Category Archives: Challenges

crash

Book Review of Crash (Westside Wolf Pack #1), by Zoe Perdita

CrashI picked up a copy of Crash, by Zoe Perdita, from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Ben Singer, an omega werewolf, has been in love with his former best friend and the alpha scion of their wolf pack, Axel, from the time they were teenagers. Ben thought they were mates, but the rules of their pack kept them apart.

Axel Cross is a fuck-up. The sexy tattooed wolf threw away his chances of ever becoming pack alpha at seventeen, and Ben has no idea why.

When Axel’s uncle kicks Ben out of their Pittsburgh pack, it’s the chance the omega has been waiting for. Then Axel demands to accompany the smaller wolf. The only problem is Ben wants to run away for good – away from the pack Axel’s uncle decided the omega should join and away from Axel. 

But Axel doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He’s determined to go with Ben, even if the omega doesn’t want him around. 

While desire stirs between Axel and Ben, years of heartache haunt them. Can the alpha and omega let go of their past and the old pack in order to find a bright new future together?

Review: 
I basically enjoyed this book. I thought Axel was an interesting character and liked Ben well enough. I was disappointed to find such a strong representation of the common hetero romance “Damsel In Distress” trope. I can’t even begin to estimate how many of those het romances feature a tough hero who hurts the woman he loves by forcing distance between them for her own good, without giving her a reason. Only to then protect her secretly from a distance and then return and claim her when he’s ready, expecting all past slights to be instantly forgiven. This is a very common trope in het romance and I wasn’t thrilled to find in it my MM, because one of the primary reasons I read MM (other than it’s just sexy) is to get away from these same heavily gendered versions of male-female relationships. (And there is no question here of which man represents the ‘woman’ and which the ‘man.’) Despite that, I did enjoy seeing how Axel struggled with the reality of his decisions.

While I quite liked Axel, asshole alpha as he was sometimes, Ben didn’t light my fire. I found him to be an overly stereotypical queer kid and his constant mouth got on my nerves. Yes, I got that was part of his personality, but he mouths off relentlessly to people he was otherwise terrified of. (Really, that’s not how terror usually works.) And he does so knowing it’s Axel who will be punished. He loves the guy, you’d think he’d be invested in not getting him punished. Similarly, as adults I found his constant sexual innuendo exhausting. Again, I get it, he does it as a means of deflection and self-protection, but I got so tired of reading it.

I found the writing fine, with the exception of the constant ‘taller wolf, ‘smaller wolf,’ ‘Omega,’ ‘Alpha/Alpha Scion’ (the author wasn’t consistent in which was used, which was problematic as I believe, per world-set up, he was an Alpha Scion but with no pack to lead, not yet and Alpha). I really did need an explanation on pack hierarchy and politics though. I understand alpha/top dog, omega/bottom dog. But there is no explanation of what makes an omega an omega. I assumed Axel was an alpha scion by virtue of being the Alpha’s son. But Ben’s parent’s were mid-level pack members, not omegas and Ben was labelled as such even as a small child. So it can’t be family position and isn’t necessarily just his smaller size or personality (as it wouldn’t have developed yet). In the same vein, Axel’s need to prove himself worthy before taking over the pack (and thus throwing that chance away) doesn’t make a lot of sense considering the two previous alphas. Neither of them would qualify as worthy.

Anyhow, I had complaints, yes. But if I came across the sequel I’d be more than happy to read it. I enjoyed more than I didn’t.

Book Review of All You Need Is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

 All you need is KillMy husband had a couple Amazon bucks to burn, so he gifted me a copy of All You Need is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka ( Alexander O. Smith, translator).

Description from Goodreads:
When the alien Mimics invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally–the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji’s escape or his final death?

Review:
I haven’t seen the movie and have no intention to. They cast an 18-year-old Japanese boy as Tom Cruise (who happens to be white and in his fifties). How does that even work? So, no, that has ruined the movie for me. But I won’t hold that against the book.

The book I quite enjoyed. I liked Keiji’s tone and the way, after struggling with his new reality, he just got down to the business of making due. I enjoyed the Full Metal Bitch! God, do I love a warrior woman and I really appreciated the way everyone, Keiji included, was perfectly willing to step aside and acknowledge that she was the best at what they did. There’s also a bit of a dark twist that I didn’t see coming and, no surprise, I liked it.

