MOVIE REVIEW: "Love and Friendship" (2016)

What.

Even.

Is this movie?

When I received free passes to see Love & Friendship (based on Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan), I was excited. I loves me some Austen costume drama, and as I hadn't yet read Lady Susan, I was looking forward to being surprised.

Well, I was a little surprised, but I spent most of the film feeling super confused. While the film is occasionally charming and funny (truly funny at moments), the pacing is absurdly drawn out, the staging is dull, and the plot is an incomprehensible mess.

The story (such as I could make out) is this: Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) - an impoverished widow with a scandalous reputation - comes to stay with her in-laws after being kicked out of her last domicile for tarting around with a married man. Once her last suitcase is unpacked, she precedes to spend the next two hours gaslighting hot dudes, ruining her daughter's life, and bitching with her sardonic BFF Mrs. Alice Johnson (Chloe Sevigny).

I think we're meant to root for Lady Susan, the sly and cynical outsider who offers clever observational quips about the follies of gentry life. But she really is The Worst, and what's more, there's no real explanation for her behaviour. She just seems to like messing with people with no apparent end goal or motivation. You might think she's out to catch herself a meal ticket, but she throws away every romantic attachment she appears to make, seemingly on a whim. Perhaps she's determined to secure her daughter's future - except for those long stretches of time when she forgets her daughter exists because she's too busy convincing hapless dudes that Up is Down and Black is White.

What does Lady Susan want? Why does she do what she does? I've never read Lady Susan, so I had no context to understand her myriad changes of heart. Nearly every character in the movie actively hates her and with good reason.

On top of that, despite some truly hilarious moments, the movie is boring and clumsy. Characters are introduced by name (with personalized title cards, even), only to vanish after a single scene without leaving any impact on the story. Several scenes go nowhere or end abruptly.

The filmmakers make no effort to frame the novel's events in a visual context. Instead of showing what happens, the filmmakers have the characters sit down and tell each other what happens - staging that's fine in a novel but glaringly dull on film. Compare that to the Mansfield Park adaptation that starred Frances O'Connor - despite being a wretched representation of the novel, as a film it was visually dynamic and the story was told through an even mixture of action and dialogue.

The actors do the best that they can - Kate Beckinsale, in particular, gives a breezily cunning performance that convinces the viewer she's a misunderstood snarky outcast even as her actions reveal her to be an amoral, manipulative sociopath. It's not enough to save the movie, however.

Perhaps I might have enjoyed this movie more if I'd read the book first. But as a film on its own merits, Love and Friendship is a hot mess. Give this one a pass.
C-

"Guy in Real Life," by Steve Brezenoff

Okay, so I'm going to start this review with two warnings:

Warning the First: I had no interest in reading this book, no desire to pick it up at all, and the only reason I did was because it's FYA Book Club's April pick. So I may have gone into it with a bit of resentment at being "forced" to read it.

Warning the Second: I ended up skimming this novel sometime after the halfway mark.

But guys, this book sucked.

It starts out with an interesting idea - after black-clad metalhead Lesh gets grounded by his parents for coming home drunk from a concert, he gets suckered into signing up for a World of Warcraft-style MMO by his nerd friend, Greg.

Lesh initially signs up as a meathead orc warrior at Greg's behest, but is soon bored - until he decides to create a female elf healer because the avatar reminds him of a new girl at school that he can't get off his mind. Of course, it's not long before Lesh realizes that other players treat him differently when they think he's a girl. But for some reason, he really enjoys embodying a female character on a vast fantasy adventure.

Meanwhile, the girl he's crushing on, Svetlana, is an anti-social artist who's heavily invested in tabletop, Dungeons and Dragons gaming. She starts hanging out with him when she realizes he can help her shake an infuriatingly persistent (and unwanted) suitor, but starts realizing there's more to him than meets the eye.

Doesn't this sound good? Nope. I decided to make a list of the things that annoyed me - and it's a long one.

1. This book isn't finished. It throws out a bunch of ideas like so much spaghetti at a refrigerator, but it doesn't stick around to clean any of it up or explore it in any depth. Lesh's adventures as a female character, Svetlana's attempts to keep her D and D club at school from being disbanded, Lesh's fracturing relationship with his truly hateful "friend" Greg, and Svetlana's increasing disgust and frustration with unwanted male attention - none of it gets resolved in a meaningful way. Maybe the real ending will come out in a future DLC?

2. Svetlana is primarily treated as Obsession!Bait. Almost every major male character in the novel is obsessed with her. There's family friend Fry, who becomes increasingly violent and bullying towards her (and her friends!) when she refuses his advances. There's Abraham, who quits the D and D club because ... she dates someone else, thereby refusing his advances. There's a Creepy Online Stalker who targets her and sends her weird gifts because he confuses her for the character Lesh plays online (for reals). Her storyline is focused almost entirely on how all these dudes are obsessed with her and make decisions of varying levels of inappropriateness because she turns them down.

And...am I forgetting someone? Oh right - LESH, who's SO obsessed with her from the very first minute that he creates a lookalike avatar of her so he can pretend to be close to her. HOW IS THAT OKAY? The novel never explains this theme - if all these men are irrationally fixated on this one girl, what makes Lesh the "good" one? His plot line is like the G-rated online version of that Buffalo Bill dude from Silence of the Lambs.

Long story short - the most important female character is reduced to a damsel who's constantly beating off hordes of angry thwarted males with her 12-sided die.

3. The actual gamer characters in this book are almost uniformly awful, cliched, shallow, bigoted turds - and the book never explores or deals with it. Yes, some of them need to be turds. This novel's main (if poorly-handled) theme is on sexism in gaming. It's about a tough-looking rocker dude who enjoys playing as a delicate lady elf, but discovers that playing a female character inspires other gamers to behave like total asshats.

Except - Lesh never explores deeper than, "Man, that sucks." Take his "friendship" with Greg - a venomous douchenerd who spits homophobic slurs like a malfunctioning sprinkler. I would have liked to see Lesh actually internalize what Greg says and realize that it's not okay. I would have liked to see him tell Greg off, stand up for himself and reveal Greg for the bully he is. Except - it never happens. Greg throws a mild hissy fit when he finds out Lesh is a G.I.R.L. (Guy In Real Life - get it?) and then vanishes from the novel completely. No resolution. No exploration of theme.

And the depictions of almost all the gamers (with a few exceptions with Svetlana's D and D crew) are laughably stereotyped. They're nerds who are good at math who hunch over their screens with bad posture and bad skin, their hands poised like claws above their keyboards. The only thing missing is a pair of taped-up, thick-rimmed Coke bottle glasses to settle the depiction of gamers firmly back in the 1980s.

4. The description of the MMO itself makes no sense. First of all, the author inserts truly laughable attempts at epic fantasy to describe the world of the game. Brezenoff is no Tolkien. He's not even a Tracy Hickman. Moreover, there are a number of "questionable" events that happen in the game - for instance, poor Lesh gets molested and drenched in beer by a pack of dwarves and needs to be rescued. Um, I'm sorry - are there fantasy games out there where avatars are allowed to rape or sexually assault other player characters? Who would design a game like that?

I get the sense Brezenoff is attempting to highlight the sexism that female players often endure in gaming - but instead of focusing on the very real, very common ways girls are ostracized in games, he decides to make up some exaggerated, cartoonish bullshit that would NEVER HAPPEN in a popular MMO because no game dev in his right mind would put a rape feature in his game unless he wanted to endure a billion lawsuits.

5. Our two main protagonists barely spend any time together.
Seriously, even if the rest of the book had been fine, Guy in Real Life would still have fallen flat because its two romantic protagonists barely talk to each other. Sure, Lesh obsesses over Svetlana all the time, but Svetlana has her own life, and their scenes apart are far more numerous, important, and interesting than their scenes together. I still don't understand what they have in common or how their romance works - and ultimately the whole stalker storyline muddies the waters even further.

My opinion? Avoid this sloppily-plotted, creepy, and ultimately pointless novel in favour of novels that aim for a higher level (ha!) of story telling and theme structure.

C-

"Midsummer Moon," by Laura Kinsale

The Chick: Merlin Lambourne. A famous lady inventor.
The Rub: She's dumb as a post at anything that isn't mechanics. How will she cope?
Dream Casting: Alison Brie.

The Dude: Ransom Falconer, Duke of Damerell. A high-handed duke who must protect Merlin from evil French spies who want to kidnap her for her inventions.
The Rub: Unfortunately, after "accidentally" having sex with her, protecting her becomes a whole lot more complicated.
Dream Casting: Cillian Murphy.

The Plot:
Ransom: Hey, I'm here to save and protect you!

Merlin: What are you wearing?

Ransom: ... a hat.

Merlin: Mercy me, a hat! How exciting! I've never seen a hat before, what is it for?

Ransom: Huh. I somehow find your utter ignorance of everything somewhat arousing! *accidentally eats Magical Salt* Now it's completely arousing!

Ransom and Merlin: *knock boots*

Ransom: Crap. Now we have to get married!

Merlin: Why?

Ransom: Well, you might be pregnant.

Merlin: Doesn't the stork bring babies?

Ransom: Wow I am already regretting this a LOT. And yet your baby behaviour is so inexplicably erotic!

Merlin: I don't want to get married! I don't want to make babies! I want to stay up all night and eat candy and play with my toys--I MEAN INVENT MY FLYING MACHINE.

Ransom: No! Bad Merlin! GO TO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW!

Literally Every Other Character: Hey there, we're totally interesting and have really intriguing backstories but go ahead and focus the story around the Teletubby and her babysitter. We'll wait.

Evil French Spies: *kidnap Merlin a lot*

Ransom: *rescues Merlin a lot*

Merlin: *falls into a coma, wakes up with amnesia*

Literally Every Other Character: ... really? You'd rather read about AMNESIA than us? When we have secret lovers and acrimonious divorces in our pasts? Oh well. There's no accounting for taste.

