Dear Ms. Black,

I will admit front and center that I never read Decadent, but I definitely did read the reviews and comments on both this site and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I was intrigued by the reviews and comments, similar to how one is intrigued watching the slow-motion replays of the crashes during the Women’s Olympic Downhill ski race. The hits just kept on coming. But for some reason, I never picked up the book, and after readingDelicious, I am very happy that I didn’t bother.

It took me quite a while to get through this book, not because there were big words or complicated plot twists, but because I had to keep collecting my jaw from the ground and re-reading to make sure I’d read what I thought I had. I laughed…I cried…I nearly barfed. I can’t say it was better than CATS, but that’s probably because none of the characters were weres.

Luc Traverson (cousin of Deke from Decadent) spent an incredible, unforgettable night with Alyssa Deveraux, but it’s a night he’s never going to repeat. Alyssa is a stripper and very unsuitable mother material, and Luc is looking to marry his mommy. Don’t believe me? Straight from the horse’s mouth:

A perfect wife. A perfect stay-at-home mother, just like his own. That’s what he wanted.

Why, you ask, is Luc looking for this paragon of virtue? Well, Luc has some sperm issues, and his biological clock is TICKING! He wants babies, and he wants ‘em now, and he’ll do anything to get ‘em, be it adoption, insemination…he didn’t go as far as stealing, but it sounded damn close. This guy has baby fever…lord knows why. Luc thinks Alyssa is totally unsuitable as a mother because she’s a stripper. And, in Luc’s vernacular, stripper also equates to stupid, sex-crazed, gold digging whore. Without asking, knowing or having any sort of proof, Luc assumes that all of Alyssa’s interactions with the male population involve her trading sex for just about everything.

So why is Luc back in Alyssa’s neck of the woods? Well, remember that special night they spent together? As an exchange for sleeping with him and Deke (Deke chickened out at the last minute), Luc promised Alyssa he’d cook for her restaurant opening week. One wonders why Luc thinks Alyssa uses sex as currency.

Alyssa knows deep in her bones that Luc is the man for her. Anyone that gives a rogering that amazing and sends you flowers days later, but won’t return phone calls, is your one twew wuve. Alyssa has Luc cooking at her restaurant for one whole week, so she has seven days and nights to work her wiles on him. Oh, and she hasn’t had sex with anyone since she hooked up with Luc in Decadent, and before that encounter was celibate for 3 years. I bet that re-virginized her.

Alyssa’s restaurant, Bonheur, is an expensive, upscale endeavor that is blocks from her original business venture, the strip club Sexy Sirens. I don’t find it strange that Alyssa would want to be the proprietor of a hip, upscale business venture and shed her stripper image. However, it’s hard to do that when you’re still stripping. You read that right. Alyssa owns Sexy Sirens (and apparently has for five years) but still strips at her own club to make ends meet…or something. Oh, the humanity. Luckily, Alyssa’s bouncer (and giant, Goldberg-sized slab ‘o meat) is there to keep the riffraff away:

[...] Tyler lifted Alyssa, sat in her chair, and set her on his lap. His hand rested high on her thigh, the other on her waist. And the bouncer’s fingers weren’t still. They roamed, his thumb brushing the curve of her breast, his other palm disappearing under her skirt, over her hip.

Alyssa didn’t blink, much less fight him off.

What? In addition to this, Luc has caught Tyler ogling Alyssa naked…in her own home. Alyssa’s reaction? Not much of a reaction at all, in fact they had a conversation as he helped her out of the tub. Hell, I’d assume the same as Luc; she’s fucking the bouncer.

Happily, the stripper prejudice goes both ways. Alyssa is the target of a crazed lunatic and is on the receiving end of threatening notes and break-ins, in other words, the usual. Rather than doing things to protect her own well being, she’s TSTL (as are all the characters in this book) and ducks away from Tyler and Luc to check in at Sexy Sirens. She’s talking to an employee and there’s this:

Though it was hard to take someone seriously wearing a thong and pasties, Alyssa couldn’t discount the dancer’s observation.

Yep, you read that right. She just knocked her own employee for doing something she does on a regular basis. You may think I’m nit picking here, but I promise you, there is a gem on nearly every page of this book. At this point, I’m sure you realize that the back-and-forth between Luc and Alyssa consists of Luc hating that he wants Alyssa and punishing her for it, Alyssa wanting Luc but hating that he doesn’t want her, respect her or seem to give a rat’s ass about her:

“What I really wanted to hear was that you believed I didn’t have sex with Tyler today.”

Luc shrugged. “You don’t owe me explanations.”

“I don’t,” she agreed. “But I want to know what you really think.”

It was probably pointless, but she couldn’t stand him thinking she was the kind of woman who slept around.

He paused, seemingly lost in his thoughts, sorting through them. “You’re too dedicated to your future to fuck away the afternoon the day

your happiness opens its doors.”

Tears hit her instantly. He got it. He got her! It was a start.

Trust me, for much of the book, we don’t get beyond “start”. Luc’s jealous of any interaction she has with any other man, and backs it up with his crazy assertion that <sarcasm> relationships are difficult and take work </sarcasm>.

No matter what route he took to fatherhood, he couldn’t achieve it without a woman in the picture. Even if Alyssa supported his decision to adopt or undergo surgery or visit a sperm bank, she’d have to agree to go through the process with him, perhaps carry a child. And they’d have to find a way to make their passionate, difficult relationship work.

What kind of mother would she be? Certainly not like his own.

I nearly cried when I read the above, and this is the point the wheels fell off the bus for me. There are so many things wrong with it that I think any commentary would send me into rantsville, and I don’t want to go there. In addition to all of the relationship angst, sexxoring and fighting, there’s a buttload of non-communication, miscommunication, intentional miscommunication, oversharing (by secondary characters) and an annoying background threat to Alyssa’s well-being that could be resolved/avoided if she’d just discuss her past with someone…anyone. This book is written in all seriousness, but the characters, plot and dialogue are so unbelievable that I kept thinking my brain was going to spontaneously combust from the absurdity. F.

~ Shuzluva

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I was very excited to see that you had a new release out. You are one of my favorite Harlequin Presents authors. Sure, you have some rape books in your past, but this is 2010, and those are a thing of the past, right? Apparently not. The Innocent’s Surrender started out innocuously. The heroine, Natasha Kirby, is summoned to meet with her foster brothers regarding the failing family business. Her brothers want her to promise to marry Alex Mandrakis, their chief rival. The promise will somehow allow her family to gain enough time and confidence with bankers to allow them to gain financing to support the efforts to revitalize the family business.

While Natasha initially resists, she is assured that it is just a verbal promise and that Alex, a pursued bachelor, would not even be interested in her proposal. She signs the agreement and returns to London thinking nothing more of the situation.

Natasha is summoned yet again and when she arrives in Athens, she is whisked away by a car service. Natasha believes she is headed to her brothers’ homes but instead she is taken to a stranger’s home and marched into his bedroom. There she finds Alex Mandrakis, nude from the waist up, in bed and covered only by a sheet. He orders her to strip and get in bed with him. Apparently another letter was sent, ostensibly by Natasha, filled with lewd suggestions of what she can do for Alex and he wants her to fulfill those promises.

Natasha refuses. She attempts to leave and finds the door locked. She contemplates climbing through a bathroom window. Alex warns her that his guards will only bring her back to his room if she manages to escape. The only way out, according to Alex, is to have sex with him. She begs him to allow her to leave, debasing herself. He is unmoved. Natasha is left with little option. To worsen the matter, Natasha was dating someone and she realizes that this event will negatively impact her relationship with the man in her life.

UP TO that moment Natasha had only really thought about the outrage to her feelings, and the nightmare effect on her life of this unbearable, shameful indignity that was being inflicted on her. It had not occurred to her that her first experience of sex might cause her actual physical pain.

Her taut muscles shocked into resistance, she wanted to cry out to him that he was hurting her, and beg him to stop. To give her unaccustomed body at least a little time to adjust to the stark reality of his penetration of her.

Yet she did nothing, said nothing, determined not to grant him the satisfaction of knowing that anything he did could affect her in any way—pleasure or pain

Despite this event, Alex never really apologizes or acknowledges that he has essentially raped Natasha and she herself does not treat this as rape. Alex excuses himself by telling Natasha that he wanted her badly. Alex does treat Natasha better after this incident and somehow Natasha finds herself in love with him, but she believes Alex only sees her as a whore, a prostitute and not someone worthy of making his partner.

I think if that scene had been omitted, I would have enjoyed this story but I found the rape to be offensive particularly when it was, at best, excused, and at worst, unacknowledged. F

Best regards

Jane
This book can be purchased at Amazon
(affiliate link), Kindle, eHarlequin in print , eHarlequin in ebook or other retailers.

Dear Ms. Gregory:

When I saw Karen Scott post about this book, I thought it was a joke. Surely no one was writing Gingerbread man porn, right? Right? Because what is the point of taking a Mother Goose nursery rhyme and pornogriphying it (made up word, I know)? What’s next? The menage a quatre with the three blind mice? I’ve really always wondered what happened when the Dish ran away with the Spoon…

Marisa is a lonely suburban housewife. She has three main pleasures: masturbation, baking and magic. Her husband Don is a good provider, but he’s often gone away on business and while some nights he can pleasure her until dawn other nights he’s tired. Don always brings her to orgasm, but he doesn’t do it enough. Marisa needs to get off once a day:

On good nights they’d make love for hours and on the nights he fell asleep too tired to have sex, Marisa would sulk. She wanted to make love all the time and her day wasn’t complete unless she had achieved an orgasm.

Marisa has a tough life. She has enough discretionary money to buy whatever she likes. She doesn’t work. Instead she spends most of her day masturbating:

Marisa considered masturbation an art form. She could spend hours playing with her pussy until she achieved the perfect climax . . . or two. She loved creating the mood for her me-fuck-me sessions and always took special care to set up before pussy play.

She’s so into her own pleasure that she gives head to a dildo in one scene. At one point, I wondered if I was reading a play by play of some porn video on xtube, Lonely Housewife Gets Dirty. When she is not masturbating for hours, she bakes or dabbles in magic. The three pleasures in her life coalesce one day when she is rolling out gingerbread dough. Without first baking said Gingerbread Man, she proceeds to frost and decorate the cookie. She places red hots for the mouth, raisins for the hair, a cinnamon stick for a cock and raisins for balls. Then she takes a book of incantations she found in some store and wishes for the gingerbread man to come to life so it will fuck her.

And he does. The dough rolls off the counter and pops up a fully formed man. His muscles are huge! His hair is soft and gorgeous molasses. (I assume that makes his raisin balls soft and molasses-y too, right?). Mr. Gingerbread advances and then says:

“Run, run, run as fast as you can; I’m going to catch you . . . I’m your gingerbread man!” He called after her as she raced around the island.

When he kisses her, “She let him control her with a deep, tongue-melding kisses that tasted like . . . red hots!” His lips had a hot sensation. I worry for her and his cinnamon stick cock but apparently the burn is turning her on. After she gets a good rogering from cookie man, she falls asleep

In an almost dreamlike state, Marisa slipped from her straddled position and into his arms. With her cheek pressed against his chest, she could hear his heart beating rapidly and distantly marveled at how a cookie could have a heart before she fell fast asleep.

Right, because after she just had sex with a cookie, the fact that he has a heartbeat is what fills a person with wonder. Fortunately for Marisa, the cookie has incredible stamina. Unfortunately for Marisa, Don comes home and finds her fucking the cookie, only it looks like a man to him. Marisa tries to explain that it’s not really a man, but some thing she conjured up but the fact is that she is having sex with another person. Don is suitably enraged and is angry at Marisa. His response is…something I never anticipated. Maybe I should have.

Don drops trou and after accusing Marisa of being a cheating whore, proceeds to force her to have the best sex of her life with him and the Gingerbread man. That’s right. Marisa’s punishment for cheating on Don is to have a threesome. My eyes are like Oreos at this point, in keeping with the food theme. But poor Marisa might have met her match in cookie because he is insatiable and continues to chase Marisa around crying “Run, run, run as fast as you can; I’m going to catch you . . . I’m the gingerbread man!”

What is there to say other than there are things seen that cannot be unseen and this story is one of those things that is burned into my brain, destroying my fond memories of gingerbread cookies, red hots and cinnamon sticks. It’s an F for romance and sexiness but probably an A in destroying my childhood innocence. Bravo.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at BooksonBoard.

After reading this book, I am vowing not to read another book with “Knight” in the title. Knight of My Dreams was suggested to me by a friend and I had heard that you appeared on several ebook bestseller lists. From the opening chapter, I knew I had found a book that might rival my other favorite Knight story.

Quentin Albermarle’s wife is in a coma. If she ever awakens, she will turn into a werewolf and may die because of it. The only person who might save her is an old witch who had seduced Quentin as a human and turned him into a vampire. Quentin travels to the Cayman Islands where Kamaria, the witch, lives to beg for help. Kamaria requires that Quentin have sex with her multiple times before she will attempt to save Quentin’s wife, Darcy. Who lays in a coma. I just need to emphasize this. While the wife of the purported hero of the romance novel is in a COMA, he is off shagging some witch in the Caymans.

Of course, Quentin is reluctant. He recognizes in some part of his brain that having sex with Kamaria might really hurt Darcy but this is his only option. Why this is the only option, I’m not sure. Is Kamaria the only witch in the entire paranormal world? How did all the other werewolves in this world survive the turning? Who cares, right? It’s conflict! It’s sex + conflict. It’s sexflict!

Quentin’s reluctance doesn’t stop him from having non stop erections around Kamaria. In fact, the second sentence of the book is this:

Quentin Albermarle steeled himself against the sudden thrill that quickened his heartbeat and heated his sex.

Quentin is forced to pleasure Kamaria and in doing so becomes aroused to the point of pain. Over the course of the first twenty pages or so we see Quentin in a nearly nonstop state of arousal from being near Kamaria, remembering his time with her, but agonizing over his in-a-coma wife.

Quentin wished like hell he and his cock shared the same heart. The same mind. He hated how his body betrayed him, again, in her presence. Just a whiff of her unique scent wafting in the air was enough to tug his arousal into full bloom. Like Pavlov’s stupid dog, his cock filled, poking at the sheet.

Quentin tries to retaliate against Kamaria by refusing to bring her to completion. Quentin’s punishment for failing to pleasure Kamaria completely is to get magically induced blue balls when Kamaria’s snake bites him in the sac.

Later, Quentin is in a dreamspace and having sex with Kamaria and she transforms into a winged creature with a tail. In this story, no appendage or orifice goes unused.

But he didn’t know how to manipulate this realm, couldn’t fight the beast sitting on his body, raping his ass while she used his cock to milk him of seed.

While Quentin was sporting the non stop woody, I was in a constant state of confusion about who he was actually in love with:

A part of him, the dark beast he kept leashed deep inside, howled for her. She’d given him his first bite, his first taste of blood. She’d introduced him to endless carnal delights. When he made love to any other woman, even Darcy, he recalled her tutelage to bring the fire to the surface.

As a reader, we have the choice to view the sex scenes with Kamaria (and they are numerous) as rapes because Quentin is unwilling at heart, although not in body, or we view them as advancing his relationship with the villainness while his wife is in a coma – either way, the sex scenes are a grotesquery.

