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Book Review: Sin & Seduction, by Allison Cassatta

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sin and seduction coverAbout the book:

Dorian Grant is king of the New Orleans underworld, but he isn’t mafia and doesn’t appreciate the assumption. He’s simply a crude businessman anyone in his right mind would think twice about screwing over. Life in the Big Easy is all about sin, and violent, short-tempered Dorian has committed them all.

But not all New Orleans sins leave a bad taste in the mouth, as Dorian discovers the night a man stage-named Sweet Heat dances into his life at a club called Sin and Seduction. Dorian was expecting a hot lay. He damn sure wasn’t looking for a relationship, and certainly not with someone like Jansen, who turns Dorian’s grimly organized world upside down.

Now Dorian finds himself pressuring Jansen to quit his job because he can’t stand the thought of other men touching what’s his. Of course, Jansen wants a little quid pro quo—after all, Dorian’s job is dangerous. Jansen just doesn’t realize how dangerous until it’s too late.

**ranty review … spoiler alert**

I will admit that since the writing and editing of this book is fine, it almost certainly deserves more than one star. But I just plain hated the thing so much I can’t bring myself to give it anymore. This book, no, not the book, the book is fine, this story is horrible. H.O.R.R.R.I.B.L.E! It’s basically porn with a very weak attempt at a plot, which can be fun sometimes. But this was not one of those times.

The plot is essentially that a violent, drug-addicted, murdering mafioso goes into a strip joint and hires a dancer to take home for a night of meaningless debauchery. First off, while erotic dancing and prostitution are admittedly both part of the sex trade, I’m fairly sure ‘pole dancer’ and ‘whore’ aren’t actually the same profession. But hey, apparently, I’m wrong.

Said mafioso treats said dancer just like a hooker. He does his deed and dismisses the dancer before the poor guys even peeled himself off the shower stall wall. It was literally, “I’m done, get out.” But for some inexplicable reason that isn’t explained he then suddenly starts having all these wants and feelings that he’s never had before. Suddenly the dancer isn’t just a whore. He’s something more. Wha…what? Why?

Meanwhile, the dancer is convinced he’s falling in love with the man who just used and discarded him—the man who he never spoke to, who made him wear a blindfold to his house, provided no foreplay, and was basically just a dick to him. The next night, the drugged-up man shows up and buys the dancer again. Treating him so badly that he injures him quite severely without noticing, throws money at him, and leaves. (‘Cause that’s the obvious thing to do to the man you’ve just spent 24 hours fantasising about.)

And you know what the dancer did then? You wanna know? He fell in love with the man and spent the next third of the book pining for him and obsessing over whether he was just a whore to that ‘mystery lover.’ WTF? Seriously? What in the previous occurrences would suggest he could expect to be anything else? I haven’t left anything out, either. The two of them had no actual conversation, didn’t exchange names, never showed any kindness toward one another. NOTHING. So, the whole ‘romance’ was completely baseless and made no sense at all.

I could really go on and on and on about how much I hated these two characters and their ridiculous ‘love.’ (I’m throwing out some mean air quotes on that word too.) But I won’t. I’ll just say that I hated everything about them, their relationship (or lack thereof), their unnatural progression from strangers to ‘most important person in my life,’ their weird attempts to change each other while simultaneously saying they accept them as they are, their hospitalisations, their ‘move in with me, you’ve met me two whole times and I only tore your rectum the once, you don’t even know my name and I obviously live the sort of life that sees me almost assassinated but I’ll treat you right’ buuuullllshiiiitttttt.

I generally like a good mob boss character. But the damaged millionaire being saved by the prostitute with the golden heart has been done so many times already, and I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the trope to start with. Then there was Dorian’s ridiculous speech patterns and Jansen’s wishy-washy ‘I’m submissive, now I’m accreting myself, now I’m submitting’ schtick…oh, and the history of rape (’cause Jansen apparently wasn’t filling enough heroine tropes already)…ugh. Just no. I have nothing good to say about this book other than that the writing is perfectly readable, so a different reader might not hate it as much as me.

Pruning some of the <100 page stories from the review request shelf

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ShortStories
Today I set out to read a number of short stories, as opposed to a single book for review. Before I post those reviews though, I’m going to allow myself a small, selfish gripe. It’s really just to make myself feel better. We all need that on occasion.