Ransom: *recuses Merlin again*

Merlin: Okay I'll marry you now! How do we petition to stork to bring us babies?

Ransom: ....hoo....ray....

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Romance-Aiding Pet (a hedgehog)
• 1 Condiment-Induced Deflowering
• 1 Infantalized Heroine
• 2 Flying Machines
• Several Barrels of Gun Powder
• 1 Bout of Fountain Sex
• 5 Infinitely More Interesting Supporting Characters
• Several Evil French Spies

The Word: I will hand it to Laura Kinsale - her heroines are a varied bunch. Some are practical, some are romantic, some are stone-cold bad-asses, and others are emotional and compassionate. Unfortunately, with Midsummer Moon, I spun the Kinsale Heroine Wheel and wound up with Helpless Baby Duckling Woman.

Our heroine, Merlin, is a wide-eyed, chipmunk-cheeked, oblivious dithering idiot of a woman who is (allegedly) a genius at physical engineering and a sleep-deprived six-year-old at literally everything else. Perhaps the author intended her to be an Absent-Minded Professor, but she wound up closer to Nell, instead. And of course, the novel presents her as the Cutest Widdle Special Snowflake, rather than a woman with severely stunted social, interpersonal, and self-preservation skills thanks to an abusively isolated upbringing that is only barely hinted at.

Our hero Ransom Falconer, named in the ancient English tradition of picking two random words out of the dictionary, is a duke/government agent who has been sent to protect Merlin because one of her inventions has attracted the notice of Evil French Spies. His task is to figure out what Merlin's trying to invent, and protect both it and her from falling into Evil French hands.

Ransom makes his own task (among other things) much harder when he accidentally ingests Magical Sex Salt and winds up despoiling Merlin (twice!) on her dead uncle's bed not five minutes later. This contrived coitus-causing condiment is never explained nor mentioned again. But that makes sense - why write Ransom as an Irresponsible Rake when you can just give him a magical potion that makes him one for three pages? Then he can go back to being your Man of Honour Hero without taking any pesky responsibility for his actions. The magical salt made him do it. Right.

Adding a crank of Creepy Pepper to this Gumbo of Stupid is the fact that Merlin clearly has no idea what's going on while it's happening, giving us a scene that reads pretty darn close to statutory rape.

See, this is why you don't have sex with children. If your partner is incapable of understanding what sex and its consequences are, you're doing it wrong. And if you write a heroine who talks like a baby, thinks like a baby, and fiddles with her lower lip like a baby, it's going to look really creepy when your hero fucks that baby.

Anyway, Ransom recovers from his, uh, sodium-induced boner to realize he's been an Exploitative Dick, so he decides to kidnap Merlin so she can continue to work on her inventions under his supervision and protection.

The novel picks up a bit at this point, because Ransom's family members are also in residence, and each one of them is about a billion times more nuanced, colourful, and interesting than our main pair. How could Laura Kinsale write women as complicated and interesting as Ransom's politically-minded sister Blythe, or his dramatic opera-singer ex-sister-in-law Jacqueline, and decide to make Professor Honey Boo Boo the heroine instead?

Yeah, I absolutely despised Merlin. While she's not quite as unbearable as Olympia from Seize the Fire, at least that book acknowledged Olympia was an idiot once in a while, whereas Merlin's utter incomprehension of language, social conventions, adult behaviour, and advanced reasoning is depicted as Just So Precious by everyone in the novel. Merlin acts like a child - and the other characters coddle and treat her like one, which makes her burgeoning relationship with Ransom come off like Regency Lolita.

The secondary characters are pretty much the only reason I didn't DNF the novel. The main conflict between Ransom and Merlin is that Merlin's determined to build a flying machine, which scares the utter bejesus out of Ransom because he's so terrified of heights he's never even visited the second floor of his own house. Merlin tries to work on her machine, Ransom tries to talk/force/trick her out of it, Merlin gets angry, Ransom whines and apologizes, then tries a dirtier trick - until Merlin winds up kidnapped and has to be rescued. She gets kidnapped (and subsequently rescued) a lot. Because she's about as sharp as a bowling ball.

Their relationship is founded on Ransom constantly saving or easily tricking Merlin away from the danger she constantly puts herself in, and that is the last kind of romance I care to read about. I grew out of the Babysitters' Club books when I was in elementary school.
C-

"The Raven Boys," by Maggie Stiefvater

The Protagonist: Blue Sargent. A non-psychic in a family of gifted seers, her own gift is the ability to amplify already-existing magic.
Angst: When some rich white dudes want to find a sleeping Welsh king, she sees an opportunity to be an active participant in an adventure instead of a passive supporter.

The Secondary Cast:

Gansey: It's tough out there for a rich white dude. Hopefully, finding this dead rich white dude with magical powers will finally make people take me seriously. If you need me, I'll be sulking about how unfair life is in the renovated factory I bought and turned into my own personal Batcave.

Ronan: Grrr! Ronan angry! Ronan mean! Ronan miss his dead dad! Feelings scare Ronan! LOVE RONAN!

Noah: I am shy and quiet and I pet people's hair and this makes me endearing for some reason.

Adam: I'm the Poor One. But I work hard! And I don't take any charity! I ... you gonna eat that? No?

Angst Checklist:

• Magic
• Poverty
• Child Abuse
• Being Dead
• Daddy Issues
• Whiny Rich People
• Ravens
• Aunts who are Weird in a Good Way
• Aunts who are Weird in a Bad Way

The Word: I didn't like this novel.

Let's just get this out of the way. I realize this novel and its characters (*cough* its male characters) are beloved in the YA blogging community in general, but me? I just didn't get it.

Our protagonist (sort of...) is Blue, a non-psychic from a family of psychics whose main source of income comes from dropping Cryptic Hints That Prove Relevant to the Plot Later On - which becomes pretty convenient as the book continues. Is it bad character development if they're written as people who spout random dialogue and have no background or motivation?

Anyway, Blue's helping her visiting aunt Neeve in a ritual to identify people who are going to die in the next year in an old graveyard (as one does), when she spots the future ghost of a boy wearing the uniform of the nearby Aglionby prep school. Blue's never been able to see ghosts (past or future) before, and Neeve tells her this means she might be the one who kills him. Or he might be her true love. So easy to get those two confused. The future ghost identifies himself only as Gansey.

Meanwhile, the actual Gansey turns up in the next scene, and he and his Raven Boys (nicknamed so by the resentful town for the raven emblem of their school) are searching for an ancient Welsh king who's buried somewhere in Virginia because hey we're all white dudes and crazy rich (except for the Not Rich One), so why not?

They're set up a bit like a boy band, where every Raven Boy gets his own accessories (relevant female protagonist sold separately). You have Batman With Parents (Gansey), Tim Riggins (Ronan), Pigpen (Noah), and The Not Rich One Who's Slightly More Interesting (Adam). Fate (or convenient plotting) has them meet up with Blue and her Phenomenal Not-Psychic Powers and they all jump into the Mystery Machine Gansey's broken-down Camaro because ancient Welsh kings aren't going to wake themselves.

There are a lot of interesting ideas in this book - too many, which is my main problem with The Raven Boys. Hear me out. There's so much Deeply Important Magical Nonsense crammed into this one book that it was impossible to stay interested or invested in any of it. Alfred Hitchcock once explained the concept of the MacGuffin: the MacGuffin is something that matters very deeply to the characters of a fictional narrative and very little to those reading or watching that narrative. We, the reader, care about the MacGuffin when we start to care about the characters who are pursuing it.

The Welsh King is The Raven Boys' boring-ass, meaningless MacGuffin because, in a novel stuffed with dream thieves, psychic hotlines, aunts who might be evil (on a good day?), magic mirrors, corpse roads, secret ghosts, mysterious father murders, grape juice scrying and baby animals, there is precious little time spent developing the actual characters, much less their gossamer-thin reasons for caring about a mythical wish-granting European monarch.

The characters are defined by one or two attributes apiece, cherry-picked for their YA-lit popularity - Ronan is Angry (and hot) because of his father's mysterious death. Adam is Independent (and hot) because he refuses to take his friends' charity to leave his abusive father. He Will Live Life on His Own Terms and Without Handouts - unless you're a magical wish-granting king. Then it's totally cool. Handout away!

The author tries - there are some marvellously insightful passages here and there, in between the untidy heaps of supernatural window dressing. But there's simply not enough.

And then there's Gansey. This privileged little asshole is the "hero" of our story and the one "destined" for Blue. He really is Batman with Parents - all the wealthy ego-stroking manipulativeness, none of the understanding of real-world misery. He lives in his own refurbished factory/Batcave. He decides to call Blue "Jane" because her real name is weird, but throws a stink eye at anyone who calls him by his real name (Dick, appropriately enough).

He's dedicated his life (and the lives of his friends) to finding this Welsh King because his amazing wealth and privilege is such a horrific burden to his dreams of being The Specialest Snowflake. It's so much harder to be recognized as a brilliant individual when you're busy tripping over all your daddy's money. He drives an old, beloved, broken-down Camaro to show you that he's deep - unless the road is rocky, in which case he'll just fly his sister's helicopter (for reals). If only his life could be more like Adam's, then people would value his accomplishments and his life would have meaning. Yes - Adam, who works three jobs while getting daily beatings from his trailer-trash father.

Why the hell should I give a shit if Gansey finds that damn Welsh King or not? You see what I mean about MacGuffins?

And don't even get me started on Blue. Seriously, don't - because I shut the book with only the haziest of impressions of her character. She was - nice. I guess. Didn't get in the way too much. She and Adam were cute but she's "obviously destined" for Gansey.

Honestly, if the contents of this book had been stretched out over a trilogy, with enough character development and build-up and layers and interaction in between, The Raven Boys could have been as good as the Fionavar Tapestry. The book's well-written and cobbles together an interesting mythology. As it was, I was overwhelmed by the fantasy aspects and underwhelmed by the human ones.
C-

"Last Summer at Mars Hill," by Elizabeth Hand (Open Road Media, 2013)

When Last Summer at Mars Hill came up on Netgalley, I immediately knew I wanted to read it. I'd read one of Elizabeth Hand's story collections before - the exquisite Saffron and Brimstone - and I figured this new story collection would be just as good.

