Dear Author » sexual-assault

REVIEW: Archangel’s Blade by Nalini Singh

Janine — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 19:00:03 +0000

Dear Ms. Singh,

Archangel’s Blade opens with a flashback in the vampire Dmitri’s POV, one that takes us back to Dmitri’s human life. In the flashback, dark, ruthless Dmitri is revealed to have once, a thousand years ago, been a loving and tender hearted man devoted to his two children and to his wife.

Smiling at his son’s joy, he looked up and saw her in the doorway. His wife. With their new daughter in her arms. His heart twisted into a knot that was almost painful.

Sometimes, he thought he should be ashamed to love his wife and children so much, until the days when he went away to the markets were a rare anguish…but he could not bring himself to believe it.

This picture of domestic bliss is almost shocking in contrast with the Dmitri we know from the three previous Guild Hunter books. As the Archangel Raphael’s second-in-command, Dmitri could not be more loyal – and ruthlessly cold. He is said to love no one, and to like his pleasure twined with pain.

Though she has never met Dmitri, Guild Hunter and ancient languages expert Honor St. Nicholas is well aware of his reputation. She has spent years observing him on television and from afar due to an inexplicable obsession, but the thought of a close encounter with him or any other vampire now terrifies her.

Ten months ago Honor was kidnapped by vampires and raped and tortured for eight weeks. While two of her attackers were killed during her rescue and two more captured alive, no information about the rest of her tormentors has been uncovered. Honor has been hiding in one of the Guild Academy buildings since the assault, so when Sara, the Guild director, calls her and informs her that she is needed to consult with Dmitri on a case, Honor feels shattered.

Nevertheless, she manages to scrape enough strength to pull herself together and meet with Dmitri at The Tower where he oversees Raphael’s empire. The encounter is anything but soothing – Dmitri presents Honor with a young vampire’s severed head whose tattoo he wants her to decipher.

Moreover, Dmitri is attracted to Honor, though she is far from his usual type. When he puts his hands on the back of her neck and she slices his face in instinctive self-defense, he promises her private, intimate retribution at his hands. But things begin to change when Dmitri learns what Honor suffered, and vows to bring all the remaining perpetrators to justice.

As he takes Honor along on his excursions to find her attackers and to mete out punishment to them, a bond develops between Honor, who slowly gains confidence and begins to trust this one vampire, and Dmitri, who persistently denies that he can have a lasting or meaningful relationship with any woman – but finds it difficult to deny Honor whatever she needs.

Archangel’s Blade is a melding of more than one genre, with elements of mystery, thriller, horror, urban fantasy and romance. From these disparate genres you craft a nearly seamless, powerful, riveting novel. I found myself wholly absorbed in Dmitri and Honor’s story as I watched both characters transform – Honor into a courageous survivor, Dmitri into a more human, tender, loving badass than he’d been before.

Archangel’s Blade reminded me of a bit of Time Without End by Linda Lael Miller, a book I remember loving back in the 1990s, and one that had a very similar premise. I thought Time Without End was pretty dark but Archangel’s Blade makes it look like a sweet and gentle story.

I appreciated that it was acknowledged multiple times how thin is the line that separates Dmitri from the villains he takes down. There’s a cruel streak in him at times (especially in the beginning of this book), and in the earlier books, I hated the way he forced his seductive scent on Elena.

One of the reasons I was able to love Dmitri despite this is that the vampire Dmitri was contrasted with the human he had once been, sweet, caring and loyal above all to his beloved wife and children. You do a great job of showing what a lovely person that human Dmitri had been, how much he had lost, and showing also, that some remnants of that man were still in Dmitri.

Honor is also haunted, not just by the events of her recent past and her foster home upbringing, but also by an inexplicable sense of loss she has always lived with. I felt that past and present weren’t quite as well-integrated in her as they had been in Dmitri’s character. Surprisingly, it was easier to see the human Dmitri in him than it was to see the woman she’d once been in Honor.

But despite this, Dmitri and Honor’s journey gripped my guts and my heart. Seeing these two lost souls find love and acceptance with one another wasn’t just compelling, but also deeply moving.

