On Strawberry Fluff: A Review of Kiss of Pride by Sandra Hill

 Today for your reading delight, I have this...well, it's meant to be a romance novel, I think. I bought this when it was $0.99, thinking that it would make for light-hearted amusement some day. And then I got into this reading funk, and I sort of realized that I wasn't going to become fully immersed in anything, no matter how awesome, so why not choose something shallow?

The book jumps right into the back story, so I'll start there. Prepare yourself for some silly-ass world building. Vikar and his merry band of brothers were all vikings, and that made them pagans, and so God wanted to wipe them out. The archangel Michael pleads their case, and they end up as vampire/angels in training instead, doing penance until they make up for their sins (there are seven brothers, seven sins, DO YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING?). Vikar's sin is pride. Anyway, they've been time jumping for awhile (for some reason), but now they've settled in present day Pennsylvania, in a town that subsequently becomes a vampire themed tourist trap.

Alex is a jaded reporter with a tragic past--her daughter and husband were murdered. She wants nothing more to take revenge, but her plans are interrupted when she's put on an assignment to interview Vikar. Almost immediately after arriving in Transylvania Pennsylvania, she is bitten by the resident bad vampires--they're called lucipires, and they work for the devil. Consequently, the hero has to start cleansing her of the inherent badness that lucipires spread, and he does said cleansing through a lot of sucking, which is even less sexy than it sounds.

I assumed from the start that I wasn't meant to take this book seriously, and that it would be more of a light PNR. But at times, a serious fact or moment would be thrown in there, and I got the impression that I was supposed to become invested, that I was supposed to find the romance in the midst of the ridiculous. Instead, the whole book is just awkward. The tone is way off, like the author has no idea how to balance horror, sex, and humor. Kresley Cole is the queen of that balance. Gena Showalter is not bad either. J.R. Ward has some seriously awkward bullshit in her stories, but the tone is still mostly cohesive. This book? This book is a mess. The author wants to be funny, but she doesn't understand how to be--she thinks that referencing Twilight and Micheal Jackson and all of the other pop culture things she knows about will make it funny, but all of those jokes are just flat and annoying. Then she wants to be serious, she wants us to feel sad or concerned for Alex, or to find Vikar sexy, or to get caught up in their relationship, but she ends up being hilarious by accident with her awful world building and purple language. You end up laughing at the author and not with the author, laughing at all of the wrong things.

Even if the world building were not unforgivably silly, it would still be terribly unoriginal. I'm entirely sick of seven deadly sins books. If you're going to use Christian/biblical mythology, pick something that hasn't been done nine million times already. Don't get me wrong--angels and demons make interesting characters, but you have to have a good feel for how to write them and how to make them seem both real and different (the same principle applies to vampires0. Hill doesn't seem to know what to do with the mythology, and she doesn't want to bother digging up some fresh and new concepts from it, so she's deriving everything from other PNRs in a way that's too obvious and too sloppy for a traditionally published author.

The Christain nature of our vangels is then used as the main obstacle keeping the hero and heroine from getting their freak on, and is the reason they decide to have lots of near sex. It's only a real sin if there's actual penetration, apparently. You know who thinks like that? Teenagers. Stupid, horny teenagers who believe that celibacy through technicality is just as good as actual self-restraint. Seeing adults rationalize in the same way is just plain stupid --either sexual acts are a sin, or they aren't. Whatever you believe is fine, but don't try to have the cake and eat it too--you're just being hypocritical.

Delicious, and versatile.

The sex (or almost sex) scenes in themselves are the most unintentionally hilarious things I have ever seen in a modern romance novel. At one point, the heroine thinks she sees a halo around the hero's dick. She pronounces it "cute", and the sex continues. Yeah. Later, the author treats us to the silliest purple terms she could think of--including, but not limited to "woman channel", "woman dew", and my personal favorite "strawberry fluff" (which described the heroine's pubic hair). When the strawberry fluff came into play, I had a small and not altogether quiet break with reality where I collapsed in a fit of giggles. In my world fluff is a marshmallow topping you put on peanut butter sandwiches--so you can imagine what my mind cooked up in the context of the sex scene. Sorry, NEAR sex scene.

