Tag Archives: PNR

Book Review: Defiled, by Ann Denton

I accepted a review copy of Ann Denton‘s Defiled through Love Books Tours. It is the second book in The Feral Princess series and I reviewed book one, Defiant, last month. You can find that review here. The book was also featured over at Sadie’s Spotlight.

Elena

When Black tries to force a ring onto my finger, I bolt.
I escape the pack leader’s clutches with Jonah, my best friend with benefits…who has become so much more.
But then my body betrays me. My stupid wolf shifter hormones send me spiraling into my first heat only hours after I flee.
Desire blazes through my veins until it’s so wild and fierce that it takes over my reality.
It makes me hallucinate while I’m with Jonah and wish for things I don’t want.
Like Black.

Black

Elena was stolen from me.
No one steals from the Lobo pack, and no one ever steals from me.
I’m going to hunt down whoever took her and punish them until they can’t even scream for mercy.
The moon goddess better hide her face because I’m about to show the shifters who stole Elena that my soul can be as dark as my name.

Jonah

She picked me.
The most perfect woman in the world chose me.
I should be on cloud nine, but instead, I’m terrified.
How the hell am I going to protect her with furious shifters from two different packs hunting us down?

My feelings are pretty middle of the road about this book. Most importantly, by the time I reached the end, I was re-invested and interested in finding out what happens in book three. So, obviously, I didn’t hate the whole thing. But there was a large chunk of the middle in which I simply wanted to stop reading the book entirely. I hated Black. I’m still not a fan, if I’m honest.

Yes, he’s an anti-hero that isn’t supposed to be overly-likeable. But part of the fantasy that make dub-con readable for me is that the imposed upon party secretly wants or enjoys what is happening. That’s what makes it dubious and not straight out coercion and/or rape, in my opinion. But here we had three people, two of which legitimately thought they were going to be killed by the third, even as they had sex. There was no joy, secret or otherwise, in it for me. Black was just cruel and even the author’s attempt to make him broken, instead of villainous didn’t fully redeem him for me. I couldn’t find anything to appreciate in the angry, “I don’t want her to enjoy it” sex they had and I thought the turn around from enemies to not was too abrupt. I really needed there to be a conversation between the parties. So much of the drama is based on assumptions and miscommunications and I feel like the author is just skimming past it, instead of addressing it. But it is a scene I really want to read.

Having said all that. I still adored Jonah. He’s the lubricant that makes everything work. I liked that Elena loves him so fiercely and that Black is also being forced to appreciate and accept him. I still find the writing easily readable and look forward to reading book three, if in a somewhat baffled at myself sort of way.

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Book Review: Bleacke’s Geek, by Lesli Richardson

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I picked up a copy of Bleacke’s Geek (by Lesli Richardson) as an Amazon freebie, after seeing it recommended in a fantasy readers’ group I’m in. It was still free when I posted this review.

When girl meets geek, the fur’s gonna fly.

Dewi Bleacke is a no-nonsense Prime Alpha wolf. As head Enforcer of the Targhee pack, she’s in charge of Florida. Her assignment is to kill a dirtbag who sold his daughter. She doesn’t expect to find her handsome, albeit geeky, soulmate in the process.

Dr. Heathcliff McKenzie Ethelbert lives a quiet, boring life. A professor at USF, he has no girlfriend, no car, and is a devout vegetarian. So when a mysterious woman with mocha eyes literally drags him out of his booth and then proceeds to have her way with him, it’s not his average night out. When she follows their sexy interlude by abducting him after killing a man, he suspects life has just taken a drastically odd turn.

Now Dewi, her partner Beck, and her surrogate father Badger, have to educate her new “grazer” mate on the ways of the Targhee wolves. “Ken” does his best to fit in. But an old killer lurks in the shadows–the wolf who murdered Dewi’s parents. Can she keep Ken safe, or will her mate prove to everyone that he’s a lot more than just Dewi Bleacke’s geek?

This was recommended by someone in a fantasy readers’ group because a member had asked for books in which strong women protect nerdier guys. I loved the idea and when I saw it was free on Amazon I picked it up and read it soon after. The problem is that, while it fits the description of strong woman protecting nerdier guy, it doesn’t actually subvert the patriarchal, women as the weaker sex script and suffers greatly for it.

Let me be clear. If I pick up a book about an female alpha werewolf falling in love with a nerdy, vegetarian university professor, I want her to be the stronger party. I want it to actually subvert, not just flip the gender dynamic. Bleacke’s Geek doesn’t even try.

Dewi is the only ever female Prime Alpha (the alphas’ alpha), stronger than even normal alphas and even more unable to submit to others. Excerpt…she’s really not. Dewi, sweet special Dewi, really just wants to submit to her weaker human husband (something no male prime would ever do, even to another alpha), cries a lot, and ALL the men in her life coddle and protect her. They keep information from her to keep her safe and unstressed. Information they tell Ken immediately so that he too can protect her from it.

I found the whole thing worse that being given a weak heroine. Here we were promised a strong one and then it was taken away. But I’m not supposed to notice.

Then there is the abuse problem. One of the things I complain about most in reviews is the easy use of abuse of women as a plot device. Here we have Dewi’s parents murdered, her mother raped in front of her first. Dewi almost killed as a child. Dewi kills a man who has sold his daughter into sexual slavery and has plans to do the same with the other two, she saves a woman whose husband has tied her up and is beating her, Ken’s mother is murdered in a bout of domestic abuse, and the man who killed Dewi’s parents shows up to rape and murder her. That’s a lot of unrelated cases of abused women in less than 200 pages. I think I’m justified in wondering if Richardson simply can’t think of a single other plot device to use, because that is some pretty weak storytelling.

Additionally, the ONLY other women in the book are faceless waitresses and the co-ed students in Ken’s class who go slutty and throw themselves at him as soon as he mates a werewolf. One of whom he can’t remember her name, but remembers masturbating to the memory of her triple Ds several times. (And this is a man I’m supposed to like?) So, every woman but Dewi is either a victim or sexually disposable, or a sexually disposable victim. This I can do without, especially from female authors. I simply expect more and better.

The writing and editing is competent, even if the author makes some odd stylistic choices. The first sentence of the book has no verb, for example. But if this is the authors idea of a good story I have no desire to read anything else they every write.