Outside of the insane storyline that is completely unromantic (in fact, this is what I call #romfail), is the writing.

Kamaria is apparently snakelike so she always refers to Quentin as “husss-band”. And she talks like Yoda:

“All alone, we are,” she said, lifting her hand to trail a long finger along the crest of his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to ask me, husss-band?”

…

“Husband,” she enunciated slowly, closer this time. “Husss-band,” she whispered into his ear.

…

Her gaze swept sideways and her lips curved in a close-lipped, feline smile. “You know what I will demand, husss-band.”

…

“I see you are awake, husss-band.” Damn, or was she a goddamn snake?

…

“This is to clear your mind and waken your body. Then you may begin to please me, husss-band.”

These references all occur within the first 20 pages. It got to be so ridiculous that I started laughing with each consecutive mention. Maybe it was an intentional comic relief to serve as a palliative for the sex scenes that included phrases like this:

“Good.” He rooted with his cock, still pressing down his chest to keep hers deflated, and then curled his belly to stroke inside her.

He rooted with his cock? I don’t even know. Or what about this imagery:

He didn’t relent, even after she’d collapsed against the mattress, moaning, her head thrashing because it was too much. He’d kill her with this one. Suck the life force out of her like a giant alien leech attached to her cunt.

and

and her womb clenched, cramping hard, almost painfully, and she couldn’t do anything, just lie like a suffocating fish on the banks for a roaring river while he continued to plow her depths.

and

His cock spent, but still turgid, returned to a meaty human size, filling, but not too many calories.

I could quote this book non stop. But wait, there’s more. While a disjointed, nonsensical storyline, no consistent worldbuilding, stomach churning sex scenes, cringe inducing descriptions of coitus (alien leech attached to cunts? a cock that is measured by caloric intake?) might be enough for most authors, this one had to have all the dark skinned people all being evil.

Fierce. Fucking like animals. Once, long ago, he’d thought he found his soul mate in a dark-skinned woman. Instead he’d surrendered his soul to a demon.

and

“Quentin’s memories, huh?” Joe said softly. “Damn, I knew he gave me more than just fangs. He had a hard-on for a witch—a dark-skinned woman—a long time ago. I’ve been dreaming of her too.” He shot a glare at Dylan. “Don’t mention it to Lily. She’d skin me.”

Yes, how horrible that Quentin had a hard on for a dark -skinned woman.  Why is mentioning her skin color relevant or important? When I was hoping for more people of color to appear in romance novels, this wasn’t quite what I anticipated.  Do I have to put a grade on this? F.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Ellora’s Cave.

If you will excuse a personal history, you will see its relevance to my review. I enlisted in the Army National Guard after 9/11. I became a US citizen and commissioned (became an officer) in 2003. I accepted a medical retirement in May of this year, at the rank of Captain, after 7 ½ years of service. I never went overseas, but I served in the Katrina response in Louisiana. I was a soldier and damn proud to be so.

But I am also bisexual (with some extra kinks outside the Kinsey continuum). This is the first time I’ve been able to admit this in public (well, I came out on Twitter on National Coming Out Day) since figuring it out because of the US military’s destructive Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. My sexuality in no way affected my service. All outward appearances show a happily married, monogamous, heterosexual soldier, which is mostly what I am. But every now and then the issue came up and I had to bite my tongue. I could have been kicked out of the service if anyone had dug too deep, for a reason that didn’t affect my service or that of others around me.

At a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is destroying the careers of loyal, hard-working, supremely competent soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen of the American Armed Forces, this fictionalized retrospective of men who serve together and love each other is never more necessary and welcome. I was thrilled to receive it (free) from the publisher (through Jane) and while it did a great job of showing the soul-destroying problem of homophobia in general, I could have wished that it had focused more specifically on the subtle differences of the problem of being gay in the military, rather than just showing gay military men.

“Blessed Isle” by Alex Beecroft
I don’t know what it is about Beecroft’s writing that ravishes me so. Maybe it’s that her prose is like Keats’ poetry to me: redolent with scent, aching with color, and beautiful with taste and sound. Maybe it’s how she scours me inside with the deeply-felt emotions of her characters. But this story manages to do in 58 pages what False Colors did to me in more than 300.

Set in the late eighteenth century, Captain Harry Thompson, late of her Majesty’s Navy, safely ensconced in Rio, begins a journal of his relationship with his Lieutenant, Garnet Littleton. They met when Harry took his first command of the Banshee with orders to escort three transport ships to Australia. Buffeted by storms, typhus, mutinous convicts, and his own yearning for the free-spirited Garnet, Harry only finds happiness when he and Garnet are marooned for months on their own small Pacific island. The actual sexual activity is minimally detailed, but you feel every prick and rush of longing and satisfaction, the abject fear and bone-deep rightness when the men fall in love. See how much Beecroft can do with so few words:

When we woke, that first morning, we made love. Nothing needed to be said; we both understood it would happen as soon as we had the physical resources to allow it. It was sweet and weary and gentle, and afterwards I held Harry tight and mourned for all the things he had had to lose to make this possible. I wished I might give his prudishness and his confidence and his career back to him. And in a petty part of myself I wished he might have come to me despite them, instead of needing to be ruined first. But I will say that holding on to him afterwards, in the warm glow and satisfaction of coitus, I entertained the inexcusable thought that the past months had been worth it.

Harry and Garnet find their happy ending and record it for posterity, for a time when their love might be celebrated rather than reviled, for a time after their death when they don’t have to pretend. The story is told in journal form, with Harry’s memories interspersed with Garnet’s as they reveal to each other, even after years together, their feelings and motivations in the past, as they reveal them to their reader, who also becomes a character in the story. So even the journaling has a place in their relationship. Brilliantly, perfectly done. Grade: A+

“Not to Reason Why” by Mark B. Probst
This is a narrative — a very boring narrative – of Custer’s last campaign, told from the perspective of a corporal (I think? Too bored to go back and look). Brett has the hots for Dermot. Dermot is married to Sarah. Dermot loves Sarah very much, and Brett is jealous of Sarah. There’s absolutely NO indication that Dermot feels anything at all for Brett beyond deep friendship and besides one kiss Brett almost (but not quite) forces on Dermot a few days before the big battle, there’s nothing overtly romantic about this story at all. In fact, there’s nothing covertly romantic either. This is not a romance (especially since it does not end happily); this is a narrative representation of a campaign: They saddled up, then they stopped here, then had dinner, then dicked around in the evening as soldiers tend to do, then slept, then had breakfast, then saddled back up for another grueling day of chasing Indians, then stopped for lunch, then…. Seriously, with a little more detail to prove that Probst had done his research (They stopped under overhanging cliffs. They crossed the stream eight times.), that’s what the story is like. Every now and then Brett will think something emotional for a sentence or two, but then he’ll ignore it and move on. I hate to play to stereotypes, but this read like it was a “romance” written by a man, and hey, look! It was written by a man. Okay, dude, you did your research; now tell me a fucking story.

And seriously, someone please proofread: “Dermot was in line looking none the worse for wear, though Brett could see his eyes were still vacuous from lack of sleep.” Really? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

And if we’re going to have a story about a man who runs away from battle, who deserts his troops, then lines like “The heat was stifling and there were times Brett would have welcomed a warrior arrow straight into his heart just to end it all” are not only not helpful, they’re patently wrong.

After Brett does desert, the level of his thought processes about his actions are symptomatic of the level of emotion and characterization in the rest of the book:

The wind and his body heat had dried his clothing and he began to warm up. His thoughts were a jumble of images and confusion. He couldn‘t sort it out enough to put together a plan of action. A piercing accusation kept surfacing—You are a coward and a deserter. Was he? What good would it have done to have stayed and died with the rest? Perhaps a couple more Sioux and Cheyenne may have been wounded or killed, but it would not have saved a single soldier‘s life. He longed to be unconscious so he didn‘t have to think. After the celebrating quieted and morning drew near, he got his wish and fell asleep, lying on his side on the creek-bank.

Oh! Coward! Deserter! Right, check. Let’s move on, folks, nothing to see here.

The author didn’t seem to be aware of the weight of his words, and coming after Beecroft’s clarity and precision, it was almost painful. At one point, Brett engages Dermot in deep conversation:

“Wrong side?” Dermot frowned. “How can you say that? There is no wrong side against the Indians.”

“I mean wrong side, in that it may not be the victorious side.”

“There‘s nothing wrong with dying to protect your country.”

“Dermot, haven‘t you ever noticed how these things are reported in the newspapers? When we win they say it‘s a victory, but when they win they say it‘s a massacre.”

Then after the Brett escapes/deserts, he listens to the Indian victory drums: “It went on for hours. The chanting haunted him. He wanted it to stop. It tormented him by constantly reminding him of the massacre. He sat huddled on the riverbank; the drums felt like his own heartbeat.” Completely, utterly without irony, Probst uses the word he’d previously questioned.

Dermot was cardboard, Brett was an unlikable, whiny, cowardly turd, there was no romance, no emotion, no connection. What there was was wishy-washiness. Was this deep, thoughtful commentary or just campaign details? Neither. Sorry. Grade: F

“No Darkness” by Jordan Taylor

Okay, so when the book starts like this:

“Lieutenant Darnell!”

“Sir?”

“Oh, there you are. Why are you skulking, man?” The red-faced, broad-shouldered platoon sergeant did not wait for an answer but plowed on before Darnell could even open his mouth, “Find someone to take with you down to the cellar. There should be half a ton of supplies in this bloody shack and no one seems able to find so much as a tin of jam.”

Private Morgan stepped forward and saluted the sergeant. He had large front teeth and matching ears that reminded Darnell of a corgi.

“Sir,” the private said. “Me and Stokes searched the cellar already. Nothing, sir. No sign anything‘s been in there for some time, sir.”

The sergeant walked right past him as if he had neither seen nor heard the private. “Well, Lieutenant? What are you waiting for?”

I’m confused. Unless things are very different in the British army in World War I from the US Army now, lieutenants don’t call platoon sergeants “sir” and platoon sergeants don’t call lieutenants “man” and give them orders. And no one salutes NCOs. So I don’t think much of your research abilities if that’s how the book starts. I mean, seriously. And my father (British AND British history buff) also confirmed for me that the officer corps in 1915 was still very much of and from the upper classes and Darnell is not upper class. He’s almost the opposite of upper class.

Inaccuracies aside, this has to be one of the most depressing stories I’ve ever read. This is precisely why I don’t read stories that aren’t romances with HEAs. Yes, I understand that World War One was a desperately horrible war. Yes, I understand that being gay in the military is terrible. AND, I understand that the purpose of this anthology was not all about the happy endings. But can we have ANY bright points of light? Can we have ANY happiness in the story? Apparently not.

LT Darnell and PVT Fisher get shelled into a cellar with no way out. Fisher’s broken so many ribs he can’t do anything to help get them out. Darnell literally ruins his hands digging them out, but even when they get out, it takes days to find anyone else and of course when they do, disaster strikes. There’s only a relationship between these men on the level of two men who find themselves stuck in a cellar together, trying to get out. The fact that they’re both gay doesn’t really factor into it at all.

What I do think is interesting is that both this story and the last both conform to the melodramatic abjection of the married gay man being the one to bite it. Think Brokeback Mountain, right? Sure, Jack’s more out, more comfortable with himself than Ennis, but he’s the one who marries first and stays married so he’s the one who has to die. Ditto these two stories.

This story isn’t a romance. Not in the slightest. Not that it’s trying to be — and that’s fine, of course. But it isn’t really even a story about being gay in the military. It’s just a depressing story about a horrific war. I don’t know how to grade it. It’s not badly written like the previous story (research abilities aside). It’s just…not something I choose to read. So, I guess…Grade: C-

“Our One and Only” by E.N. Holland
This is the only story that truly deals with the problems that being gay specifically in the military can produce. Philip is Eddie’s lover, but when Eddie dies in France in 1944, Philip is left feeling invisible, able only to admit to being Eddie’s best friend, not able to fully express his grief over his beloved’s death. The story is told over 40 years, at intervals of a decade. We see Philip deal (or not) with Eddie’s death, even though every now and then you want to hit him over the head and say “Get OVER yourself already!” The story shows the expected and unexpected repercussions the life and death of one soldier have on his friends, fellow soldiers, and family. While not amazing, this story is thoughtful, interesting, and eventually has a hopeful ending (not with Eddie, obviously).

One thing pulled me out of the story. In 1954, Philip thinks, “he always thought war was sort of pointless and his feelings only sharpened after Eddie‘s death.” Maybe this is just me overthinking things, but if there was one “just” war, one necessary war, it was World War Two and I don’t think very many people can disagree with that. Yes, war is devastating and horrible, but with Hitler as an aggressor, there’s not much else that the Allies COULD have done besides what they did. WW2 was not a pointless war; of any war in history, it was the least pointless. The mindset Philip expresses is very much a post-Vietnam mindset and I found it jarring in this story.

Other than that, I enjoyed watching this man through 40 years of his life and I was very happy that he had a hopeful ending “blessed” by his long-lost partner. Grade: B

Overall, while I think that an anthology against DADT, showing the emotional devastation it causes, is a wonderful idea, it was only the last story that really dealt with the peculiar problem of being gay specifically in the military. Because in 1790, 1876, 1915, and 1944, being gay was a problem NO MATTER WHAT. So being gay in the military was no more or less difficult that being gay anywhere else (it might have been easier, perhaps, considering close proximity). I would really like to have seen the awful Custer-era story or the depressing WW1 story dropped, and a story about the Gulf War or even Iraq or Afghanistan added, to make the point that “being gay in the US military” specifically IS an issue NOW, because being gay now is much more accepted than in 1876 and it’s the military that’s ridiculously behind the times.

I once had someone ask me why a gay person would join the US military when they know they’re not wanted, and the question made me shake with rage. Gay and bisexual men and women want to join the military for the same reasons as everyone else: we love our country and want to defend it, we like the opportunities and benefits, we’re loyal and hard-working and honorable people. Just like everyone else. Why should we not be able to serve? We have just as much to offer — more, perhaps, since we’re joining knowing we’re not wanted, joining knowing we’re going to have to hide who we are in order to serve.

Anyway. Overall, I’d give the entire anthology a high C+ or a low B-, but the whole thing is completely and utterly worth buying just for the sublime Beecroft story, “Blessed Isle,” with a nice added bonus of the gentle “Our One and Only.”

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased at Amazon. No ebook version that I could find.

Thirty Days by Shayla Kersten (Liquid Silver Books)
This book horrified me. So much so that I literally can’t bring myself to read the sequel. Thirty Days got fabulous reviews all over the web and has intrigued me for a while, so I was excited to find the time to read it. But once I did, I was absolutely appalled. If this is really what people think BDSM is, no wonder it’s so reviled and hated — because it should be.

This whole review is italicized, bolded, and written in flashing red and yellow danger signs in my head, so imagine that as you read it. I’ll try to be restrained (harhar — very weak joke).

