Review of Tame a Wild Human, by Kari Gregg

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To Tame a Wild HumanI got a copy of Tame a Wild Human, by Kari Gregg, from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Drugged, bound, and left as bait on the cusp of the lunar cycle, Wyatt Redding is faced with a terrifying set of no-win scenarios. Best case: he survives the coming days as a werewolf pack’s plaything and returns to the city as a second-class citizen with the mark—and protection—of the pack. Worst case: the wolves sate their lusts with Wyatt’s body, then send him home without their protection, condemning him to live out the rest of his short life as a slave to the worst of humanity’s scorn and abuse. 

Wyatt’s only chance is to swallow every ounce of pride, bury his fear, and meekly comply with every wicked desire and carnal demand the wolf pack makes of him. He expects three days of sex and humiliation. What he doesn’t expect is to start enjoying it. Or to grow attached to his captor and pack Alpha, Cole. 

As the lunar cycle ends, Wyatt begins to realize that the only thing to fear more than being sent home without the pack’s protection is being sent home at all. 

READER DISCRETION ADVISED. 

Review:
I decided to read this as part of some bastardised version of Weird Shit Wednesday. I’m not part of any group officially doing it, but it seemed like a fun idea. So, I appropriated it. Granted, Tame a Wild Human isn’t as out there as Taken By The Gay Unicorn Biker or My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass, both of which I’ve seen pass my Goodreads feed on Wednesdays, but it’s weird for me. I chose it because someone said it had knotting in it and I’d never read a shifter book that explored this aspect of canine physiology.

[The rest of this review will likely have spoilers in it, as venting my frustration at the book usually requires mentioning what annoyed me. Be warned.]

Now, I’ll grant that I chose this book because I was pretty sure it would be outside my comfort zone. I like challenging my limits on occasion and I usually have pretty good results. This was not one of those times. I did not enjoy this book. If I was using stars, I’d say it was a 1-star read, then I’d give in and allow it a second star (or maybe even only half of one) for being structurally sound and adequately edited. But it would get a 1-star, at most, for my enjoyment factor.

If rape and serious non-con is your kink, this book is for you. It’s not my kink and I did not enjoy spending at least half the book inside the mind of a man as he rationalises submitting to 3 days of constant gang rape in an attempt to save his own life. (Because the wolves have no problem f*cking a human to death, as we’re shown.) Plus, all I could think was, ‘This man’s been raped by 6+ others multiple times for 3 days straight, with no bathing facilities or even an attempt to wipe him down. He must freakin’ stink!’

Then, after over half the book had been dedicated to rape, rape, rape and the victim has given in to Stockholm syndrome and the apparent fact that regardless of terror, pain or self-preservation if you touch a man’s prostate he’ll get aroused, the victim was given something (I won’t say what) that made him ‘understand the wolves’ and want to be with them and submit to them. So, instead of constant rape we have a man who’s now begging for his abuse.

All of this was somehow wrapped up in the idea that human’s are cruel and wolves are caring, because, you know, they lubed him before gang raping him. Honestly, that whole plot-point made no sense at all. “Yeah, my 5 or 6 mates and I are going to gang rape you while you’re bound and blindfolded, for three days, all because we care so much for you. *cough* Bullshit!

Then the throw-in about the father…hey great, the willingness to submit to horrendous atrocities on one’s person runs in families. How wonderful for you. *cough* Bullshit!

Plus, you never get the satisfaction of finding out what happens to the brother who betrayed Wyatt. I suppose because by that point you’re supposed to have seen it as a good thing that he was bound, drugged and abandoned in the woods with a bunch of sodomite savages. Yeah, thanks bro, for real. *cough* Bullshit!

All of this might have been something I could have dealt with if the book had had any significant world building to situate it in. But it didn’t. We’re told humans make no effort to stop the wolves from kidnapping and gang raping people on the full moon and that any human who then returns without a token of protection is essentially an untouchable (or untouchable in any sense but to be further abused). But we’re not told why or anything about how society works. What’s more, being as there are obviously multiple wolf packs, who kidnap more than one human a month and almost no one gets a token, shouldn’t a fairly large swath of the city’s populous be untouchable? This isn’t made out to be a rare occurrence.

