Tag Archives: erotica

Book Review of (Watch Me) Break You (Run This Town #1), by Avril Ashton

I bought a copy of Avril Ashton‘s (Watch Me) Break You.

Description from Goodreads:
Here comes trouble…

Men. Women. Drugs. Dima Zhirkov’s favorite things. Add in the element of danger and he should be right as rain. But not today. It’s not working, hasn’t for a long time. He’s grasping at the flimsiest of straws to prove he’s indeed strong enough to run his streets. Until he sets eyes on him. In the midst of a room full of strangers, Dima is drawn to a man as cold and dangerous as he’s beautiful. Captivated, Dima embarks on a ruthless campaign to get his new toy into bed.

Here comes the danger…

Xavier “X” Storm is content to pull the strings while someone else handles the day to day dealings of his gang, The Rude Boys. He’s after what Dima holds closest—the Coney Island streets. He contracts out the job of killing the Russian, except Dima isn’t that easy to kill. When he suddenly shows up in X’s path, tempting him to indulge in the dirtiest play, he finds Dima isn’t all that easy to shake, either. His cocky attitude and rough submission tempts X to go where he’d vowed to never return, and they plunge head first into an affair fueled by possessive obsession.

Run for cover

Sex and pain Dima can handle, and X delivers the most depraved kind. Their connection is explosive, their games addictive, but Dima can end it whenever he wishes. He doesn’t see that X is breaking him down, giving Dima everything he wants and even more than he ever thought to need. By the time he realizes who X is and what he wants, Dima is raw and bullet riddled. It’s run or fight. And Dima doesn’t back down. Neither does X.

Review:
This book has great reviews, but I’m just not seeing the appeal. The whole thing felt like one long, sustained and unwavering note. It got a little old.

The book is primarily sex. I knew that going in, so no complaints. But it seemed to be on repeat. I’m not sure if X and Rush had a lot of sex or if I just read the same sex scene 5 times. The plot was weak and for two men running large criminal organizations, they seemed to do very little actual work.

I hate to say it, but Rush was written as a woman. Really. He cried all the time, was described as needy and sexually hungry (all at the same time). He often fainted when he climaxed. X joked about knocking him up and told him how much he liked seeing him in his kitchen. Not to mention Rush was always on the receiving end in bed.

It would have taken little more than a change in pronouns for him to be female and other than the fact that it’s unlikely a woman would have headed part of the Russian mob, a female would have fit the descriptions better. It would have been a Glen Close, boil the bunny type woman for sure, but still would have fit the character.

I also have to address the whole “safe word” thing. Yes, I understand that in real life BDSM safe words are important. In the same way that if you plan on having anonymous sex you need to use a condom. I get that. But if erotic authors religiously ensure to point out the partners stopping and rolling one on, it breaks the fantasy. The book risks feeling like an object lesson instead of a fun sexual romp.

Safe words here played the same role. X and Rush spent the beginning of the book enacting real violence, waving guns and throwing threats. But the second anything drifted toward sex, X would stop to ensure Rush remembered his safe word. What?

When faced with such complete violently erotic abandon as the rest of the book exemplified, the use of said safe word struck a false and out of place note. It broke the narrative and reminded the reader that there was an author somewhere who stopped at her keyboard and thought, “oh, I better use safe words or real BDSMers will call me out for being unsafe.” Hello, they’re already being unsafe—Rush let X choke him unconscious their second time together. Why bother?

My biggest issue however, was that once Rush had elbowed his way into X’s life the whole rest of the book was just a broken record of “I love you,” “I need you.” “Stay with me.” In the last half of the book “love” was used 36 times. I get that the author was ensuring that the reader understood the depth of emotion these men felt (even though the whole book occurs in maybe a week), but it was too much. I felt beat over the head with it and eventually wanted to gag on it.

Generally, I love some broken men. I love crazy violent pairings. But this was too much of a good thing, with not enough of anything else to balance the cray-cray.

The writing itself was fine and I liked finding people of color as main characters for a change. The editing could have used a little more attention, though. All in all, I think this one just wasn’t for me.

Book Review of Bound By Blood (Soul Mates #1), by Jourdan Lane

It’s day three of my personal Bound By Blood challenge, where I set out to read five books titled Bound By Blood. Today’s fare was Jourdan Lane‘s Bound By Blood.

