Reviewed by Sheena
TITLE: The Tide of War
SERIES: Defending Epsilon #1
AUTHOR: Lori A. Witt
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 320 Pages
BLURB:
Lieutenant Commander Kyle West is one of Earth Fleet’s greatest fighter pilots. Every day, he leads his squadron into battle over Earth’s cities in a seemingly endless war against a vicious alien race, defending his home and his loved ones.
Millions of miles away, the Fleet’s Elite Squadron attacks from another angle, engaging the enemy on its home turf. Casualties are high, and the Squadron needs more of the Fleet’s very best. But joining the Elite is a death sentence—a surety Kyle isn’t willing to face. Until a devastating attack wipes out the family he refused to leave.
Commander Andrei Dezhnyov, an Elite Squadron gunner, isn’t sure what to make of the cocky new American pilot. Kyle is equally uncertain about the snarly Russian, but as they warm up to each other, their tentative alliance becomes a deep bond—one that endangers them both when a daring and disobedient rescue reveals secrets that call into question everything they’ve ever believed about their enemy. Secrets that their superiors would kill to protect.
REVIEW:
It’s not often I read a book by a veteran author and put it down feeling so very conflicted. Lori A. Witt, or L.A. Witt, or Lauren Gallagher, or any of her other numerous aliases, is a fantastic, skilled, and masterful author who churns out novels faster than people can read them. While rarely do I come across a book of hers that I didn’t enjoy (in fact, it has never happened to date), this time, with The Tide of War, Ms. Witt left me in a shaking, wretched, angry, grieving mess of a reader…and I still don’t know how I really feel about this book.
My trouble comes not from the exemplary setup of the plot, or the gut-wrenching scenes of grief and anger, but the fact that not even halfway in to a single chapter of the book, I had an epiphany of sorts, and I saw EXACTLY how it was going to end. And 300 pages later, I was right. A single clue dropped by a throwaway character told me exactly how the book was going to go, step by step, motion by motion, plot point by plot point, and BOOM, there at the end, I was reading the very scene I knew was going to happen.
Now here is where being a fan of a particular author comes as a handicap. Is it my devotion to her wonderful backlist that made is so easy for me to predict and be certain of the final outcome, due to my extensive exposure to her work? Or was it the book itself, and the fact the clue was so blatant, so obvious, that everyone else had the same issue as me, and saw how the book was going to end?
Or perhaps, in her maniacal and devious way, Ms. Witt wanted the readers to know what was going to happen—that she wanted us to know just how deep the anger and rage and grief and pain were all going to run before she brought us to the end. In this book, The Tide of War, the reader is not going to experience the typical romance—not even close.
As Ms. Witt tends to separate her romance subgenres under different names, this is a very atypical m/f/m/f—m/m insanely twisted book, and since it is not under L.A. Witt, this book is not devoutly m/m. While one of the male MCs is strictly gay, the other is fluidly bisexual. Each MC is paired with a woman—don’t get too turned off, its simply how the world works in this book—and the relationships are either platonic, or actual marriages that have open boundaries. I sincerely cheer on Ms. Witt as she conquers the ideas of fidelity and loyalty and what is right and wrong in a relationship full of love and acceptance, and she did it here in a unapologetic manner that left me applauding her even as she dragged me through the reeds in a river of angst.
Kyle and Andrei, our two male MCs, are toughened, scarred, and battered warriors that each toil under the yoke of war. They have both suffered grief, and loss, and physical and mental pain from their experiences that would leave lesser humans collapsed and wanting ‘it all to be over.’ This book is heavy of anger and pain, so be warned—this isn’t a romance so much as a tale of two men who come together to survive, to feel alive, to stay alive—and avenge those they have lost.
I am very glad this book is #1 in a series. It needs to be. While the book is not structurally incomplete, nor does it end on a cliffhanger, the characters in the world Ms. Witt created are left with the end of their story left untold. The danger isn’t over, the threat isn’t gone—things are only going to get worse. All I can hope, along with Kyle and Andrei—is that there is a dawn on the other side of night. And that the ending of all things made the journey through war worth it.
RATING: 
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