When I finally finished this book, it was with the feeling of relief that comes with being fairly certain that you've hit rock bottom. I have found the worst of the books, there is nothing more awful, and anything else will be fantastic by comparison because I have lived through lucipires and strawberry fluff. Do I recommend this book? Well, I don't know, it did make me laugh. Not at the right moment, and not in the way it meant to, but by God did I laugh. So, yeah, if you have a good strong bullshit shield and you like "so bad it's good" books, maybe. Overall, though, it's probably not worth it. 1.5 stars

On Crystals: A Review of Chosen by Sarah Swan

You know what it takes for me to like a book? It has to make me care. I'll forgive forced dialogue and improbable plot lines, I'll overlook slightly ditzy characters, contrived relationships...hell, I'll probably forgive your main character for kicking a puppy. As long as it makes me care.

I did not care about this book.

Tracy goes to an exclusive boarding school on an island off the coast of Maine (I think). She meets a close knit group of girls. They instantly treat Tracy like she's one of them. Then Tracy finds out that she, and all of the girls, can access magic powers through crystals.

Positive Comments

I don't...

I've got nothing.

Okay, I guess the reason I read this book is that, on the surface, I'm sort of a fan of the whole "coven of magic" trope. Every little girl goes through a "witch" phase, and I was no exception, especially since I grew up in the era of Harry Potter. So the idea of a group of girls using crystals to access power sounded interesting.

The other thing that had potential in this book was the island atmosphere. It's a really cool setting and I wish the author had done more with it.

By the way, I have no freaking clue what's up with this cover. It's kind of nice, but at no time in this book is anyone in a ball gown in the forest. Unless I zoned out for awhile when I was reading, which I guess is a distinct possibility.

Critical Comments

Tracy is unlikeable. She's not very bright. She's so eager to fit in with the popular girls that she 1)openly ditches a guy she made friends with in order to be with them 2) does not question their over-enthusiastic interest in her, the new girl 3) agrees to not speak to a cute boy, because one of them has dibs on him, even though a)talking to a guy does not constitute cheating by an sane definition, and b) the guy in question has no interest in the girl who called dibs. I'm not kidding here. They flip shit on her for saying "Hi" to him.

The group of friends are insipid, snobby, and indistinguishable from one another.

The girls know stuff about the crystals that no one could logically learn through trial and error. In other words, the world building is clumsy as hell. We are told that one of the girls, Liz, has known about the magic crystals for two years, and that's why she knows so much. But they lay out all of these facts and rules and theories that you simply could not know if no one told you. It would be like someone from the year 1400 finding a car with the keys in the ignition. Given plenty of time, he might learn to drive it. He might even figure out a bit about how it works, if he really cared. But he's never going to understand, say, where gasoline comes from or what it is about gasoline that makes the motor run. He's not going to figure out what combustion reactions are just by looking at a car.

The "villain" is this kid who acts like a loner and has no friends. The moral of the story is, you better get in with the popular crowd at all cost, because having no friends makes you EVIL.

The romance is sparse and pointless. It really doesn't need to be there. It serves no purpose. Rob likes Tracy, despite the fact that they barely interact and Tracy gives him no reason to like her. But the kisses are so special. Ugh.

Recommendation

I don't recommend this one. It's boring and silly and it makes no sense. 1.5 stars.

On Portals: A Review of Upsetting the Tides by David Englund

I know, I know, I'm supposed to be reviewing Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews. But I got stuck in a waiting room yesterday with nothing but my Kindle, and one thing lead to another....Magic Slays is coming, probably by the end of the week. In the meantime, I present you with a review of Upsetting the Tides.

Our main character is Clark, an ordinary guy who finds a portal in his backyard, which contains thousands of doors that lead to other worlds. He also finds a device designed to enable intergalactic travel. It can generate a protective shield, allow him to fly, translate alien languages...you get the drill. So, Clark merrily begins exploring worlds at random, but there's a problem: The alien (Tr'zez) that this device belongs to is demanding it back, and the only thing that he'll accept in exchange is a much better device that's found on a hostile planet. In order to keep traveling, and keep Tr'zez from attacking Earth, Clark must retrieve the device and try not to die in the process.

Positive Comments:

The narrative is written half in third person, half first person (in the form of Clark's thoughts). At first, I was ready to call this a negative, but it actually works really well for this type of story. You get an immediate sense of everything Clark is thinking and feeling, as he sees and does incredible things.

The story has a good tone to it. It reminds me of a comic book or a video game--undeniably fun wish fulfillment. An ordinary guy gets to experience something completely extraordinary, he tries to save the day, girls like him, the whole package.

The author obviously put some thought into the creation of cultures of the beings on other planets. The creatures themselves are not well written (I'll get to that) but at least there was an effort made to compare and contrast these non-humans to the human culture Clark is used to.

Critical Comments:

You really have to turn your brain off to deal with the pseudo-science in this one. Here are just a couple of issues I had with it.

1) The technology is not even vaguely explained. Oh, I have this invisibility/shielding/flying machine handheld device...I'll just use it with rampant abandon! No question as to how any of those things actually work and whether or not they're safe. In my mind, Clark is probably going to end up with horrifying full body cancer from using the device, and it would serve him right.

2) The portal only lets through one individual at a time, and only for about three hours. So, even if there were only 100 planets with intelligent life forms, and even if only a third of those life forms knew about the portal, you'd still have as many as 33 people trying to get in at any given time. And once one did get it, it would lock the portal up for three hours. That's a hell of a wait.

3) The evolution explanation. I might be the only one bothered by this, but it bothered me a lot. Many of the planets seem to have creatures similar to animals we have on earth (such as ants), only they've developed human-like intelligence, language, and what not. They've "evolved further" than their Earth counterparts. Later, there is talk of creatures "evolving backwards" to become more primitive. THAT IS NOT HOW NATURAL SELECTION WORKS! Populations of creatures don't evolve toward some perfect being, they just grow more suited to their environment, which tends to change. It's not about better or worse, it's not about the superiority of traits like human speech or walking up right--it's just about survival.

4) Why would there have been ants on other planets? How likely is it that a different environment would produce that exact same creature? Convergent evolution? It just doesn't make sense.

Moving on...

Clark really bugged me. He keeps the portal and everything else that he's discovered to himself. Part of the reason is his mistrust in the government, which is valid. But the bigger issue is that he wants to be the one who gets to use the portal to travel. He's selfish. A discovery like that has implications for every field of science, not to mention the cultural, philosophical, and religious implications. But hey, screw that, Clark has to have his portal-hoping mid-life crisis.

Then there are the other characters. Sarina, a woman from Clark's office, is the ostensible love interest. She's a cardboard cutout of a real person, whose traits include "nice" and "likes fashion". Then, Clark meets this alien chick, and starts to think he likes her too. A love triangle? Really? Love triangles are what authors use when they have no other way of creating romantic tension: It's cheap and it's boring.

The dialogue is awkward. It's not the worst I've seen, but it's definitely on the wooden side. Characters who don't talk like real people don't feel like real people, and it's hard to get invested in their story.

The conflict is weak. Why not just give back the device? I know Clark likes exploring, but when an alien threatens your planet and blows up several buildings in your home town, why not just give up? Why help an obviously unstable person obtain a new unknown device that for all you know may be a world destroying weapon?

So no, I didn't like this one. This type of story can work, and it needs a little more time and a lot more thought put into it. There are too many leaps in logic that make no sense. I don't recommend this one. 1.5 stars.

On Love Potions: A Review of Tris and Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison

I'm probably the last person that should have read a book like Tris and Izzie. I've said often enough that I despise love triangles. But I thought the idea of a modern retelling of Tristan and Isolde might have potential. And the cover is so gorgeous. Yes, I know there's a saying about that, but damn it, just look at this thing--

It's so lovely and atmospheric! Between this and the description, I was prepared for a lot of romance and teen angst and magic--all good things. What I got was frustration.

Backing up a bit, let me summarize briefly: Izzie has been with Mark for over a year, and the two are quite happy together. But Izzie's friend Branna is the proverbial eternal bridesmaid-- nice, but less attractive, shy and socially awkward. Izzie decides to help Branna out by stealing a love potion from Izzie's mother (who is a witch) and attempting to make Branna fall in love with the new kid at school, Tristan. The plan backfires and Izzie ends up in love with Tristan instead.

Positive Comments:

The premise has potential. Even when you add in the contrived love potion conflict, this story could still work. I imagined that it would be a lot like "marriage of convenience" plots in historical romance, or perhaps "fated mates" in paranormal. Two people who initially don't like each other are forced to be together, and over time genuine love develops. Unfortunately that's not the case in this book. It seems like wasted potential.

I liked the secondary characters--namely Mark and Branna. I felt for Mark, who did nothing wrong except date the wrong girl. Plus, at one point he straight up punches Izzie in the head. I'm not condoning abuse here--in the context of the plot, she really deserved it. 

Critical Comments:

I hated Izzie. She's selfish, reckless, manipulative, and worst of all stupid. Her love potion scheme was perhaps the most thoughtless (albeit good intentioned) plan one could possibly invent to help a friend. Much like Jane Austen's Emma, Izzie thinks she knows what's best for everyone, but her attempts to manipulate only make things worse. The real kicker for me was the fact that she drinks the love potion voluntarily. She knows what it is, and that Tristan already drank his half, and whoever drinks the other half will be stuck with him. She gulps down the second half anyway, just to stop Mark or anyone else from drinking it. She could have walked away, or dropped the bottle "accidentally", but no, she drinks it. And then whines about it's apparent effects. Effects that, incidentally, can only be erased by death.

The magic in this universe only barely makes sense. If I've pieced it together correctly, there are witches who use potions, sorcerers who have power over the elements, and alchemists who have power over metals. And also, big scary monsters to battle. It sounds more like the plot to a video game than a paranormal romance novel.

Yeah, the "villain" is a giant snake. I really wish I were kidding.

By the time we get to the final boss battle, where Tris and Izzie face off against Gurmun the snake of doooom, I was really hoping one of them would die. That would solve everyone's problems. Instead we get the most shoe-horned in loophole ever, allowing our "heroes" to save the day.

To be fair, Tristan isn't a bad character. He's severely underdeveloped, but I didn't hate him. However, the romance is extremely thin and not in the least bit believable. There's no build up of emotions, no connection through dialogue or shared experiences, and no affection. The entire relationship is a handful of passionate kisses. This problem was made worse by Izzie's bipolar attitude toward Tristan--one moment she's making out with him, the next she's slapping him across the face.

Rating:

This is not a book I would recommend. At times it approached so-bad-it's-good levels, where it became unintentionally funny. But other than for purposes of poking fun at the silly plot and stupid characters, don't waste your time. 1.5 stars.

On Science and Sex: A Review of Tempting the Beast by Lora Leigh

Lora Leigh is one of those writers who many people like, and who has produced a ridiculous number of books in her lifetime. For many people her work is like crack. And if that's the case for you, awesome. I've only had one experience with her work, and it was...less than positive. Tempting the Beast was the very first book I ever read on my Kindle, and it has stuck in my mind ever since as a pretty big WTF? Here is my review: Beware the Minor Spoilers.

Science: Saving the world, one genetic abomination at a time.

So obviously this is erotica, and I realize erotica is pretty subjective and hard to grade. But to me, this was just bad.

The premise was actually somewhat promising. Callan is one of several genetically manipulated humans--he has lion DNA in his genome--who are all part of some top secret highly unethical experiment. Merinus is a journalist who is eager to expose what was done to Callan and his fellow "Breeds", and requires his cooperation. They meet, sparks fly in a big way, and we find out that they have some sort of intense biological connection. As in, they are in heat and absolutely must have sex, lots of sex, or they suffer painful consequences.

I may have actually been able to ignore the very contrived nature of the plot and all the hokey science fiction, had the characters been likeable. But they are not. Merinus is the worst--she is absolutely too stupid to live. She's understandably upset at being forced into a sexual relationship with Callan. But she uses it as an excuse for the stupidest decisions possible. She gets mad and blames him, though it's not his fault. She lashes out at those trying to help her. She runs away. She gets angry at Callan for killing rapists who would have killed him. She insists that she's tough and un-girly, but her toughest action in her moment of desperation is to call her big brother for help. And Callan isn't much better. He instantly falls into the overly possessive caveman routine so common to this sub-genre of romance. He's arrogant and sexist. While he says he admires Merinus' tough act, he continuously says things along the lines of "her brothers should have trained her better" and other things that demonstrate an utter lack of respect. This is all justified by saying that it's his nature, he can't help it, this is how all men would be were it not for that pesky feminism keeping them in check.

As stated above the plot is contrived entirely to get the main couple to boink a lot. In erotica, that's to be expected. I know a lot of women like the whole fated mate concept--you see it in Christine Feehan, J.R Ward, Kresley Cole, and Eileen Wilks. I don't have a problem with it if it's handled well. By that I mean, if it isn't used as a substitute for real emotional relationship building and depth of feeling that is only gained with time. Well, this book doesn't have much relationship building outside of the sex, so that was a problem for me.

Also, the plot is kind of...gross. There's a doctor and several assistants helping to figure out what's going on with Callan and Merinus. And the research process involves a lot of swabbing and sample taking before and after they have sex. And the doctor comes up with some kind of  birth control, but just as soon figures out that it probably won't work long term. This medical/science drama really took me out of the sexy moments and were just plain creepy.

I was told by people who have gone ahead and read this entire series that this isn't the best book to judge by. I may attempt book two at some point to see if it improves, but probably not soon. I'm giving this book 1.5 stars.