Each time I read one of your books, I’m of two minds about the prose style. On the one hand, it feels a little choppy and repetitive at times, but on the other hand it’s also vivid, powerful and distinctive, and when I enjoy a book this much, it is difficult to complain.

A bigger problem for me, especially with this series, is the violence. This book is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. Still, although the violence disturbed me, it also worked better for me than it has in the previous Guild Hunter books. I was quickly plunged into the dark places Dmitri and Honor inhabited and from there, followed their struggle toward a ray of light.

It was brave of you to tackle this much darkness and emotional baggage in one book. I was so touched when, at the end of the book, Honor and Dmitri fully understood and embraced the love they had found in each other, and yet, they had both lived through so much heartbreak and pain that the book left me a bit melancholy despite the happy ending.

Nonetheless, for its intense emotional quality and its romantic and redemptive feel, this is my favorite installment of the Guild Hunter series so far. B+/A-.

~Janine

REVIEW: Hard to Hold by Stephanie Tyler

Jane — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:41:31 +0000

Dear Ms. Tyler:

I was pretty excited to read your stand alone romantic suspense. I think it did a great job of blending the suspense and the romance. It was full of sexual tension but it also had a strong emotional impact even if I did think the villain was a little overwrought and the insertion of the father figure with his … ah, magical abilities, was a bit jarring.

Here’s what I thought the book presented in terms of each of the main characters: Do you want to live or do you want to die. Your subconscious knows the answer and dictates your actions. Change your course means coming to grips with living. Dying is easy.

Isabelle Markham is a talented plastics doctor who decided the regular practice wasn’t for her. She began to volunteer for Doctors Without Borders. During her last trip, she was taken hostage by her bodyguard, left for dead and was rescued by Lt. Jake Hansen. The physical exploits are laid out so simply, without gloss, that it makes Jake seem all the more heroic. He runs several miles, through difficult and dangerous terrain to get to a helicopter landing site, carrying Isabelle all the way.

“Are you going to keep fighting, Isabelle? Or am I in this alone” Jake asks her during the rescue. Isabelle asks him in return to share one of the worst things that he has done in his life so that she can feel comfortable unburdening herself. She tells him that she welcomed her captor into her arms and into her body so that she wouldn’t be violated. During the rescue, Isabelle asks him to kiss her. ”I don’t want to die knowing that the last man who touched me hurt me.”

And so he does and it forges a connection between the two. When the two return to the States, Jake resumes his life, trying to forget about Isabelle.

0200

Hostage found. Medical performed.

0230

Held hostage’s hnd.

0300

Lost my fucking mind and kissed the hostage. Repeatedly.

Jake is better at diagnosing Isabelle’s neurosis than his own. She maintains to herself, even after the rescue mission is over, that she was never raped; that she consented. Jake knows differently. He rescued her. He saw her naked, beaten and bloodied body. He knows that her control was taken from her. He knows that she was violated. He also knows that until she can come to grips with that, she can never be truly with him.

Jake and Isabelle are really well drawn and delicately so. By that I mean that their layers are pulled away fairly slowly and we see them evolve before our eyes. Jake is grappling with his past and feels that Isabelle is too fine to be with a man who killed his own father. He suffers quite a bit of insecurity in this regard.

Isabelle says to her mother that Jake is the only one who treats her as if she is whole. Her fierceness, what made her get through the hostage situation, the rape, the aftermath, what propels her forward is all of what attracts Jake to her. His silent strength and acceptance is what she needs. She is the storm and he is the port.

This is not an uncomplicated plot and there are many characters that are introduced (maybe too many?) Isabelle’s mother is a senator. Her past was complicated. Isabelle’s mother has a relationship with Admiral Callahan who is Jake’s superior and ordered Jake to watch over her. There is a secondary romance that I can see evolving over the three books. There is some mystical crap going on with Jake’s adopted father. There is the relationship between the three adopted brothers. And all of that seemed extraneous to the story. It was build up for the series, but affected the two main protagonists and even the plot almost none at all. I think they could have been removed and I wouldn’t have even noticed. I liked Jake and Isabelle so much I wanted to spend my time exclusively with them. Their chemistry was palpable.

