Lee Savino's "Rescued by the Berserker" is from a planned series of wolf/berserker books; this was the first of the series. The antagonist of this story is a mage skilled in necromancy, called the 'Corpse King'. The extremely small description of this one dimensional villian was similar to a vampire many may have heard of, Nosferatu - some call him the original vampire villian in movies, by the way. The Corpse King commands an army of undead, again not really described but this reader came away with the impression of Borg-like zombies that follow the command of their leader, the Corpse King. The Corpse King is kidnapping spaewives - in case you are unsure, a spaewife is a Scots word used to describe a female fortune-teller, prophetess or witch - for unstated reasons; some he 'eats', but according to the alpha protagonist, Knut, the Corpse King planned to make his mate and the young heroine, Hazel, his bride. No reasoning is offered anywhere within this first story as to why the Corpse King 'eats' spaewives, or why he should desire Hazel as his bride. Characters were barely described, let alone developed, making it extremely difficult for this reader to visualize them or feel any empathy for or with them. Some of their dialogue had an authentic feel to it, while at other times it felt forced and unnatural. The story itself was told from both Knut and Hazel's point of view, which is fine and should allow a reader a greater sense of familiarity with a character while in their head; unfortunately, this reader did not find that to be happening. Savino told a lot of the story instead of showing it, although there were scenes she did a good job showing and those scenes allowed this reader a chance to visualize what was happening - much like a fly on the wall. Had the characters been better developed and more fully realized, the sex scenes could have been pretty hot, especially if one is interested in a dominant/submissive sex life. However, this reader only found them along the lines of 'eh'. Some of the settings were detailed enough to easily visualize, others were not. There were enough grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, as well as missing words, found in this story that it did toss this reader out of Savino's world fairly often. At the end of this first tale, Savino's blurb about planned upcoming books in this series concern ménage à trois of two males and one female as mates; this is not an area this reader is interested in, so she will not be reading any more of Lee Savino's works. This reader found Savino's writing style choppy at times, more fluid at others; however, she definitely has a creative flair, so while this reader will not 'not' recommend her writing, she will not recommend it, either. ** Review originally posted to Amazon reviews on May 13, 2017 and Goodreads on the same date. **