Cavan has been in held in literal sexual slavery for nine years, probably since he was 13, maybe 11. He has a 6th grade reading level. He has no idea how to interact with anyone normally. He hasn’t seen a woman in a decade. He has no idea if he’s really gay or really into BDSM, because he was given no choice about either. And these issues are NEVER resolved in the book. He’s three months out of this literal slavery — THREE MONTHS!!! — and he’s taken to a BDSM party to be hooked up with Biton, a dom who is three months past his partner’s death from cancer. Biton wants Cavan, takes him, and then when he figures out the depth of Cavan’s issues, including not knowing whether he’s actually gay or submissive, doesn’t immediately stop the relationship and treat Cavan as the little boy he is emotionally and intellectually, but continues with the relationship because he wants to, because he’s hot for Cavan and because ::gag:: Cavan is so sweetly submissive:

Biton set down his coffee cup and stood up. “He doesn’t understand that being a slave is a lifestyle choice. He’s never really known any other life. He thinks being tortured is normal.” Biton paced the kitchen, anger at the people who did this to Cavan growing with each step. “He’s a gentle soul. I don’t think he’d be into submission if he hadn’t been forced into it.”

“And you want to keep him around.” It wasn’t a question and Harry hit the nail on the head.

Biton wanted Cavan, but the idea of giving up the thrill of control, of power over a helpless body, bound and gagged, waiting for his whim…The memory of Cavan strapped in the sling Friday made him shiver. “Yes.”

How can someone write those three paragraphs together? Seriously? How can you say you don’t think he’d be into submission if he weren’t tortured into it when he was thirteen and then shiver at the memory of this same man strapped into a sex sling?! It made me nauseous, personally, and although Biton isn’t the man who enslaved Cavan, he’s coming pretty fucking close here, to my mind.

Exposition reveals that Cavan showed up in an ER three months previously “badly beaten. His back was a bloody mess, broken arm, two fractured ribs and rectal lacerations from some kind of foreign object. He refused to press charges against his attacker” and the BDSM “Society” that Biton and his friends belong to “warned Wainwright [Cavan's "master"], threatened to exclude him and issue warnings to potential subs.” You’re shitting me? They fucking WARN him?! They don’t CALL THE COPS?! The ER doesn’t CALL THE COPS?! A whipped back, a broken arm, broken ribs, and anal rape doesn’t qualify for someone getting arrested, whether or not Cavan files the charges?!

Somebody posted on Twitter (it might actually have been Jane) a few days after Roman Polanski was arrested that they’re sick of how the media says Polanski “had sex with a 13 year old girl”, rather than saying he “drugged and raped his 13 year old victim”. Don’t say “had sex with” when it was really “drugged and raped.” In this story, Biton and his friends continue to call Cavan’s abuser his “former master” and a “dom.” No, dammit. No. He’s a pedophile, a rapist, a torturer and, apparently, a murderer. Don’t continue to call him a “dom” when what he did was so hideous. Raping, torturing, and enslaving thirteen year olds is so far from being a BDSM dom that it’s not even funny. So unfunny I was crying with despair when I read this book.

In fact, this book almost made me throw up. This is NOT BDSM, folks. Some things are too big for a romance to cure. A boy — barely 20 — three months out of a decade-long abuse, rape, and torture, a boy with a 6th grade education and an inability to interact with anyone normally, should not be entering into ANY relationship, let alone one with a sexual dominant who has problems understanding the ability to give consent. Because more than anything, Cavan cannot give his consent, the foundation of Safe, Sane, and Consensual. Grade: Epic EPIC FAIL.

Pink Buttercream Frosting by Lissa Matthews (Samhain Publishing)
If you’re going to write about BDSM, if you’re going to have one character be a much sought-after dom and the other be a newbie sub, then the sex should be something other than vaguely hot, but otherwise normal, ordinary vanilla sex. You can’t just slap a BDSM label on a romance that in all other respects is a vanilla romance and expect your audience to believe you without actually including anything that looks or feels like BDSM sex. Bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, masochism. Those are some pretty scary words and some pretty involved practices. But having your hero identify as a dom and your heroine identify as a sub doesn’t mean that their story is a BDSM romance unless you actually have them interact on a BDSM level. Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible to be BDSM-identified and have a vanilla relationship and be happy in it (so I’m told), but then you can’t call the book about that relationship a BDSM romance. To be a BDSM romance, the relationship must be built with, explored through, filtered by BDSM practices in the relationship, not just generic BDSM identification by the characters without any application in the relationship.

Aidn is a much sought-after dom who does not date his submissives. Huh? Why not? “He dated vanilla women, engaged in vanilla sex and kept the dominant side of himself just out of reach. It was simply something he did, something he’d done in the years since…” (ellipse in original). Ah. The old “past submissive ruined me for everyone else” trick. Right. Anyway, so Aidn meets Bailey at the mall, they recognize each other from the BDSM club they both frequent, and they go to her place to have sex, because they’re too hot for each other not to. He’s stripped her, has her sitting on her kitchen counter, orders her around a bit, and then cuts her panties off her. Big whoop-dee-doo. Without the constant internal refrain from both characters about their need to dominate or submit, none of this would be out of place in non-BDSM erotica. They do nothing — NOTHING — that vanilla people wouldn’t do when having sex. And then Bailey thinks:

She was slipping into a place that she’d only dreamed of. Subspace; the sensation of floating on air, a bliss so sweet it could be painful. She’d read about it, talked to others about it, but until Aidn, she hadn’t had an inkling of what it might be like to feel it. She gave herself up to it, gave herself and her pleasure over to him, and he was taking her there, making her fly. She was a different woman than she’d been just hours ago.

Oh good lord, no. Subspace is, usually, an endorphin high from being beaten. It’s a feeling of floating, an in-body/out-of-body experience that is the result of physical overstimulation and PAIN. Sure, good BDSM relationships can have submissives slipping into a submissive mindset with a word or a look from their dominants, but that’s not subspace, dammit. It’s certainly not flying! Good lord.

And, finally, submissive does not equal doormat. When a guy fucks you three ways to Sunday then leaves before you wake up, doesn’t contact you for two weeks, and then walks into your bakery, you do not just kiss him when he tells you to. You give him the cold shoulder, make him explain himself, scream at him for being an asshole. Not Bailey. No, sir, she kisses Aidn and calls him sir. Then when he runs AGAIN, she goes looking for him. Give me a break. Might as well write “WELCOME” from sternum to belly-button and lie down in the doorway.

And! way to go, Aidn, ruining another dominant’s scene on purpose by being a possessive asshole about a woman you’ve been running away from for 50 pages. Fabulous manners there. BDSM does NOT give anyone the permission to act like a complete asshole like Aidn seems to think it does. Irrational jealousy is not an attractive trait and not the innate right of a dominant. In fact, most doms are the opposite of jealous.

Bailey’s a doormat, Aidn’s an asshole, and the only thing BDSM about this story is their constant harping on it being their true identity. Take that away and it’s a mildly hot Harlequin with an alphole (TM SBTB) hero and a ridiculously self-effacing heroine. Grade: F

This book can be purchased from Samhain.

Bondage Betrayal by Lila DuBois (Liquid Silver Books)
This book makes the strong distinction between nice normal sane people who do a few kinky things now and then in the bedroom and those dirty rotten perverts who fully identify as kinky and try to live it all the time. I’m actually loathe to include this book in this list, because it’s got some really great writing, really hot scenes, and deep emotional issues. Then again, it’s also got a Big Mis that’s solved in three seconds and the characters are suddenly soulmates again.

Savannah is a famous yet anonymous and stunningly sadistic femdom. The first scene of the book is hot until you get to the part about: “He screamed, not merely a cry, but a true scream. Around the room people jumped, some of the Doms moving as if they would interfere, but no one did.” Um, why not? Because they should have.

That aside, then, Savannah in her normal life is an artist with a dark past, a deep betrayal in her background. She accepts a commission for a sculpture for a building only to see her dark past, the man who betrayed her, as she leaves the building. They meet again at a BDSM club that evening and most of the book is spent in flashback in alternating points of view that tells about the dark betrayal. Roman and Savannah were very much in love and exploring shaking things up in the bedroom a bit. They go to the house of a “Master” and go through a pretty intense but positive scene as Roman is coached by “Master Wilcox” and another guest. Wilcox then convinces Roman to let him “train” Savannah because she’s a “born submissive” and “needs” submission all the time and Roman can’t provide it because he’s too weak. Proving him right, Roman says yes rather than listening to his instincts. With smoke and mirrors and digital recorders, Wilcox then convinces both Savannah and Roman that they have abandoned each other, all the while raping and torturing Savannah. Savannah feels abandoned and betrayed (duh) and runs away, Roman feels abandoned and betrayed and runs away, everyone runs away until they come back together in the end with 20 seconds of “I’m sorry”, “no, I’m sorry”.

On the surface, it looks like the conflict between the characters is a deep betrayal, but underneath, the conflict is actually a Big Misunderstanding that pits The Plucky Hero and Heroine against The Evil BDSM World. BDSM is the enemy. Anyone who does it as more than spice in a relationship is evil and a torturer. And anyone who feels the need to do it more than occasionally should be willing to give it up to please their partner. And yes, technically, sometimes people who do BDSM are evil, but really, statistically, many more vanilla people are evil than kinky people. Grade: D

This book can be purchased from Liquid Silver.

Look, I know that authors are convinced that their books are unique and spring from their own fears and desires, so they’re just trying to tell this one story and aren’t writing a treatise about all BDSM everywhere (this was Tymber Dalton’s defense about her hot mess of a story). And they’re right, of course. But those fears and desires are themselves shaped by culture and society and the people we’re with and the shows we watch and the books we read. And if all books, shows, people, society, culture represent BDSM as sick, twisted, perverted, ridiculous, then that’s going to be reflected in your writing sometimes, however much you might not want it to, unless you’re a very strong-willed writer OR unless you have a healthy understanding of and respect for BDSM-identified people that comes from lots of experience in and with BDSM. Yes, DuBois’ book shows some scenes in which BDSM is used to enhance sexual interaction, but the fundamental, underlying message of the story is that anyone who wants it full-time, anyone who actually identifies as full-on kinky, is evil and sociopathic, abusive, manipulative, and murderous. Is that really what she was trying to say? On the other hand, Matthews has it in her head that BDSM is Hott! and Exciting! and makes a relationship better and bigger and more meaningful. But that doesn’t mean that any sex scene labeled BDSM is kinky — it just doesn’t.

Impacted! by Mickie B. Ashling (Dreamspinner Press)
Finally, a book that gets BDSM very right, in my opinion (Yay!), but is terribly, horribly, awfully written (Boo!). It’s just as possible to get the BDSM right and be a truly bad writer, as it is to be a great writer and get the BDSM wrong. Everything Ashling writes about the BDSM sounds fine. She seems to get the emotions, understand the way it feels, understand the whys and wherefores. It’s not abusive, it’s not the enemy, it’s not there just to make the story hot. But she’s just a truly bad writer: info-dumping; terrible flat, bland voice; ridiculously flat, stereotyped characters; characters and storylines that come out of nowhere; cringe-worthy motivation — you name it, this book has it.

Scott is an oral surgeon (no, really — there’s a whole plot point about making sure his partner doesn’t do some delicate oral surgery because he doesn’t have the training. Sexay!) and a sexual submissive and masochist. He comes to work one day and finds that his new dental hygienist is the dominant he hooked up with for a one night stand a few weeks ago. Hijinks ensue, mostly having to do with their homophobic mutual boss. It’s one of those stories that thinks it’s a romance because there are apparent external barriers keeping the couple apart, but not really, and the characters fall in love and express that love so early that there’s no emotional tension or uncertainty at all. It’s boring. Seriously boring. Even with the ridiculous plot twist at the end of the book. The BDSM’s good, but the story as a whole is a cure for insomnia. Even though I struggled through in order to write the review, I’d have to say that this book was truly unreadable. Grade: F

Oh, and P.S.? No dom is going to pierce his sub’s left nipple. Left side flags dominant. Right side flags submissive. Do your research.

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format.

I opened THIS anthology because I liked Sindustry I. But this volume is so obviously all the leftover stories from the Sindustry I anthology that didn’t quite make it into the first volume. And most of these stories should NOT have been included. This anthology had very few redeeming stories and some that make me want to puke, which kinda dampens any enthusiasm I might have for the whole. Mostly it’s filled with stories with awful, weak, boring, TSTL characters who couldn’t characterize their way out of a paper bag, and their ridiculously over-protective and unrealistic saviors. I have never really understood what m/m readers are complaining about when they say that that one of the characters doesn’t have to be the woman, but I do now. In this volume, one half of the relationship was invariably the damsel in distress who needed saving, the other the knight in shining armor who knew just how to take care of things, pretty lady…uh, I mean lad. Yech.

As in Sindustry I, the premise is that these are all stories about people in the sex industry, either strippers, prostitutes, or porn actors. This volume does a much worse job of speculating about whether it is possible to have a realistic representation of tricking and yet still have a good romance. Because the other problem with most of these stories is how glamorized prostitution or stripping is made out to be. And it’s not. That’s why I liked “Sunshine” so much, I think, because it showed some gritty realism about what money does to a relationship.

“Package Boy” by Connie Bailey
A strange little story about a high-end rent boy who has fallen in love with a client who happens to be the heir to a Mafia family. He hears a hit ordered on his lover while on another call and the rest of the story deals with how he and his lover respond to the news. Told mostly in choppy, untagged dialogue, the conflict is mostly external. The relationship conflict isn’t sign-posted very well so I didn’t know that it existed until it was solved. The affection between the lovers is genuine and the sex is pretty hot, but there’s a bit too much grating, unexplained mafia language. Grade: C

“Dance for Me” by Maria Albert
This story was both so melodramatic it was funny, and so completely disturbing I was sickened. Carlo is saved from an abusive john by Michael, a bouncer at a club. Carlo is barely 21 and has been kept in literal sexual slavery for 7 years, only to have been thrown out by his captor 2 weeks previously. Michael is 43 and lives at the club, which seems to be a kind of halfway house for gay homeless men, complete with Leprechaun-like Irish owner. Carlo and Michael instantly fall in love, but can’t communicate enough to actually figure things out without intercession by Michael’s boss. Carlo is a complete mess and Michael seems a few cards short of a deck and to have a relationship between them when Carlo is only 2 weeks out of 7 years of abuse and Michael seems emotionally unstable was unbelievably appalling. There’s a limit to what can be solved in a novel, let alone a short story. Don’t set up characters who need years of therapy and think some sex and a few kisses makes everything all better. Ew. The ending’s even worse, the HEA degraded beyond compare by the creepiness of Michael’s final words to Carlo. Grade: F

“Unorthodox Utopia” by G.S. Wiley
Stephen owns a salon but needs extra cash. He hires on as hair and makeup artist for a low budget porn shoot, where he meets Jeff, one of the actors, who has an abusive boyfriend. The story, told from Stephen’s first person point of view, is a nice, gentle blossoming of a good relationship, as Jeff leaves his boyfriend and grows closer with Stephen. There’s no sex, just two men getting to know and care for each other, even if they do it rather too quickly considering Jeff’s abusive relationship. Grade: C+

“Leather Dancer” by Andrew Grey
Denny is dragged to a Leather Expo by his way-more-outgoing friend. There he sees Robbie, the next-door-neighbor he’s been crushing on for months, dancing at a booth. Over the next month, they build a solid relationship. The characterization seems non-existent. Denny is a shy introvert, then he’s the driving force behind the relationship. Robbie is an annoying wet noodle who seems to bend to Denny’s whim and whatever the story needs him to do. Complete lameness: having Denny buy books from a booth at the Expo that is obviously the Dreamspinner booth, complete with titles mentioned. Stretching credulity: Robbie takes Denny to his father’s restaurant on their first date. Boring writing, very little conflict. Grade: C-

