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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.

Image of Emeralds and Chocolate

Book Review of Image of Emeralds and Chocolate, by K. Murry Johnson

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Images of Emerald and ChocolateI picked up a copy of K. Murry Johnson‘s Images of Emeralds and Chocolate from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
In his breakout novel, K. Murry Johnson combines two never before paired genres: black gay and vampire fiction. Set in Louisiana, Image of Emeralds and Chocolate masterfully explores the past and the present. The novel speaks to all who have ever dreamed of finding romance, and captures the national obsession with vampires. The story follows Eric Peterson, a talented high school senior enrolled in a creative writing course at Loyola University. Insecure and inexperienced, he often daydreams about finding love. His fantasies quickly become reality when a strikingly attractive new student, Marquis LeBlanc, is assigned as his writing partner. But the man of Eric’s dreams is hiding something. Marquis has been severely depressed for a very long time. His therapeutic motive for enrolling in a writing class is abruptly derailed when he unexpectedly falls in love for the second time in his life. If Marquis reveals his secret, will Eric accept him…or even believe him?

Review:
I’m not going to lie. When I grabbed this book to read, I never made it past the cover (Gawd, I love a fit man’s back!) and the first sentence of the blurb. “In his breakout novel, K. Murry Johnson combines two never before paired genres: black gay and vampire fiction.” Yep, that was enough for me. Some racial and sexual diversity in a PNR/UF book? Hell yeah, I’m all for that! A black, gay vampire…*happy sigh.*

My hopes were sky high. I really wanted to love this book. I really wanted to finish it and rush out to recommend it to all my friends. The thing is that I just can’t. I still think it deserves tons of accolades for filling a niche that is in desperate need of attention, but it suffers from what I’ll call first-time-author syndrome.

The writing is very simplistic. It’s of the Eric did this, Eric said that, Eric went here, Eric thought that and THEN (big surprise) Eric felt something else sort. It’s functional. The book is even well edited. But it’s painfully straightforward and almost impossible to immerse yourself in.

I strongly encourage Johnson to keep writing though, because IMO a lot of the detractors of this book are things that will improve with practice. I’m no expert, but the anecdotal evidence of reading hundreds of books a year (many by new, Indie or SP authors) is that the too frequent use of names, stiff dialogue, understanding that some regional dialectic speech is good, while anything past some fuzzy ill-defined line of more is bad, too many unnecessary details and personal histories cluttering a narrative, annoying internal dialogue, anachronistic (if idealised) language, beliefs and behaviours, the unfailing need for a character to be involved in every historical event in recent history, and the ability to let a joke stand on its own, without the need to explain it all eventually smooth themselves out with more experience.

So, I was generally disappointed in the mechanics of the book. I was also disappointed to discover that this is a Young Adult novel (maybe New Adult). Phooey. I wanted some hot, chocolate, vampire sex. Yes, I did. And I just didn’t get it. Instead, I got a trash-talking, teen genius coming to terms with his own sexuality. It wasn’t the book I hoped it would be. Oh well.

It was however very obvious that Johnson put a lot of himself into his story. And I always make an effort to be cognisant of myself as a reader, especially when I’m probably not the intended audience of a text. Because Johnson’s acknowledgements page makes it plain that he is writing for men like himself, not women like me.

I read an interesting blog post recently. It was a bit of a thought exercise about understanding the effects of the fact that much of the  M/M literature being written is targeted to cis-gendered women (female identified straight women) and what this means to LGBTQ readers trying to find books that realistically represent themselves, even in a genre that should be for (not just about) them. This means the issue is fresh in my mind.

Johnson claims to have written this book for young, gay men of colour. That’s the target audience and I’m not an African American gay youth. If I was and was looking desperately for a character, any character, even just one measly character that I could relate to in the PNR/UF genre this would be about as close as I can imagine easily coming. So I have to be careful to not criticise the book for simply not being another M/M book targeted at me—a straight, white woman.

I think it probably accomplishes its goal of contributing some much-needed diversity to the PNR/UF genre. The writing and story just needs to be smoothed out. And I think the public service announcement aspects of it needs to have been dropped.