Having said that, this book (and I predict this series) is highly addictive. I know I am interested and anxious for the next story. B-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

What’s Wrong with Massachusetts? (Or Lie To Get Laid and You Might Go to Prison)

Jane — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:58:17 +0000

In our ongoing coverage of what is wrong with the United States (soon to be expanded to cover wrong headed laws being enacted or pushed to be enacted in foreign countries), we include Massachusetts. A proposed bill would allow individuals who obtain sex by lying to be charged with a felony which would, you know, probably implicate 75% of bar patrons and one night stands.

Whoever has sexual intercourse or unnatural sexual intercourse with a person having obtained that person’s consent by the use of fraud, concealment or artifice, and who thereby intentionally deceived such person so that a reasonable person would not have consented but for the deception, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or any term of years. As used in this statute, ‘fraud’ or ‘artifice’ shall not be construed to mean a promise of future consideration.

As Eugene Volokh states, its probably not the intent of the drafters of the law, but the language essentially makes the elements of the rape by fraud act as follows:

Any time someone has consensual sex (1) having gotten the consent through (a) lying or (b) concealment, and (2) a jury (or perhaps a judge) concludes that “a reasonable person would not have consented but for the deception,” that’s a felony, labeled as a form of rape. Promises (“I’ll marry you”) are excluded, but other statements -’ or silences -’ are not.

I wonder, since it is a sex crime case, whether the offender would have to register as a sex offender.

REVIEW: Ben’s Wildflower by Carol Lynne

Jane — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:00:14 +0000

Dear Ms. Lynne:

Fellow blogger Karen Scott emailed me yesterday and said I should go and buy Ben’s Wildflower. I obediently went and bought it. About 10 pages in, I emailed Ms. Scott back and asked her if I had done something to offend her because I thought she and I were pals.

Katie Crawford is a tiny woman who is working her ranch alone after the death of her parents. She’s at the end of her rope but won’t sell. Her neighbor brings by a friend, Ben Thomas, to see the ranch. Kate refuses Thomas’ offer to sell the ranch but easily capitulates when Thomas offers to buy only half. Kate is a shy woman. She had a terrible experience as a teen at the hands of the bank owner’s son and has stayed away from town ever since. Ben falls in love with Kate immediately but believes that his love can only be an emotional connection rather than a physical one because of bad experience in his youth.

Ben’s Wildflower is a bad book. I don’t know that I can say that any nicer. As with so many other bad books, it is just best to let the book do the talking.

Ben’s bad experience dates back to when he took his first girlfriend, Mary Sue. Mary Sue was a tiny woman like Kate and during intercourse he ripped her “tiny pussy”. “Since that horrible day he’d fucked only big, very, very experienced women.” I couldn’t figure out how he knew how big a woman’s vagina was. Can a man tell that by height? weight? length of index finger? Does he carry around stirrups, a speculum and a ruler?

Kate was described in the following manner: “tiny thing”, “tiny woman”, “tiny precious body “, “tiny waist and nice sized ass”, “tiny slip of woman”, “tiny hand”, “tiny spitfire.” I was pretty sure we were dealing with Thumbelina until I read she was 5′ 2″ and 110 lbs. I don’t perceive that to be so tiny as to be unable to have sex with Ben even if he has a 10 inch cock. I don’t know how big Ben was, but it sounds like he rivaled Andre the Giant. “Just one of his fingers had to be at least two or three of hers.”

The story doesn’t have much plot nor is there much consistency in characterization. Even though Kate works all day at the ranch, doesn’t go into town and is a virgn, she still takes time to pierce her navel and her clit along with buying lingerie with cutouts. Apparently she must like looking good for her collection of vibrators.

Ben’s big character arc is based on his Andre the Giant penis getting inside the little teeny tiny vagina of Kate. Lots of time spent on that. There’s a really bad (so bad that it isn’t even comical) legal subplot put in where criminals are tried without a lawyer and Kate represents herself in prosecuting said criminal. Okay, maybe it is comical.