“Corona & Lime” by Sonia Devereaux
Jacob hasn’t wanted or had a relationship — or even sex — in ten months, since his boyfriend dumped him. Race is paid by Jacob’s friends to pick him up in a bar. They go to Race’s apartment, but Jacob puts on the breaks and they fight in a very amusing way (to me, at least). The next morning, they find a way to the beginnings of a relationship. The story is told from the point of view of both Race and Jacob as they each feel out their vulnerabilities and find how the other could fix them. Each convinced that the other couldn’t want them, the end is sweetly optimistic. Grade: B

“Sunshine” by JL Merrow
I thought Merrow’s story in Sindustry I was one of the best in that volume. “Sunshine” is definitely the best in this. The story is set in England, I presume in London, and replete with British slang. Daniel is a street-walker, Rob a bouncer at a bar who checks up on Daniel on the way home. He takes Daniel home with him once, paying for sex, ruining their tentative friendship and the story tells how they find their way back to each other. Sweet and sad and wonderful. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Merrow has any full-length novels yet, just short stories. Pity. Grade: B+

“Night Moves” by Patric Michael
Guy who is NOT a trick spontaneously rescues a hustler and vows to protect and keep him all of his days. Huh? Over-emotional, crying at the drop of a hat, unbelievable love at first sight, out-of-left-field motivations, and generally a story that makes absolutely no sense. And don’t people know that relationship tattoos are incredibly bad juju? They’re a death knell to a relationship, so if characters go out and get one, I’m pretty much ready to chuck the book. Not sexy and romantic, just stupid! (But that might just be me.) Grade: D

“Wanting More” by Cari Z
Alex is a stripper who goes home with a trick, only to be discovered by the guy’s long-term partner. He is surprised when the partner, James, shows up at the club 2 weeks later and asks for a private dance. Surprised but thrilled, because he’s very attracted to James. They establish a relationship of sorts, with lots of really hot D/s sex, that eventually works into something more. A satisfying development of a wonderful relationship. Although if James didn’t learn from his previous lover or from Alex, when IS he going to learn?: a fact which threatens my belief in the HEA. Grade: B-

“The Cowboy and the Movie Star” by Kate Roman
Oh, blech. Jake is the foreman of a ranch hired out for a gay porn shoot. Matthew is the star of the show and a complete and utter wet blanket. If any heroine acted like Matthew—completely unable to take care of himself in any way—I’d chuck that book across the room without hesitation. One night of hot man-lovin’ changes their lives and Matthew quits in the middle of the shoot, except Jake doesn’t believe him….blahblahblah. The core of the story is when Matthew says to Jake, “Jake, do you know how long it’s been since someone’s touched me because I asked them to? Or because they wanted to? Because they wanted me?” And, I mean, sure. That’s the fantasy, right, that prostitutes and porn stars want their One True Love as well, that sex isn’t worth it without love. But these characters are awful, the story is unbelievable, the villain is ridiculous, and the sex is boring. Grade: D

“The Meaning of Perfection” by Taylor Lochland
A prostitute falls for the owner of the hotel who rents him and his roommate rooms for their jobs. Julian, the hotel owner, takes payment in kind from Felix’s roommate, which makes Felix very jealous because he wants to be the one servicing Julian. He eventually gets the chance, only to have Julian reject anything more in the morning. They eventually find their way back to each other, and poof! Felix quits whoring. Um, yeah, not so much. Grade: C-

“See Me, Feel Me” by Zahra Owens
A stripper takes a private gig for a friend, only to be wined and dined by a blind massage therapist, who does his own, unofficial sex work during his business. A fun little read, but the length of these “short” stories sometimes leaves me feeling like the story could be 2000 words shorter. Very little conflict and merely a progression of the relationship ensues and while that’s enjoyable, there’s no incentive to keep reading besides some moderately enjoyable sex—nothing’s at stake. Grade: C+

“Exposure” by Marguerite Labbe & Fae Sutherland
Whoa, hello head hopping! Give me whiplash, why don’t you! Ahem. That aside, this was a surprisingly hot story about a photographer introducing one of his models to a little bit of BDSM. The instant attraction between the two made me roll my eyes a bit, but then I was completely sucked in to the sexual and relationship tension between the characters and was very happily following along until the photographer called the model “Pretty baby.” That just stomped on all my squick buttons and pulled me right out of the story. I could tell that it was still hot in the same way it was before, except every time “pretty baby” showed up again, I’d get squicked all over again. Except for that, very enjoyable, and very very hot, very well-written D/s sex with a little bondage thrown in. Grade: B

Looking through the whole, now that I’m done, there’s quite a few more Bs than I thought there were. But still, the awfulness of “Dance for Me,” “Night Moves,” and “The Cowboy and the Movie Star” overshadows the good of “Exposure,” “Sunshine,” and the quirkiness of “Corona and Lime.” Skip this volume unless you can find those three stories separate.

Overall grade: C-

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Books on Board or other etailers.

Dear Ms. _l:

At first I was greatly enjoying your book, The Multi Billionaire’s Virgin Rodent Wrangler Bride. Yes, I had to hide the cover on the bus, but I was fascinated by Ho-Lotta and Chee’s developing relationship. I also greatly enjoyed the subplot with Harvey and Reynold the hamster jugglers; in fact, sometimes I rooted for their successful romance even more than I did the main characters’. Your setting was perfect; I could hear the squeak of the wheel and smell the cedar.

But as I read, something about your text nagged at me. In several places, your writing style abruptly changed. For example, this passage where Ho-Lotta sees the shifted Chee for the first time:

He broke away from her, panting. The moonlight struck his face, and suddenly the handsome man was gone.

In his place….

It was ratlike, looking like it belonged to the same family as the globally widespread brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, but in some features of appearance and habits it resembled more the jerboas (family Dipodidae) and kangaroo rats (family Heteromyidae).

“Huh?” I thought. I read on.

The fur was fawn on the upperparts of its body, the hairs often tipped with black, making it darker. The underparts were white. The tail was long and slender, often with a small tuft of hairs at the tip.

“Oh my goodness!” Ho-Lotta shouted. “Even though we’re not in the dry, sparsely covered regions around deserts, you’re a gerbil!”

Imagine my shock and horror when I plugged some of these phrases into Google Book Search and discovered that near-identical phrasing was used in the Gerbil article of The International Wildlife Encyclopedia by Robert Burton!

Spurred by this, I went on to check other suspicious phrases. “Chees’s innate sense of curiosity and his friendly attitude towards people generally made taming a painless process, provided that Ho-Lotta applied a little common sense” matched a phrase in Raymond Gudas’s Gerbils. “Chee was excited when Ho-Lotta gave him a plastic enrichment device to play on, as he was gentile and docile by nature and intensely curious” matched up with a phrase from The Laboratory Hamster and Gerbil. And I could go on further, but I have already included enough links that my post will be quarantined by the blog software.

Ms. _l, I am always hesitant to throw about a word such as “plagiarism”, but the similarity between these passages in your book and those in these texts rings my alarm bells. I suggest that other readers look at your text themselves and draw their own conclusions.

As for myself, I would love to one day read a book that you have written. This one, however, I feel I must give an F to.

~Castiron

****

And as a bonus, we thought Xandra’s comment was hilarious and we are sending her a book as well.  Thanks folks!

XandraG

I couldn’t resist. Any book with a were-gerbil in it has to be a win.

OMG everybody who gave this book a F are just h8rs and meengrrlz! Holatta and Chee were two of the best characters to ever come out of the pages of a book and theirloveissopureIcan’tstandit. I fell in lurve with Chee and made “Team Chee” t-shirts to give to all my friends who haven’t yet discovered this amazing book. And I’ve left my gerbil cage open at night because I just know I have my own Chee in there waiting for me, his beady little eyes firmly fixed on my quivering and flaming nipples in exstacy.

You h8ers are only jealous of Jane because you wish you could have ger-boyfriends of your own and write like she does.

signed,
Britney RainbowMoon Fangirl

I am writing this letter to you because I have a serious beef with this book and I don’t think its appropriate to direct my ire toward her, but rather you. You are the company that purchased this book and then released it at a cost of $13.99 on the unsuspecting public. I say unsuspecting because there is not an excerpt to be found on the web.

I have suspicions that the lack of excerpt is due to the fact that if one were provided, it would deter sales. One + One = Three is written as if it were a primary school handbook. The story is told in short three to five page chapters written in a dry biographical manner (which is kind of insulting to biographies). Former supermodel Munro opens a bar/lounge, has sex with two super hot, rich guys, and gets threatened in her bar by someone who has it in for Munro.

This ultimately leads to a) the most boring book written, b) the most conflictless book ever written, c) the most shallow characters ever profiled and d) the most unengaging sex I’ve read in a long, long time.

She reached out and pulled him by the tie, which he still had on, along with his shirt. Once their groins made contact, they began grinding in their underwear. She knew that Rock liked to mix things up.

…

She was enjoying his sensuous approach, and wrapped one leg around his butt, so that his cock was right in the middle of her punanny. They moved in slow motion, feeling each other up, until she could feel him getting harder and harder with each gyration. “Oh, Rock, Baby, your dick feels so good,” she moaned with her eyes closed.

I know that this sounds a bit hyperbolic and I am sure in the annals of publishing history, you’ve put out worst.  However, if you are going to be tossing around this book and this author as exemplyfying the type of erotic romance you guys are putting out, then it should be good, if not damn good.

Munro is a super model who typifies every stereotype of models sans the drug addiction.  She’s stupid.  For example, she’s nearing thirty and decides to get out of the modeling business and decides to pour all her money into a lounge (she refuses to call it a bar). She does not stint on any luxury. Even her “throne”, as she calls it, ( a booth set up in the back and raised on a platform) is made out of the same leather of Prada handbags.

Speaking of Prada, every chapter includes some random brand name reference. Don’t set up a drinking game for this because by chapter 10, you’ll be soused.

Back to our intrepid “heroine”. So she’s stupid. But she’s also shallow. For example, she hires a hostess who is pretty but a dime a dozen because her bookkeeper is too ugly for the front of house.

She’s deceptive. When her purported best female friend wants to be hooked up with Munro’s friend Rock, Munro does not tell her BFF that Rock and Munro are seeing each other. Instead she says Rock has just broken up with someone and, hey if he were really into you, he would have asked you out.  That’s harsh but Munro doesn’t really care because Munro, she’s all about herself.

Which is good that Munro has two men who love “polyamory”.  In case you didn’t know what that was, the author provides a detailed explanation from several characters. Some of them claim to be in into the polyamorist lifestyle, but in truth, it’s all window dressing.  Also, just because Munro may have had a threesome, she is not gay, folks.  The book is insulting and boring.

“No, I’m not gay.” Munro had had threesomes with another model a few times while in Paris, but she didn’t consider herself gay, especially since she and the other woman never even touched.

Then let’s take a look at Dirk and Rock.  I mean, come on. What is with those names? Are you punking us?

Anyways, Dirk and Rock could be Dirt and Rock for all the interest they provide to the reader.  Here’s a little example:

Dirk’s father lived vicariously through his son. Having married so young, his dad never got the chance to have a carefree life. As a result, he encouraged his son to have as much fun as possible before settling down with one woman.

His father was also an excellent soccer player and taught his skills to his son. Dirk excelled in athletics as well as academics, and was offered a scholarship to Rutgers University. He majored in finance and went on to get his MBA at NYU. After grad school, he worked on Wall Street at a few top-notch firms. Dirk was smart and savvy, and it didn’t take long for him to amass an impressive client list, along with an impressive bank account. Dirk excelled so quickly that he soon reached the “glass ceiling.” Frustrated at the lack of further advancement, he and a couple of his college buddies decided to branch out on their own. BLAC was a small, but powerful, private equity firm, and before long they had billions of dollars under management.

Yes, Dirk’s daddy gets his rocks off whenever Dirk is out shagging some chick.  Maybe that’s supposed to be some kink.  Actually, it would be more interesting if it was Dirk and his dad polyamorying their way through Manhattan.  Gross, but more interesting.

Speaking of interesting, while I love a good word game, reading five pages of the characters playing Scrabble for no reason is beyond dull.  I don’t care which Scrabble dictionary the damn characters are using unless it is going to be used to kill one another (preferably Munro). Also, scene that takes up three pages of a non essential character interviewing women to be her assistant is not even filler. You might as well have just typed a;sdfj;alksdj;flaksfj;lksj;dol on three pages and it would have had the same meaning.

What can I say? I’m not your usual type of girl.” Munro sat down, and picked up the Scrabble game. “Hmm, I see somebody’s cruising for a beating.”

“No, no, no. It’s more like somebody’s gonna get beat. Remember the last time we played? I won by three hundred points,” he said, bragging.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever!” She rolled her eyes. “Well, bring it on, ’cause I want a rematch. And I guarantee you this, you’re not winning tonight!”

Rock poured a glass of wine and handed it to her. “You know, Munro, it’s not wise to make promises you can’t keep!”

“Okay, Mr. Braggadocio, don’t get too cocky. Order my food, and let’s commence playing so I can kick your butt,” she said, taking a sip of wine.

Rock ordered the pizza, and set up the game. “Which dictionary do you want to use for challenges?” he asked.

“Webster’s is good, unless you’ve gotten geeky on me and bought one of those Scrabble dictionaries,” Munro teased.

“And what’s geeky about a Scrabble dictionary?” he asked, producing the specialized dictionary.

So we have a heroine who is stupid and shallow.  Two male leads that are less interesting than two day old bread.  Is it any wonder that the reader’s pulse is barely moving at this point?  What could possibly spice up this story? Can it be saved by the sex? The polyamorous sex?  Sadly, it cannot.  Because the sex scenes consist of unzipping the clothes, underwear grinding and the cries of “III’M CUMMMMMMMMING.”

“Take … all … of. . . this . . . dick,” he said, in between thrusts.

“Give it to me,” she moaned back.

They each gave as good as they got, bucking back and forth like two prized steers.

“Oh yes, yes, yes, YES!” Munro screamed on the verge of cumming.

“That’s it, Baby. Let’s cum together!” After a few more heated moves, they exploded simultaneously.

Note to the author. Your characters are from Michigan farming communities. One would think that they would know that steers are castrated and incapable of CUMMING let alone CUMMING together by ramming their pelvises against each other.

He kissed her forehead. “I want to make you cum.” Rock increased the pressure until she started squirming and moving her head back and forth. Her movements told him that he was doing the job. “Come on, Baby, don’t hold back.”

“Ohhh. Ohhh Yeah!!” she moaned. After a few more deliberate rubs, she was ready to climax. Munro yelled out, “III’M CUMMMMMING!”

Once she came, Rock climbed on top of her and slowly eased inside her cum-coated opening. Her pussy was so warm and moist that he almost came prematurely, but he fought the urge and continued humping.

(no, that was not me making a mistake about the number of I’s or M’s.)  Another note to the author, “humping” and “grinding” are often not considered sexy words. Ever.  Even inside a cum-coated opening.

