Paperback Reader

**GUEST REVIEW**

I should start this review by explaining that I am probably not the target audience for this particular book, Into Thin Air by Cindy Miles. I asked to review this novel in part because it was the only author of the three whom I had never read before.

Apparently, there was a good reason for that.

I am not generally a fan of ghost romances (although I have read—and liked—Lynn Kurland’s ghost novels), and I have a hard time with romances featuring angels of any type (I could not finish Meljean Brooks’s well-reviewed Demon Angel no matter how hard I tried). I tend toward darker, edgier romances with hyper-masculine alpha heroes, and a lot of sex.

Having said that, this novel is the exact opposite of what I would normally read. This is the story of a medieval Celtic warrior named Gawan, who became a “Guardian”—and earthbound angel--after altruistically saving a boy’s life. Gawan has spent the past 1000 or so years helping his “charges” —however, this is where the novel began to get very confusing for me. We’re never really clear on what Guardianship entails, because Gawan forgets his charges after his duty is completed. In fact, everyone who encounters his charges forgets them.

You can see how this would be an issue. I think this was a major mis-step for the author because I kept getting stuck on this issue. If he forgets them, how does he ever learn and improve? Shoot, how does he even know what to do?

Anyway, Gawan apparently only has twenty-something more days of guardian duty before he becomes mortal and then lives out the rest of his natural life as a human. Of course, it can’t possibly be this easy, so his final charge, Ellie, is more complicated than most—she’s “In Betwinxt”—basically, as I understood it, almost dead but not quite. She’s comatose. She shows up in Gawan’s life as a ghost, but the problem is, she has no idea who she is or how she became “In Betwinxt”—and more importantly, she does not know where her physical body is located. It’s clear that her body is not in a hospital, and so there is a desperate need to find her body and hopefully save her life. And to make things even more difficult, whenever she regains some kind of consciousness in her mortal body, her ghostly form disappears.

This is all very complicated, and I continued to be confused throughout the entire book. I admit this was exacerbated because I put the book down several times in frustration and so there were week-long gaps between readings. This is not a good sign. I am a book-a-day reader and rarely abandon one book for another.

I can’t say I ever really understood how the world of the Guardians worked. Gawan could talk to ghosts, and he could touch ghosts, and Ellie, despite being sort of a ghost, could borrow clothes from living people and wear them. But other ghosts couldn’t do that. Some ghosts could travel between locations and some couldn’t. Regular people could see the ghosts, but they couldn’t see Ellie. Well, no, that’s not right. Some living people could see Ellie. But some couldn’t. And there were a lot—a lot—of ghosts, and a secondary cast of characters from a nearby estate that clearly were part of a prior book and at that point I started to feel not only confused, but frustrated. This was one of those books with an overwhelming cast of characters, and I could not remember all their names or who they were or why I would want to invest myself in learning about them.

Frankly, there was a point where I started to wonder if I was just not clever enough to understand Into Thin Air. I don’t generally have this much trouble understanding books—I read a lot of fantasy and urban fiction and paranormal romance and they all have complicated world building and I don’t ever remember being so confused about those novels.

There were good things about this book. I liked Gawan, even though he is definitely a beta hero and not one of my beloved alphas. Gawan is covered in tattoos, which I thought was rather hot. I felt he was an interesting character, although I am always a bit cynical when it comes to romance novel heroes who are a thousand years old. Authors make it seem like this is no big deal—when I think that living for a thousand years is a very big deal. That’s a lot of death and change and technology to master. Shoot, most people over 30 are already so confused by technology we have to call our nephews to help us program the DVR.

I particularly liked the angle about Ellie being Gawan’s “intended”, and the small mark on the side of her mouth that made that fact clear. When he “steals” that mark, I thought that was very sweet and tender. All of their kissing scenes were well written and engaging. There was the appropriate level of angst regarding the fact that if Gawan was successful in saving Ellie, she would no longer remember him, and that his intended would be lost to him forever. I thought that was a good hook to keep the reader invested.

I was a little thrown by the lack of sex in this novel. I guess I should have figured that since this was about an angel that there might not be any nookie, but like I said, the last angel book I tried to read was Demon Angel, and there was definitely some gettin’ it on in that novel. I had a hint that this might be a sex-less book when one of the characters, Jason, appoints himself Ellie’s chaperone and protector. I remember thinking, why? What did she need one for? And then, having the thought: oh, is this one of those no-sex novels? Can’t they put that someplace on the cover so I’m prepared and not disappointed?

But that’s strictly a personal preference, and really didn’t impact my overall feelings about this book.

My biggest issue (other than the fact that I found her world, and its rules, confusing) with Into Thin Air was that Ellie is the most passive heroine I have ever encountered. She does nothing in the novel except appear and disappear. Because she is a “In Betwinxt”, she can’t interact with the world around her very well, and it’s difficult to get a sense of her real personality and root for her as a character. Even one of the things that I liked about the novel—that she was Gawan’s intended, as demonstrated by this mark on the site of her mouth—even that was passive. He “steals” the mark. There’s no reciprocal “stealing” on her part. She’s not even in most of the novel, and when she is, she’s not very helpful.

I really wanted to like this book, since it was the first book I had ever reviewed for a romance blog. I tried. I just couldn’t. It’s gotta be a real stinker for me to give it a D. So, I’ll give this one a C- and my apologies that I couldn’t grade it higher. This would have been a DNF if I hadn’t volunteered to review it for Paperbackreader.

You can visit Cindy here and purchase this book here and here.