Except it wasn't new - it's a reprint of a 1998 anthology. Alright. No biggie.

It also wasn't that good. While Elizabeth Hand has a deft, er, hand with poetic language and vivid description, the stories in this collection come across as repetitive, turgidly paced, often self-indulgent and at times incomprehensible (particularly her science fiction entries). I found myself frantically doggy paddling towards the end, perpetually splashing but getting no closer to the final page.

Most of the stories have strong autobiographical elements, teenage narrators, and involve a similar story structure - lots of description and set-up at the beginning and a supernatural surprise reveal at the end. Because of this, most of the stories are rather top-heavy - the introductions are all filler and the narrative payoffs aren't worth the wait.

The anthology opens with "Last Summer at Mars Hill," about a pair of teenagers whose respective dying parents find a supernatural cure for their ailments at a spiritualist colony in Maine. However, the cure will last only as long as they remain there. Their parents' ultimate decisions are thought-provoking - but the actual plot and examination of life and longevity doesn't even start until relatively late in the story.

Next up is "The Erl-King," involving a teenage girl and her best friend who run afoul of a mentally unstable former rock star, an insidious evil, and a devil's bargain ticking down to a bloody conclusion. The story is slow to pick up, and hinges on a single exposition-heavy encounter that explains the entire plot in one gulp.

Elizabeth Hand explains in the author's note that "Justice" is one of her most controversial stories. Set in rural Oklahoma and heavily influenced by Greek myth, it follows a reporter trailing the story of a number of wife- and child-murderers who have gone missing. No one has found the fugitive men, but a strange number of mutilated pig corpses have turned up. You do the math.

"Dionysis Dentrites" is the one poem in the collection, a personal piece for the author based on a recurring dream she's had most of her life. Interesting but too brief.

Following that interlude is my favourite story in the collection, the whimsical "The Have-Nots." Told entirely in down-home dialogue from a chatty cosmetics saleslady, she recounts the story of how a downtrodden friend's life is changed - and eventually saved by - a Cadillac owned by Elvis Presley. Weird but delightful and brimming with empathy, it's a much lighter (and funnier!)  story than the rest of the entries in this collection.

"In the Month of Athyr" takes a trip into the seriously weird with a story aboard a space station where gender politics have been twisted almost beyond recognition. The protagonist is a teenage boy whose father brings aboard a genetically-engineered sex slave, triggering an incredibly unpleasant sexual awakening. The story makes so many vague references to other stories and incidents within the same universe that it cannot really stand on its own.

"Engels Unaware" is a deliciously satirical story of how a ruthless and greedy financial corporation (and all of its self-indulgent VPs, analysts, and office managers) destroys itself in the most flamboyantly over-the-top way possible - and all of it witnessed through the eyes of its lowly, mistreated temp, Rebecca.

"The Bacchae" is another tale the author gleefully describes as one of her most hated stories. Following in a similar vein as "Justice" - it draws from another Greek myth to switch gender roles as a strange lunar event causes all the women in the world to target and brutally murder men. The difference between "The Bacchae" and "Justice" is that "Justice" has an actual plot. "The Bacchae"'s meek, nervous male narrator simply grows more and more uneasy until his inevitable senseless demise at the hands of violent, drunk women.

"Snow on Sugar Mountain" melds science and fantasy in an interesting way in a slow and low-key tale about a teenage runaway with the power to shapeshift who seeks refuge with a retired, reclusive, and dying astronaut. It took me a while to warm up to this one, but I did enjoy the payoff.

"On the Town Route" is another story that irritated me with its long, overly-described lead-up to a Surprise Magical Climax Out of Nowhere. Our heroine, Julie, joins her close friend Cass as he drives his dilapidated ice cream truck through rural areas to distribute ice cream to impoverished families. Sounds nice - until summer ends and one of their customers reveals their true, Greek-myth-inspired colours.

The penultimate story is perhaps the least comprehensible in the collection - "The Boy in the Tree" apparently involves biochemically-enhanced autistic dream-eaters who are hired to devour the bad memories of psychologically-scarred people to help them heal. Our heroine - a dream eater - might be inducing these people into committing suicide. Or she might not. Or her doctor has been secretly sleeping with her own brother. Or not! Who knows? Not this reader.

The last story, "Prince of Flowers" is a rather standard tale of supernatural retribution enhanced by a superior writing style. An assistant curator at a museum who likes to steal inventory to display in her own home snatches a mysterious, creepy doll and reaps the horrifying consequences. While the writing and description is lovely - the depth of the story leaves much to be desired.

I wasn't altogether impressed by this collection. A few stories - mainly the ones that employ Elizabeth Hand's sharp humour - shine ("The Have-Nots," and "Engels Unaware"). Some are borderline incomprehensible messes ("In the Month of Athyr," "The Boy In The Tree,"), while others seem merely pointless ("The Erl-King," "On the Town Route").

If you are still curious about reading this (particularly if you adored previous collections like Saffron and Brimstone), I might suggest taking the 1998 edition out from the library first.
C-

"Fathomless," by Jackson Pearce (Little, Brown; 2012)

The Protagonist: Celia. One of three triplets with psychic powers, she finally discovers her ability to see into a person's past might be useful when she discovers she can help a mysterious ocean girl regain her memories.
Her Angst: Can she possibly keep the ocean girl a secret from both her psychic sisters and the cute boy who thinks she rescued him from drowning?

The Other Protagonist: Lo. An underwater creature who lives in a sunken ship with her sisters, slowly losing her memories of being human, day by day.
Her Angst: She wants a different life than this - but what if getting it means losing her identity?

The Other, Other Protagonist: Naida. A human girl who was torn from her home, stripped of her memory, and transformed into an ocean girl named Lo.
Her Angst: How far will she go to regain her old life?

The Secondary Cast:

Anne: Celia's sister. Can see the future.

Jane: Celia's other sister. Can see the present by reading people's thoughts.

Jude: An adorable musician who almost drowned until Lo saved him, although he thinks Celia did it.

Key: Lo's best friend under the sea, who is desperate to believe their myths that she'll turn into an angel.

Molly: The newest ocean girl, who still remembers enough of her past to prove that the "angels" all the ocean girls worship aren't as benevolent as they seem.

Angst Checklist:

• Sibling Rivalry
• Loneliness
• Magical Twin Powers
• Magical Triplet Powers
• Inconvenient Foot Pain
• My Psychic Power Is Totally Lamer than My Sisters'
• Dampness
• Hipster Musicians
• One of My Personalities Is a Desperate Murderer and I'm Not Sure Which One

The Word: Despite my concern about reading Jackson Pearce after hearing about how slutshamey Sisters Red was, I've always been a fan of The Little Mermaid (both the Anderson tragedy and the Disney film) and hearing that Fathomless would be a modern retelling piqued my interest in spite of myself. Unfortunately, despite the cleverness of Pearce's adaptation, the ending was a silly, undeveloped mess.

Our "mermaid" is Lo - an ocean girl who lives under the sea with her sisters near an unnamed coastal tourist town. Lo used to be human once - all the ocean girls were born human - but her memories of her human life and how the angels changed her into a sea creature are hazy and indistinct. While she loves the ocean and her sisters, she longs for something more, but her kind have only two options. They can wait out their time, grow old, and turn into an angel themselves - or they can charm a human boy into the ocean and then steal his soul by drowning him, which has rarely, if ever, worked.

When a young musician falls off the pier, Lo's newest sister sees this as her chance to try and steal his soul. However, Lo, knowing this attempt will inevitably fail and only kill an innocent boy, has had enough with this tradition and drags him to shore. There, she meets a human girl named Celia, who grabs her arm before she escapes and mutters a name. Lo's human name. A name she's forgotten - along with the rest of her human memories.

Celia is one of a set of triplets who are attending boarding school in the area. Unbeknownst to everyone, she and her sisters Anne and Jane have psychic powers. By touching people, Anne can determine their future, Jane can sense their present thoughts, and Celia can see their past. Celia's always believed her powers are lame - what's the point of seeing someone's unchangeable past? - and has always felt somewhat separate from her sisters, who use their Awesome Powers to scam boys into buying them dinner.

When she touches the strange ocean girl who rescued the musician from the waves, she can see her past - including her name, Naida. Nothing about this strange girl makes sense, so when the paramedics arrive, Celia keeps Naida to herself and is thus mistaken for the boy's real rescuer.

Lo wants to meet Celia again, to see if Celia can find out more about her past - and Celia is also fascinated with Lo/Naida, and the possibility that her powers might not be as useless as she thought. Meanwhile, both girls develop an affection for Jude, the affable, impoverished guitar player they saved from certain death.

The story itself is interesting - and I really loved how Pearce worked the details of the original fairy tale (the false rescuer, the sisters, the mermaid's pain at walking on land, the mermaid's ultimate sacrifice) into a contemporary narrative. I also liked Celia's characterization - imagine having special powers that are still less special than your sisters'! I appreciated how she felt at once left out of her sisters' circle and inextricably bound to them, and how important it was to her to suddenly have something that was hers, just hers, that she didn't have to share with her loving, if controlling, siblings.

However, everything else - like Lo's characterization, the worldbuilding, and the ultimate payoff - were disappointing and nonsensical.

With Lo, once she remembers her human name and memories, her past self of Naida becomes a separate personality from her present mermaid self, which doesn't make a lick of sense and really confuses both half-characters. At the beginning of the novel, Lo wants to become human and know her human identity, but once she gets it, suddenly she's afraid that her present consciousness will have to "die" in order for Naida to get her life back. What? Because of this, Lo's character is only half-developed - her actual desires and motivations are baffling and unclear, especially once Lo and Naida start "fighting" about their future.