Here’s the conclusion I’ve drawn. You don’t think that readers who read erotic romance either like romance or sex. We readers deserve better than this. F

Best regards,

Jane

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

Maili, I understand you just finished reading (or is that too generous of a word) the words compiled into one PDF known as The Claiming by Trinity Blacio published by Siren Publishing-Bookstrand, Inc. The Claiming is ostensibly about a young woman whose family was killed in a bomb explosion on the family boat 10 years prior to the start of the story. Tabatha (also referred to as “Tab”) receives a frightening phone call from someone claiming to be responsible for those long ago deaths and promising to finish Tabatha off now. Tabatha believes that werewolves might be responsible for her family’s death but this doesn’t stop her from dressing up (or undressing given the scanty nature of the costume) for a Halloween party held at the local werewolf club. There she discovers that the Alpha is her mate and that a demon named Chax, summoned using her stolen car (don’t ask), is also her mate.

Tabatha is claimed by the two men, transformed by their seed “part werewolf and demon, being able to shift as she saw fit, and living as long as they chose.” There’s other stuff that goes on including that her brother isn’t really dead but has been hiding for 10 years and he gets to join a threesome claiming of his own.

Your email said that you were rocking slowly in a dark corner. Is there any one thing that you can point to that finished you off?

Maili:

“Then they heard Chax bellow his rage from the living room. He came storming into the room. He stopped at the foot of the bed and stared at them. His clothes flew off his body. Ever so slowly, he crawled onto the bed with them.”

It’s either that or at department store Macy’s, Tabatha somehow managed to floor two fierce demons by kneeling their balls. Or when fighting at her home, she suddenly shape-shifted into a werewolf and then a demon, to deal with a couple of demons. I’m not sure why she managed to do this when she didn’t at Macy’s. Actually, perhaps it was that moment when everyone stopped fighting after the Master of Hell – out of the blue – shouted, “Stop fighting!” There were so many. I think I was finished off by page 2, actually.

I just can’t get over that there was virtually no world-building. It seemed so random. Tabatha is probably the most inconsistent character I’d come across. What did you think of her?

Jane:
I admit that I was skeptical when I started this book as I was alerted to it by a reader who informed me via email it was the worst book that she had read; that she was never going to buy another ebook again; and that the author used “neither hole” twice in place of nether hole.

(neither hole exhibit A) and (neither hole exhibit B)

I didn’t fully appreciate how truly awful it was, however, until I started reading. It wasn’t just simply the lack of a coherent plot or the lack of worldbuilding but the consistent misspellings; lack of proper grammar; inconsistent details from page to page; and total disregard for use of punctuation. It actually read like a test you might give to a copyeditor who is applying for a job.

Maili:

Yeah! I don’t think anyone would dare to use it as a test because it’d take longer than an hour for a copyeditor to highlight all errors and inconsistencies. It’s the constant inconsistency that almost killed me. Chax’s height varied throughout the story. As far as I could remember, he was seven feet and one inch tall and somehow, became six feet and a half. In one scene he had shaven chest and in other scene, he had chest hairs same colour as his red hair. Oh, speaking of his hair. It was long enough to touch the floor, but the length varied since then. Down to his waist, his shoulders, his knees or God knows where else. A black-haired woman became a blonde bimbo. Some actions were repeated. Tabatha pulled her t-shirt off twice in one scene. Once in a while, it happened on the same page.

The Claiming read as if it was a first draft and completely unedited. I suspect the editor – if there was one – ran a simple spell check because we have so many WTF? words. Cheek for check, rapid for rabid, story for store (“Glancing around the story she noticed everything back as if there had never been a fight” ), and their for they’re (“Yes, they know their not too happy, but I didn’t care.“). It was truly crazy.
Jane:

Toward the end of the story, I was unsure whether the author’s native language was English. As you noted, rapid dog was used (twice in fact). There was a “coat cheek” and “he cheeked every nook of her body”.

The use of pronouns was optional:

“I thought you would like to have our ceremony with Melody’s. We could have out there by the lake.”

The transitions were stunningly bad:

Tabatha blushed and looked up at her mates’ glaring eyes. They didn’t say a word to her as they disappeared from the store. Her head rose up and she glanced up and her headboard greeted her vision. Face down on the bed she tried to turn around but her…

Consistent tense is forgotten:

“Tabatha couldn’t believe it. This hunk of a man could dance, and he is gorgeous to boot.”

Maili:

Someone responded to a recent DA article about the etiquette for reviewers that a reviewer should find something good in a bad book. I honestly tried to find one in The Claiming. The nearest I could find: the author has had an interesting concept. Not original, but interesting. I could see the skeleton of her story, but the execution is so poorly done. There was no story structure and… I’m sorry, it was unbelievably bad.

Well, it did have some memorable bits. Such as these: -

• Ben laughed a sad laugh as two cups of coffee flew at him.
• She bent down to pick it up when she felt the wiz of something fly by her ear.
• Tabatha stopped for a minute, thinking about it, and continued walking to the car.
• Shane grabbed hold of her, stopping her progress. “Wait, let me check outside.” His nose sniffed around the door. He poked his head out doing the same thing. Okay, everything is clear.”

There are some poorly plotted stories that have good erotic scenes, but the erotic scenes in The Claiming aren’t erotic at all. All were the ‘Wham-bam-thank-you-Ma’am’ type. I wouldn’t even brand it bad porn. I wonder if the author skimmed the details and the world-building to fit the word count for a 85-page novella? Or is it too charitable of me to think that?

Jane:

You have to wonder how any house can put this work out and maintain a reputation as a credible publisher.

Maili:

Especially when the ending made it clear that there will be a series to come. I hadn’t read a Siren Publishing book before and having read The Claiming, I’m not sure if I’m willing to read another.

Jane:

If there was a grade below F, I would give it. I truly believe this book is unpublishable in its current state. It gives Siren a bad name and, by extension, epublishing a bad name. No self respecting publisher should put out this kind of product. I intend to read another Siren book to see if The Claiming is an aberration.

This book can be purchased via Bookstrand (unfortunately you have to buy a $5 voucher and the book itself is only $4.50).

Dear Readers:

I can’t remember who chose this book for me to read during #RRTheatre (wherein I roast bad porn) but the premise was “have sex or die.” We thought that the plot promised some hijinks at least. Grammatically this Ravenous book wasn’t as poor as previous titles, but the editing was still abysmal. I had a feeling that this was supposed to be some kind of campy send up of futuristics but because it lacked any coherency, it was just a mess inducing unintentionally hilarious moments.

The basics of the worldbuilding that I could glean from the story is this.  There was a Great Fall and society split into Blacks and Blues.  Blacks were more technoliterate and Blues had more money.  There was a renewable energy source namd pilox that was the subject of much dissension between the Blues and Blacks.  There is a revolutionary group that no one knows about and there is the ability to infect someone with vampirism as well as the ability to cure it by creating a serum from a pregnant woman, although it destroys the fetus.

The story opens with our heroine (and I use this term very loosely as there is little heroic about these characters), Mayflower, in a three by six foot box designed for pleasure bots. Mayflower is pretending to be a pleasure synth. She is awaiting Klyper Corporation to pick her up and return her to her warehouse where she can return to someone named “Dime”. While she is waiting, the door of her unit opens and a man wrenches her out. He informs her that she will spread her thighs for him or they’ll both be dead.

Jovinius Markus Artinuous doesn’t buy Mayflower’s acting job and warns her “if you don’t do as I say when my clients get here, I’ll rip your fucking head off and shove it up your ass. Do you understand, Synthia?” There is no real explanation for why Mayflower is in this box designed for pleasure bots or why it is attached to Jove/Mark’s apartment. There is no real explanation for why Jove/Mark is a male prostitute/gigolo. Nor is there any real coherent worldbuilding. It is important that I lay out these precepts early on so that farther into the review when readers might ask “why”, they can answer their own query with “It’s RRTheatre”.

Mayflower is both excited and terrified by this assault. Her terror stems from her mistaken belief that Jove/Mark might be a synthbot. A synthbot is characterized by “his strength, his unusual good looks, his large cock, the freaky name, and his bad manners.” But Jove/Mark is not a synthbot. He is something else and when he kissed her jugular, her “pussy twitched” in response. She gives her tacit agreement to perform for these clients of Jove/Mark’s which the proviso that he not show them her “tits.” Mayflower, you see, has only one nipple.

Mayflower and Jove/Mark engage in sexual congress in front of Jove/Mark’s clients, the Dostens. Dostens are lithac traders. Lithac is a potent, addictive drug which apparently turns people into mindless children. Witness, for example, the behavior of drugged out Mrs. Dosten:

“I want you to lick her pussy, then fuck her ‘til she screams,” Janis blurted, ending her words with a giddy giggle.

and

“I’m horny! I’m horny!” she chanted, her head rolling this way and that as if she alternately searched something on the ceiling and all four walls.

Despite actually being at Jove/Mark’s place for watching and then having sex, Mr. Dosten is thoroughly disgusted with his wife and proceeds to slap her. This pushes Jove/Mark to get on with the show. He realizes that his instincts were correct when he smells her arousal.

She’d almost convinced him, but pussies don’t lie. They don’t cry either, unless they’re excited, and hers wept.

Pussy wept. Good thing that Mayflower responds to threats of violence and enjoys fucking strangers for voyeurs. Pussy’s aren’t the only thing that weeps. “Mr. Dosten’s erection dripped.” “His erection dripped down her thigh, eliciting a burst of her own woman’s cream.” “A burst of her woman’s cream spilled down her thighs…” “…come filling her and dripping between them onto the sheets.” “Mark erupted inside her, his come gushing down her thighs.” “…as more cream dripped from her swollen pussy.” “Mayflower’s body ached…her pussy dripped.”

Mark/Jove are so good together that Mr. Dosten cannot wait for his turn. This enrages Mark/Jove and he physically prevents Mr. Dosten from touching Mayflower. A scrap ensues wherein Mrs. Dosten jumps on Mark/Jove’s side and then he feels a “creamy liquid cascading down his side.” This description made me think that Mrs. Dosten may have leaked all over Mark/Jove. Someone on twitter suggested that it was blood and that Mark/Jove may have had different colored blood. This was dispelled by a later passage that described his blood as “ruby”. Make of this what you will. (Screencap).

Mayflower saves the day by pushing the Dostens into the Synthbox and pressing “WASH” which essentially kills them. The only concern Mark/Jove has regarding this is the bodyguard of the Dostens. Mayflower whisks Mark/Jove away to her warehouse by calling an ambulance and then getting the ambulance to leave them at her warehouse. I know that this might raise questions but I’m telling you to refer to previous paragraph in which I explained that there is no explanation for many of these things.

Mayflower has to give a blowjob and have sex with someone she has watch over her friend “Dime” who is called “Dime” because “Well, they used to joke about how Dime’s thoughts were worth at least nine cents more, hence his name.” Dime is a mentally challenged young man whose dialogue consists of ““Maaaaaaaaaafloooooooooooer,” Dime screamed in one of his random outbursts”. Don’t feel bad for him though because Dime gets to have sex and Mayflower even peeks at his sexual activities with maternal pride. Mark/Jove can tell that Mayflower is just faking her orgasm with this other person because she isn’t using her nails to scratch her john like she did when Mark/Jove and she were having sex.

Mayflower and Mark/Jove eventually go to a revolutionary camp. The revolutionaries are gearing up for a battle to bring peace between the two warring factions of Blues and Blacks. “He recognized Rocky, Melanchor, and Selena, leaders of the hard-fought revolution that no one seemed to know existed.” INORITE? A revolution that is so ineffective no one knows it exists? It gets better. When Rocky, Melanchor, Selena go off to battle, they return after three hours because a peace accord had already been worked out between the Blues and the Blacks. The revolution was for naught. !!!!! !!!!!

The book ends with Mayflower revealing that her left nipple was excised “per policy” when she was attacked and left for dead. The nipple stores all the information from her attack. Mayflower put her nipple in a necklace which she then gave to Dime. Yes, she gave her nipple in a “smooth silver box with rounded edges” to Dime to wear around his neck. Fortunately, they were able to reattach her nipple and all her memories were restored. This leads Mayflower to realize that her death was setup by her sister and exhusband. She returns to the Blue side to confront her sister, have sex with her ex-husband so that she could capture his DNA, and obtain revenge. Yes, hair or saliva samples aren’t sufficient, only sperm in one’s box can achieve perfect identification.

There is so much I left out in this review like the fact that Mark/Jove is a “Return”, a vampire cured of his vampirism but I leave you with my favorite line of the book:

She could tell the real man in front of her wanted her, because he told her so. “I want you,” he whispered (Screencap)

Best regards,

Jane

You can purchase this book at Ravenous Romance.

Netcomics is a publisher that publishes manga and manhwa online. No e-reader is needed, just $0.25 per chapter. They publish not only their own but Luv Luv and Yaoi Press comics among others. The way it works is that you buy e-cash in $10 amounts, then pay as you view each new chapter.

You don’t own the chapters, not at those prices. You get to view them for 48 hours. But, so you have a chance to look at a manga before starting to pay, the first 1-2 chapters are always available free (one for short works, 2 for longer).

Last, almost all the books are or will be available in hard copy if you find you truly love them and can’t live without them. There are a couple of series I follow that I purchase in hard format. What I love most about Netcomics though is that the net-version is usually 1-2 volumes ahead of the print, and with chapter releases the wait time is generally much less for updates, 2 weeks for my favorite series.

The series tend to be focused on women’s and girls’ comics. There are romances both het and m/m, and fantasy and drama with strong female leads. Only a few of the series are what I’d consider to be male-oriented. There’s a lot of variety though, and a number of the series look interesting. Browsing through their lineup I found 20 series that looked interesting enough to try, a third in various stages of completion, the others completed and (most) also in print.

The comics are quite easy to read on the screen. Some adjustments can be made for size, one or two page viewing, auto vs manual page turning. One thing that does annoy me about the reading window is the scrolling text on the upper left menu bar. It keeps catching my eye and distracting me. But the window can be slid to the side so it’s off screen so it’s not that big a deal. Other than that, I enjoy reading the manga this way. The print and art are clear and crisp, and there seems to be very little issue with things like lag or memory overload.

Today I’m looking at three ladies’ het oneshot manga volumes (single volume series) that can be viewed on the site for a really reasonable cost. The quality of writing varies wildly between them. I’ve not included samples, because the website itself offers a sample of every manga it sells. I’ve linked to the pages for each.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Luv Luv Press is bringing Japanese adult comics for women to the US. Sadly, the economy is hitting them hard, so if any of the titles here interest you, you may want to try them while you can. Their titles are all complete within one volume. The subject matter is adult romance and relationships. Their latest title on Netcomics is Make Love & Peace by Takane Yonetani. The volume is 7 chapters, or $1.50 (the first chapter is free). It consists of the 5 chapter main story and two oneshots.

The story has Ayame, a college student in a relationship with Koichi, a detective, when he saves her from a mugging. Koichi saves Ayame a lot. Between saving her they have lots and lots of sex (The sex is softcore level of explicitness, ie no graphic depictions of genitalia.). But it’s boring sex, not the least bit erotic to me, for two reasons. One is that the characters look like teens. I know the conventions of a lot of manga result in this, but I prefer manga where the guys look like they’re over fourteen, especially if sex is involved. Second, the art just feels amateurish. Not only are the character designs mediocre, but the pacing of the stories is off, and the drawing of the sex is stiff (no pun intended) and without eroticism. It felt like this was an early comic by someone who didn’t know how to draw sexual tension.