Description from Goodreads:
Houston nightclub Rave is famous for nearly-naked male dancers and beautiful bartenders. Like Peter, a young man with a strict rule about one-night stands with locals. He breaks that rule for Lucien, the owner of The Den, a rival nightclub where there are no boundaries, no taboos. Only he doesn’t realize just who Lucien is when he does. When Peter finds out that the man he wants to get to know even more is a vampire, he figures he should have stuck to that rule. He’s not fan of vampires or most other creatures of the night, but Lucien is relentless in his seduction. Peter resists Lucien as long as he can, but when he gives in, he does it in a big way, falling headfirst in to the dark, violent world of vampires, werewolves, and other creatures he’s only read about.

Peter and Lucien begin a very dangerous dance of sensual heat and deep emotion, one that causes them nothing but trouble. No one approves of the human and vampire match, including those in Lucien’s Coven, old enemies, and even older friends. Peter and Lucien have to struggle to stay together and protect those they love. Can they beat the forces that will try to tear them apart forever? And can they face what will become of Peter if they stay together?

Review:
The first thing anyone needs to know about this book is that it’s porn with plot. It’s a weak plot to be fair, but there is a little plotting. There is also lots and lots and lots and lots of sex. There is so much sex that about half way through this book, even suspending as much disbelief as one has to to read vampire/werewolf themed erotica, I started to cringe on behalf of the characters. Seriously, there couldn’t have had any skin left between them. I had sympathy friction burns and could only see them as rubbed absolutely raw. Raw, I tell you!

It’s fun sex though. It’s all consensual. It’s all of the ‘let me show you how much I love you’ sort, even when it’s not monogamous. And it’s not. The end of this book is essentially a series of orgies, with no indication that these men mean this situation to change. But it is sweet in its own way.

I did find the first third or so of the book clunky. Characters had complete 180° attitude shifts with no indication of an impetus of change. At one point, a man went from terrified of all things vampire to unafraid and half in love/lust with one in the course of a paragraph and I still have no idea why (other than he had to for the plot to progress). Meanwhile, his best friend went from encouraging him to get over his vampire-phobia to adamantly insisting he have nothing to do with the vampire, with no apparent reason to change his mind

The events of the story also moved from one to another, covering months at a time and glossing over the actual falling in love aspect of the romance with no transitions. It was jarring and I started to fear the book was heading toward a DNF. But once the characters accepted each-other things smoothed out. However, as they accepted each-other and Peter moved farther and farther into Lucien’s world their personalities changed drastically. They felt inconsistent.

Despite all that, the writing is really good and if you’re looking for some basic fap matter (or whatever the female equivalent is, schlick I think) this will do the trick.

Book Review of The Fallen (Sons of Wrath 0.5), by Keri Lake

I downloaded a copy of Keri Lake‘s The Fallen from the Amazon free list. I believe it is permafree.

Description from Goodreads:
To catch the Fallen, you have to become the very evil you were bred to slay.

Show loyalty. Be willing to go deep into the gritty underbelly of the world, where the vilest acts of human carnage thrive and seep into your mind like a black poison, consuming every part of you that was once good. Ignore your dark cravings and keep to the most important rule of all: never save the mortals.

This is the life of a Sentinel.

Some call us the toughest angels in the heavens. Unbreakable. But even the strong can break in the face of temptation.

Human females have always been the forbidden fruit for our kind—an enticement I’ve resisted for centuries, until she came along.

Karinna lusts for vengeance.

She wants inside the darkness, where the Fallen own the corrupted streets of Detroit—the perfect bait to take down the biggest crime ring the city has ever known.

I want her. To have her, though, I’ll have to break the rules.

For one taste of the forbidden, I’ll have to commit the most heinous sin of all …

Review: **spoilerish**
I must have missed the memo. When exactly did the word erotica become synonymous with abuse? This is complete drivel—cheap thrills and post Fifty Shade of Grey crap with a paranormal twist. Seriously, it is one big rape fantasy and glorification of abuse.

The thing is, I can understand the rape fantasy part. I REALLY don’t enjoy reading them (in fact, I had to force myself to finish this one), but I understand women who do. I totally get facing that fear on safe pages and forcing it into something you can garner a little excitement and fun from instead of just a terror inducing real possibility. I get that.