Similarly, the worldbuilding is just plain ridiculous. The mystery of the ocean girls' origins permeates the entire novel - who are these ocean girls? Who are the "angels" who took them away from their human lives? And why did they do it? These are the unanswered questions that kept me reading to the end.

Spoiler territory, folks.

The answers are disappointingly silly and undeveloped. It's obvious the "angels" aren't really the benevolent forces the ocean girls believe they are, but I certainly wasn't expecting them to be werewolves. Yes, you read that right, WEREWOLVES. They hunt for girls to render them soulless like themselves - except they have to, er, "stew" in the ocean as mermaids for a certain amount of time first to erase them of all humanity. When a mermaid is completely soulless, she emerges from the sea and turns into a giant, ravenous wolf.

Because wolves have everything to do with the ocean, am I right?

The monsters' payoff in this novel is just so random and shallow. No explanation is given for why a soulless, sea-dwelling creature would suddenly evolve into a completely unrelated, land-based monster who has never had any mythological or folkloric ties to mermaids whatsoever. Why wolves? Why not turtles? Or sharks? Or the Creature from the Blue Lagoon - or something that is in some way related to the ocean since it's a key aspect of THE ENTIRE NOVEL?

Of course, it's all swept under the rug with the half-assed, unspoken explanation of "They're Just Fantasy Monsters, Deal With It." Writing fantasy means you can write your own rules - it doesn't mean you can write without rules and expect the genre label to explain everything. You want to write a story where mermaids turn into werewolves? Fine - just so long as you explain and develop your core concept. Otherwise, how are we to understand the true situation and the stakes involved? Robin Hobb wrote an entire trilogy about how sea serpents are connected to dragons, and it made sense because she wrote about how and why it worked.

Here Endeth the Spoilers.

Honestly, by the end, the over-the-top randomness of the conclusion pulled me completely out of the story. While Fathomless started out strongly with an interesting twist on a beloved tale, it ended up with  undeveloped plotting, confusing characters, laughable worldbuilding, and a needlessly sad and unsatisfying payoff.
C-

"Crewel," by Gennifer Albin

The Protagonist: Adelice Lewys. While born with a miraculously powerful ability to weave the fabric of reality, her parents have taught her to suppress it to avoid calling attention to herself.
Her Angst: Unfortunately, the government finds out about her powers and proves willing to do just about anything to control it for themselves.

The Secondary Cast:

Amie: Adelice's little sister, who is captured by the Guild after their parents try to protect Adelice from being taken away.

Enora: Adelice's Spinster mentor - a genuinely nice gal, with some pretty dangerous secrets.

Maela: Adelice's superior, and an insanely power-hungry villain who may or may not be anger-banging her personal assistant.

Erik: Maela's personal assistant, who may or may not be getting anger-banged by her, all the while trying to love-bang Adelice with his eyes. Love Interest #1.

Jost: The head valet of the Coventry, assigned to care for all the Spinsters. Gruff, but kind - and fully aware of the Guild's evil ways. Love Interest #2.

Cormac Patton: The leader of The Guild, who has a definite thing for underage girls.

Pryana: Adelice's training-mate-turned-enemy, thanks to Maela's machinations.

Loricel: The Creweler - the one Spinster capable of creating (rather than just re-weaving) raw matter. Without her, their world is toast, and she's not a spring chicken anymore.

Angst Checklist:

• My Parents were Murdered and Then Written Out of Existence
• Two Boys, One Love Triangle
• Literally Everything Bad That Happens Is My Fault
• Gender Roles
• The Needs of the Many Versus the Needs of the Few
• Caring For Your Appearance and How That Automatically Makes You a Terrible Person
• Dystopian Futures

The Word: I really wanted to like Crewel. It seemed to have such an interesting story - in an alternate world, the fabric of reality itself is maintained and woven by powerful women known as Spinsters, and every girl who demonstrates potential for weaving is taken away at the age of sixteen to train in the Coventry to help maintain the ordered nature of their world.

Unfortunately, Crewel turned out to be a dud for two major reasons. Firstly, it tries way too damn hard to be The Hunger Games. Secondly, for all of its colourful attempts to present gender roles in an interesting way, it only ends up solidifying sexist ideas. 

In the dystopian world of Arras, Adelice Lewys returns home after being tested for Spinster abilities, unwilling to tell her parents that she failed. Not that she failed to prove herself a Spinster - but the very opposite. She failed to hide the amazing weaving skills her rebel parents have trained her to repress since childhood, and she can't bring herself to tell them that the Guild will soon be coming to take her away.

Which turns out to be a monumentally stupid decision, since once the Guild shows up, her parents resist and her father winds up murdered. Captured and sedated, Adelice is dragged off to the Coventry against her will. 

As Adelice quickly learns, the Spinsters and the Guild can control the very weave of reality itself, and they use this phenomenal cosmic power to make life harder for just about everyone in existence. Not only can they kill people from a distance (by "ripping" their threads), but they can rewrite people's very identities. Revolution is impossible because Spinsters can even "spot" treasonous thoughts because they cause a person's thread to change colour. Even though Adelice has the potential to be an incredibly powerful Spinster, she has no desire to play God or by the Guild's rules. 

Now, all of this would be lovely and exciting, except that the storytelling in Crewel is incredibly derivative of its literary predecessor, The Hunger Games. See if any of this sounds familiar - Crewel has:

• A cloyingly innocent little sister character whose safety guarantees the protagonist's compliance
• A beloved dead father figure to inspire the protagonist's rebellion against authority
• A government-sanctioned team of stylists whose leader becomes a friend who also harbours rebellious leanings
• A love triangle between a charming but untrustworthy diplomat and a damaged, rough revolutionary. 
• A voracious and tacky media machine for which the protagonist is forced to primp and pose in gowns to promote the party line. 

As well, I found the gender dynamics of Crewel were incredibly troubling and hypocritical, even though the unfair treatment of women seems to be a major theme of the novel. The society of Arras is incredibly repressive towards women: girls are segregated from boys and held to high "Purity Standards." The only jobs available for women are as as secretaries, teachers, nurses, and factory workers. In fact, most people in society want their daughters to become Spinsters, since it seems to be a far more powerful and influential position than any woman could expect otherwise. 

And yet, almost every female character other than Adelice is either a) a shallow twit who cares only about make-up and clothes, b) an evil power-hungry slut, or c) a victim. 

Every woman who is depicted as ambitious, as wanting more than what the male establishment allows her to have, is not only written as a villainess, but as a sexually aggressive and/or promiscuous one. Maela is the main baddie - a violent and unstable psychotic who apparently keeps Erik (Adelice's Love Interest #1) as a sexual plaything while secretly wishing to be the wife of Cormac Patton (the President Snow leader of the Guild). 

Second to that is Pryana. Pryana - without actually doing anything evil  - is depicted as evil and inferior to Adelice because she uses men's physical attraction to her to gain power for herself, such as when she dances and flirts with (gasp!) ugly, old, fat men at a social function while Pure Heroine Adelice only dances and flirts with thin, young, hot boys. Oh, and Pryana likes shopping, clothes, and looking hot! TOTALLY EVIL, right?

Because Adelice, our heroine, is such a fine, upstanding individual. So selfless, so caring. So in love with burly, rebellious valet Jost, who tragically lost his teen bride and baby daughter to the Evil Guild of Evil. Yet when our Selfless, Caring Heroine discovers her Super-Special-Spinster powers don't involve time-travel, her first thought is relief because if she had the power to go back in time and save Jost's family, she's not sure she'd be able to do it. 

I am dead serious. Adelice, our heroine, is glad that she doesn't have the power to go back in time and save her OWN family, because it would also mean she would have to save THE WIFE AND BABY of the boy she has a crush on. Really. REALLY. TOTALLY SELFLESS HEROINE, right?

But what about the Spinsters? They have the power to control weather, transport matter, rewrite existence, and even read people's intentions in the colours of the threads. Surely there must be a girl-power reason that all Spinsters are women? There is! As Adelice discovers, the (entirely male) Guild only chooses to train women as Spinsters because women are more easily controlled. 

I almost threw this book at a wall.

I am not even kidding. That is seriously the book's worldbuilding. Women, apparently, are chosen to be Spinsters not because only women have this power but because women are just naturally more easy to manipulate than men. Just dangle some diamonds and Colin Firth DVDs in front of their faces and they'll do anything, am I right ladies?! Women won't care that they're murdering people or ripping entire societies out of existence so long as those hot baths and foot rubs keep coming! 

Do yourself and your ovaries a favour - avoid this misogynist Hunger Games rip-off. 

C-

You can purchase Crewel here. But don't say I didn't warn you.

"The Kingdom of Gods," by N.K. Jemisin

The Central Cast:

Sieh: The God of Childhood, eldest of the lesser godlings created by the Three. Despite being alive since existence began, he is lonely and aches for something more, so he befriends a couple of children, an action that has unforeseen consequences.

Shahar: Befriended by Sieh, despite being Heir of the ruling Arameri family - but she is determined to try and rule fairly and justly, and overturn the belief that Arameri are calculating, heartless monsters.

Dekarta: Shahar's distrusted brother. Sent off to become a powerful wizard, he still maintains his connection to his sister - and Sieh.

The Secondary Cast:


Nahadoth: God of Darkness and Chaos. Sieh's father. Loves him, but as the God of change, he cannot protect Sieh from the march of progress.

Yeine: The new Goddess of Balance. Trying to bring the Three back together again - including Itempas, who started the Gods' War.

Itempas: The God of Light and Order. Enslaved his fellow gods and godlings for thousands of years and is only now starting to pay the price for it - but will he ever be forgiven?

Glee: Itempas' daughter by Oree Shoth (the protagonist from The Broken Kingdoms). Manages his business in the mortal realm.

Ahad: A mysterious, bitter godling with painful ties to Sieh and Nahadoth.