The entire volume had that shortcoming. There wasn’t much story, just several flimsy plotlines about an underwear burglar and lots of boring sex. It was painful to read. Honestly, if I hadn’t bought it for review I would have stopped after one chapter. I’d call this a skip-worth volume. I really found nothing redeeming in it, so I’d have to honestly give it an F.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The next Luv Luv volume I tried was much better. It’s Real Love by Mitsuki Oda , and is 6 chapters, or only $1.25!

The art in this is beautiful, professional, a complete opposite to the previous volume. It reminds me a lot of Ai Yazawa (Paradise Kiss, NANA) only a little less cluttered. It’s very pleasing to look at. The story is an improvement as well. Of the 6 chapters, the first 4 are devoted to the cover story. The last two chapters are a lesser story about a young woman musician who has to learn to write music from her heart, and it’s fairly average.

I enjoyed the cover story more. A young woman in university, Shu, is surprised to meet the young man, a popular actor named Naomichi, who took her virginity. She had loved him but found he was a cold womanizer and she dropped him. His career went downhill after that and he’s back in school, and determined to win her now. She’s not interested, except the sex was hot and she’s still attracted for that reason. Her waffling and our not being sure of his motive or feelings supplies the tension. As does the presence of her twin brother Shun, who seems to be having some crises of his own centered around both his sister and her ex.

For only having four chapters I thought I got to know the main characters remarkably well. I felt like I’d been reading something several volumes long, not because it was tedious, but because the mangaka told us a lot in the space she had, and that made this feel much deeper than a typical one volume manga.

However the ending of it felt way too rushed. In fact, I was shocked when I turned the page and found another story starting, and that’s not a good thing. I hope there’s a volume 2 being worked on out there that someday makes it to our shores. As it stands, it gets a B-.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The last single-volume manga I looked at for this group was cm0 (Centimeter Zero) by Kazumi Tohno and published by Netcomics. It’s 5 chapters, so would only cost $1! Honestly, at these prices how can you not try some?

This was a sweet and slow-paced love story about a university student, Hasumi, and a young woman, Miharu, who is one of his professors. They live in the same apartment building and know each other on a friendly basis. When her fiancée dumps her because of rumors about them, she turns to Hasumi for comfort, but that night they spend together drives a wedge between them. Eventually they begin to reconnect, slowly drifting back together, first as friends, then both gradually realizing it’s something more.

I love the artwork in this. The character designs are so normal, and the drawing style is soft and expressive. There is no explicit sex on the pages of this story, though there is some in their relationship that’s referred to.

I do have a complaint about typos and grammar. I’m not one to notice them, so when I do it generally means it’s bad enough to annoy most people. There were several instances of letters dropped off or left out of words. And one thing that annoys me to no end is when someone says “between you and I”. The character is an English professor. I think she’d know that after a preposition you use “me”, not “I”. This is a translation/editing mistake, and one that shouldn’t occur in a professional publication.

However, despite that, the story is a lovely one and I do recommend it the most of the three books here. This book is only available online. I’d give this story a B+.

No matter what I thought of these books though, the fact remains that I read three volumes of manga that would normally put me out $30 plus shipping and leave me stuck with one I wanted to give away but couldn’t because of its adult nature. I only spent $3.75. That makes it a great way to try manga, and a cheap way to buy manga for teens as long as you’re aware of the offerings on the site and what they’re reading. I’ll be reviewing more of the series in upcoming installments, and focusing on both the manhwa and BL (m/m) offerings.

Sincerely,
ジェーン
(Jān)

I read your offering for last month’s offering of Nocturne Bites.  Although I was disappointed by what I felt was an unresolved plot thread, I later discovered that it had been intended to be the first of a series, in which the various installments were connected by the mystery of an unidentified werewolf attacking and subsequently infecting innocent humans with his bite.  While this doesn’t give you a pass when it comes the abrupt ending of the plotline in question, it did clarify some things for me.  I’m not going to debate the pros and cons of writing a paranormal continuity that switches back and forth from novellas to novels (although I hear there are plans for novels in the future, this installment is once again a novella), I did want to mention this fact for other readers who might be interested in your stories since I know there are some who dislike this particular trend.

Jenna James is a psychiatrist with a problem.  Her latest female patient is exhibiting strange behavior and symptoms, and she has no explanation for it.  So she calls Detective Matt Wilson to come have a look and give her some insight.  The complication?  She and Matt are lovers — or were until he abruptly cut off all contact with her three months ago.

Matt knows exactly what’s wrong with the patient.  She’s a werewolf going through her first transformation.  He knows the signs.  After all, he’s a werewolf himself and has been for the past three months.  Now his problem is to find a way to help the patient while dealing with Jenna, who wants to know why he left her without a word.

While the first novella in this series had some flaws, I thought it showed promise so I approached this installment with the expectation that we’d see more advancement in the plotline regarding the mystery werewolf who’s taken it upon himself to randomly infect humans.  I was sorely disappointed.  There was nothing of the sort here.  I wasn’t expecting major revelations or anything, but a hint or two would have been nice.

More importantly, however, I thought the main plot was contrived.  If I had been reading this in print form and not on my Sony Reader, I absolutely would have thrown this against the wall the minute I read the ending.  It’s difficult to talk about without spoiling every detail, but I thought what Jenna did was absolutely cruel and inhumane towards the patient.  Her desire to see Matt again did not outweigh the unnecessary pain and anguish she inflicted upon that poor woman just to sort out her relationship troubles.

Secondly, Jenna’s big reveal made me feel cheated because it was inconsistent with what information we’d been given throughout the story previously.  If what we learned in the final pages had been true all along, why in the world was there that scene where she googled the classic symptoms of a werewolf?  Never mind the fact that I have a very hard time believing anyone wouldn’t associate transformations, hair growth, howling, and full moons with werewolf lore.  It’s like that one episode of Supernatural where the Winchester brothers pondered why people in horror movies never know basic supernatural lore. Answer: Because they’re in a horror movie and if they already did know, there’d be no suspense or plot.  So in that sense alone, the scene failed for me.  But in combination with the ending, my reaction can only be summed up with WTF just happened here?

Now don’t get me wrong.  Misdirection can be a powerful narrative technique.  For example, this can be done extremely well in first person point-of-view, in which you can have an unreliable narrator.  Dracula, after all, is a classic example of unreliable narrators left and right.  But this story was written in third person of view, and we do see from Jenna’s perspective and get insight into her thoughts.  There was absolutely no reason for things like the aforementioned computer search scene and some of her reactions if the ending’s big reveal was true from the very beginning.

I was actually going to give this novella a D but explaining how the ending made every single thing that happened before it a lie, as well as made the heroine completely unlikeable in my eyes, ticked me off all over again, so I’m afraid it’s an F.  And to think all I wanted was just a little more advancement in the mystery werewolf plotline.

My regards,
Jia

This book can be purchased in ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers. (digital format only)

Dear Ms. Layne:

When Ravenous Romance first appeared on my radar, I blogged about it and you were quick to come to inform us readers that this new epress would “blow the competition out the water from very early on.”  Given that you were also elevated from writer to editor in a short time, I thought it might be worthwhile to see exactly what was the force behind all the eruption.  Knight Moves is a time traveling story featuring New Jersey toll booth supervisor, Louise Jackson, and the time traveling knight, Lord Verdigris.  

For her birthday, Louise Jackson is dragged to Medieval Worlds: Dinner and Tournament by her best friend.  Deciding the wait for the woman’s bathroom is too long, Louise slips into the men’s room in hopes of relieving herself quickly.  There she is assailed by the stench of the men’s room and the sight of the gorgeous man at the urinal:

And the sight of the huge cock the knight is holding in his right hand as he shakes off the last few drops of pee is even more dazzling.

The sight is so dazzling that Loiuse’s pee dries up and is replaced with moist desire. 

I don’t need to pee any more. Now I just need to get laid.

The knight gives me a knowing smile, and jiggles his giant cock in my direction.  “You look like a fair maiden in need of a good visit from the codpiece,” he says.

Frankly, I don’t know of any visual more attractive or seductive than a guy dressed like a knight in a tacky dinner theatre waving his post pee schwizzle stick around.  Louise is clearly a woman of discerning taste.  She also is one who doesn’t worry about any kind of hygiene issues because she is not at all concerned when pee shaking man hands grab her and whisk her to the last stall in the bathroom that turns out to be, yes, a time traveling portal.  Oh, if Bill and Ted only knew that the phone booth wasn’t the only way to break through the space time continuum.

Louise is barely phased (or fazed) by the travel from the filthy men’s urinal where she was ready to “take a ride on a knight’s codpiece” to the knight’s castle.  She is ready for the knight of no name “to fuck [her] brains out.”  

I don’t even know what century I’m in right now. And I don’t care. All I care about is getting Gorgeous Mystery Knight’s giant codpiece up my twat in a hurry.

The knight who has yet to wash his hands whisks her upstairs to engage in coitus of a very romantic and sexy nature. I quote the liberally from the first sex scene to give the proper flavor:

Another couple flicks of my knight’s supple wrists, and I find myself naked and thrown headfirst over the wooden bench, my ass sticking straight up in the air. Gorgeous Knight, fully clothed, spreads my butt cheeks wide, whips his giant cock out of his breeches, and takes me from behind.

…

We continue to fuck doggy-style over the bench for several minutes. . . . I buck up against him hard mid-thrust, tipping him off balance. Once he’s lost his footing, I pull myself off his cock – my cunt makes a disappointed queeb sound as we separate…I come two more times when I spin myself around and around on his cock like a top, and take the last few strokes down from the rear.

Excuse me while I insert a crude joke here.  You are blowing something out of the water, but I’m not certain it’s your competition.  Back to the story.  After the aforementioned erotic sex scene (and by erotic, I mean sex so terrible that even the idea of my parents’ coupling is preferable to revisiting this), we are treated to some post coital love talk:

 

“Everything you see and feel is real, milady,” my knight says, caressing my bare back with his hands. “That, I promise you. If you desire proof, you only need consider the three very real climaxes you just had in your lady-softness.”

My eyes fly wide. “How did you know I came three times?”

He grins wider. “Your lady-softness told me herself when she was wrapped round my codpiece.”

 

Mystery knight, however, is not entranced by Louise’s lady softness for long because he soon escorts her to the Hall of Harlots where he keeps the women that he’s captured from all over the world, through many centuries.  Even though Louise is initially shocked at being stuck in the Hall of Harlots, she is reassured by Lord Verdigris, Master of the Hourglass, that being a whore for him and his knights is really an honor.  She’ll be well cared for and reside in luxury and in exchange, she just needs to open her legs to whomever desires her to do so.

Update: Someone asked me if there was a plot to the story and there is. Lord Verdigris is not the nicest guy and Louise, with the help of one particular lover from the Regency period and another knight with vengeance quest against Verdigris, challenge Lord Verdigris’ hold over the captives of his court.

Louise is a plucky heroine and decides that she’ll be the very best harlot in the Hall of Harlots despite Lord Verdigris having  ”tasted the pleasures of harlots and courtesans from every age in the Known World’s history, from ancient Greece and Rome to the Renaissance to the farflung future.”  Somehow, despite Lord Verdigris’ vast experience and extensive travel, Louise manages to come up with a sexual expertise that Lord Verdigris has never experienced.  Louise becomes a dom for Verdigris and all his knights and becomes the court favorite despite having over seven hundred “competitors” based on techniques that she remembered from the Story of O.    Her ability to wield a paddle on the “Cross of Satisfaction” is unparalleled and soon, Lord Verdigris is beckoning her:

And ‘tis time for us to partake of Pleasure’s fruit again, milady. My codpiece has desired your lady-softness all day long.”

Which is good, because then we get to find out that he sweats buckets of happy juice:

His erection is enormous – pointing at an almost 90-degree angle up towards his chin – and his glans is sweating buckets of happy juice.

These are two big secreters.  Her crotch turns to cream (“turning my crotch to cream”), she leaves a trail of juice down his chest (“I slide down his chest, leaving a trail of my nectar on his skin”), her vulva is liquified (“my vulva is sweating a sea of slick salt water”); her, well, ladysoftness is “wet, dripping.”  Besides the overwhelming amount of fluid expulsion there was also the outsized genitals.   His was ten inches and her clit was so large that, well, let me just quote it:

The walls of my vag vibrate and pulse at warp speed, and my labia are so swollen, they pound out a drumbeat as they slap up and down against the length of Lord Verdigris’ cock. 

I’m not sure what I found most far fetched in this story.  Was it the instant acceptance that Louise had of being swept through the urinal time traveling portal?  Was it ease at which Louise decides being a whore is something to embrace?  Was it the ridiculous love scenes that included “queebs”, references to “lady softness”, “lady fingers”, her “volcanic crotch”?  Was it the fact that there was some weird editing glitch wherein Chapter Five included the words “Page Break” at the top.  It could have been the fact that her hoo haa was so powerful it could make people immortal.  Perhaps it was the scintillating dialogue that include, “‘Unnnnnnuuuuuhhhhh,’ I moan, completely losing control. I come so hard, I see stars.”  Or perhaps it was the casual declaration of lesbian love that she embraces at the Harlot’s Hall when she gets her first fisting treatment.  

 

I’m suddenly beginning to appreciate the saying, “once you’ve gone lesbo, you never go back.” . . . Just when I think it can’t get any more intense, Mabel plunges her arm into me well past her wrist….I’ve got ladyfingers stuck up both ends. And I’m loving it.

 

She turns her back on the lesbian love when she finds out its all a plot to reduce her position from Lord Verdigris’ favorite.  

Or was it the finale where Lord Verdigris and Louise engage gangsters in Philly in a “yo momma” challenge where the dialogue is vaguely insulting to the people of color.  It’s hard to say.  

“As a matter of fact we do,” I say. “My friend over here” – I point at Lord Verdigris – “is from Philadelphia, and he and I have a bet to settle before we scope out any property for Mr. Trump. And I’ve decided that we’ll settle the bet with a game of Yo’ Mama. Winner takes all. I need some street-smart guys to judge the game. Y’all up for that?”

The gangbangers laugh, slap hands, and nod. “Hell, yeah,” says their leader.

“We always got time for a game o’ Yo’ Mama. Which one o’ y’all gonna start?”

…

 

Lord Verdigris holds up his hand. “I require no explanation, Lady Louisa. We play a version of this game in my own time. The game ‘tis as ancient as the Romans.”

The gangbangers stare at him. “Damn, dat dude talk funny,” one of them says.

“He don’t sound like he from no Philly, neither,” another says.

 

If this is not the worst book I’ve read, it comes close.  I’m actually not sorry I bought it.  I now know what being blown out of the water feels like and can be prepared the next time someone makes a claim about their work in such a way.  F.

Best regards,

Jane

I encourage everyone to buy this e-book at Ravenous Romance at the low price of $4.99. I’ve left out some choice group scenes and the “Yo Mama” fight between Lord Verdigris and Louise. You know you want to read it.

This is a very well-written book. You have strong, fully realized characters, an unique plot, a romance that is slowly developed and deeply felt, and a solid, believable happy ending. I think you have a lot of writing talent and a good eye for the genre. That said, this book made me feel dirty–not in a fun, sexy way, but in an unclean, depressing, angry way.

