No Man Can Tame

Dark-Elves of Nightbloom Series, Book 1

By: Miranda Honfleur

Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg

Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's Summary

After a failed courtship in an ally kingdom, 21-year-old Princess Alessandra returns home to a land torn apart by mutual hatred between the humans and the dark-elves. The "Beast Princess", as Aless is known by courtiers, confidently sets her mind to ways of making peace, but her father has already decided for her: She is to marry one of the mysterious and monstrous dark-elves to forge a treaty. While she intends to preserve the peace, the Beast Princess has plans of her own.  

Prince Veron has been raised knowing his life is not his own, but to be bargained away by his mother, the queen of Nozva Rozkveta, to strengthen the dark-elf queendom. When his mother tells him he is to marry a self-absorbed, vile human, he is determined to do his duty regardless of his personal feelings. After arriving at the human capital, he finds the "Beast Princess" rebellious and untamed - and not to be trusted.  

Aless and Veron face opposition at every turn, with humans and dark-elves alike opposing the union violently. Can two people from cultures that despise one another fall in love? Can a marriage between them bond two opposing worlds together, or will it tear them apart for good?  

Contains mature themes.

©2018 Miranda Honfleur (P)2019 Tantor

unique

loved this one. I listen to A LOT of audio books, sometimes more than 1 a day. (Sounds pathetic but I work with my hands, by myself.) It takes a really good one for me to review it. I enjoyed how this one takes into account the characters preconceived ideas of each other, and how their relationship grows and changes. I love how they learn from each other and help each other heal. The story is written in a unique enough way that I didn't feel like I could predict every little thing.
Definitely worth a credit.
ps. There is sex, though not explicit.

Has potential!

This is my first Miranda Honfleur book and i find that it has the potential to be better. I really like the story idea and it reminded me of Grace Draven’s Radiance but in a fantasy world that people are more familiar with: Fae, unicorns, shifters. I agree with other reviewers that the world-building and characters’ profiles need improvement. There was a lot of “extra talk” that seemed like explanations of explanations and did not paint a clear picture of the situations at hand. It made a lot of parts of the story boring and unnecessarily long, unfortunately.

I do not think the summary of the book and the contents of the book match completely. I got the impression that Veron (and his family) would be hesitant to accept the renowned Beast Princess, but he was understanding and his vows to her at the human wedding were sincere. Aless was painted as a bold, unruly princess, but I got none of that in the story. I remember she was supposedly bold in bed, but that was it. Maybe there was more?

Also, the characters’ names...um cut it down by half or make the names titles like Danaerys from GOT.

What I like and found unique was that the Elves were matriarchal and had “queen”-doms. The women are expected to be just as strong if not better than the men. The men are respectful and treat the women as equals. I have not come across a book that has this.

Good job regardless!

I would not have used a credit for this (even though audiobooks can be exchanged at any time) because of the underdevelopment of the countries, personalities, and histories. However, i am still going to keep this because of its potential. Maybe the book will be revised in print. I would definitely get that.

Dara Rosenberg did an excellent job narrating. Her voice is clear like Carly Robbins and her low tone for the men’s parts are not overly forced. I had some trouble distinguishing between the “extra talk” and dialogue and even dialogue amongst groups, but it is not a high concern. While Rosenberg can hold her own, I would have liked a man to voice Veron and other men’s parts. I cannot picture a “monstrous” Veron with her tone. 😂 Maybe it could be done with the kind of dual narration Renea Mason has for her Dr. Vincent trilogy. 👏

If you are curious to read this, proceed with no expectations and keep an open mind.

Miranda Honfleur is amazing

I wasn’t sure when I started this book if I would like it as much as I love her Blade and Rose series but I do! It is a great story. I love the romance of it all! The narration was wonderful as well! Another Win from Miranda Honfleur!