Fantasy Convention Checklist:

• 1 Surprise!Magic Bond
• 1 Wizard Prodigy
• Several Magical Mask Zombies
• 1 Impending War
• 4 Bratty Gods
• 1 Vengeful God
• Several Doses of Godly Angst

The Word: This was not the review I thought I would be writing for the final book in N.K. Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms trilogy.

I adored the first two books - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms. I didn't understand how the third book, Kingdom of Gods, could be so drastically different.

Previously, on The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms:

In this world, there were three major gods - Nahadoth (darkness, chaos, change), Itempas (light, order, stability), and Enefa (twilight, balance, death, rebirth), and their various godling children. Itempas went nuts and murdered Enefa, imprisoned and enslaved Nahadoth and the godlings, and gave power over them into the hands of his chosen people, the Arameri, who, for 2000 years, built an unstoppable empire using the gods as weapons.

In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, a mortal woman, Yeine, freed the gods and became the newest incarnation of Enefa, bringing balance and restoring the Three. In The Broken Kingdoms, Itempas (reduced to mortal status as punishment) set about redeeming himself with the help of Oree Shoth and stopped a conspiracy to murder the gods using the tainted blood of demons (god/human halflings).

Kingdom of Gods is Sieh's book - Sieh is the eldest of the Three's godling children, the God of Childhood. He's pretty much the deified equivalent of Peter Pan - mischievous, changeable, playful, cruel and sociopathic on occasion. Lately, however, loneliness has been devouring him from the inside out. While he adores his parents, Nahadoth and Yeine (who's more of a godly stepparent now), he knows he can never be one of The Three - because this particular universe can only support Three. Because of this, Yeine has actually been making tentative moves towards forgiving Itempas and bringing him back into the fold.

Outraged by this, Sieh flees to make mischief in the mortal realm and winds up befriending two children, siblings Shahar and Dekarta. Despite the fact that these children are Arameri (the ruling class who enslaved the gods for thousands of years), Sieh decides to make a friendship pact with them - but when they slice open their hands to make a blood oath, something goes drastically, terribly wrong. When Sieh wakes up, eight years have passed, Dekarta has been banished, Shahar is sixteen and Angsty - and Sieh has, inexplicably, become mortal. And capable of growing up.

Neither Nahadoth nor Yeine can fix or stop Sieh's aging process, and Sieh is still too angry with Itempas (the god of stability and preservation) to ask for his help.  Meanwhile, he discovers the dynamic of his friendship with both Shahar and Dekarta has been understandably and awkwardly changed by the onset of physical and mental maturity (on all their parts).

Now, I've always liked Sieh as he appeared in his minor but crucial roles in the first two books. And I thought it would be interesting to finally have a novel told from a god's perspective (the first two are told from Yeine's and Oree's POVs). However, despite my love of the first two books and my interest in the character, Kingdom of Gods was horrifically dull, disorganized, and inconsistent. If not for my interest in how the trilogy would end, I wouldn't have finished it.

First of all, the time jumps crazily for the first half of the book. One minor thing will happen, then Sieh jumps ahead one year. Then another. Then eight years pass. Then he sort of peaces out for another two years. I can sort of understand that from an immortal's perspective time doesn't mean the same thing, but the result is a plot that remains half-baked and only partially developed for a huge initial chunk of the book. How are we to understand Dekarta and Shahar as characters when we only see them for two pages and BAM! They're suddenly older and more experienced?

Similarly, the entire concept of Sieh's new condition ("mortal-ish?") is never really developed or explained. His physical and magical limitations seem to vanish or appear on a whim - one day he's in danger because he's unable to call magic, then on another he can summon enough power to kill a room full of people because he's in a bad mood.

As well, I think the use of godly POV might have hindered the character development - at least for me. Gods are supposed to be Everything and Nothing - a mixture of different things, complex, and changeable. However, in the first two books, I felt I understood Nahadoth and Itempas more clearly as characters because they were viewed from the perspective of mortals who like to define and identify things. The mortal perspective and projection of personality allowed me to see the two complex immortal figures within a sort of personality framework that allowed them to be more real and identifiable.

From Sieh's perspective, however, he's always changing, all the time, suddenly he's caring, suddenly he murders a roomful of people, now he loves children, now he hates children, now he wants to have sex, now he wants his mommy - he just kept waffling and I never got a sense of him as a character. His only consistent traits were Angst and Loneliness, and those get really old, really fast when the novel is more than 300 pages long with pacing that moves slower than molasses.

Yes, this book was slooooow. So very, very slow. The meandering, episodic, uncertain storyline meant this novel seemed to spend a lot of time doing very little. The plot takes a long time to find its footing, and even when it does, it seems arbitrary. The Big Bad is a totally random, underdeveloped villain who is entirely unconnected with the previous books and whose Master Plan is disappointingly predictable.

Honestly, I don't think I could have been more disappointed. Yes, the conclusion wraps things up in the trilogy in a vague way, but the novel itself doesn't seem very connected with the previous books - it's almost a standalone, a spin-off, that's only distantly connected to its predecessors by the abrupt, violent end.

By all means, if you're a loyal reader and want to see how the trilogy ends, read Kingdom of Gods. But in my opinion, you really don't need to.

C- 

Disagree? You can purchase The Kingdom of Gods here.

"Motherland," by Amy Sohn

The Primary Cast:

Rebecca: A well-off Park Slope mother with a successful husband and two children - only one of whom's her husband's. Keeping the secret is slowly unravelling her, and the reappearance of her celebrity lover doesn't help things.

Gottlieb: The director of a film school who worries his failures as a filmmaker and screenwriter are affecting how he's raising his sons and interacting with his wife. When he gets the chance to go to Hollywood to pitch a screenplay, he leaps at the chance.

Marco: A gay dad in Park Slope who never wanted to be a parent,  whose partner, Todd, pressures him into adopting a second baby. The stress of being the unwilling primary caregiver to two young boys leads him into an addiction to booze and anonymous gay hookups on Grindr.

Karen: A former pampered stay-at-home mom, she struggles to regain her life and independence after her husband leaves her for a transsexual prostitute, but she's been out of work her entire child's life and her money situation is uncertain.

Melora: A Hollywood actress back in New York to try theatre after her last film bombed - she's at odds with her combative director and smartass costars, but an encounter with a strange, harsh artist on a plane gives her a new inspiration - and obsession.

The Secondary Cast:

Theo: Rebecca's husband. Kind of clueless - but may have a surprising secret life.

CC: Rebecca's best friend and Gottlieb's wife - also rather unsatisfied in her marriage.


Todd: Marco's inconsiderate ass of a boyfriend who pressures Marco to adopt another child, only to spend several months away at work.

Ray Hiss: An odd, borderline cruel man whose negative treatment of Melora makes him her latest obsession.

The Word: I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I picked up this book by Amy Sohn at the BEA Book Blogger con. The author had pitched at my table during the Networking Breakfast and she made it sound like a soapy read about pretentious, unhappy rich parents.

And, essentially, it is. Motherland follows five loosely-connected protagonists (Rebecca, Gottlieb, Marco, Karen and Melora),  all of them parents from the privileged New York City neighbourhood of Park Slope. All of them are unsatisfied in some way, most of them make numerous expensive, selfish, strange, and disturbing attempts to escape from the misery of being pretentious, bored, and wealthy (although not as wealthy as they'd like to be - they have to simply scrape by to afford forty thousand dollars a year for the nanny!), and few of them exhibit much empathy for anyone else.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to review this novel. Ultimately, for this sort of book, I must rely on the basics: did this novel entertain and satisfy me? To that, I reply sort of and not quite. Motherland entertains on a voyeuristic level - on being able to peek into the lives of privileged people and the details of their clothes, lifestyles, and personal problems. However, I only found it entertaining in a very superficial way. It was very difficult to become invested in the storyline or connect with the characters because none of them seem capable of healthily connecting with anyone else, including their kids.

They're all quite isolated in their pursuit of satisfaction, and perhaps that was the novel's point. Honestly, Karen was the only character I felt any attachment to. I could understand her loneliness and living under the stigma of being a single parent in a neighbourhood full of smug marrieds, trying to figure out what the hell she's supposed to do if her husband decides to stop paying child and spousal support. I understood her feelings and her motivations, and I appreciated her attempts to find herself and what she's good at - even when the story takes a bizarre turn and she starts pimping out a toe-sucking masseuse/prostitute in her co-op building (don't ask).

If I feel distanced from the characters, I can usually at least take some enjoyment from the events in their storylines, the progression of the characters' mindsets, and the satisfying conclusions to some if not all of their problems - however, Motherland doesn't provide that, which leads to my second biggest problem with the novel. Most of the storylines either a) go nowhere and are ignored or else remain unresolved or b) end with a sudden, unforeseen and random conclusion that feels unearned. I suppose that's meant to invoke the "it's just like real life" voyeuristic appeal, but to me, stories need to be told for a reason - there is a reason we're seeing these people at this particular stage in their lives right now - which usually means that something has to be achieved at the end of the novel. Instead, the narrative kind of peters out as if bored with itself and none of the characters (save perhaps Karen and Melora) have changed or grown in any way. This left me feeling cheated - particularly in regards to a surprisingly disturbing storyline hidden in the spoilers:

In the storyline where Gottlieb goes to Hollywood to pitch his screenplay, he has a fantastic one-night stand with a mysterious and much-younger woman at around the same time he gets an E-mail from a sperm bank he used in college to say that he has a child. Yes, it turns out to be exactly as awful as you're thinking: he discovers he's had sex with his own daughter. Bizarrely, after the initial shock, he simply takes the news as a sign from the universe that he's a luckless schlub just like everyone else, and he should just start over. Except - sleeping with your daughter isn't an ordinary Everyman screw up. It's horrifying and almost made me dry heave while reading - even worse, his narrative fades out after that, although he does move to L.A. to "keep in touch with his daughter." GROSS.