The book is also very violent. Again, I’m not particularly bothered by gore. I’m not even always bothered when violence and sex converge. But none of the violent sex in this book, which is essentially all of it (including watching a human get killed while you’re being f*ucked and only being able to save his life if you can climax in time) was erotic. Not once in the whole book of basically ceaseless sex did I feel a tingle. Nope, I might as well have been reading the Spam section Joy of Cooking, for as much as it turned me on. And that was sort of the whole point.

If I’m generous I could say I think I know where the author was trying to go with the story, though not wholly successful. But I’m not sure that would be true. I don’t know what was supposed to have been the payoff for the reader, Wyatt’s happy slavery maybe. I don’t know. I’m all for the occasional taboo read, but I wish I hadn’t read this one. It definitely wasn’t for me.

Merrick

Book Review of Merrick, by Claire Cray

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MerrickI grabbed a copy of Claire Cray‘s Merrick when it was free on Amazon. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
New York, 1799: the future looks bright for the charming young book dealer William Lacy, until a raucous night of drinking lands him in shackles. He narrowly avoids the brutal prison system thanks to his mother, who negotiates with the judge to secure him a five year apprenticeship in lieu of a prison sentence. And so William finds himself in a carriage bound for the remote woods upstate, where he’ll spend the next years of his life learning a new trade under some old master.

When he first sees Merrick, William thinks he’s been dropped into a medieval horror story. Tall and gruff, dressed in a hooded robe that completely conceals his features, and riding a black mare, Merrick might as well be the Grim Reaper.

But appearances are deceiving. A skilled apothecary and healer, Merrick proves to be a generous host and a gentle teacher, and William soon finds himself surprisingly comfortable in his new surroundings. And yet troubling mysteries abound: Why does Merrick never show his face or hands? Why do his movements seem so young and sure beneath his robes? What lies within the cave behind the stone cottage? 

Something unnatural is afoot. But most alarming by far is William’s own reaction to his new keeper. For Merrick’s strange charms are bewitching enough by day; but by night, in the darkness of the room and the bed they share, William finds himself entirely overwhelmed by desires he never imagined…

Review:
I don’t usually use ratings on this blog, thus forcing people to actually read the review if they want to know my thoughts. But I’m going to for this book. For the first half I was all like, “Hell yeah, this is shaping up to be a 5-star read.” Then not long after the halfway mark it started to falter, but I was still like, “Well, maybe a 4-star.”

Then the inevitable happened (because I’ve read Ms. Cray’s work before and I should have expected it). From one page to the next, essentially mid-scene, the book JUST ENDED—no tapering off, no indication that the end was approaching, no conclusion, no feeling of satisfaction to tide you over until the next book—nothing, nada, nichts. Just poof, we’re done here. It wasn’t even a cliffy, since there was nothing culminating into a cliffhanger. The book just ended at what felt like some random junction and I was like, “Forget that, I’m dropping another star for my basic dissatisfaction.” So, in the end this is a 3-star read.

Now, Ms. Cray calls herself ‘spooky romance writer’ and I think that describes this work. What I liked so much about the beginning of the book and what was lost toward the end was the atmosphere, the spookiness. I really enjoyed that. I even enjoyed William’s unfathomable acceptance of things and Merrick’s confusion over it. With the exception of the ending issue (which I think is one of Ms. Cray’s hallmarks, hate it as I might) it’s a well written piece of m/m romance and I love the cover.

I won’t be continuing the series, though. I learned my lesson with Cray’s Hidden Talents series, where I read seven novellas and still got nothing approaching a satisfying ending, or any ending for that matter. I sometimes wonder if some, otherwise awesome, authors just don’t know how to write conclusions so never, well, conclude a story. If you don’t mind being strung along, this is a good one. I do, so…

Craziness on the Interwebz

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Oh, it’s been an interesting week or so in the indie book world. First, there was another special snowflake author, making a practically scripted new-author-with-thin-skin mistake and paying the similarly well-established price. Now, someone has, for sure, takSpecial Snowflake Awarden the Angry Special Snowflake Award when he took his Goodreads is evil and all reviewers are trolls in disguise rant off of social media and blog platforms and published an actual book about it. No joke, it’s titled Authors vs. Goodreads and you can find it here and here. The world has gone mad, mad I tell ya.

