Tag Archives: why choose

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Book Review: Stone Cold, by H.B. Jacks

I picked up a copy of H.B. Jack‘s Stone Cold as an Amazon freebie.

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Three massive stone gargoyles. Monsters all. And now I belong to them.

I didn’t ask to be rescued. I was doing fine on my own, even if I had just lost my job, dumped my ex and taken a wrong turn down a dark alley.

So when Cararr thinks I need saving and sweeps me up in his huge claws, what am I supposed to do? Say no to this damaged, vicious and sweet as candy gargoyle who only wants to prove to his mates he’s worthy of their love?

Mates who include Viriroz, one growly grump of a gargoyle, all dominant and possessive, and the sinful Garaz who looks at me like he wants to eat me. Whole.

These are powerful monsters with a dangerous job to do, protecting the human world from the things that slither in the dark, but they need a final female mate to complete their roost and produce their heirs.

All of which means I have to decide whether to stay with these delicious, feral males who love to share a bed and each other, or whether to condemn the rest of the world the world to the darkness.

But I have to make the choice, because the war is coming and it might just rip us apart before we even begin.

my review

Think Gargoyles, the TV show, but spicy.

I dislike the cover, but I decided to overlook it and give this book a try. It started out really well with three male gargoyles in a very affectionate, committed relationship. I liked each individually and had high hopes for when the why choose element was brought in. But the book deteriorated fairly quickly into weird sex-based power dynamics and a sloppy, predictable plot full of far too many coincidences.

Let me start with my biggest disappointment. The three males were in a pre-established relationship, and they needed a female to join them in order to have children. But this left Lara feeling like a fourth wheel, the three of them in a relationship that had a female instead of the four of them in any sort of equal partnership. I really like that the three men were involved and continued to engage with one another even after she arrived, but she was never integrated enough into the dynamic to feel like a true part of it. This was very much reinforced by the weird power relations of sex.

Penetrative sex is referred to as being bred, even between men, and penetrative sex is used as a punishment. Don’t get me wrong, everyone who was penetrated seemed to enjoy it. But it is referred to repeatedly as punishment and used as such. These two facts infer, upfront, that penetration is tied to procreation, and there is something shameful about being penetrated. It is shameful to be the receiving partner in the sexual act. Sound familiar?

Plus, there seems to be rigid penetration politics involved. Alpha Viriroz can penetrate everyone. Garaz can penetrate Carrarr and Lara. Carrarr can only penetrate Lara, and Lara penetrates no one. (This isn’t just an observation, Garaz says at one point how glad he is to never let Carrarr breed him. It’s explicit.) It’s of note here that Carrarr is the most female-coded of the three gargoyles.

This ranking of who penetrates and who is penetrated seems to correlate almost exactly with authority in the relationship as a whole. The end result is that one’s place in the hierarchy reduces with proximity to femaleness, with being the receiving sexual partner as the proxy signal and being deserving of punishment (shameful) as the reason for one’s social position.

Taken together, all of this starts to look a whole lot like familiar patriarchal, misogynistic bullshit that reduces women to sexual toys and broodmares and then deems them of less worth because of it. I want none of this anywhere near my romance books, but especially in a why-choose romance that one reads largely to subvert such puritanical standards. (As a side note, I wonder if the author even knows they did this or if it is so internalized as the norm that they didn’t even notice.)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect every book to be a feminist masterpiece. A lot of what makes dark romances fun is that they play with the very cultural norms feminism fights. As women, these are our reality, and it can be satisfying to engage them from a position of control. (I can shut a book at any moment, and there is a compact between the author and reader, then the heroine is really safe, no matter the current plot point.) But I adamantly dislike books that do so uncritically, that feed the reader raw patriarchal, puritanical mythos as romance. There is nothing subversive here, and I find nothing in female oppression erotic without it.

Plus, a lot of the sex scenes were repetitive (both in the acts and the language used) and defied photo of stone coldthe limits of human capacity. I know it’s fantasy. One always has to suspend their disbelief. ButJacks so threw out any limits to what the female body can accommodate to pull me, the reader, right out of the scenes, the last one especially.

Add all of this to the convenient and often unexplained coincidences and Dues ex Machina solutions to problems, and by the end of the book, much of my hope had simply evaporated, and I was glad to be shot of it.


Other Reviews:

Review: Stone Cold (Monster Prey Mates, #1). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

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Book Review: Syndicate Princess, by Kira Stanley

I picked up a copy of Kira Stanley‘s Syndicate Princess as an Amazon freebie.

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Being a vampire boss’s daughter was a lot of work. Being the only girl heir from the five families, I’ve always had to work harder, fight dirtier, care less. It made me into the woman I am today, causing fear in my enemies and a bloody trail for those who betray us.

