairly naturally throughout the prose. However, if you are unfamiliar with the constant and casual use of acronyms, I imagine it can get overwhelming quickly. I do find it amusing that one of the terms the author chose to define via our main character Jonah's routine was an MRE, which I figured was one of the more well-known military usages. I've eaten several; they're just as horrible as described.

Brothers In Arms was an excellent balance of a rekindled romance between fellow soldiers and a mysterious adventure of treason - not to mention the sex scenes, which were hot as fuck. Through the interaction with the baby Marines, we see that Gunnery Sergeant Jonah Carver is a legendary good soldier and leader. He's smart, able and has an wonderfully wry sense of humor. He cares desperately for all the men under his command. I pretty much loved him immediately and hoped that Kellan, when he finally reappeared, would be worthy of his character - and I wasn't disappointed!

The intensity of the scene as Jonah chases down

Kellan's kidnappers

on foot while avoiding hostiles in every other alleyway and rooftop was incredible. The biggest let down was the lack of follow through on the gun trafficking plot that brought them back together in the first place - once "the package" was recovered, the story ended. I wanted more politics and intrigue along with my sexy military men.

WOO BUDDY.

This toes the line between excellent possessive mate bonds & controlling asshole behavior so well, never pushing into that territory where I have to put it down as Too Much. There was nothing I didn't like about Lucas and Noah's relationship - except maybe how fucking long Lucas took to understand what Noah clearly wanted.

A solid 4.5 stars.

Jacqs is offensive and ignorant and kind of an asshole. I loved him against my will. He is based on the character of Jayne from Firefly, a hypermasculine man who is uneducated but has developed high survival skills because of his shitty, shitty life.

Jacqs makes homophobic and sexist remarks consistently, which is initially very off-putting. However, through the narrative, we see that much of his derogatory language is tangled in his ignorance of sexuality. For example: thinking that hypersexual women have sex with everyone , whereas (in this society) it is defined as someone requiring sexual intimacy as a way to know someone before entering into any sort of relationship. Jacqs feels singled out as undesirable when Allie Grah (a hypersexual navigator on his ship) doesn't want anything to do with him and it bothers him more than the usual standard rejection, of which he can seemingly take with ease. The same is true of men who enjoy sex with other men - his deprived childhood in the overrun refugee camps gained him many experiences of seeing men being truly awful to others sexually and it colored his viewpoint. Jacqs is not the type of person to seek out new information; if it happened in front of him, he takes it as rote fact.

Enter Zeke, his new commanding officer, who is a true war hero. Someone with prescence and experience, someone Jacqs can respect, as the only other frontline veteran on the ship he has been banished to. He is also pansexual, which confuses Jacqs, who has a pretty terrible image of such sexualities in his head. Zeke has a predatory grace that draws Jacqs in, even if he doesn't quite peg it as attraction at first. Once the ball gets rolling on Jacqs' introspection, we see that his prejudices were mostly personal dislike. He didn't hate Lt. Taylor because he was registed as homosexual, but because he was a whiny pissant. Once pushed into thinking about it, Jacqs looks beyond Zeke and realizes there are other men fitting his criteria who he would gladly, as he says, "knock boots with"(thankfully, that takes Turbulence out of the "gay-for-you" genre). Jacqs just has a competency kink, y'all.

Sidenote: there are several instances in Zeke and Jacqs' interactions where Zeke would look as if he wanted to say something, but think better of it. This usually happened when Jacqs laid out his honest opinion on something. I would love to see this whole story from Zeke's POV.

Oh, by the way, there's an war going on between humans and some creepy ass alien species. That's kinda important too, I guess. Turbulence truly had a bittersweet ending - Jacqs and Zeke were attempting to prepare themselves emotionally for their inevitable separation. They knew Zeke would be recalled to the front after his "officer experience" training was complete. Instead,

the war ends (and not in humanity's favor) and they become well-treated slaves on a mining planet.

But hey! They're together, right?

3.5 stars. Despite never fully defining their relationship for over two decades, Gunny and Mac are two of the most emotionally apt fictional men I have ever read. The social conflict in this story is not usually what I grab military novels for, but discovering their passionate relationship, despite the odds, was an excellent way to pass a few hours.

The plot was relatively interesting, but it was set up to resemble an episode far too much. I don't read a lot of media tie-ins, but there's a reason different storytelling techniques exist. This was almost like reading a beefed up screenplay.

However, Collins was really on the money with the interpersonal connection in the BAU team. The defense of Reid to anyone who would dismiss him as just a kid, the silent byplay between JJ and Hotch, Morgan's frank relationship with Emily- it's all there. This is actually why I kept watching Criminal Minds past the point where it got to be too much murder porn.

Pro tip: if there's ever a room in your own house that your man doesn't allow you into, refuses to the point of obscene anger - he's probably a serial killer. Sorry.