Tag Archives: erotica

Book Reviews: The Thorns of Charbon Institute Series, by Kate Messick

Kate Messick contacted me about reading/reviewing her The Thorns of Charbon Institute Series (Self Studies, Group Studies, and Class Studies). I agreed to read book one and, if I liked it, continue to the other books. I ended up reading all three. I did take notes for individual reviews, but I think I’d rather write one for the series as a whole instead.

I knew nothing but the touch of my master until the Magical Authorities killed him and set my world on fire.

Now, I’m a prisoner at an institute stressing students beyond their limits.

I’m a sorceress who can’t access her magic and wanted by wickedly handsome mages who all have their own agenda.

I spent my life following directions. Now I can make my own decisions, I don’t know the right ones. Why is saying ‘no’ so hard?

With the administration judging every action I take and weighing them on their uneven scales of morality, I must come to terms with my darkness to survive and, if I’m lucky, even gain my freedom.

On the whole, I enjoyed this series. I binged all 3 books in about 4 days. I liked the heroine and all her men. Each managed to have a distinct personality, which isn’t always the case when authors write such a large grouping. (Beryl was my favorite. How could he not be?) And the writing is smooth and easy to read. (Though there are a few editing mishaps and they increase as the series progresses—more in book 2 than 1, and 3 than 2. But nothing too disruptive. I noticed them but kept right on reading.)

All in all, I have more good things to say than bad. But I do have a few complaints, most of which are subtle and therefore not brief to explain. None of them were deal-breakers for me, though (or I wouldn’t have read the whole series).

My biggest is how very focused on Aphrodite’s sex the book is. Now, I don’t mean the number of sex scenes or anything like that. I just mean the way she is largely reduced to her sexuality over and over and over again. The thing for me is that this is what has happened to women for so much of history. History has painted us as mindless slaves to our urges (and this has been used to both villainize and victimize us).

Messick definitely falls into this tradition. Both in making Aphrodite almost mindless with lust for a large part of the series and (for me, more notable) making every man (both those she wants and far too many others) pant for her. There is a long-standing history of sexual abuse, starting in childhood, attempted rapes (plural), threats of sexual violence, groping, leering, more than one attempted kidnapping with rape as one of the intended outcomes, etc. Then there were the other people calling her a slut and such. Just too much of the story revolved around Aphrodite as something to have sex with, rather than Aphrodite a person for my comfort. Not only for any sort of high-brow reason but also just because I got bored of it. I was especially sick of Ram and Alrick by the end. (Though I’ll also acknowledge that overcoming some of this was one of Aphrodite’s points of growth.)

None of this was helped by the way sex scenes were almost exclusively focused on what the men were doing TO Aphrodite. Sometimes what they were telling each other to do TO Aphrodite. She often didn’t feel like an ACTIVE participant. By the end, when we had all five men involved at once, she might as well have been a blow-up doll for all she seemed involved as anything other than something for the men to move, manipulate, affect, dump into, etc. Unfortunately, I don’t encounter this infrequently. It’s fairly common, actually. And while I noticed it, Messick wasn’t any worse than some of those other author’s who write sex scenes this way.

Similarly, Aphrodite is told over and over again like calls to like, power calls to power. For a lot of the early part of the series, there is a definite sense that most of her men love her for what she is, not who she is. They have explosive sex, and the men ‘fall in love,’ but there is no sense of knowing or liking one another. They have sex once and are hooked. Which, again, reduces Aphrodite to a sexual object, not a person.

And almost all of those rather long paragraphs can be reduced to the book is full of the patriarchal view of sexuality and male-gaze of the female sex. That’s my biggest complaint.

My biggest compliment is just how *Chef’s Kiss* wonderfully Messick shows Aphrodite’s personal growth. The way she learns to recognize and come to terms with all of the ways Damon victimized and controlled her, the ability to hold contradictory and confusing feelings about a victimizer, growing a backbone, and started to stand on her own. Honestly, this is well done over the course of the series.

I also liked the way not all of Aphrodite’s men fell in love with her and were instantly on board for the whole peaceful harem situation. There were personality clashes, cliques, likes and dislikes among them. Some were open to pairings, others weren’t; some were open to activities, others weren’t; some were open to trying new things, others weren’t; some liked each other more than others. It made for a more interesting group.