Seth’s best friend Kaden drops a bomb on him one day: not only is he dying of pancreatic cancer, but he’s asking Seth to step in for him as his wife’s dominant after he dies. Seth, who had no clue that his best friends were involved in BDSM, let alone in a 24/7 Master/slave relationship, is understandably blown away and completely weirded out. But he agrees, moves in with his friends, learns to be a dominant, slowly falls in love with Leah (or, rather, admits to himself and his friends that he’s always loved her), shares her with Kaden, watches Kaden sicken and die (the whole story takes about 18 months, I’d say, maybe a bit longer), after which he and Leah learn to live without Kaden and live happily married ever after. There are no surprises in this story and that’s as it should be. No miracle cures, no unbelievable emotions, no melodrama. Seth goes through very realistic feelings of grief and despair over his best friend’s illness, horror and outrage over the BDSM aspect of Kaden and Leah’s life that he is expected to learn and take over for, which changes to acceptance and understanding by the end of the story.  You obviously feel very strongly about explaining, even normalizing, the BDSM lifestyle to an interested but ignorant audience, when you say in your Author’s Note:

While this is a fictional story, the portrayal of a 24/7 M/s relationship is accurate. There is a rich diversity to “the lifestyle” that most people never know about because their information comes from BSDM fetish sites on the internet. Try to define normal, either in a vanilla or kink relationship, and it’s truly impossible.

You might be more “normal” than you think…

And if your whole plot set-up weren’t, to my mind, inherently offensive and dangerous, you would have done a great job.

But rather than normalizing or explaining BDSM, this book pathologizes it even more than the APA has by including sexual paraphilias in its DSM IV.  Because the only reason that Kaden and Leah are in a 24/7 Master/slave relationship is that it’s the only way that Leah has to access her emotions after her hideously abusive childhood:

Some people, for various reasons, need pain. They use it. It’s how they function, how they deal with their emotions. Some use it to help relieve intense emotional pain in an external way, some use it to feel like they’re connected to life again. [ . . . ] She needs things. It helps her cope. She doesn’t feel or express emotional pain like you and me. She needs safety and security. She needs someone who will care for and about her and understand why she needs…things. Someone she can put her full trust in. It’s how she’s made it all these years.

Leah used to self-mutilate to access her emotions, but Kaden put a stop to that by hurting her in a controlled, ritualized BDSM context instead. This is how she processes grief, anger, pain, fear, even sometimes happiness. Leah tells Seth toward the end of the book about the first time that Kaden spanked her when he discovers her self-mutilating after she promised she wouldn’t anymore:

“Then he grabbed me and spanked me. And when I looked up at him, he was just…well, sort of like you looked when you were trying to see how bad I was hurt. Horrified. I knew immediately he didn’t mean to do it. I knew he didn’t enjoy doing it.” She shook her head. “I think maybe that’s why I wanted him to keep doing it. Why I was able to promise him and keep it that time, mostly.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He was the first person in my life who hurt me but he didn’t enjoy it. Do you think he just jumped into this with both feet? You know him. The only reason he did it was for me. Not because he enjoys it. Don’t let him fool you, he was just as scared as you are now. Probably even more.”

“He sure doesn’t look like it.”

“That’s twenty years of experience.”

Kaden isn’t doing this because he enjoys it. Oh no. Even though he admits that the sex is hot:

“It’s not about sex, either. That’s tied into it, but in our case it boils down to giving her what she needs to function. Some people are in it for the sex. Yeah, the sex is hotter for us because of this. I won’t lie, you’ll find it’s the hottest fucking sex you’ve ever imagined. But it’s not about the sex. It’s about fulfilling a need for someone.”

God forbid it be about getting off. No, it has to have a higher purpose than that.

Let’s perform a little thought experiment, shall we. A man, hideously abused during his childhood, feels that the world is spinning out of control. In order to calm himself, to access his emotions, and to act in a way that does not result in pure self-destruction, he needs to impose order on everything around him. In order to feel alive, he needs to make others around him hurt. What do we call this man? Sociopath comes to mind for me. What do we call his lovers? Victims? What about if it’s all consensual though — isn’t that the rallying cry of BDSM? Safe, Sane, Consensual, right? And these characters present as consensual, at least on the surface. But what if he manipulates his lovers into a virtual sexual slavery without them even being aware of what’s happening until they’re so far into it they can’t see a way out because they don’t want to cause him to spiral out of control? They do it because they want to please him, but they don’t actually like it.  I think we all would recognize that as abuse. In fact, it’s horrifying to us — or at least, to me. So why is it different in this instance? Why is it NOT abuse when it’s the “submissive” basically forcing her dominant with emotional blackmail into hurting her “for her own good”? Why is the dominant in this situation not seen as abused? Because dominants can’t be abused by submissives? I call bullshit.

And what about those who are BDSM identified who DO take part in BDSM activities solely because it gets them off, solely because they like to feel or inflict pain? Because despite what you purport to be trying to do, Ms. Dalton, the way you’ve constructed the characters in this book pathologizes real sadists who really do like to hurt truly consenting partners; it pathologizes real masochists who really do get off on being hurt by truly consenting partners. By having one of your characters say:

I told you, she’s not a pain slut. You’ll see people who put dozens of clothespins all over themselves, needles, hot wax, knife play, shit like that. She has no desire to do any of that. All she needs is the occasional grounding. That’s what the spankings are about.

You’re basically saying that it’s all those pain “sluts” out there who do “shit like that” who are really the sick ones. By justifying BDSM as therapy, for god’s sake, you pathologize anyone out there who just likes it withOUT justification, without a higher purpose, who might just be wired that way. After all, Kaden wouldn’t be a dominant if Leah didn’t “need” pain, and Leah wouldn’t need pain if she hadn’t had a fucked-up childhood, and Seth is forever whining about how he needs just to be vanilla now and then, that he’s only doing this for her and doesn’t really enjoy it. None of them are wired to be BDSM-identified and, in the world of the book as you’ve constructed it, THAT’S precisely what makes their practice of BDSM okay. Because they DON’T like it and it’s NOT natural for them, it’s okay.  Higher purpose, remember? And anything else — anyone who enjoys it because, yes, dammit, it’s about sex and fun and desire — anything healthy like that, is suspect. And that’s NOT okay, in my book.

So, some tips to other authors who hope to write BDSM:

• BDSM is not and should never be used as therapy. That’s dangerous. If someone needs a therapist, they should see a therapist. If they can’t access their emotions, trust me, pain and submission are not the answer. Although this is obviously impossible to put in practice, only relatively healthy people should engage in serious BDSM play. And although authors like Joey Hill and Anah Crow show their characters using BDSM as a way to find their more authentic selves, they don’t use it as a way to avoid therapy, as explicitly stated in this book.
• Cutting and self-mutilation do not indicate that a character is naturally a submissive. This is why I despise the movie The Secretary, too. Self-mutilation has nothing to do with BDSM. For most submissives, BDSM-inflicted pain is completely different from other types of pain. Self-mutiliation and BDSM play might both release endorphins, but other than that, the experiences have nothing to do with each other. One is about loving connection with and complete trust in one’s partner. The other is about mental illness.
• Submissives do NOT need a dominant to keep them in line in order to function in the world. Most submissives are incredibly strong, competent, completely normal people who just happen to get off on giving up control to their partner, something which does NOT infantilize them.  Depicting them as being completely lost without a dominant DOES, however, so knock it the fuck off.
• Dominants are not interchangeable. One dominant is not as good as any other. A BDSM relationship is just like a vanilla relationship: all about attraction and compatibility.  If the thought that your husband might try to set you up with his best friend after his untimely death in order to keep you sane horrifies you, then why is it okay in a BDSM context? Hint: it’s not.
• Both sides need to get off on the BDSM. Both sides need to agree to it and want to do it and get something purely *selfish* out of it. Neither side should be manipulating the other side into anything.  Having a character observe: “The truth was, most of what Kaden did, Leah had talked him into it even if it didn’t seem like it to others. He might have had the title and obviously the demeanor of her Master, but it was all because he loved her and tried to control and heal her pain the only way he thought he could.  Not because he wanted to dominate her,” does not make it all better and more acceptable. It makes the whole situation way way worse.

I’d be interested in reading some non-BDSM books from you, because, like I said, I think you’re a very talented writer. But please, don’t do the BDSM world any more favors like this book. With friends like you, we don’t need the legions of enemies we already have out there.

I have a really hard time grading this book. Purely mechanically, I’d give it a B- I think. Seth needs to get over himself a lot more quicker and Kaden’s OCD beyond-the-grave letters and DVDs are a bit much, but the characterization, relationship growth, and HEA are strong.  But as a whole product, the story gets not just an F, but an Epic Fail. I shouldn’t finish a romance feeling furious and degraded.

Sincerely,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased in ebook format from etailers carrying Lyrical Press books.

Thanks so much for writing a novel that could be used as a writing manual entitled How Not to Write a Romance.  It’s an invaluable resource for all other romance authors out there. It must have taken considerable time and unknown talent to include so many stereotypes, mistakes, crushed conventions, and sheer bad writing as examples, or maybe as warnings, to other authors.

I was particularly impressed with the character list:

• The gay cop who tries to prove himself by going undercover, without any authorization from his superiors, as the bodyguard and right-hand man of a new mob boss.
• His Latina partner who uses so much Spanish slang and cursing, her dialogue is almost unreadable.
• The crime boss whose evilitude is obvious because he’s a sadist! Of course, because you know about those dirty sadists! And he’s British, so automatically more evil!
• The stunningly beautifully gorgeous rent boy who is the crime boss’s boyfriend. He’s fuckable! And defiant! Lonely! And out for revenge! He fucks anyone who asks. Except for the gay cop. Even though they Lurrve each other instantly! He’s got an awful horrible background that’s revealed in pointless info-dump, rather than through subtle hints and clues throughout text. But, Oh! So fuckable!
• The huge, loyal, yet two-timing bodyguards.
• The other mob boss with a heart of gold and a really cute nephew.
• The savior cop with a heart of gold whose memory is inexplicably dragged up in the final third of the novel.
• The ruthless sidekick who inexplicably shows up half way through the novel as an alibi for the crime boss.
• The ridiculous skater gang that show up inexplicably half way through.
• The other undercover cop who inexplicably shows up….well, you get the point.

Extra points, by the way, for introducing so many characters so late in the novel. I get the impression that they’re actually a planned part of the back story, but you just don’t manage to mention them until late in the story.

Double extra points for so many plot points that require super-suspension of disbelief:

• The unauthorized undercover work.
• The cops’ apparently close and personal relationship with the mob boss with a heart of gold. He may have a heart of gold, but he’s definitely still a mob boss.
• The instant connection the gay cop and the rent boy feel that “felt so right on an almost molecular level.”
• The unsafe sex everyone has.
• The fact that the rent boy has oral and anal sex with everyone except the gay cop.
• The fact that the gay cop goes around killing random gang members without worrying about repercussions.
• The completely manufactured “conflict” between gay cop and rent boy after the plot tension seems over, a conflict that seems completely contradictory to cop’s entire previous character and actions

And congratulations on hitting every cliche in romance writing by someone who doesn’t understand what makes a good romance:

• All the conflict is manufactured by the “suspense” plot, rather than the relationship between the main characters, who instantly fall into lust and love and perfect harmony.
• Sex with anyone by one of the heroes must make it a romance!
• Lust=Twu Wuv, naturally.
• Instant and perfect understanding between the heroes, until the Big Manufactured Character-Contradicting Conflict.
• The power of the hero’s Mighty Wang (TM SBTB) curing all sexual dysfunctions!

Super bonus for covering the biggest m/m romance cliches:

• Gay men are insatiable.
• Any hole will do and any sex must be hot.
• Retaining the gender roles of TSTL heroine who needs saving from herself and big strong cop who does the saving.

I started the book because I’ve immensely enjoyed other books from Dreamspinner Press and because I liked the set-up for this book. I kept reading the book to try to figure out if it could get any worse, and I was never disappointed. Well done!

Grade: F

But as I said, its future use as a what-not-to-do manual is invaluable.

Best regards,

-Joan/Sarah F.

The book can be purchased in ebook format from Dreamspinner Press.

Once upon a time, my so called friend, Sarah, sent me a book to read. She had told me some bare details about it that raised my eyebrows and I started to read it when I received the book but it wasn’t intriguing enough to continue so I put it aside. But, it was laying on the top of the TBR pile, taunting me so last Friday I picked it up.

Nicholas is an Italian lord and vineyard owner who happens to be one of the three Satyrs that live in EarthWorld as opposed to ElseWorld. ElseWorld is where Satyrs, Faeries and who knows else frolic and fight. In EarthWorld, there appear to be humans, human-blends and Satyrs. Nicholas receives a note from the Kind of the Faeries that he, the King, had impregnated and begat three girls. Their Faerie blood is now starting to quicken and Nicholas and his two brothers must seek out these girls, marry them and continue the Satyr line. Nicholas, Lyon, and Raine divvy the girls up by geography. Nicholas’ chosen one is in Rome and off he hies to find her.

Find her he does and makes an offer to her degenerate family and she’s bundled off as his wife as quick as can be. Once on Satyr land, she is taken by Nicholas on a regular basis for as a Satyr, he cannot be without copulation for any significant period of time. Nicholas was taught by his father that there are two kinds of women: the Madonna and the Whore. You marry the Madonna, you fuck the whore. And because the wife is a precious piece of property, you don’t attempt to seduce her or pleasure her in anyway. Instead, you shove up her nightgown, stick a finger up her vagina like a “thermometer”, add some cream, and do her. “A fingertip pricked and then delved inside as though a thermometer intent on taking her temperature.” If she doesn’t like it, well, she’s the wife. Not supposed to.

The conflict in this story does not appear until the last third to a quarter of the book. Essentially the evil aunt (will address her in a bit) wants to copulate with Nick to begat heirs to continue her evil work. It’s not very well explained as to what evil work that she wants to continue because her evilness is exemplified by the fact she has lesbian orgies but is bisexual in the choice of rape victims she chooses for her orgies.

I’ve long bemoaned the use of villain sex to show the reader how truly putrid a villain is. In this case, not only is it used, but it is overused. Not only does the evil aunt have sex with her stepbrother, but she does so calling him brother to emphasize the incestual nature of it. (Why they weren’t blood related makes no sense to me). Not only does the evil aunt have incestuous sex, but she comes to his bed after having with someone else to deliver this line: “She intentionally didn’t wash before joining her stepbrother. . . . Come inside me, brother . . . feel the welcome of another man’s cream”.

Not only does she deliver gross come on lines, but she has lesbian orgies (with four other women). Not only does she have incestual sex, rape young men, engage in lesbian orgies, but she also ties up her niece (13 years old) so she can hear the screams of her sister (19 years old) as the evil auntie and her coven of lesbian lovers rape the heroine with magical dildoes and their own mouths and fingers. But, evil auntie gets hers when the trees in the forest of the Satyr kill her. But only after the heroine is raped in a fogged and drugged splendor. Yep, super sexay.

What’s this about magical dildoes you say? Well, the hero has a great collection of them. One prized example is an old magical beast whose magic is still alive in the wang because it vibrates. Oh, and the only way you get a magical vibrating wang is to wait for the ancient beast to die of natural causes. I know you readers think I am making this up, but I promise you that it’s all true.