Turning a novel into a PSA is a personal no-no. This book addresses gay marriage, AIDS exposure among the 15-25 age cohort, the importance of safe sex if abstinence isn’t a realistic option, identifying possible racial discrimination, etc.  These are important issues. However, each is shoehorned into the plot unnaturally. It felt just like what it probably was, an attempt on the author’s part to get the message out to young readers. A fictional novel just isn’t the place.

So, I’m torn. The book wasn’t the hot vampire romance I hoped it would be. In fact, the vampire aspect played very little part in the book at all. It was predominately a coming of age story and a lot more time was spent with Eric and his school, friend, family and band issues than the romance or the vampire aspects. It made me pout. However, for someone who is looking for that type of book and is comfortable with plain, straightforward, unembellished writing this is a good candidate.

Incubus

Book Review of Incubus (The Incubus Saga #1), by Amanda Meuwissen

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IncubusI grabbed a copy of Incubus, by Amanda Meuwissen, from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Nathan only ever wanted a normal life, but for him, life, family, and love are anything but normal.

On the other side of the Veil, dark and light fae exist outside the knowledge of most humans. Nathan Grier was born human, but his twin brother Jim is a changeling. On the run since they were children, time for both of them is running out. Turning to fae hunter Sasha Kelly for help, Nathan must soon face his growing feelings for the other man while trying to save himself and his brother from a fate worse than death.

Review:
Having just finished Incubus, I think I can say with some certainty that Ms. Meuwissen didn’t set out to write a book. She wanted to write a television screenplay. The chapters are even referred to as episodes and every chapter or two completes a mini adventure (as one would expect from an hour long weekly show). 

Actually, I can be even more specific. Ms. Meuwissen wanted to write a Supernatural spinoff/fanfiction television show. I don’t think I’m the first to point out the obvious similarity to the show and its characters. Nathan would be Dean and Jim would be Sam. (It has been literally years since I sat down and watched a primetime television show, so if I’m catching such a similarity it must be pretty obvious.)

Also like popular, ongoing television programs, the book doesn’t wrap up by the end. In fact, between all of the distracting side adventures and the rather heavy focus on the romance, the main plot of saving Nathan from his dark fae bounty was lost. It felt very, very much like watching a show week after week and then finally realising that due to its new-found popularity, the writers, producers, etc have decided to add endless filler to stretch it into another season, and then another and then another, until you no longer even remember where it was originally going anyway. 

It was well written. I liked the characters and I liked the plot. I just didn’t care for the plotting. The book is way too long, there are too many forays into adventures that go nowhere, and there are a lot of extra bits—Alex and Jim’s issues, for example. All of this sets the series up for future books, sure, but it’s incredibly frustrating to read. Both because the plot feels diluted, but also because you reach the end knowing almost nothing more than you did when you started, which feels like a distinct waste of time. 

I did think the GFY aspect was sweetly done. There was very little ‘but I’m not gay’ angst and it therefore felt much more like falling in love with a person, instead of an appropriate gender. I liked that a lot. 

Now, a lot of people love this book and, being as it feels like a clone of the television show Supernatural, anyone who likes it will probably like the book. If it had been a stand-alone and I didn’t feel like I had just spent two days reading for no final payoff I would probably rate it higher than I am. As it is, I’m going with not baaaad, but could have be soooo much better.

Post review discovery: Big World Netwrok (the book’s publisher) states that their goal is to provide a “… way to enjoy both fiction and non-fiction in an episodic format, not unlike a television series….” So, while I didn’t much care for the format, I have to give the book credit for being true to it and its publisher’s aim. (Plus, I feel a little smug about having recognised it.)

Of course, it goes on to say, “Unlike a traditional novel with a clear endpoint, series on BWN continue for as long as their readers want more and new seasons are renewed. The average series episode is between 4-10 pages…” Which to me means, without end and no hope for a satisfying conclusion. Again, much like almost every TV series I’ve ever become invested enough to try and watch regularly. I’m fairly sure I’ve never actually made it to a final season, final show ENDING. Part of why I stopped bothering.