The sex scenes are also quite amusing. “He swallowed as much of her breast as he could and bit down lightly.” That sounds, um, painful and not at all erotic. Also painful were Ben’s constant erections and the sacrifices he had to make because of them. “He’d had to give up wearing underwear. When his cock got hard, as was the daily occurrence lately, underwear was painful. Ben had no choice but to jerk off every morning and night.” Oh, dear Ben. I guess they don’t make boxers for those Gentle Giants.

But he probably didn’t know any better spending all his time having sex with “only big, very, very experienced women” or “Well stretched and experienced.” I couldn’t really tell whether you were trying to tell me something about Ben’s past sexual history. It seems like there was a pattern but I just can’t tell because you weren’t obvious enough about it.

There was also alot of throwaway sex scenes in the book where Ben’s former Navy Seal squadron apparently are all gay or bisexual and like to get it on just at random times in the book with no apparent care who is watching; whether it is out to dinner, at the breakfast table, in a car. In one scene Ben is on the phone to someone and two of the guys are going at it right behind him.

And because all good erotica books have anal sex in it, Ben’s Wildflower ends on that note. I think it’s a bit ironic that the cover model looks like someone from the Miss Bodybuilder pageant. F.

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Undressing Mercy by Deanna Lee

Jane — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:00:37 +0000

Dear Ms. Lee:

This was the first book that I read by you and the writing was good enough to get me to hunt down and purchase some of your backlist titles. I only wish that you or your publisher had told buyers that this book had already been released as an ebook with LooseID so that the buyer wouldn’t inadvertently buy the book twice.

Mercy, an assistant director of a major gallery in Boston, is attempting to cement her position as next in line for the directorship. She has a promise from one of the premier artists in the world to show an exclusive at her gallery. The catch is that she must pose for a piece to be included in the collection. Her goals are impeded by Milton Storey, the current director. And, her past. Mercy is recovering from a rape from a former co-worker. When a current project brings her former co-worker to Boston, Mercy’s attempts at recovery are tested.

Mercy moved to Boston from NY on the basis that she would be given the directorship at the gallery. One of the main reasons that Mercy moved was that she suffered the rape. Because she was afraid of the scandal, of her position in the art world, and the thought of a trial, Mercy decided to move instead of pursuing any legal charges. The book opens with her at her therapist’s office and I thought that was a smart move. It showed me that Mercy was actively seeking help to recover from the trauma.

Milton Storey is a blowhard who skirted the edge of believability. His goal is to get rid of Mercy but she has the backing of the board who brought her in. With the confidence that she lacks in her personal life, Mercy is able to stand down Milton. I do not know whether you intended the work situation to parallel the sexual assault Mercy had with her co-worker or whether I was reading things into the story but it seemed to me that part of the plot was watching Mercy assert herself over Milton Storey in a way she couldn’t do over her co-worker in NY but learns to do during the course of the book.

Shamus Montgomery is a well known sculptor who specializes in art depicting nude and sensual women. As part of the deal for allowing Mercy’s gallery to show his pieces, Shamus wants Mercy to sit for him. At first, I thought this was a ridiculous request but over the course of the story, you really sold me on how great of an honor it was for Mercy to be asked and how normal it seemed for the artist to be making the request.

As Mercy “undressed” she gained more power over her own life, in part because she was regaining control over her sexuality. The story is told in the first person and other than the graphic language, I didn’t find the book to be outre in terms of the sex. It did have erotic overtones because of the nature of the book: i.e., Shamus sculpted erotic pieces and therefore needed to explore those aspects of a woman.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the names: Mercy and Shame (his nickname). I felt that they were so unusual that they should mean something but I wasn’t sure where they fit into the overall story.

The niggles in this book would be that some of the secondary characters were too broadly drawn for my taste, their actions were too extreme. Further, I felt that Shamus was really a mystery. I couldn’t understand the attraction between Shame and Mercy because I really never understood Shame. This is a good book, but not a great book. B-.

Best regards,

Jane