I say this a lot, but I’m not a huge fan of short stories (or novellas, novelettes, etc). I respect that it takes a lot of talent to cram any amount of punch into a short piece, but I generally find them less than satisfying. And this feeling has only intensified with the recent trend of serialised shorts, in which stories are apparently no longer expected to stand on their own. Rather, they form part of a larger whole. I am not a fan. In fact, I hate this. A lot. I’m of the opinion that if an author wants to write a 100 page work there is no good reason to break it into four 25 page stories. There just isn’t.

But I digress. My initial point was just that I dislike short stories. Somehow, however, my review request list is always cluttered with them. And though I find their presence an annoyance, I can never bring myself to just delete them. I’ve promised to give all books  sent to me consideration (though I don’t honestly consider a short story a book), so eventually I’ve so far always given in and read them…basically just to remove the detritus form my TBR list.

It always feels like homework when I do it, though. With few exceptions, any enjoyment I get out of the experience is of the ‘creating order and neatness’ kind. Not that there aren’t good shorts out there (I always hope to be reading one) and not that I don’t give each a fair crack at a good review. But they really aren’t my thing. OK, now that’s out of the way…

Passion of an AngelDescription from Goordreads:
A captivating, mystical and erotic story about the life before Earth. The first world was ideal, the first humans were immortal, everything was given to them to ensure a happy and endless future and life seemed to be going perfect. But there was a curious angel who changed the course of life.

To begin with, angels hadn’t any feelings, they were cold, emotionless creatures wandering around the new world and examining the surroundings. But one of them learned to feel and to see the beauty of God’s creation and for that life, even the angel is surely ready to leave even Heaven.

Review:
This is essentially the exodus of Adam and Eve. It just starts a little earlier in the timeline. I’ll confess that I don’t gravitate toward religious stories at all. But even if I did, I’m still not sure I would think well of this one. There is a lot that is assumed…or rather, presumed. For example, Eve and the Angel hide their actions from Adam. However, two such innocent creatures wouldn’t have even had the moral understanding necessary to perceive those same actions as anything but natural in the circumstances. So, there is no reason they would think to hide them.  It requires the reader to impose modern western morality (or rules God doesn’t set out until far later in the Bible) to circumstances that would essentially be wholly without need for them in order for this story to make any sense at all.

Plus, the passionate ‘Love’ referred to in the title is 100% based on sex. There isn’t a single conversation between the characters prior to ‘the love.’ Guess even in Eden a woman’s worth still boiled down to her willingness to open her knees.

I also thought that the writing was rough and overly dramatic. I don’t think it was originally in English. Too many adjectives are used in the dialogue tags. As and example, in about a page I found “answered shortly,” “confessed honestly,” “sighed desperately,” “responded abruptly” and “cried out maliciously.” As well as “sneered the man smugly,” which isn’t a dialogue tag, but just felt like one more of the same. The dialogue itself was also really stiff, the POV was inconsistent and the whole thing felt as if it moved ahead in jolts instead of a smooth progression.

I’ll admit that a devoutly Christian reader might really enjoy this. But I’m not that reader and was less than impressed.

Blood for GoldDescription from Goodreads:
It all begins when fate starts to play a twisted game with a young female thief, Ulian, destroying her calm life in the capital and sending her to the island of Vrisiok – the most dangerous place in the kingdom of Remmiak, where human and orks are in constant war for its rich gold mines. 

While Srevtiur and Ulian cannot read this book and unveil their uncertain future and each other’s past, you have the Arasak blessing to do so!

Review:
This could have been a good story, if it was a complete anything. It’s not. It is, in fact, apparently the first five chapters of a much larger work. Why do authors do this, publish part of a book? A full quarter of it is a flashback and nothing in it concludes. What’s the point of reading it then?

The writing itself is fine, if a bit stiff. It suffers from a painful dearth of contractions, as is common in a certain sort of sword and sorcery book. The story seems really interesting and I was falling in love with the characters. Too bad I didn’t get to see them accomplish anything. All in all, disappointing, but only in it’s incompleteness.

Veritas Liberabit Vos Description from Goodreads:
A Skydive goes wrong and the participants share an experience that on the one hand gives them a definitive explanation for a controversial phenomenon, but on the other, sets before them a myriad of questions they decide to investigate. They go their separate ways and back to their normal lives, yet things aren’t quite the same and for some, life seems to have taken a twist towards the surreal.