As well, there is a lot of name-dropping in this novel, and certain real-life people are brought into the fictional narrative and given dialogue - a technique which gave me pause. Fictional cameos of Sacha Baron Cohen and Gwyneth Paltrow seen in passing seem harmless enough and appropriate to the Hollywood and Broadway settings but in Melora's storyline, Jon Hamm (of Mad Men fame) is given several nasty scenes and lines where he comes off as a smarmy jackass. Why do that with a person who actually exists (and can sue you)? Why not invent a character? I found myself feeling uncomfortable and a little sorry for Jon Hamm.

As it is, Motherland went down easy - too easy. I read this novel with an increasing detachment and nothing stuck in my consciousness as being particularly memorable (except the nasty storyline in the spoilers that I would really care never to remember ever again). 

C-

Motherland will be available August 14 - you can preorder here.

"Accessible Love Stories," Anthology Review

There's a popular cliche out there that says, "Put your best foot forward."

Okay, so maybe that's not the best metaphor to use about an anthology of love stories with wheelchair-bound protagonists.

What I mean is, is that first story in an anthology is a crucial one. It's supposed to set the tone of the collection, it's the face of the anthology, and it's what's meant to draw the reader in to read the other five stories of people who "have already been swept off their feet by disability" and encourage us to "join them as they release the brakes on love" (from the back cover blurb).

Honestly, many of these aren't romance stories so much as stories where love eventually occurs in the narrative (and in one story, it doesn't even do that) - because of that, I've chosen to eschew my typical romance-reviewing format.

But what we need to ask is, does this first story present the anthology's best, brightest face?

"Bad Hotel Art," by Christy Leigh Stewart
In a word (screamed at the top of my lungs from the highest building in my hometown until my voice is hoarse): NO.

This story nearly sent me off the deep end by opening the collection with a tale that is, hands down, literally one of the worst things I have ever read in the more than two decades I've been capable of reading. There aren't enough Fs in the world to convey how terrible this story is. It's not even that it's terrible from a story perspective (although it is), or that its characters are heinous caricatures (which they are).

No - this story fails because it represents a complete lack of competency with the English language and how to use it properly. I am appalled at the horrendous number of glaring errors and syntactically-garbled gibberish that made it past the editor.

Our heroine, Ophelia, is an eternally-patient personal assistant to a foul-mouthed, relentlessly offensive Random Rich Dude named Abbott Hall, who's trying to op en an art gallery. To give you an indication of the quality of writing to come, the story begins while Ophelia is trying to hold a phone conversation with Abbott over the sound of a woman making a violent, apparently acidic bowel movement in an adjacent bathroom stall.

Ophelia feels eternally victimized by the world for being in a wheelchair, most especially by her cartoonishly awful mother who allows people to confuse spinal injury with autism. The only place she feels strong is at work, and that's because she and Abbott conduct all their business by phone, leaving him unaware of her disability. All that ends when Abbott flies down to see her in person because he's in a doozy of a situation - his Dead-By-Plot-Device-Grandfather altered his will to leave everything in his company to Abbott's drug-addicted uncle if Abbott doesn't marry within a year of Granddad's death. And who better to have a married-in-name-only arrangement with than his slavishly loyal personal assistant whom he's never seen?

Ophelia is a thinly-veiled slab of cardboard - completely empty of nuance or real personality until the plot demands a response of righteous indignation. Abbott acts like a 14-year-old boy - his snap judgements, immature behaviour and constant flow of swear words and offensive terms make him seem like a child trying to act like a grown-up rather than an actual adult.

He's also an unadulterated, 100-proof asshole with asshole friends:

"...Can she have sex?" Reznik asked.

[Abbott] "I'm marrying her, not fucking her."

"It doesn't really matter, I guess," Reznik ignored him. [AnimeJune's note: by the way, "ignored" is not a valid speech tag] "It's not like she's the dude; even if she doesn't feel anything you can still have sex. What kind of sex life would that be though? She could suck you off and shit but I doubt she will. If you can't even get her off I doubt she'd go for it."

"Shut the fuck up."

"Act offended, dude, but you can't say you aren't thinking it."

Abbott wished he could truthfully deny it. - page 15

As well, the writing is just abysmally bad - misspelled words, misused words, and typos abound. Points of view jump around from scene to scene.  And let's not forget labyrinthine phrases like:

The idea that there could be [mothers] unlike his own [mother] always perplexed him a little; the idea that he was the same species as someone who's [sic] life had been first held in different arms and first hopes and dreams, and pride had been crushed by someone else's painful words and eyes. - page 18

What the fuck does that even mean? How about:

"Oh, my God!"  Abbott wasn't sure how many of the other two women that came from. - Page 19

Also, is that a misplaced comma in that exclamation or are there some minor deities in the house? Or:

Anger can only stayed dormant for so long. - page 27

All your angst are belong to us? And finally:

She shivered. The subject of death or had he chilled her with the cold of his body. - Page 30

Having this anthology open with such wretched garbage seems a terrible choice - I almost put this book down, and would have if not for a) the fact that this was a review request and b) my masochistic curiosity.
My Grade: F Minus Times a MILLION

"Meet Cute," by D.C. Graham
This story starts off much better, but honestly, the nutritional information on a can of Whiskas cat food would read like Shakespeare after the steaming bucket of fail that is "Bad Hotel Art."

To D.C. Graham's credit, this story is written in perfectly serviceable English, and is about an adorable, virginal paraplegic named Daniel who falls in love with Patrick, the new partner in his doctor's practice. While Daniel is nervous about entering into a relationship because of his disability and his sexual inexperience, such hurdles are quickly overcome by Patrick, who is a loving and compassionate gentleman.

Nothing in this story is offensive or terrible - but nothing is really interesting, either. Much of Patrick and Daniel's budding romance is told instead of shown, and Patrick is honestly Too Good To Be True for there to be much conflict. The two points of this story that stick out are a) the fact that this is the only story in the anthology that actually depicts a sex scene and b) a throw-away comment about Daniel's sexual experiences with a bowl of mashed potatoes. 

Yes, this story is rather bland and sweet - but that's usually just the sort of food one recommends to settle one's stomach after eating food-poisoning-inducing sewage, isn't it?
My Grade: C+

"To Stop Now," by Jess Gulbranson
This story is an inexplicably pointless, unromantic and unpleasant short story about a guitar player who was recently paralyzed and likes to play angsty music and passive-aggressively slutshame his girlfriend to get over it. Given that this is supposed to be an anthology about wheelchair-users who find love, but this jerkwad doesn't find love and barely mentions his wheelchair, I'm baffled as to this tale's inclusion.
My Grade: D

"Fire on Babylon," by Amanda Dier
This was a nice and well-written (if slow-moving) tale about a waitress named Susan who finds herself falling in love with her brother's embittered, recently-wheelchair-bound best friend Lisa. Lisa is unsure of both her own attractiveness as a disabled person and Susan's apparent switch in sexuality, but decides to give it a shot. The story takes on an episodic structure as they weather the numerous tragedies and events that befall them, with a sweet little ending. While the brevity of the medium requires some telling over showing, Dier managed to get me invested in both characters.
My Grade: B

"Why Not?" by Esther Day
While "Fire On Babylon" was okay, "Why Not" edges past it as best story of the bunch. This sweet tale of friendship that turns into more starts when Seth, a hard-working and self-sufficient man paralyzed from birth, is forced to ask his good-natured neighbour Reed for help when he unexpectedly becomes the guardian of his 3-year-old nephew Luke - not knowing that Reed has been insanely in love with him for months.

I liked seeing how Seth, a disabled person who was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, has trouble asking for and accepting help - even when the most-abled person would find themselves out of their depth with a new baby. Reed practically falls over himself to help out Seth and Luke,  even as he worries what will happen when Seth gains his footing (so to speak) and no longer needs his assistance.

Was this story perfect? Nope - the Surprise! Orphaned Nephew is a complete contrivance - a plot moppet (copyright Smart Bitches) who's the product of a sister Seth never even knew existed, and her mysterious not-existing-until-the-plot-demanded-her-baby is never explained. She must have sprung fully-formed, pregnant and already tragically dead from the head of Zeus. As well, Seth's attraction to Reed is told instead of shown and only at the very end, and there is no indication of his sexual orientation one way or the other until then. I get the impression the author was trying to leave Seth's true feelings for Reed as a question mark until the end, but dude. This is a romance story. We all know how it's supposed to work out. For the majority of the story, his appreciation is entirely platonic, so his sudden "well, I'd always kind of felt that way for Reed" admission at the end seemed tacked on. Otherwise, it's a strong story.
My Grade: B

"On Saturday Afternoon," by Ruth Madison
Ending this anthology on a surprisingly good note is this intriguing story about Em, a pathologically shy hospital intern who falls for a disabled speech therapist named James. James is easily the loveliest hero in the entire anthology - and, interestingly, the one with the most severe disability (he has no leg mobility and very limited upper mobility). James can see through Em to her truly kind spirit and YOWZA - despite the fact that Madison doesn't actually depict any sex, the tension and the implications of what they do alone are realistic enough and yet also sexy enough to convey how well they work together despite James' limitations.

However, Em kind of ruins the story by being such a doormat she can't even refuse her smarmy prick of a boyfriend's smarmy proposal even after she and James have had sex (she actually begs him for a week to think about it!) and she ends up screwing both guys over. As well, the ending was kind of lacklustre.
My Grade: B-

You can imagine my surprise, dear readers. The majority of the stories in this anthology were decent - none of them were awe-inspiring but they were still interesting stories. But still - "Bad Hotel Art." Who let that one in - and who decided it should be first?

Honestly, that's part of why I'm ultimately giving this anthology a lower grade, because I have to review the whole as well as the sum of its parts. The anthology's theme is shaky (why was "To Stop Now" in there?) that first story was mind-bogglingly terrible, and the editing was just substandard. Even in the decent stories, I noted errors and typos that should have been caught before the book went to print.

