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Review of Indigo & Iris (Indigo Lewis #1), by C.M. Stunich

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Indigo & Iris

Early last year, I grabbed C. M. Stunich‘s Indigo & Iris from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
“If I had known last week that I would be sitting in the middle of a Dr. Seuss/Wild, Wild West hybrid nightmare, I would’ve brought more booze.”

Rule One: Gold protects but doesn’t prevent.
Rule Number One Hundred and Eighteen: Do not discredit any information for all things are, in time, inherently useful.
Rule One Hundred and Eighty Seven: Remember the Rules.

They sound more like fortune cookies than bits of advice, but Indigo Lewis is going to have to get real used to ’em if she wants to survive. After eight years on the lam, her maniacal twin sister has finally caught up with Indigo and taken away everything she’s finally built for herself. On the coattails of that tragedy comes Lynx, the man with the goofy grin and the gold epaulettes, who brings with him a train that travels without tracks and an arsenal of weapons that shouldn’t reasonably exist. And all of it for a broken spyglass. Indigo thought she’d seen it all. She was wrong.

Review:
Ok, I’m just gonna go ahead and start off with the same pissed off rant I’ve had about a million times now. (I’m not sure when this became an acceptable norm, but I wish it hadn’t.) Books should consist of at least three important things: a beginning, middle and END. Yes, an end is a required part of a book. Why then, have I read so many novels that don’t have one? Angry, it makes me angry. It makes me want to write off otherwise perfectly acceptable authors out of pure spite. (And Stunich can sure write.) Can’t bother to give me, the reader, an ending? Well, I can’t be bothered to start any more of your books. BAM

This is especially pertinent when speaking about a book like Indigo & Iris that starts out somewhere in the middle, with a whole lot of unsaid history, a confused MC and even more confused reader. For at least the first 50% of the book you have no idea what is going on (and very little even after that). This book is literally like running around with the Mad Hatter and his dozy door mouse. There’s even a lot of tea. But it’s random, unpredictable and makes little sense. However, it does manage to inspire confidence in the reader that at some point it will.

It’s a fun read. Indigo is pretty badass, in a cranky, bitchy kind of way. Lynx is hot stuff, even if he is crazy as all get out. It even manages to avoid falling into unintended YAness. (A trap a lot of books of similar intent seem stumble into.) It’s an adult read, full of cursing and sex jokes. It’s fun. But their vivacious tête-à-têtes and the steampunk descriptions are all the book manages to ride on. What plot there is, is too hidden to even guess at. And believe me, as interesting as the machinery and the characters’ repartee is, it gets old quickly. As did Indigo punching Lynx in the face and pulling guns on him constantly. It was funny for a while, but when it (and little else) happened again and again it lost quite a bit of its lustre.

Then, when it all just starts (and I mean JUST starts) to come together in something resembling a recognisable story arc the book ends. Essentially, I was lost in the beginning but enjoyed the characters enough to keep reading. I then lost patience with the whole thing and wished for a quick end. But it eventually started to pick back up and I became invested again, only to have that relit spark immediately doused by an untimely ending. It’s like an emotional sucker punch. Ha, gotcha!

I’d love to know what happens next. But I just can’t be bothered, because you know what, I’d bet top dollar that if this book ends on a precipitous cliffhanger with no discernible conclusion the next one will too and I’m just not doing that to myself. (You see authors; this is the sort of expectation you’re creating in your readers with all these serials.)

It’s worth noting too that, while well written, there were a few editorial mishaps and a little more attention could have been paid to both textual and digital formatting. There were a number of places where hard returns were missing, creating confusion in terms of who is speaking or reacting to the statement and the font changed sizes several times in the course of the book.

The Fallen

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

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The FallenI 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.

Pixie dust

Book Review of Pixie Dust (Karli Lane, #1), by Laura Lee

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Pixie Dust

I picked up Laura Lee‘s Pixie Dust from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting, it was still free (probably permafree).

Description from Goodreads:
*A lonesome fairy with no clue how to wield her powerful magic.

*A ruggedly handsome warlock torn between his past and his present.

*A five hundred year old, sinfully sexy vampire who’s obsessed with solving the mystery of a particularly interesting bartender. 

Karli Lane is the only fairy left on the planet. Vampires had driven her race to near extinction, causing the others to return to their homeland over twenty years ago. Orphaned at a young age, she was forced to hide her identity in a world full of exposed supernaturals. 

Facing her upcoming immortality, her life has become a complicated mess. A new employer and a gruesome murder bring two incredibly complex men into her life, making matters worse. She finds herself riding a non-stop emotional roller coaster while trying to figure out who she is, how to control her powers, and most importantly, how to stay alive.

Review:
Weak, very weak; that’s my assessment of this drivel. That’s right I said it. I usually try really hard not to say insulting things. I know it’s extremely hard to write even a weak book. I do. I’m sympathetic. But just about every aspect of this book and its main character grated on me.