I read about half of this magnum opus (You can read my review here.), honestly people it was as much as I could take. And it was nothing new. Just more of the same, Goodreads didn’t give me my way and those mean, mean reviewers trolled my work and took offence at my sock puppets, that we hear all the time.

Nothing new, except that he wrote it from the perceived position of an expert advising new indie authors about the dangers of Goodreads. I find this problematic because, from the half I read, it’s already painfully obvious that he doesn’t actually know how things work at Goodreads. Or he knows but it serves his purpose better to conveniently overlook, you know, reality.

But more importantly, a man banned under numerous profiles really shouldn’t be advising new authors on how to succeed on goodreads. It’s like a Special Snowflake instruction manual—read it, learn to perceive everything as a personal attack and to respond with anger and aggression, then wonder why no one wants to play with you on the monkey bars and throw a hissy. Crazy.

And that seems to have been his MO. I found this example of someone’s interaction with him:

FTR, I didn’t even rate his book. Or mark it read, for that matter. I just shelved him with a gif, on his favorite, my wouldn’t-pee-on-it-if-it-was-on-fire shelf. He also threw a tantrum over my see-private-notes shelf. B/c it was totally unfair that he, the author, couldn’t read my private notes.

The author of this book also goes by the name A.V. Roe, who was banned from GRs for attacking members reviews of his books. First under a sock acct (now deleted, even though he swore it wasn’t him) making ableist remarks towards the reviewer, (view spoiler) and then from his own author profile.

When blocked from one review for being abusive, he took to private messaging (view spoiler), then posting a blog (view spoiler) attacking more members, where he accidentally responded under the wrong author acct revealing himself without doubt as also being the author Dean Billing. (view spoiler).

And after being warned and provided links to the author guidelines, eventually by GRs staff as well, he took his case to groups b/c he was being bullied and abused and treated so unfairly. (view spoiler)

After being banned he came back at least once under a regular user acct again using the Dean Billings name. When that was also deleted he came back as author Zoe Desh, which was again deleted by GRs, rating his book about GRs and their flawed, unfair review system.

Here are some ss’s of his reviews on smashwords…I’m sure he totally meant to mention that he is the author of both of those books. Totally. (view spoiler)

ETA: here are some of his comments that are now gone with his GRs priviliges. I still think it’s hilarious that he made such a fuss about how he couldn’t care less b/c writing books was just a hobby and we were taking it all so seriously and needed to get over it.

And here we are, on the whiny, rant of a booklet he wrote, with a new pen name, anti-GRs website and Twitter acct later, still bitching and whining about the reviews, and reviewers, he couldn’t care less about.

le sigh

(view spoiler)

Now, sorry about my general technical non-knowhow, but I haven’t the slightest idea how to make those view spoiler tags work here on WordPress (though the links do) and they’re too big to post open. However, you can go here (#34) to see the comment on Goodreads and read them there.

A number of subsequent commenters mentioned remembering the hoo-ha, but I wasn’t party to it and, thus, am not taking it completely at face value. However, as Desh admits openly in the booklet that he was banned on multiple accounts (or excommunicated as he phrases it) and currently posts tweets like this:

I’m willing to believe it’s at least typical of his behaviour, even if not a perfect remembrance of it.

It’s hard to imagine someone being so very wrapped up in themselves, but another Goodread user commented thus:

I don’t know if it’s that he missed the memo, or, here’s a thought: other possessors of XX chromosomes older than 30: you know that breed of XY chromosome holder, white, aged over 35, who expects your time and attention because they are a white male? Maybe he’s one of them? They had the world at their feet, at least when it came to dealing with XX chromosomes, their whole life. In a meeting, they will interrupt and talk over you, because what they have to say is inherently more worth listening to than what you have to say. They expect – demand – your attention.