Yes, there are a couple of good stories, and if you're interested enough in them for themselves, by all means get the collection. Ultimately though, as a story collection, Accessible Love Stories isn't worth your time.
C-

"Undressed," by Kristina Cook

The Chick: Lady Margaret Ballard, a.k.a. "Brenna Maclachlan." A Scottish landowner whose parents recently died, leaving her in command of their significant and prosperous estate.
The Rub: It turns out they weren't her parents - but the people who stole her from her real family, a snobby British clan who want her to come back to London with them. But how well can this Scottish lass fit into upperclass British society?
Dream Casting: Bryce Dallas Howard.


The Dude: The Honourable Mr. Colin Rosemoor. A genteel aristocrat whose reputation and standing in society are ruined when a scoundrel falsely accuses him of cheating at cards.
The Rub: He meets and is instantly smitten with Brenna - but should he risk tarnishing her innocent reputation by association?
Dream Casting: Ryan Kwanten.


The Plot:

Brenna: Och! What are ye doin' on mah lahnd?


Lady and Lord Danville: Surprise! We're your real parents!


Brenna: WTF.

Lady and Lord Danville: Come back to England with us! We missed you so much after those people kidnapped you!

Brenna: OMG HOW DARE YE INSULT THE PEOPLE WHO STOLE ME FROM MY HOME, THEY WERE SUPER AWESOME AND LET ME HAVE FRUIT ROLL-UPS FOR DINNER, WHAT DID YE PEOPLE EVER DO FOR ME - except give birth to me and worry about me for ... 26 years .... okay fine.

In Britain...

Lady and Lord Danville: Omg ugh we're gonna be stuck with this old maid Scottish daughter forEVER, can't anyone just, like, take her? We've got a huge dowry and everything!

Brenna: ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

Colin: 'Sup - I've been kicked from society for cheating at cards so I conveniently sympathize with all your problems, also I'm hot.

Brenna: Sweet!

Evil Brother: Jolly good thing we did framing Colin for cheating, care to marry my sister?

Evil Villain: Only if I get to rape her first!

Evil Brother: Tally ho, my good man! Wot wot!

Brenna: WTF, the sequel.

Brenna and Colin: *accidentally compromised into marriage*

Colin: Well, solved that problem! What's left?

Brenna: Your drinking problem and our inevitable separation where I run away to Scotland and you come after me and save me and my cat from a burning tower.

Colin: Let's not and say we did?

Brenna: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

1 Morally-Handwaved Baby Abduction

1 Annoying Brogue

1 Case of Culture-Clash

4 Useless Parents

1 Evil Brother

1 Entire Nation of Snobby Jerks

1 Accidental Compromisation

1 Angry Cat

The Word: If I've learned anything about my reading habits this month, it's that the worst thing to read isn't a bad book - but a boring one.

Hence why I DNF'd these slogs, but continued to read Undressed, Kristina Cook's lazily-written, bluntly contrived crazypants novel to the very last page. I hated this novel - and was also mightily entertained by its hatefulness.

Here are the three things I learned from Kristina Cook's Undressed:

1. It's not morally repugnant and evil to abduct a baby from a loving family as long as you wuv her vewy much.
The gist is this: 26 years ago, two wealthy, childless members of the Scottish gentry crept into England, stole Lord and Lady Danville's infant daughter Margaret, and then high-tailed it back over the border to raise her in the True Scottish™ Way as Brenna Machlachlan, their daughter and sole heir who speaks with an annoying phonetically-spelled Scottish brogue.

That is, until a timely deathbed confession of an accomplice brings Lord and Lady Danville to Brenna's door (conveniently after a fever has removed both babysnatchers to the, ahem, warmer regions of the afterlife), and a tasteful birthmark in the shape of a fleur-de-lis on Brenna's right thigh (of course!) confirms her identity. However much she dislikes the English, Brenna is still mourning the death of her abductor-parents, so the chance to know her real ones (as well as her long-lost twin brother Hugh) convinces her to return with them to London.

Try as I might, I couldn't stop tripping over this appallingly mishandled and offensive set-up for most of the novel's first half.

It helps to explain the historical (*snort*) worldbuilding - in this novel, the subtleties of Scottish-English relations in the 19th century are sensitively and respectfully recreated by rendering everything Scottish good and everything British bad.

Therefore, the Scottish parents who stole a child from a loving family for their own selfish ends are the Awesomest People In the World, who raised Brenna in the True Scottish™ Way, whereas the British birth parents who had their infant snatched from their arms are depicted as shallow, hypocritical assbags who, two seconds after rejoicing at the return of their long-lost daughter, are fanatically eager to get this shamefully Scottish old maid off their hands as soon as possible with the first suitor who comes calling.

The only thing I like more than a storyline that trivializes child abduction is one that implicitly victim-blames the family who lost their daughter because of their culture!

2. Literally every man and woman of British descent is evil - or at the very least a pompous jerkbag.
But enough about Stealing Babies For Fun and True Scottish™ Profit - while all this is going on, our hero, a delightfully flouncy and sullen gentleman named Colin Rosemoor, is falsely accused of cheating at cards and is therefore socially ruined. He spends a number of pages swirling his greatcoat and storming in and out of buildings shouting "my father won't stand for this!" and "this is an outrage!" - making repeated pit stops for brandy and a hand of cards. While he has no proof, he's convinced a scumbag named Sinclair framed him. He runs into Brenna on his way to present his case to his friend Hugh (her brother), and later on at a ball, where they trade the usual repartee that ends up sparking undying attraction.

Brenna initially assumes the worst of Colin - not only because of his tarnished reputation, but because he's English. Brenna is a beacon of True Scottish™ Self-Righteousness whose favourite leisure activity is "keeping her ledgers" - which apparently makes her a highly-prized party animal in True Scotland™ instead of a boring old stick. Despite how often the book tells us she's a Strong True Scottish™ Woman, she's really an Old-School Damsel in disguise - the kind that swoons, flees in tears, and turns her ankle every time she puts a foot wrong - the better for our hero to rescue her. Bah!

I tired very quickly of the whole Rah-Rah True Scotland™ attitude - it'd be believable if it was just Brenna who believed this, but the whole novel perpetrates the cartoonishly black-and-white idea that people raised in True Scotland™ are pure and hard working and devoid of all faults or sins (except, you know, an unfortunate tendency TO STEAL BABIES), whereas people raised Ye Olde Evile England™ are just naturally predisposed to turn out asshats.

See: Brenna's birth family. As it turns out, Brenna's brother Hugh was in cahoots with Sinclair the whole time to frame Colin for cheating, in order so that Hugh could court and marry Colin's sweetheart, Honoria. Very conveniently, Brenna overhears a conversation between the Evil English™ conspirators where she learns what Sinclair expects in return: her hand and enormous dowry in marriage, consent-optional. Yes, because Evil English™ dudes are totally fine talking about Raping Each Other's Sisters. That is not contrived or wildly unrealistic at all.

Brenna flees from this Not Contrived Or Wildly Unrealistic Conversation to discuss this revelation with her new BFF, Jane Rosemoor (Colin's sister), but a Series of Lazily-Written Coincidences conspire to place her in Colin's bedroom with a shirtless Colin and her skirts up around her hips just in time for Colin's mum to pay an unfortunately unannounced house call - whoops!

As it turns out, a Hastily-Arranged Marriage is our Evil English™ villains' one weakness, and they slink impotently into the background after a few catty remarks and are never heard from again until a Random Background Character exposes their scheme and undoes their Evil English™ work at no cost or effort to our actual protagonists. Lovely.

3. Alcoholism and gambling addictions are sensitive issues that deserve to be treated with subtlety, realism, and respect.
With the Evil English™ Villains' plot foiled, there isn't much much left for Brenna and Colin to confront - except for Colin's drinking and gambling problems, which were exacerbated by the aforementioned stressful events.

Astoundingly, in a novel where every other plot point is contrived, exaggerated, distorted, and basically handled with all the delicacy and shades of gray of a child's finger painting of Edward Cullin, the depiction of Colin's descent into addiction is actually clever and subtle!

The book never actually comes out and says that Colin has a drinking or gambling problem until about two-thirds through the novel,  and suddenly the constant mentions Colin makes to brandy, the way he downs flutes of champagne in social situations when he's stressed out, his desire to go out and play cards after a particularly disheartening day - it all comes together to make a fully-realized picture of casual drinking and gambling taken too far that actually makes sense.

It develops slowly, gradually, but persistently - until (and I'm not making this up) he yells at his father during an argument and his father literally has a heart attack and dies in front of him. Now, Colin is suddenly coming home plastered, with no memory of what happened the night before, and spending days ill in bed after abstaining from the brandy he thought he only imbibed socially. Because of the gradual development, Colin is completely unwilling to face the fact that he has a problem - a completely understandable and reasonable development! - until he hits rock bottom and drunkenly gambles away a parcel of Brenna's land to an Evil English™ landlord who intends to clear out the innocent True Scottish™  tenants to raise (presumably Evil English™ ) sheep.

Horrified and betrayed, Brenna leaves him and returns to True Scotland™.

Sadly, the sensitive portrayal ends there. The power of True Love helps Colin overcome his addictions by himself thanks to his Awesome Self Control and he tears off to True Scotland™ just in time to save Brenna when the tower she's in catches fire after it's struck by lightning (for reals) - even though Brenna nearly does herself in by staying in the burning tower to save her cat. These two goons deserve each other.

Yes, this novel was Insane In the Membrane, poorly-plotted, lazily-characterized, and pretty offensive in terms of how casually and thoughtlessly it handles Babysnatching and Scottish-English relations - but at least it was entertaining.

C- 

If you really want to, you can Undressed here.

"Dark Lover," by J.R. Ward

The Chick: Beth Randall. When a strange, dark, leather-clad man breaks into her apartment, the last thing she expects is to have hot monkey sex with him.
The Rub: Maybe the second last - she also discovers he has pointy teeth and five hot vampire brothers!
Dream Casting: Liv Tyler.

