Healing in His Wings (Healing #1)
I wanted to like this, I really did... and in some respects it was a lovely story. I truly enjoy Ariel's characters, love her historical work, so I was excited to see an SFR from her.I just wish there had been more SF. The initial premise is so intriguing - an alien race with medically gifted wings - that I was looking forward to some solid world building, some serious culture clashes, some intersting differences in anatomy. It never quite panned out. There really wasn't a wide divergence from Earth in any serious way. Cities. Restaurants. Familiar job structures. Familiar furniture and plumbing. The aliens are essentially human in most ways, males having oddly identical equipment to their human counterparts, down to the prostate, which probably bothered me most.
But, I'm an old SF geek, and these things are important to me. They most likely wouldn't be to others. I just fell that if you're going to set a romance on an alien world, there should be some ...alien-ness.
All that said- the characters are sweet and their tender courtship quite touching. The healing, of course, refers to more than just the physical of which Ryan is in desperate need. As with all of Ariel's characters, it was hard not to get attached and I did root for them despite all else I've said.