What I don’t get it why women, WOMEN (of which Ms. Lake is just one of many) would continue to write all females as mindless, volition-less, disposable commodities who rather enjoy their own abuse, up to and including death and dismemberment (and starting in childhood). This book is littered with quotes like this:

This woman has suffered since the day she was brought into this world.” Hasziel cupped her cheek and smoothed his thumb over her skin. “It is the only place in which she finds comfort.”

What nonsense. This book even suggests that the female=tradable possession to be passed by a man to a man as reward belief exists even in Heaven. Wow, I bet that’s what every good Christian woman dreams of when she prays for those pearly white gates.

Why is this seen as sexy? Why is this so common that I’m tempted to call it cliché. Women in this book are collected, disparaged, drugged, raped (almost constantly as background noise), beaten, “trained” (which is a euphemism for being abused until they stop fighting back and become docile enough to be raped by others…but it’s then presented as enjoying her position as sex slave), killed and dismembered. Meanwhile the MC is physically abused in some bastardized version of BDSM in which she has no control or realistic expectation of not being killed. In fact, she’s terrified.

Of course, she comes to love and crave it as an illustration of how all women really only want to be dominated, hurt and broken (and what good are they then?) by the men they love. (Thus, all those other women who have been abused and killed in the book probably enjoyed their rapes and murders too.) While simultaneously regaining memories of being gang raped by her father and his cronies, as if to suggest that any woman who desires something different than monogamous, vanilla sex must already have been defiled in some fashion. You’d think these were mutually exclusive, but apparently not.

It’s horrid. I went into this knowing it was a dark read. I’m no prude and enjoy the darker side of fiction (that’s why I picked this book up in the first place), but that doesn’t mean I wanted to spend 200+ being told how worthless me and my pussy are. I mean the whole concept of this book is that Xander can torture and kill people regularly, he can get blow jobs from a mindless sex slave, he can break women into said slave, he can kidnap, whip, and abuse Karinna, all with no heavenly repercussions. But god forbid his penis enter her vagina, even in love, and he’s condemned to Hell for all eternity. We women apparently aren’t just worthless, our vileness is contagious.

And let’s not miss that it is essentially JUST women we’re talking about. Almost as an afterthought Kid’s are thrown in too (but one would presume they’re at least half girls to start with and who know when boys age out of the victimizable children’s group), but never, NEVER men. The book is very clear on this.

Nothing more stony and unapologetic than a bitter angel forced to leave the heavens—even demons avoided the Fallen. Humans, on the other hand, couldn’t avoid them if they tried. Every day, kids and females got snatched up from the streets like smelt in a shallow pond, drugged and used at the amusement of their sadistic captors.

I could write an essay on the distancing technique being used in the use of ‘female’ instead of women, girls or a name (it crops up a lot). But I’ll let that one go. What I really want to point out is that I’m always amazed that truly evil beings are still expected to adhere to strict heterosexual norms. Men are never victimised, be it in a any sort of homoerotic way or just, you know, basic power dynamics. Baffling.

To wrap this up, I’d like it noted that at no point have I used the world misogynistic. Misogyny being the hatred of women and girls, but the word is often thrown around willy-nilly whenever a book or character treats women badly. I never got the impression that the author or even any of the cruelly dismissive men in the book hated women. To hate someone (as an individual or gender grouping) requires caring enough to have an opinion about them. It elevates them at least to the level of ‘human enough to think about.’

No one here did that. In a sense, I think this is worse. Women weren’t hated. They were just not accorded any sense of human agency, or even faces as they’re all masked as well as apparently thoughtless automatons. They were, as a whole, mere shadows that men act upon. I’m holding out hope that sometime in the near future the female population will realise that we’re worth more than this.

The book did try to redeem itself at the end by punishing the bad guys, but it was too little too late for me and really the exact same story could have been relayed without dehumanising every woman…excuse me, female…to pass the pages. (And been a damn good book too.) I’m giving this two stars and the only reason it’s not a single star is that mechanically it’s fairly well written. I like a spot of erotica here and again. I even like a bit of dark erotica. But I don’t want to finish the book feeling like shit about being a poor, pitiful, potentialess, penisless, disposable victim…i.e. a woman.