I did think that by the end of the 3rd book, a lot of the plotting felt same-same. I mean, the broader plot of books 2 and 3 were almost exactly the same, even utilizing some of the same bad guys. Then there was a 3-year gap and a happily-ever-after epilogue that felt random. Other than the harem (that’s the term they use in the book) having formed, there was nothing to distinguish the end of book 3 as the end of the series any more than the end of book 2. Messick could have written 6 more books before coming to the same epilogue point. It felt arbitrary.

All in all, however, any other complaints I have are minor (occasional clunky dialogue or clichéd speech pattern for a side character, for example, or the lack of non-cliché, fleshed-out female characters outside of Aphrodite) and basically not worth mentioning. I’d certainly read another Messick book…or series

Other Reviews:

Self Studies by KATE MESSICK (Book Review #1245)

Book Review: Wicked Monsters series, by Skye Jones and Marissa Farrar

I picked up a copy of the four-book compilation of the Wicked Monsters series, by Skye Jones and Marissa Farrar the other day. Then, later, realized I actually already had each individual book. So, it turns out I now have this series twice.

One girl, five monsters, one hell of a ride.

Taken from the Pit where she was raised, Aisha believes all vampires are horrifying… Then she finds herself in Dashiell’s possession.

Powerful, handsome, and charismatic, Dashiell is not what she thought her master would be.

His dark desires draw her into his world, and things heat up between them.

But with a demon gargoyle scratching at her window, and wolves sniffing at the door, Aisha might not stay in the vampire’s grasp for long.

Danger and temptation surround her on all sides, but Aisha is determined to fight them all.

My Reviews

I did write individual reviews as I finished each book. They’re below. But I’ll say a few overall words first. This was bad. It started out bad and got worse as it went. As you’ll see, I was so distracted by the authors’ refusal to call sexual slaves, slaves in book one that I barely focused on anything else. But once the cast list expanded this was less jarring. But the sex because less and less feasible and the dialogue more and more atrocious as the series progressed. Until, by the end, I think I was reading in a permanent cringe.

Additionally, the plot only makes even a little sense if Aisha literally has a magical vagina…maybe addictive in some fashion. There isn’t any reason 5 powerful men instantly dedicate themselves to her, above their own self-interests with nothing more than a single sex act. (I mean, her magic pussy even brought a demon back to God. I don’t think I can roll my eyes hard enough for that!) All in all, the only positive thing I can say about this series is that, having read it, I can mark four books off on my yearly Goodreads challenge.

Night Captive

I’m both torn and not torn about this book, which I understand is confusing. I’m not torn in the sense that I can 100% say with certainty that I did not like this book. But I am torn in the sense that this is the first of four and that gives the series a lot of time to improve…or at least grow past the things I hated so much in this first book. Should I give the next one a chance or not? Decision, decisions.

There are numerous reasons I didn’t like this book. But I’ll state upfront that the writing itself seems fine. I didn’t even notice any serious editing mishaps. And I appreciate the bisexual characters. But I just really did not enjoy the overall tone of the book, and there were several linguistic quirks that almost drove me to rage. Here’s the biggest one. The authors refer to Aisha and her ilk as serfs. But they aren’t. They’re slaves. These words do not mean the same thing. They cannot be used interchangeably, and the characters are not serfs. They are property. They don’t have any of the rights or protections of serfdom. They are slaves. And I found Jones and Farrar’s avoidance of the language reprehensible.

If you are going to be ballsy enough to play with the power dynamic of a master/slave sexual relationship, you shouldn’t skirt around the realities to make it more palatable by wimping out on the language. You need to call it what it is. Anything less is just skeevy.

This is only reinforced by the way that Dashiell is referred to as Aisha’s lover. He is not her lover. She is not his lover. He owns her. There is no equality. There is no relationship outside of his ownership of her.

Look, I’m not ranting that this is a master/slave dark reverse harem erotic novel. I’m not saying these shouldn’t be written. I’m ranting that Jones and Farrar wanted the titillation of a master/slave dynamic without being willing to own up to the fact that that is what it is. They water it down and artificially present is as something other than slavery. And that I have a serious issue with.

When I mentioned this elsewhere someone said, “Sounds like some white supre[macist] bs that re-imagines serfdom as the same thing as slavery.” And that’s just it. It feels supremacist. It feels like someone wanted to snicker and bask in the slavery trope, but didn’t want to truly have to face the atrocity that is slavery.

