A Princess ruling on a cold, dark world A Warrior dreaming of a female he can love and protectA perfect match? Maybe not…he’s a Giant.Can Alanah and Bram overcome their differences to be together?Read Taming the Giant to find out… massive race of people, they are thirty percent bigger than their ancestors. Which makes them 9 feet tall—giants to regular sized humanoids. Now, hundreds of years after the genetic trade which made them so huge, the Jor’gen Kindred have no more females and are seeking a new people to trade with. Bram, their captain, has been dream-sharing with a female from a small, cold, rocky planet at the far edge of the galaxy. The problem? She’s tiny compared to him.
Alanah is the ruler of her people but not by choice. After a plague carried off all the men and boys, including her father the king, she and the female members of her pre-industrial society were left to fend for themselves. Alanah has always felt like an outsider. Not only is she a princess but she’s considered much too tall for a woman. The other ladies at court sneer at her behind her back, wondering where she will ever find a man big enough to take her on.
Enter Bram, a giant three feet taller than Alanah. Suddenly the formerly too-tall princess is feeling positively petite. But Alanah’s planet is stuck in the Dark Ages and Kindred technology looks like magic to them—black magic. Can Alanah convince her people the giant race is safe to join with? And can she and Bram overcome their differences—both physical and emotional—to form a lasting relationship?
You’ll have to read Taming the Giant to find out.
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This follows pretty closely with what I’ve come to expect (and enjoy) of Kindred Tales novels. Rather than the race the Kindred are interacting with being either our level of technology or farther along, this race is around middle ages level. They keep calling them human, though I’m still not sure that’s accurate, even after finishing it (probably my only mar to the book is this little conundrum). Bram is a Jor’gen Kindred, which pretty much means ‘giant’ as they’re all around 9 feet tall, so the majority of the story is he and Alanah overcoming that issue. Alanah has the interesting issue of being ‘unusually tall’ among her people at 6 feet. As with all Kindred Tales novels, this is very sweet, though there is a good bit of built in sorrow for both groups. It was interesting to get to know a new group of Kindred for sure.
This was a bit more straight forward than this author usually is. I prefer the twists she has in her other books. That being said this was still a very good story that I would recommend to any Kindred groupie.
This might be some of Ms Anderson’s best Kindred writing. The story was so unique and well developed. The characters I wanted to love were so easy to love and the one that I really wanted to hate grated me wrong from the moment I met her, and I wanted to punch her. I was drawn into the tale from the beginning and found it impossible to put the book down, reading it from cover to cover in one sitting.
For being a princess in a difficult position, and the tallest woman in the kingdom, Alanah was such a strong female character and had me empathizing with her immediately as she worked hard and had a difficult time trying to get some of the other women to work as hard as she did. She didn’t have to work, being a princess, but she did nonetheless, setting a wonderful example of someone who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty to show others how it was done.
Bram, a giant Jor’gen Kindred has been dream sharing with the lovely princess for 6 months and has finally found her along with the rest of the women on the planet. As they bring their ship into orbit around the planet, they discover something that could potentially mean the end of the population of their kingdom. Desperate to claim his female and bond with her, he visits her kingdom and makes a plea to prove to her how much she means to him and how precarious their living situation is. Each of them has hurdles to overcome to reach the place of trust and happiness a bond can cause. And as with all of the Kindred novels, there is strong opposition that threatens not only their possibility of bonding but perhaps even their lives.
I listened to the audiobook version of the story and it was good. It’s not my favorite but it was worth listening to, especially if you enjoy this series as much as I do. Alanah and Bram’s story was one that was definitely different when it came to the ritual needed for the females of Alanah’s planet. Bram is with a group of kindred seeking women and Alanah planet if full of women after the plague killed all of their men. This story is one of adventure, desires, steamy scenes and everything that comes along with this series. I look forward to the next book in the series.
This was a very different Kindred tale. A long ago race of Kindred that left for other worlds. Giants that tower over females on any other planet. They need women and this very old planet with no technology is full of women with no men. Can this work for them with at least a metre or more height difference.
Evangeline is a master storyteller, her men make you sigh…are there really any out there like that?
A wonderful fantasy romance that swept me away.
I keep telling myself that I am going to stop reading this series and yet, once again I see three new Tales out and my curiosity makes me pick it up. So, pros. Yes, I was entertained. The sex was hot. The author has a very vivid imagination regarding creating crazy alien sexual customs. The cons of this book is the same in most Kindred (and Alien Bride Index series) books. This author has exactly one formula for her romances and sex between the characters. One. Not a couple of different ways characters finally do the nasty, just one. Fair warning and spoiler for every sci-fi romance book this author has ever written is below. Some crazy insane things happen that forces the man to pleasure the woman or have to do a ton of sexual acts but never the full deed. It’s never nonconsensual, both characters always want to do all these sex acts, but shyness or insecurity on the woman’s part stops this until the poor female gets a weird disease or eats an aphrodisiac or is on a planet with VERY public sexual rituals. And finally in the end, the female always has to convince or trick the man into completing their bond because he feels unworthy or that he’s now protecting the female from himself. There, every Kindred book plot can be boiled down to those words. And the AMI series started out promising but I know the last 2 books were exactly like this. Another con in this one was the names of things. Seriously? Ms. Anderson is usually MUCH MUCH better than that. She also used the word human once (accident, I assume that the editor didn’t catch) when these women are NOT from Earth.
Honestly, I’m always equal parts annoyed and entertained by these books. I keep picking them up just to see how crazy the sexual situations these characters get into are. This author is a one trick pony for the actual relationship but she’s exellent at creating weird, crazy alien sexual customs.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and I am voluntarily leaving a review no minority compensation was received the opinions I have expressed are my own what that being said. This novella is shorter than I’m used to for a Kindred story but just the same I enjoyed it. I felt like this was a sweeter side of the kindred and found the whole idea of kindred giant fascinating. Overall enjoyable and entertaining read with some suspense, action, and of course steamy romance. I would’ve like to see more actions moments also maybe we can get a future story of giant kindred and the previous kindred together that will definitely be a epic read.
fun read