And now I wonder if the culture of GR was a harsh shock. Suddenly, he can’t mansplain that our reviews are all wrong. “Smut isn’t supposed to be politically correct, for heaven’s sake – this is about getting your load away. What’s WRONG with you all? Why don’t you get it?”

And the more he used the techniques that served him well his whole working life – repeating his pov endlessly until the women just shut up and leave go do their own thing – well, here on GR we do not shut up and we do not go away. In our space we learned to say what we think and to stick to it.

So, yeah. That, maybe.

On discovering Desh was male, I had a very similar, if not as elegantly phrased, thought and that just makes me sad.

But even if Desh’s online temper-tantrum is actually an academic feminist’s wet dream of a case study, the booklet is pretty obviously a stunt. Let’s break this down. Goodreads is a large book-data gathering machine. We all—even Desh, it’s one of his complaints after all— know this. So, any book provided a ISBN/ASIN can and probably will be added to the database.

Desh then publishes a booklet on a popular book sales platform and his own website, along with the statement that he doesn’t want it on Goodreads, but he’s tracking how long it will take to show up there and will report back. Um…that kind of sounds like he wants it on Goodreads, otherwise there’s nothing to report.

Then, once this attack on Goodreads and Goodreads’ users is discovered by readers (you know the very people the book is calling trolls and villianizing), they unsurprisingly read it, dislike it and rate/review it accordingly. Their friends then see these rating in their update feed, go look at the book too, have a similar reaction, read and rate it, and then their friends see the book, etc.

That’s how snowballing works (no, not that type of snowballing, geez) and, no doubt, exactly what Desh was hoping for. (Though he calls it trolling and apparently assumes there is some clandestine group of evil reviewers just waiting to gang up and trash a book.) True, some may rate it on principle and instant dislike, but the reviews show an awful lot of people actually reading the book prior to reviewing.

Meanwhile, Desh gleefully sits back in his proverbial castle and sends out hourly tweets like these:

The whole thing is obviously a set up for an eventual, “See, see, I told you so!” And it’s working. He’s undoubtedly going to play this to the very end. More power to him.

Now, given Desh’s history of picking fights, his stated intent to keep people updated (whatever that means), and the need for a little more drama to keep this train rolling, I expect a backlash from this post. (Pending it’s noticed at all, obviously.) God(dess) protect me from dying of laughter as I feed the troll…and not the reviewing kind.

Honestly though, it’s not Desh’s book, tweets, delusions of grandeur or pitiable attitude that prompted me to write this post. No, it’s the next evolution of this affair that’s worth mention. Yes, there’s more.

A French author named Tobias Gavran has written a rebuttal to Desh’s book in the form of a satirical spoof. It’s called Authors for Goodread and can be found free here.

I’m just going to post the Dedication/Disclaimer page to give you an idea of the tone it takes.

Dedication pageHe’s even given himself a GIF heavy, 1-star review on Goodreads to really make the point. It’s worth a read. Despite obviously being sarcastic, it makes a lot of sense and it’s only 19 pages long. To be fair, though, that’s probably the same number of words as Desh’s 104 page masterpiece, only in a more reasonable font size, for ease of reading.

While I laugh at the goings on lately, it’s also noteworthy because it’s such an excellent example of the damaging effect that artificially separating readers, reviewers and writers has. Ideally, an author should be a bit of all three and a reader has no obligation to be anything more. But it’s nice when they are and should be appreciated as such.

I recommend reading both booklets and making your own choice about which makes sense to you. But regardless, I strongly encourage readers to keep on reading and maybe,  just maybe, if I can be so bold as to ask a favor, please don’t judge all indie authors, all readers or all reviewers by the standard set by special snowflakes, but especially not by the likes of Zoe Desh and Authors vs. Goodreads.

I have one authored book listed on Goodreads, have written 700+ reviews and have literally thousands of books on my shelves to read. If I’m to identify as anything its as a reader first, then a reviewer and lastly an author. But the fact that I can order them, doesn’t make me any less one than the others.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” I think the idea applies to the ability to be both a Goodreads reader/reviewer and an author. There doesn’t need to be antagonism between the enclaves. And as amusing as all the above is, it’s not helping anything or anyone.

I’m just saying.