Again, write slavery tropes, sure. But be honest enough to call it what it is.

But the book ends with Aisha escaping her slave master and there’s a chance of the next book being more tolerable. But I honestly don’t expect much.

Cruel Moon

This is very much a middle book. It doesn’t stand on it’s own, FYI. Much more porn without plot than book one. This is basically just a series of sex scenes and Aisha arguing that the wolves want to keep her just as imprisoned as the vampires, which is true. The word slave is still never used, but the wolves are basically just offering a little more illusion of freedom in her enslavement than the vampires did. But it’s also supposed to be luuuurve.

I did appreciate that Aisha was standing up for herself. She made some very good arguments, not that they made any difference. But I continually came up against the question of how and why Aisha is able to articulate herself so well. She grew up in a very limited environment. She’s far too educated and well-spoken for the history the authors have given her, and I felt it sharply in this book.

I’m also still not particularly enjoying the tone of the book—or series, really—not for any deep reason, just in a not-good-for-me way. The whole thing just feels super sick, and I’m struggling with it.

Enchanted Dusk

By this point I’m pretty much finishing this box set/series by grit alone, because I don’t want to leave it languishing in my Kindle Cloud unfinished. But I’m done, toast, really really not enjoying anything about it.

The sex is becoming increasingly ridiculous in an attempt to incorporate all five men. Some of it doesn’t sound at all enjoyable or like the character herself is enjoying it. I can’t account for all these men dedicating themselves to Aisha by anything but a magic pussy. It’s just stupid, really. And I am 100% sick of the hollow Aisha worship. And Aisha is far, far, far, far too knowledgeable about, well, everything for someone who grew up without experiencing anything.

On a positive note, the word slave is finally used to describe the slaves, though only once and not in reference to Aisha or in acknowledgment of those who actually held them.

I will read book four just to finish it, but I don’t anticipate enjoying it any more than this one.

Fierce Light

So, I managed to read this whole series. I think I deserve an award. So does anyone else who made it through this drek. It was…not good. The final random plot event was both predictable and poorly done. It was just more people who wanted Aisha’s magic pussy. I got so tired of it.

And look, porn without plot books are a thing, and I’m not knocking it. But this didn’t read like that. This felt like the authors (two of them) were trying to write porn with plot and just failing miserably. The dialogue, too, seemed to get cheesier and cheesier the farther into the series I got until it felt like full-on Stilton here.

God, I’m just glad to be done.

Other Reviews:

Book Nook Nuts: Wicked Monsters

Book Review: Forbidden, by Jewels Arthur

I picked up an e-copy of Jewels Arthur‘s Forbidden on Amazon the other day.

When a little girl, all alone in the big bad woods, lets it slip that she’s on her way to visit her sick gran, I can’t help but take advantage. Don’t judge me. I’m hungry and let’s be real… What tastes better than a meal that doesn’t struggle—much.

Little do I know, my blood-thirsty plot is about to be foiled by a set of five werewolves that have decided to eat gran, take her place, and eat the little girl! I wish I had thought of that last bit myself.

The worst part is that I have been a lone vampire for years now so I have no one to watch my back. I am just easy prey to them and their beastly desires. If I can’t escape, I just may become victim to those desires and they are more than willing to huff and puff and blow my resolve away.

Before I read this, I couldn’t figure out how it had so many good reviews. It’s a little counterintuitive, but I understand now. Put simply, this is objectively bad—but in the absolute best way!

Years ago, before the time constraints of children, my now-husband and I used to do something called Good Wine/Bad Movie Night. One of us would pick up a good bottle of wine (Mind you, we were young and broke. So, our idea of ‘good wine’ was probably suspect.) and the other would pick out a bad movie. The idea was that the more you drank, the better the movie got. We watched a lot of B-grade sci-fi and questionable anime. But, my goodness, did we have fun with it.

If it were a movie, Forbidden would be a prime contender. It is bad. It’s ‘staying up until 2 am covered in Cheetos dust and cheap wine with your best friend’ bad. It’s cringe at the dialogue and sudden, inexplicable changes in character attitudes bad. It’s porn with minimal plot bad. But it’s not trying to be anything else. Which means you can laugh with it, instead of at it, and bask in its badness. I just had a ton of fun with it and will absolutely try the rest of the series.

Other Reviews: