Tag Archives: PNR

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Book Review: Bleacke’s Geek, by Lesli Richardson

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.
bleacke's geek

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?

my review

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.

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Review: Bleake’s Geek

 

wolf marked x3

Wrapping up the Wolf Marked reading challenge

I had a lot of fun with the Wolf Marked reading challenge. As a reminder, three different books titled Wolf Marked were promoed on Sadie’s Spotlight fairly close together and I joked on Twitter that I should just read and review them all. Well, what started as a joke soon became reality and I decided to see if I could get hold of all of them. The last was a challenge since it wasn’t released yet. But I managed it and the battle of the wolf marked was on.

I set out to read Veronica DouglasWolf Marked, Alexis Calder’s Wolf Marked, and Harper Brooks’ Wolf Marked. I’ve accomplished it and it’s time to wrap the challenge up and call it done.

Being only three books long, I don’t know that it really needs a wrap-up post. But I think I do. It’s not until I write such a post that my mind stops going, “Oh, there’s another Wolf Marked (or whatever the challenge is), maybe I can add it in.” For example, I stumbled across Isabeau CrossWolf Marked book, and undoubtedly would have added it to the challenge if it was actually available now instead of next April.

So, to put a period on this challenge and call it truly finished, I’m bringing all three Wolf Marked reviews together.

Book Review: Wolf Marked, by Veronica Douglas

Book Review: Wolf Marked, by Alexis Calder

Book Review: Wolf Marked, by Harper A. Brooks

I’m reluctant to declare a winner. I didn’t love or hate any of them. If I was truly forced to rank them it would probably go Calder, Douglas, Brooks. But they’re all pretty neck-to-neck honestly. They did have a lot in common though. All the heroines were pretty close in age, there were a disproportionate number of red-heads with freckles, and (of course) they’re all destined to love werewolves (though not all did by the end of the book).

All in all, I’d call the whole endeavor a success.

 

difiant flipped

Book Review: Defiant, by Ann Denton

I accepted a review copy of Ann Denton‘s Defiant (The Feral Princess, #1) through Love Book Tours. It also promoed on Sadie’s Spotlight.

Defiant by ann denton cover

In shifter life, what’s more important? Your human mind? Or your wolf’s?

Elena

When my wolf appears for the first time, I’m so overjoyed that I don’t think, I just run into the forest…and smack into Black Maddox, the leader of my pack. Only…he doesn’t believe that I’m what I say I am. He insists that I’m part of a rival pack and locks me up in his basement.
Black’s twice my age, insanely powerful, and has a streak of darkness running through him a mile wide and an ocean deep.
He’s exactly the type of man that I always swore I’d stay far away from. I should stick with Jonah, the beta I know and trust, the man who’ll give me everything I ask for.
But what if there are things I didn’t know I ever wanted before? Things I don’t know how to ask for?
The shadow Black casts drenches me, his depravity soaking into my skin.
He’s going to destroy me if I don’t escape him.

Black

I discover pretty little Elena helpless in disputed territory.
At first, I want to crack her open, this wide-eyed temptation who derails me. I want to shatter her and those who sent her into tiny pieces. I will not be manipulated or deceived by her false innocence.
That’s what I tell myself. But even as I say it aloud, my obsession grows and the spell she weaves leaves my wolf and I both panting.
But once I realize Elena’s a special type of shifter, the rarest of the rare, and the most precious of them all… I don’t want to crush her. I want to chain and keep her. I want to make her beg for mercy, but not because she’s broken.
Because she’s mine.
I want her desperate and aching for me in ways she’s never been before.
My wolf and I will claim her, mark her, marry her and keep her.
Only one thing’s stopping me.
The entire shifter world wants her too.

my review

Let me be clear from the start that I didn’t dislike this book. The writing is crisp, there’s some great humor, some likeable characters (some, not all of them), it plays with power dynamics, and has an interesting plot. Plus, look at that gorgeous cover! But the book did bump up against my personal “ick” tolerances. And it’s gonna take a little picking it apart to avoid sounding like I’m complaining that this Dubious Consent Erotic Novel has dub-con in it. That’s not my issue. I chose to read the book knowing that.

While true dub-con is something that only ever really exists in fiction,* it is safe to say people accept, read, and even enjoy aspects of it in a book that would be considered heinous and problematic in real life. It works because of the established, if largely unspoken, compact between the author and the reader that the heroine (in this case) is actually safe, nothing outside bounds will happen, and it’s possible to hold both the position of wanting and not wanting something in a way that isn’t allowed in the real world. So, my complaint isn’t about the dubious consent or even that Black is such an anti-hero as to almost not qualify for the hero label at all. (Though, having sex with someone who is asleep does kinda push my boundaries a little. And was questionable behavior for the character, considering how many times he’d emphasized not wanting to force her into sex because she’d hate him afterwards. Ummm, isn’t that the same thing?)

It’s simply that I really struggle when love, passion, lust—whatever you want to call it—is based on WHAT a person is instead of WHO a person is. In this case, Elena is an omega and all alpha wolves want an one. They want IT (an omega), not HER (Elena). And I realize this is often the case in Omegaverse books, but that doesn’t make it any more appealing to me.

Similarly, Black says to himself that he likes his women in their twenties. Again, it’s a WHAT, not a WHO. Elena, as a person, is irrelevant. She’s wholly replaceable. (What happens when she is in her forties, will she be replaced by the next bright young twenty-year-old?) Such scenarios are like sand under my skin, irritating my attempt to immerse myself in a sex scene, or believe a burgeoning relationship, etc. I can roll with the punches of dubious-consent—explore those power dynamics or questions of powerlessness, etc—and still enjoy it.

I have a harder time accepting women gleefully being treated as objects and being expected to find it sexy. Sure, like with dub-con, I could say it’s exploring societies’ treatment of women, or the gendering of power, etc. I’m not saying I should always be able to read dubious consent for feminist content (though certainly exploring those themes could be), but the WHAT versus WHO question is one of my person limits. Though everyone will have their own. I can see and respect that the WHAT versus WHO issue has a place in literature. I just have a hard time reading it personally. It’s just one of my discomforts as an individual.

The book is not unaware of its own use of this trope. At one point, Black acknowledges, “If you had any other kind of pussy…” referring to what marks her as important and at another, Jonah questions, “How can I leave her here with Black, knowing that she’ll only ever be seen as a thing, not a person?” It’s this fact that allowed me to decide to continue the series. I’m hoping some of this will fall away; that this is the author giving Black room for personal growth and he will eventually see her as a person, as Jonah does.

Well, that’s not the only thing. I loved Jonah. I know Black is supposed to be the dark, dangerous, star of the show here, but Jonah stole it for me. I adore him.

All in all, an interesting (if not perfect for me) read. I’m looking forward to seeing how things work out. I’d hate to see anyone go into this without knowing what they’re in for, but as long as you dive in with your eyes wide open all should be well.

*I accept that there might be situations in which consenting parties agree to contracts or simply enter into scenarios in which the idea of consent is allowed to be flexible—playing out rape fantasies, etc. A lot of discussion could happen around this. But for the purposes of my point, I’ll just say that in such cases the limits of consent are established and agreed to by both (all) parties, therefore it’s not truly dubious in the same manner as in dubious consent plots like Defiant‘s.

difiant signed


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