Fantastic series

Like the other books in this series, this was a fantastic journey. The only detracting factor, and it's really small, is that this narrator pronounced some of the places differently than the other narrator. Besides that tiny detail, it was wonderful.

loved the story line.

loved the story line can't wait for the book 2. What I don't like is you catch us 9n the first audible yet the next 2 books r kindle. It does make me angry.

Growl

This is really a poor version of Grace Draven’s Radiance. Really poor version. I am also starting to double anyone knows how to write a strong woman that isn’t a stubborn whiny pain in the ass. As this and the last book I tried to listen too, seem to think that is the only way to show female strength. Instead of using thoughtful and intelligence as strength. I will go back to Grace Draven’s books over and over again since that seems to be understood in her books.

ok

ok story line but slow at times. performance was difficult to follow esp between the male and female characters since not much change in voice

I really liked it but I was still confused

I like a fantasy romance and this gives you everything you'd want, a journey, character development, and an interesting world. The biggest problem I had with it was how confused I'd get about names, places and concepts. If I had read this rather than listened it might have been easier to follow.

No Rose and Blade

I got this after listening to the four audiobooks available in the Rose and Blade series by this author. That series is quite a read with lots of adventure, and I recommend it once the final two books are released since book #4 ends with multiple cliffhangers and the author is focusing on two other series so who knows when the final two books will be released? However, this book was much slower, more romance-focused, and quite frankly, harder to follow even though I was familiar with the world-building from the previous series. The other series had romance but was plot driven and very exciting and suspenseful. Since this is a spinoff, I expected the same and was disappointed.

There are also a lot of other differences between this and the series it came from. Aless doesn't even seem like the same mature, sharp-witted, confident character that she was in Blade and Rose's second book, By Dark Deeds. She seemed less mature and confident in this book, and her obsession with building a library wasn't even mentioned in By Dark Deeds. I would think she would have mentioned it to Jon during their courtship during By Dark Deeds, but I will let that one go. There were other discrepancies, too, like the fact she promised to talk her father into keeping his navy in Emaurria as long as she could in By Dark Deeds, then in this book, her father wouldn't even grant her an audience when she got back and their navy had been demolished by the pirate that was captured not too much later in the first series. From the other series, I thought she had a better relationship with her father and that her father had a stronger navy. That navy was the main reason Emaurria's king proposed to Aless in By Dark Deeds. In the first series, it was also stated that light-elves were able to only produce female offspring while dark-elves barely even produced any offspring at all. Yet, this book starts with a two-month-old dark-elf baby.

I also didn't love the narrator. Her voice sounded very young, which affected my view of Aless. She also mispronounced several words, and I'm not even talking about the Italian or made-up words. I'm talking about English words. I hate when narrators can't pronounce what they are paid to read. In addition, this book had a lot of difficult words that made it hard to follow on audio anyway so I bought the ebook so I could look up things in it if I didn't understand a section, but searching is not enabled on the ebook so I will be returning that. I ended up DNFing this book after trying several times to push ahead with it. I can't imagine someone who hasn't listened to or read the Blade and Rose series being able to follow this audiobook. Actually, maybe it would have been easier to follow if I hadn't read B&R. The discrepancies really threw me and kept taking me out of the story.

Wasn’t for me

The narrator is partly why I really did not like this book. She tried too hard with the male voices and it was comical but not in a good way. She also sounded robotic and the Italian words (when needed) felt forced. Almost like when you try to make Siri pronounce foreign words.

The story itself was not that great. I found myself missing parts and not bothering to go back to listen to them. I think the conflict she tried to create between the two main characters just didn’t seem realistic to me. Also, she wrote the elves to have sharp teeth and claws and for whatever reason I couldn’t get over that.

Not my favorite, but that could just be me.

Perfect if you want to relax.

The performance was fantastic! The story is simple, but heartwarming and easy to follow. Brilliant!

Fabulous

Thoroughly enjoyed my first Miranda Honfleur book! Narration was very good too. If you are a Grace Draven fan you will enjoy this! Looking forward to book 2