I did think the world-building was a little weak, but it was enough to know what was going on. My one big complaint is that no one questioned what happened between Keiji and the FMB at the end. (Trying not to use a spoiler.) But it seems, if no one knew their predicament then someone should have had a serious WTF moment and no one did.

All in all I enjoyed the book a lot.

Partners

Book Review of Partners, by T. L. Stowe

PartnersI picked up a copy of Partners, by T. L. Stowe from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
When two gay policemen, both desiring each other, finally discover the other is also gay, sparks fly, long time erotic desires are fulfilled, and questions of unrequited love begin to hang in the air. Will a heart be broken or will lust blossom into mutual love?

Review:
I’m afraid this review is all about the numbers. I didn’t plan it that way, but it turned out that way.

I picked this book up because I recently wrote a blog post about how much it annoys me when authors put tags in book titles on Amazon. I chose this book as an illustration of this, because it went one step farther. On Amazon it’s titled as such: Gay Romance: Partners: Gay Romance by T. L. Stowe (Author), Gay Fiction (Foreword). Seriously, did they think I’d miss that this is a book about gay men? And if I did, did they think I’d miss the first “Gay Romance” or the second? Better throw it in as an author too. And just in case I did somehow miss it, they use the word gay a further 13 times in the two-paragraph book description. The whole blurb is only 134 words long, so a full 10% of it is the word gay! I love m/m, but surely I’m not alone in thinking that’s overkill. Just how stupid do the authors think their readers are? I was astounded.

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But then, I thought it might be parody and as parody I thought it might be a little funny. It reminded me a bit of Daffyd Thomas (Little Britton) who, despite being questionably gay, repeatedly insists that he’s the only gay in village, while remaining oblivious to the fact that everyone around him is having copious amounts of gay sex (unlike him).

So, I decided I’d best just read the book. Well, it’s not a parody. It’s a serious novel, yes, about gay men. And other than having two points that irritated me, it could have been an ok read…except the numbers. The author’s tendency to overuse words, as noticed in the blurb, haunted me throughout the book. And because I read on a Kindle I can show you just how much. These words stood out, not just because they were used so often, but because they were also unnecessary. I get it; these men are cops and thus, a bit dude-bro like. But the use of direct addresses tacked onto the end of sentences was vastly overplayed.

They called each-other buddy 28 times. And it felt like soooo many more. As soon as they kissed the first time the baby & babes stared. They used those endearments 40 times. But it was man that really stood out. It was used 245 flipping times in this book! Granted, some of them are obviously used as a standard noun, as in ‘The man turned around.’ But the vast majority were used as a direct addresses, as in the last comment of the book, ‘Me too man. Me too.’ And they’re all just like that, with no comma. I would really like to know what a me too man is. You can probably imagine what the combined effect of all these extra words was. Could someone maybe lend me something to pry my eyes from the back of my skull?

With a decent editor to address the repeat words, typos (come on, there’s one in the first line of the book, the fourth freakin’ word), missing words and grammar mistakes (commas, people, commas) this might have been pretty good. It’s a very sweet, friends to lovers, first time gay, maybe GFY book…except the wife.

Now, this is a personal niggle but I have never figured out why so many MM books have to create some false competition between gay men and straight women. I didn’t like that the author went to such lengths to highlight how much better sex with Alex was for Rick than with his wife. Prefer one to the other, but don’t make it about debasing the woman just because you have a preference. Similarly, I disliked that she was made out to be such a witch because she was always suspecting Rick of sleeping with other women. Fair enough, he wasn’t and that would get old, but he was fucking a man, so it’s kind of difficult to claim the moral high ground here and this dichotomy was never addressed. Really, the wife was hardly even considered as anything other than an obstacle to them moving in together and this wasn’t fair to her. Such selfish callousness (ostensibly excused because she’s supposed to be a b/witch) made it hard for me to respect the men or their HEA.

Lastly, Alex is gay. Rick is attracted to women and men, but by the end of the book he’s calling himself gay instead of bi (his attraction to women doesn’t seem to have died or anything) and this felt a bit like…is there such a thing as gay washing, like white washing in race relations, where everything but the dominant categories are glossed over and downplayed? I don’t know. While everyone is obviously entitled to their own sense of self-identity, it didn’t feel quite right to me.

All in all, a sweet enough story but, objectively speaking, it’s a pretty rough draft.