Starting with the ridiculous attempt at regionally hip dialogue: “True dat, Bitches!” Ugh. This followed immediately by the cookie cutter caricature of a slutty BFF. I’m not slut shaming here. Eri seems really comfortable in her slut role, even giving instructions to dress sluttier, etc. More power to her. But as a character, she was beyond unidimensional. There simply wasn’t anything else to her (or anyone else).

Then the movie comparisons started…and never stopped. It’s a poor way to describe something or provide familiarity, but also a pet peeve of mine. Both because I no longer own a television or bother with Hollywood (so I often don’t get the references and kind of resent the assumption that everyone will) and because it dates a book quickly. Plus, it just clutters up the narrative.

Just about the time I’d ground my teeth and persuaded myself to stick with it. I was blindsided by a series of instant and baseless attitude and character changes. One second two characters are cocky and hating each-other, the next throwing themselves at one another in sexual heat, then suddenly all shy and hesitant. So, enemies to lovers to touchingly sweet love in about an hour. Oh, and this happened more than once.

About that touching, all consuming love…There were two of them, for starters. And while I love a little ménage here and there, this wasn’t that. It wasn’t even a love triangle. It was just two men who for no apparent reason suddenly fell madly in love with one woman (on sight), were willing to do anything for her, and apparently didn’t even mind the other. Hmm, I guess maybe that could have been a little further developed…maybe at all.

Even more confounding than the sudden, obsessive love of two sexy, powerful men who didn’t know her from Eve was the question of why/how the vampire managed to overcome the bloodlust that plagued EVERY VAMPIRE THROUGHOUT DOCUMENTED HISTORY as if it was nothing at all. No explanation provided or even attempted. And if that wasn’t enough to make me gnash my teeth, the question of why she would put herself into the position to find out he wasn’t going to kill her immediately is. Hello stupid!

But stupid was a running theme for her. For example, being a fairy is supposed to be some big secret she’s kept her whole life, but her slutty BFF knows and she’s only been Karli’s BFF for a year or so. Which means Karli couldn’t have waited long to tell her the oh-so-big secret. She then easily (accidentally) revealed herself by displaying her powers to someone she just met. Shortly thereafter, she walked into a possibly dangerous situation and orders 3 double shots of vodka. Guess being clear headed isn’t important or anything.

Could she really be that stupid? Yep, ’cause next Ms. Clutso sliced herself open in front of a vampire and let him lick it clean. (You know those vampires who almost exterminated her entire race for their blood, yeah, them.) Really. Not too careful, our MC. She basically approached Too Stupid To Live territory and camped out there.

Then there was the juvenile shouting, yelling, screaming, etc. Maybe this is just a symptom of the verbs the author chose to use, but it made everyone (but especially Karli) feel overly dramatic and tween-angsty. Especially since more often than not the circumstances didn’t call for all the extra emotion. For example, she Karli didn’t want to have a conversation with Vance (a perfectly reasonable one, BTW), so she screamed at him, slammed doors, tried to throw him out and eventually threw herself into idiotic danger with a smirk. Someone just go ahead and shoot this woman for me, please.

Add to all that the obvious attempts to add pointless titillation and I’m darned near toasted. As an example, one night after meeting Karli the detective asks her to accompany him to seek out a suspect (obviously proper police procedure, that). He then takes her to a sex-bar. This was pointless for anything but to showcase her apparent naiveté and allow for a whole boatload of sexual snippets. It was also almost too cliché (and over-used in PNR) to bear.

Plus, in an atmosphere of complete sexual nihilism there isn’t a single non-hetero act to be seen and the whole scene seemed oddly male-centric, making even the women seeking their own pleasure feel like sex workers instead of equal-part satyric. Seems unlikely and mildly insulting.

This theme of pointless titillation continued in the make out sessions that leapt out of no where, but never actually went anywhere. This irked the hell out of me because they were so jarring, but also because it made the book feel very stop-start. Not to mention there was a whole heck of a lot of internal monologue-like fantasies, posturing, and petting and NO ACTUAL SEX. Seriously?!

Then I had to tolerate all of Leo’s pet names: sweets, my sweet, dearest, my dear, love, my love, etc. (There were an endless supply of them.) This drives me crazy in general. I find them belittling. But here they were especially annoying since he and Karli had no relationship yet for him to so casually, use them. It felt false.

The writing itself was fine. I found it a little repetitive at times, as reader saw events and then characters relate that event to others. There were also a number of infodumps that made things feel clunky. But beyond my basic loathing for first person points of view the writing wasn’t too bad.

To wrap this sucker up, I disliked this book. I hated the main character. I found her a weepy, bratty, juvenile woman. I probably would have liked the men if they’d been developed at all and if I understood where their obsession for Karli came from. But they weren’t and I didn’t. But as much as I disliked it all, it’s almost all personal preference sorts of material. The nuts and bolts are there and another reader might (does, since there are plenty of great reviews of Pixie Dust out there) really enjoy it. Just not me, not me at all.