The Dude: Wrath, King of the Vampires. To honour his promise to a deceased friend, he seeks out his friend's half-vampire daughter to ease her through her coming transformation.
The Rub: He gets all warm and tingly around her - but his angst! If he settles down, he might actually have to take on all those responsibilities he's been shirking for centuries!
Dream Casting: Eric Bana.

The Plot:

Wrath: Surprise! You're going to be a vampire!

Beth: WTF! GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT!

Wrath: But I'm a sexy, angsty pain-filled vampire!

Beth: ...go on.

Wrath: And I have five brothers who are just as angsty as me!

Rhage: I bring the sex appeal!

Phury: I'll do your hair!

Zsadist: You'll want to fix me!

Tohrment: I'm full of pre-emptive angst because my hot wife is still alive!

Vishous: I bring homoerotic subtext!

Butch, Beth's Friend: What a coincidence! So do I!

Vishous: YAY! LET'S BE PLATONIC MAN-FRIENDS!

Butch: I CAN'T WAIT TO NOT MAKE OUT WITH YOU!

Wrath: OMG YOU GUYS THIS IS MY FREAKIN' NOVEL, GO AND BE NOT-GAY SOMEWHERE ELSE!

Vishous and Butch: *skipping away happily* ~*let's talk about baseball...*~

Beth: You were saying?

Wrath: Let's get hitched!

Beth: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist
6 Orders of Piping-Hot Vampire Angst

1 Order of Piping-Hot Cop Angst

1 Pair of Wrap-Around Shades
1 Evil Karate Dojo

2 Accidental Cases of Forgot-the-Condom

1 Magical Transformation

1 Magical Aphrodisiac Vampire Doobie

1 Abused Ex-Wife

1 Secondary Romance between Abused Ex-Wife and Angsty Cop

1 Secondary Homoerotic Bromance between Angsty Cop and Hacker Vampire

The Word: I really must give J.R. Ward her due.

She has crafted one of the most enjoyably silly and spot-on parodies of vampire romances that I have ever read. It plays so close to the line that it can be read like the real thing, if that's your bag, but it's overlaid with just the right amount of cheese and exaggeration that people who are not normally fans of vampire paranormals (like me) are totally in on the joke.

The whole novel plays like a dark, twisted vampire parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - where a woman on the run is essentially adopted by a DudeGroup of inbred cannibal vampires who name themselves after incorrectly-spelled negative attributes.

Let me explain - this particular DudeGroup is the Black Dagger Brotherhood, a secret society of vampire warriors dedicated to protecting the slightly-less-secret society of vampire civilians.

The members of the Brotherhood are neatly introduced with all the pride and specificity of a new line of action figures. Each one comes with his own angst! Romantic Soulmate sold separately!

Wrath: He's the leader of the BDB, and the official King of the Vampires - presumably because he was the only one smart enough to spell his name correctly. However, he is visually impaired, so maybe someone else with a better grasp of English wrote it on his nametag for him. Likes: Black satin sheets, leather, ninja stars. Dislikes: Bright lights. Responsibility. His angst: He's been slacking off on the ol' Royal duties for 300 years because of his low self-esteem.

Vishous: The Hacker Vampire. Sports a goatee and a Mike Tyson-esque face tattoo. Casting: A sleazy Chris Evans. Likes: The Red Sox, hot cops named Butch, things he can do with his right hand. Dislikes: The Yankees, things he can do with his left hand. His Angst: A magical Left Hand of Doom that he must keep gloved.

Rhage: The Hot Vampire - nicknamed "Hollywood." Described as a "sex legend." I suppose the name Hhumble was taken. Casting: Chris Hemsworth. Likes: Killing. Sex. Ladies. Not at the same time. Dislikes: Anything that does not involve killing, sex, and/or ladies. His Angst: Cursed to turn into a dragon when he's enRhaged.

Phury: The Fabulous Hair Vampire. Casting: Michael Bolton, circa 1991. Likes: Vidal Sassoon, Moroccan Oil, his twin brother Zsadist. Dislikes: Split ends, scrunchies, everything his twin brother Zsadist actually does. His Angst: Vow of celibacy! Woe!

Zsadist: The "tortured" one, he is clearly the A.J. of the Backstreet Dagger Boys Brotherhood. Casting: Vin Diesel. Likes: Pain. Darkness. Terrorizing, torturing and possibly murdering women. Hitting that high F in "Defying Gravity" from the Wicked soundtrack. Dislikes: Women. Everything else, too - but especially women. His Angst: He was, um, literally tortured since infancy and is covered in scars.

Tohrment: The well-adjusted one! Nice, reasonable, easy on the eyes. His wife is awesome. Casting: Brian Austin Green. Likes: Rational arguments, and his wife Wellsie. Dislikes: Being called pussy-whipped. His Angst: Having a fabulous hot wife with a baby on the way more or less paints a Bull's-Eye for Fate on his ass - is he only two days away from retirement, too?

Darius: The Dead One. Bites it with a car bomb.

The whole group dynamic is a sharp riff off the Manly-Man-Pain stereotypes that tend to proliferate in DudeGroup romance series. There is absolutely no reason given for the ridiculous names that no other vampire has - and it can hardly be a coincidence that the one Brother in the Hood with a comparatively normal name is bumped off in the first chapter. They're all more or less Angst Archtypes hyped to 11 - Zsadist, in particular, takes the Done-Wrong-By-One-Woman-Therefore-ALL-Women-Are-The-Same trope so far he makes the average Judith McNaught hero look like a petticoated lesbian suffragette.

But beneath all the sweaty, angsty leather-coated muscle, there is a narrative! Before he's blasted to the Ann Rice Novel in the Sky, Darius (or Uhnlucky, as I like to call him) reveals to Wrath that he sired a daughter on a human woman 25 years ago. Thanks to her half-vampire heritage, she's due to undergo Fang Puberty very soon, and he asks Wrath to help her survive the transition with his pure vampire blood. Wrath, who has spent 300 years turning Commitment-Dodging into a science, refuses - but he feels differently after he's forced to collect his brother's remains with a dust buster.

Enter Beth, a perpetually sexually-harassed newspaper reporter. She's tasked with investigating a car bomb that went off outside a nightclub, but she's understandably distracted as she only barely escaped full-on sexual assault mere hours before. She's initially too shaken up to open up to Detective Brian "Butch" O'Neal, a human cop with Vampire-Sized Angst who is an acquaintance of hers - and Wrath certainly doesn't help when he pulls an Edward Cullen and gets caught sneaking into her apartment to see Darius' half-breed daughter for himself.

Forced to psychically sedate her and erase her memories, Wrath tries to Groundhog Day her and breaks into her apartment again, this time smoking a blunt of what I can only surmise is Secret Vampire Weed, which is intended to relax her into listening to reason. Unfortunately, it makes her uncontrollably horny instead - a common side effect in romance! - and they end up Doing It. Whoopsie!

It's not long before Beth's eyes are forcibly opened to the secrets of vampire society - as are Butch's, when he follows her because he suspects the enormous, tattooed, pierced, leather-clad, heavily armed men she now hangs out with are up to no good. Butch is easily the best part of the novel - he's nicely self-deprecating and the one male character who can communicate with a female character without dragging his knuckles across the floor and beating his chest. He's a little hyper-masculinized, too (his suspension from the force for police brutality is completely deserved!), but he makes up for it with his immediate bromance with fellow Sox fan Vishous, a pairing that generates enough homoerotic tension to fuel an armada of Disney cruise ships.

The Brotherhood, meanwhile, are opposed by an evil anti-vampire group with the wimpiest of possible names: the Lessening Society. Watch out! They're going to lessen you! They're not going to eradicate you, but they'll shave a little off the top! Enough so that you'll notice! Oh no!

But no, I'm being too harsh - the society is actually comprised of albino baby-powder-scented eunuchs. But threatening albino baby-powder-scented eunuchs! Ward very cleverly gives the villains attributes that are directly and exaggeratedly opposite of the descriptors stereotypically given to romantic heroes (who are typically dark-complexioned, musky-scented, and virile). Since there is no actual world-building reason given for why they smell like Johnson & Johnson, it seems apparent to me that this is a comedic choice for parody purposes.

As funny as they are, however, the Lessening Society serves more as a looming threat than an actual one. They seem to be trapped in the world of '80s films since their evil plans consist of recruiting boys into evil martial arts dojos. Most of the major baddie's (Mr. X) story arc involves him serving as an evil Mr. Miyagi to a young recruit, as he teaches him how to metaphorically wax on and off with paranormal villainy.

There is also a subplot with a Mad Vampire Scientist that is a little Jekyll and Hyde and a lot pointless.

When it all comes down to it, I suppose I am making a conscious choice to see this novel as a parody, because if it isn't, it really is a rather subpar paranormal. The worldbuilding is hit or miss - Wrath states that vampires feed on the blood of other vampires, not humans, and yet Zsadist frequently does and Mr. X catches vampires by attracting them with human blood. I also get iffy feminist vibes from the vampire culture's restrictive "protectiveness" towards the females of the species - why are there no Black Dagger sisters? I mean COME ON, no Bhitchy?

It's also easier to tolerate the Brothers' attitude towards violence and collateral damage when it's viewed through the lens of parody. Without it, the Brothers appear cruel, callous and bigoted (even Tohrment has a questionable scene where he threatens to rape Butch's significant other). And Wrath essentially abandons the wife he neglected and abused for centuries to the point where she's a shell of a person, for another woman and we're supposed to cheer and clap. If I didn't look at this novel as a take off of cliches that I despise, than I'd just plain despise it.

Honestly, I'm still pretty much immune to the Black Dagger Brotherhood's charms (in particular, Zsadist sounds so horrible and terrifying that I can't imagine how Ward would do his novel without retroactively neutering him first), but there are a host of other reviewers who are fans of the series, so if you're serious about giving this one a try, I would try searching for their reviews. In fact, if you are a fan of the series, do leave a comment below - and even drop a link to your own reviews!

As a Parody:
B

As a Serious Vampire Novel:
C-

Purchase Dark Lover here.