I received a copy of Elizabeth Stephens‘ Dark City Omega in a Renegade Romance Book Box.

When Omegas run away, the beasts of Gatamora come out to play… Echo knew that being caught by a ruling Berserker would mean becoming his pawn, a play thing to be used for her powers. That wouldn’t be her fate. She’d rather run lost through the woods forever, dangerous though they may be. But there’s something even more sinister than beasts and Berserkers lurking in the woods. Something both undead and deadly. She can’t fight it alone. She’ll have to turn to the Berserker who’s caught the trail of her scent and won’t let it go. He says she’s his. She says never. He says forever. Bones, bonds and hearts will be broken. Some battles can’t be won. Run, Omega, run.

I found this a really frustrating book to read because there would be moments when I would see such potential in it. But then Stephens would ALWAYS choose to lean into the cliched, patriarchal, usually flat-out misogynistic tropes instead of the interesting, dissident, sometimes even transgressive ones her own plotline, as written, would allow for. There were times she even did this when the plot couldn’t support it, forcing the characters to enact popular kink or BDSMy acts that fit neither of the characters’ personalities up to or beyond that point.

Or, for example, making the male lead grovel satisfyingly (as he should) while the female lead shows admirable backbone in setting reasonable boundaries. Then, immediately making him disregard everything she said, each boundary, and his own just spoken promises to bypass her consent and firmly stated boundaries to force a kiss on her and declare his desires and intent (which run counter to hers and disregard the fact he is doing what she just said she didn’t want). Of course, she then just accepts it, forgives him, and picks up right where they left off because sex makes it all OK. And make no mistake, Stephens wrote this to be romantic. He wants her this badly, bla, bla, bla. It’s almost a satisfying scene, but is utterly ruined by cliches instead of giving us true introspection and character growth.

I suppose I’ve just reached a point where, as much as I once enjoyed ABO fiction, stories that uncritically place women in socially submissive, abuse-as-romance cultures are a little too on the nose for contemporary America, and I can’t suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy them anymore. But Stephens also tries to have her cake and eat it too in this regard. She wants the reader to believe Adam (and supposedly future berserker heroes) truly loves and value their omega mates (can see them as equals) and that omegas are rare and valuable. But she also placed them in a world that treats omega (which correlatively is a stand-in for women, even ifthere are two token male omegas—the mechanics of their omega-ness never addressed) where omegas are considered worthless trash to be caught and thoughtlessly raped to death. This is both displayed and explicitly voiced in the book. It’s one or the other. Maybe other authors can pull it off, but it definitely didn’t gel here.

All in all, I wish I liked this a lot more than I did. I saw a lot I could have liked if Stephens was a different sort of author, writing a different sort of book.

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Book Review: Dark City Omega by Elizabeth Stephens