Part of me wondered if this was written by a man, no matter what the biography states. After all, so much of the book read like male wish fulfillment. Nicholas is a shapeshifter of sorts. Once a month he has the Calling wherein a second penis springs from his pelvis. During the night of the Calling, Nicholas is wracked with lust. Fortunately, he and his brothers can summon women out of mist, called Shimmerskins. These women are animated blow up dolls. Nicholas even has one that he can summon from a mirror in his bedroom. But sometimes misty women are not enough and Nicholas has to seek succor from brothels. Usually he needs two women at time, even when he only has one dick. For his wife, though, he enjoys carnal relations only with the help of first cream and then drugs.

Jane, of course, is a half blood Faerie which is why Nicholas seeks her out in the first place. She knows she’s different (although the reader doesn’t really KNOW until later in the book but at least she doesn’t have a second shape or different appendages, those all belong to Nick). She’s afraid that her differences will disgust Nick and that she’ll lose her home and possibly a home for her sister Emma. One of Jane’s abilities is to heal the land and make things grow. Convenient that she is now a vineyard owner’s wife, particularly when the vineyard owner’s life depends upon the health of the vines.

This is an Aphrodisia book and the warning on the back tells the reader that is sexy. But I have to confess I spent most of my reading experience with my legs crossed. Dildos that are actually penii cut off from real live beasts? The penis and vaginas are sentient beings. The sex organs are described as “the grudging slit“, “the dutiful netherlips“, “His satiated shaft hung in smug relaxation” and this, one of my favorite descriptions: “Her channel spasmed on it suddenly, gripping, releasing, gripping, releasing—like a nursing mouth.”

And then . . .

Startled, she cried out, trying to sit up and scoot away. “Something is—ahh!”
An unidentified serpentine instrument had unfurled from below his scrotum to tickle its way inside her anus! She wiggled her buttocks in confused delight as more of the tonguelike protrusion made its way into her rear entrance.

Again, not making this up. Confused delight? How about Terrified Horror at the fact a snake is protruding from her husband’s sac and crawling up her asshole?

In her drugged state, Jane enjoys Nick’s changes. “A matted, downy fur now covered his haunches and calves. He was as furred as an animal.”

The prose is purple, the storyline is flat with little movement. There is no character arc. There is no connection between the characters. If this is a love story, my copy was missing those pages that described it. If it was a hot and sexy read, then I’m going to have to become an inspirational reader. I debated not finishing it because it was so boring at one point. I fell asleep after reading about the magical dildos and then when I did soldier on I was treated to the horrible rape scene (which was depicted as almost some kind of strange normalcy because the heroine is not affected in any way and does not even address it after it happens) and the Sharing scene (where the heroine is drugged, yet again, so that her brothers in law can make her “safe” by sharing their “brotherly semen” with her). I wished I had left the book in the middle. I would have been less scarred. F.

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Dear Ms. Gryphon:

The cover quote for the book is by Laurell K Hamilton and it says “A unique idea in the paranormal genre.” I have to agree. It was unique. Unique like I’ve never read anything so bizarre in the paranormal genre before. Unique in that I’m sure that no one else is using the word “wereBear” because it rhymes with “careBear” thus rendering the shifter completely toothless. Unique in that it had every possible kind of mythical creature from vampires to the menagerie of shifters to Brownies, Fey, Elf (different than Fey), Pixies, dragons, Greek gods and goddesses, Ghosts, Demi-Fey, Slaugh, Goblins, Light Court, Dark Court, Twilight Court, Lord Dracula, Anibus, the Egyptian Vampire. Jack the Ripper and the Grael, that heals. Did the publisher employ a “No mythology left behind” policy and I missed it?

It’s so unique that it’s nearly impossible to read in its jumbling of words, plots, thoughts, and character arcs.

First, the menagerie of others is referred to as paramortal. Does that mean that everyone is part normal but just a higher class of mortals? Why then do you have immortals and mortals? This isn’t really answered or even addressed. Maybe I’m the only one that thinks the use of Paramortal to describe a bunch of non mortal beings is, well, wrong.

I was confused about the heroine, Gillian Key, who is a psychologist to the paramortals as well as a Marine Corp Special Forces Captain. How could she be an empath, someone who feels people’s emotions and treats their mental wounds, and also be the leader of a Special Forces team that kicks the shit out of people? I acknowledge that was part of her over reaching character arc, but I wasn’t sold that the dichotomy even made sense.

I’d accept this if Gillian Key was a sociopath ala Dexter but I don’t think that was how she was written. I admit that some of the scenes that dealt with her struggle between psychology and military were unintentionally comical. “No. No! Psychologist! Think Gestalt thoughts! Bad Captain Key! Good Gillian and Bad Gillian were currently at odds in her psyche.” Think Gestalt thoughts? It was a good thing that Bad Gillian and Good Gillian were only mentioned in this one scene or else, it would have been Dexter. Or maybe that would have been a good thing.

Gillian’s not even a great leader (and empath) as evidenced by the scene where members of her Special Ops team make fun of the Brownies who have come to help them execute their mission.

“The Brownie unhooked a small horn made from the tooth of some woodland creature from his belt and blew it. . . . ‘Sorry but that sounds like a mouse far,” Jenna gasped between guffaws of laughter. Kimber giggled helplessly. Gillian palmed her face, hoping the Brownie wouldn’t pay attention to her blunt companions.”

Blunt? I probably would have used a different description. Like rude. Politically unwise. Assholic. (As an aside, Kimber and Jenna giggle ALOT for members of a Marine Special Forces team. They sounded like two teenagers at a mall laughing at a handicapped person.).

The writing also confused me. For example, “Being a real psychologist, Gillian had used her time wisely and resourcefully.” I don’t really understand what being a psychologist has to do with time management. Or “Her empathy, as much as she blocked, couldn’t help but leak through with the enormity of emotions emanating from the children in this terrible place, so her mind took over and shielded her.” Erm, how does that work? I.e., how is blocking different from shielding? How does empathy leak through anything? Wouldn’t the emotions leak through the shield? Or “Gillian’s empathy was ‘on’ all the time so she picked up subtleties from those around her.” But that wouldn’t include when she is blocking, right? Or shielding. Okay, am giving up on this one. Moving on.

The constant paragraph to paragraph switching of points of view was also a challenge as was the switching of stories. Yes, the story that is described on the back cover blurb (the rescue of children) takes over the first 50 pages and then we enter a new and completely different story which has nothing to do with the first 50 pages. Then after reading the second story involving ghosts and Jack the Ripper, we get a third story centered around a Loup Garou, which may or may not be the same as a Shifter, who doesn’t want to be a Loup Garou. In the end, we get some story involving Gillian’s lover and his conflict with Lord Dracula. 0_0!

Finally, I have to ask what is up with all the proper nouns? It was like the shift key was broken or something. “Aleksei reacted, his hands tightening on her as he began almost frantically plunging into her, driven to the edge of his control by her attempt at Vampire Sexuality.” Every paramortal being was capitalized. Ghosts. Faery. Brownie. Dark Elf. “‘There are Faeries in the Garden, Trocar!’ The Dark Elf had the grace to look sheepish.” and “Wherever he touched the lady Ghost. . .” and “‘Why, you are lovelier in your own form . . . than in that Fairy body.’” and “Boris turned to the shifted Moose. . .” I don’t think you could open the book to a page without being slapped with a Proper Noun.

Lord Almighty, this book was Bad. There are actually Some Books that are Bad but readable and you actually want to Read those Readably Bad Books just to see what is so wrong with them. This Book, however, simply falls in the Waste of Time Category. F.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Dear Readers,

I’m cheating today. This blog is for book reviews, things you read. And so I’m going to review an absolutely terrible manga adaptation so that I can also review the anime of the same name, because it’s just a wonderful series that’s so overlooked, and it would make a great Christmas present for anyone who loves storytelling, ballet, or classical music.

First, the manga. I’m not even linking to it. It’s terrible. It takes an enchanting story and wipes all emotion and excitement and meaning from it. Take, for example, the climax of the first story arc of the series. This is a tremendous episode in the anime, with the “light” and “dark” ballerinas battling through dance for the heart of their prince. In the manga, when the light ballerina comes and dances with the prince and his knight tells the dark ballerina those two belong together, what does the dark ballerina do? Does she get up and fight like she has for the entire book? Does she even try for the man she loves deeply? Does she at least weep in anguish and gnash her teeth? No, she says “Yeah I guess you’re right.” End of conflict. Boy, there’s some drama for you. So, the whole manga is like this and I hate it. F.

Now for the anime. Where the manga is flat and lifeless the anime dances and soars and teases your preconceptions and reshapes all you think you know, and it’s set to some of the most beautiful music written in history.

The story is almost completely different from the manga, framed by a storyteller of dubious motives and frightening powers, modeled after the manipulative uncle in The Nutcracker. He tempts a duckling who dares to dream of dancing with a prince and who says she would give her life to make him smile, and she accepts the storyteller’s bargain and amulet. Duck is given the form of a human girl in order to restore the prince’s heart which was shattered in a battle with a Raven. And whenever she’s near a fragment, she senses it and can change into Princess Tutu, a ballerina of highest caliber, able to touch the hearts of everyone she dances with.

Here’s the opening song of Princess Tutu, to give you a feel for it:

Notes of whimsy are added by a great collection of side characters, including the marionette with a heart, a variety of anthropomorphic animal students, like the anteater girl who also falls in love with the prince and especially Mr. Cat. Mr. Cat, almost creepy at times, is the school’s ballet teacher and a real cat. He threatens his students with marriage if they fail, almost hoping that they will so he might find love. He’s one of the oddest characters I’ve ever seen, dispensing wisdom one minute then licking himself the next.

Duck’s quest for the prince’s heart comprises the first arc of 13 episodes of the story, a beautiful standard fairy tale.

The second arc of 13 takes this story and rips it to shreds, examining what it means to be a hero and heroine, a story-teller and one within the story, and all the assumptions we as readers make about all of those. This section can just be seen as simple continuation by those who are too young to grasp otherwise, or it can be enjoyed by adults as a beautifully done exploration what it means to live at the whim of others.

The story is marvelous. The way it’s told makes it even better. The music in Princess Tutu is all classical ballet and orchestral pieces, mostly from the 19^th century. Its drama and romance lends itself perfectly to setting the moods for all the episodes. This music has stirred audiences for decades, and it doesn’t fail to do so here where the musical selection is paired so well with the storyline.

A note about the extras. ADV came up with some great ones and they’re all included in the thinpak. There are animated shorts about ballet terms and the music in the episodes, as well as films of the voice actors in the studio. There are commentaries and interviews, as well as extra shorts about things like how to watch ballet, and notes about how Princess Tutu came about. These DVDs are loaded.

Drawbacks: There are two in my opinion. One, a couple of the episodes are repetitious, seeming like filler, completely skippable. Two, when side characters are involved, Princess Tutu almost always solves problems the same way, and the footage of Duck changing into Tutu is stock used in every episode (a standard anime practice). But while she might easily dance away the problems of the side characters, her own problems and those of the other three leads aren’t dealt with as easily, and it’s there where the series excels.

The saddest thing about this is how little this series is watched. No one seems to know about it. So I’m spreading the word. This one is for children who will love it for its excitement, beauty, scariness and humor, and especially the emotion I think. And it’s for adults who’ll love it for those same things, along with the cleverness and satisfaction of seeing something well told. And I have to say I literally sobbed for joy at the last episode, which was just perfect, and that really stunned me to be so affected by, well, anything.

Here’s an award-winning AMV (anime music video) created by a fan named Marisa Panaccio who calls this Princess Tutu in Three Minutes. The music is not from the anime, but it’s very cool.

OK, if you’re not convinced now you won’t ever be. But pick up the anime if you’re the least bit interested, or if you know someone who might be, because sadly it will probably disappear soon from shelves, and this is a series you would truly regret missing. Manga: F. Anime: A.

Sincerely,

ジェーン

(Jān)

Dear Ms. Slaughter:

I have tried to rewrite this letter many times since I’ve read the book because I try to come off as a reasonable person and this letter is angry and bitter. After trying to rewrite it for the nth time, I’ve just decided to own the fact that this letter is angry, bitter, and even juvenile. I can’t help my emotional response and I am not going to apologize for it so that I can appear levelheaded.

I am an emotional reader. I invest emotionally with the characters, particularly those whom I have read over the course of many years. I recall buying each Grant County book in hardcover. I remember hotly anticipating each new mystery and each new development in the relationship of Jeffrey and Sara.

At the outset of the series, Sara begins to renew her relationship with her ex-husband, Jeffrey, whom she had divorced after she caught him cheating on her. When my friend, Keishon, urged me to read this series, I was quite reluctant. After reading Blindsighted, however, I was captivated; not only by your way of weaving a mystery and creating suspense, but at your deft characterizations.

I don’t think that Grant County books would be so compelling if it weren’t for Jeffrey and Sara. After all, despite your good writing, I never bought your stand alone book, Triptych, simply because there was no Jeffrey and Sara. And the love story of Jeffrey and Sara was one that I saw develop from the very inception to strengthen and grow deeper as Jeffrey and Sara both grew and matured as individuals.

Beyond Reach has a tightly plotted suspense story which primarily revolves around Lena, a former detective who worked for Jeffrey in Grant County. Trying to shake off her past, Lena accepts a police position in a different small Georgia town. Unfortunately, a series of deaths occur with the finger of responsibility pointing toward Lena. Jeffrey and Sara travel to Heartsdale to help Lena and extricate her from the mess. There, they discovery racism and drug use driving the town into darkness.

Beyond the suspense is the continuing depressing and repetitive downward spiral of Lena. Her storyline has remained fairly constant from the beginning of the series. She’s angry and bitter (hey, maybe she read a book by an author she loved and then the author turned on her) and self destructive. She suffered a terrible tragedy and has never been able to escape from her own pain, striking out at those around her and associating with those who only deepen her psychosis.

Unfortunately, the story ends. It ends with a cheap trick to elicit a strong emotional reaction. In looking back, I see that I’ve been misled all along. You have often gone for the shock route to gain reaction from your characters. It was not enough for Lena to have struggled with her childhood and the violent death of her twin, but you took an emotional unstable woman, and had her suffer one of the worst torments. It shouldn’t surprise me that you chose the out that you did. It shouldn’t surprise me that in 6 books, Lena hasn’t grown or matured because she’s an easy stomach turner. It shouldn’t surprise me that you choose to take a course of action that will effectively ruin the future of the series for me because you wanted to have some kind of reader response. It seems to me that you are afraid to allow your characters to experience happiness. That prolonged happiness would somehow negatively impact on your writing. The ironic thing is that for as much as you want to be remembered as a strong mystery/suspense author touching on important subjects such as how meth addictions ruin lives, I suspect that most will remember you for the ending of this book. That is what will stick in most readers heads for years.

I won’t ruin the ending, but I will say that I am sorry that I ever read you. That I spent over $100 in your career along with years of waiting and hours of reading. I am sorry that you have chosen your path. If this makes me a child who can’t handle the realities of life, so be it.

If I sound bitter, it is because I am. You expect this, I think, but hope that we readers will understand and stay with you. Not this reader. I’ve got too many authors to read. Too many books to try out to stay with an author whose belief that sufferance is of the greatest literary merit. B for the suspense and F for the rest of it.

Signed Angry and Bitter