Then my dad sprung on me that the other bosses and their sons were coming into town. That they wanted us heirs to all meet, to bond with each other.

To top it all off, my dad shocked the hell out of me by throwing out a challenge to the other heirs. Whoever could keep me in their possession, by force or choice, for twenty-four hours, would win the right for my hand in marriage.

The other bosses are all for it, wanting to get their man whoring, untamable, or workaholic sons to settle down finally, but I was not some prize to be won.

I was Rayla Desmond, a force all her own. A Syndicate princess that was not to be messed with, so these boys better be ready for me because I’m coming in for blood.

my review

I really wanted to like this, but I just couldn’t. I get that it is probably intended to have a certain humor element, but it just felt over-the-top ridiculous to me. As in, I just kept thinking, “This is so stupid” the whole time I was reading it.

The fathers are caricatures. Rayla and her men are all supposed to be in the 27-28-year-old range (which I was initially happy about), but they literally act like children. But more importantly, they are treated like children. Considering there is relatively little actual sex in the book, I don’t see why Stanley didn’t just make them teens or new adults, at most, to match what she wrote. Plus, while I like a morally grey character, Rayla has the overblown emotional capacity of a toddler.

Other than the whole thing just being roll your eyes and cringe ridiculous, my main complaint is that the three men don’t come together until late into the book. This means that Rayla does everything three times. She escapes each man. She goes and sees each father. Then, she goes and does each challenge. Then she goes and seduces each man. (Then they talk about it all). Everything was done in triplicate, and I was bored.

Literally, the only things in the whole book I cared about were Cosmo and Lex, and neither of them gets much play here. But I’m not interested enough to read the next book to see how things work out. Plus, it could use a little more editing, both copy edits, and to catch the occasional consistency issue.

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Other Reviews:

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Book Review: Blitz, by M. Sinclair

I picked up a copy of M. Sinclair‘s Blitz as an Amazon freebie.

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Three dominant dragon alphas who seemingly have it all… except the one thing they want: me.

My life hasn’t been typical. All I remember is waking up in an alley when I was ten, scrounging for scraps to survive until I was taken to the Bronzeheart estate.

That’s where my life began, where I’ve lived for the past eight years with the ruling family, the Blitz Clan. It’s where I found my best friend Gage, the future leader of this clan.

At the time, I didn’t question my good fortune because I was happy to know I wasn’t alone in this world anymore. But maybe I should have.

After landing a shocking invite to the prestigious Dark Imaginarium Academy, I realized how much of a safe haven the estate was.

The students at this school are out for my blood because somehow I have the attention of not just one, but all three Storm Dragon Clan heirs: Gage Bronzeheart, Breaker Firespell, and Jagger Silvershade.

None of them should have an interest in me, seeing as I’m the only shifter at this academy who hasn’t, you know…shifted. They should want someone powerful at their side. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting them as well.

That is until I find out they’ve been hiding a life-changing secret from me. And now that I know…

Nothing will be the same.

Blitz is book 1 in the Storm Dragons’ Mate series that features a slightly naive but sassy MFC, possessive dragon alphas, and a secret that will change everything. This is not a high school academy book and the contents are intended for mature audiences, with characters who are all 18+. This book includes violence and mature sexual content.

my review

Meh. This was OK, but not the book I had hoped for. However, I acknowledge that it is partly the fault of my own expectations. The description says, “This is not a high school academy book…” and I took that to mean it is not as YA as the blurb sounds. That was apparently wrong of me. Sure, the heroine may be freshly 18, and there may be spice at some point in future books, but this is firmly a YA read. I’m just not a grand lover of the YA genre (too old to relate anymore, I guess).

But I probably could have taken the YA-ness of it all if the heroine wasn’t so strongly infantilized. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, and I’m very sensitive to it. I’ll acknowledge that the book did give reasons that she had been so sheltered and knew so little. But her descriptions are all child-coded. She’s small. She loves pretty sparkly things. She has a set of stuffed animals she takes places with her. She has significantly less knowledge or information than the males her blitz photoown age, etc. The book description calls her “slightly naive.” I call her too childlike for my tastes.

I did like her and her harem of men, though. I liked that she was willing to tell them plainly what she was thinking. I liked that they were fully willing to show their vulnerabilities and desperation. None of them are well-developed yet. But I accept that this is only the first book, and there is time for that in future books. I liked the book enough to be maybe willing to read more of the series if it was available for free, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to pay for more (if that tells you anything).


Other Reviews:

????Blitz (The Storm Dragons’ Mate Book 1) By M. Sinclair