Review:
Um….um….I’m sure something interesting was going on in this story somewhere. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is…something about crop circles and a convoluted interweaving series of events. But it was all so confusing I never did catch on. What’s worse, by about 75% I was so bored with all the telling and not being sure what the point was and some of the painfully mundane events that I started skimming instead of reading. (That couldn’t have been helping my understanding any.) I gave serious thought to just not finishing it. It’s also another short story that doesn’t actually conclude. I seriously don’t understand the point of short stories that don’t end! Wouldn’t it be better just to write a novella that does?

The Loving Husband and the Faithful WifeDescription from Goodreads:
The Loving Husband and the Faithful Wife
A cutesy tale of romance and domestic bliss? Step inside this suburban home to find out what happens when the couple decide to have an extension added. What could possibly go wrong?

The Debt
Meet Del. Meet Tel. Two men from the wrong side of the tracks. Del stayed straight. Tel, well, he didn’t. Now Del is in debt up to his eyeballs, facing ruin. Only Tel can help. Will he though? And if he does, can Del afford the terms? 

Two dark tales of fear, paranoia, and good intentions, set in situations where grey bleeds into black, and where there are no easy answers. Kit Power invites you to see the world through the eyes of the faces that pass you every day. Discover how it feels to really know someone.

Review:
The first story started out well and then tapered off into mundane predictability. It was well written and all, but after a certain point you just knew where it was going to go. Though, I do have to admit that the final dénouement pulled everything together nicely. The second was better and I really appreciated the interpretable ending. Both stories show a real talent for placing the reader in the characters’ heads and they all felt real to me. I’d be well up for reading more of Power’s books.

The Accidental Demon Slayer

Book Review of The Accidental Demon Slayer (Demon Slayer #1), by Angie Fox

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The accidental Demon SlayerI grabbed a copy of Angie Fox‘s The Accidental Demon Slayer from the Amazon free list. I believe that it is perma-free.

Description from Goodreads:
It’s never a good day when an ancient demon shows up on your toilet bowl. For Lizzie Brown, that’s just the beginning. Soon her hyperactive terrier starts talking, and her long-lost biker witch Grandma is hurling Smuckers jars filled with magic. Just when she thinks she’s seen it all, Lizzie learns she’s a demon slayer-and all hell is after her.

Of course, that’s not the only thing after her. Dimitri Kallinikos, a devastatingly handsome shape-shifting griffin needs Lizzie to slay a demon of his own. But how do you talk a girl you’ve never met into going straight to the underworld? Lie. And if that doesn’t work, how dangerous could a little seduction be…?

Review:
Meh. I’ve seen it done before and done better. Mechanically the writing was fine, as was the editing but the story itself and the plotting…disastrous. It’s a longish book. There should have been ample time to develop characters, a world and relationships However, Ms. Fox appears to have not bothered.

If this book was a cake, the eggs would still be in the shells (maybe even still in the container), the flour in its bag, the butter in the dish, the milk in the jug, etc, all tossed in a bowl to sit next to each other. All the ingredients are there (a hunky love interest, an unavoidable destiny, an evil antagonist, a spunky side-kick, etc), but not mixed, measured or cooked.

There is no depth to any of the characters and some, most notably Dimitri, are wildly inconsistent, as is the plot. Time is indeterminate. The whole book takes place in 2 or 3 days (not sure which), but characters talk about things happening days ago that appear to have happened hours earlier, at most. And at one point someone goes on what must have been an extended adventure in the time it takes Dimitri and Lizzie to sit up and say, ‘hi.’

A shirt is ripped open a page after it was slowly unbuttoned. Dimitri admits to a lie that couldn’t have held water with the rest of the knowledgeable coven. Plus, he talks like he just showed up but is also supposed to have been hanging out with the witches and werewolves for a while. The antagonist, who has been killing and absorbing the power of all the witches in America for a hundred plus years (so, you know strong and skilled), is somehow easily defeated by a slayer with two days of “training.” Honestly, how believable is that? I could go on, but you get the point, I imagine.

The book’s one real redeeming quality is the humour, but even it’s so over the top and ridiculous it can’t carry the load. No doubt, this will appeal to some. I’m just not one of those people. Too bad too, I spent forever deciding to read it.

Edit: Why the hell is she holding a sword on the cover? She uses a “switch star” (think Xena’s….round thing…with points). Not once does she use a sword. What’s more, the ONE TIME anyone does, it’s a katana.