Fifty Shades Darker

Author: E.L. James

Genre: Erotic Fiction

Rating: D

“You can still say no. You can always say no.”

I think the above quote is a big part of why I have a problem with the Fifty Shades series.  Throughout the first and second books love interest Christian Grey tells protagonist Anastasia Steele that she holds all the power in the relationship because, while he is the dominant, she has the power to say no at any time and he has to listen to her.  The problem, however, is that he never listens to her.  Time and time again, Ana attempts to assert herself and Christian’s response, if she’s lucky, is that he simply ignores her and does what he wants anyways – when she’s less lucky he tends to threaten her, and has actually physically punished her for her disobedience.  Ana’s reactions, however, are just as bad.  With the exception of the concluding incident of Grey – which is resolved very quickly in Darker – whenever she does actually get upset with Christian’s reaction it’s only momentarily.  It’s like she’s going “grr” every time her boyfriend is a controlling dick, but forgets about why she was upset in the first place as soon as she hits send on her email.

There is more of a plot to this novel than its predecessor.  That’s not to say that it’s a good plot, just that there is one.  If you remember, the original was focused on the set up of guy meets girl, girl falls for guy, guy has deep issues and is really kinky sexually, girl figures out how to deal until guy finally takes the spanking too far.  Darker picks up roughly where Grey leaves off; Ana is mourning the loss of the relationship and dealing with her now job, while Christian is being his usual controlling self and trying to find a way to order his way back into Ana’s good graces.  Once that’s achieved the plot then moves into threats towards Ana and Christian’s lives, as one of Christian’s former subs begins to stalk him.  When that’s resolved Christian goes missing in his helicopter, and when he’s saved it’s just in time for his birthday.  Hanging over all of this is Ana’s new job, the fact that just about every man she’s ever come into contact with is in love with Ana, the overall threat of Christian’s first sexual partner and now business partner, and whether or not Ana’s going to accept Christian’s proposal.  Because when you’ve only known someone for a total of five weeks and have never been in a real relationship before marriage is totally the best idea.

Let’s deal first with the plot issues, then with the relationship issues.  I actually liked the general plot of Christian being stalked by his deranged former sub.  The way its set up kind of says something about James’ feelings towards the actual dom/sub culture: her dom in this series is a deeply traumatized man with serious psychological issues, and the one true sub that she shows is outright insane.  The heroine, who is supposed to represent everything that is pure and innocent is really against the culture and, despite enjoying some aspects of it, very much refuses to be put into the position of sub.  I did feel that this plot was resolved too quickly, and as a result James had to throw in the whole Christian going missing storyline which was just a bit too over the top.  If your book is only about 300 pages long, you shouldn’t need to have two different major events in a very short period of time.  It seemed like this whole book covered about a week and a half of time, so it really seemed like on Wednesday Christian’s stalker tries to kill Ana, then on Friday Christian crashes his helicopter, but everything’s okay by Saturday.  I can see where she’s going with the helicopter incident, but in this book it largely felt unnecessary – either she should have focused more on the stalking plot and eliminated the crash, or developed the crash more and eliminated the stalker.

With that being said, let’s move on to the relationship stuff.  The reoccurring issue of these books seems to be that every man who Ana meets instantly wants her, and none of them are particularly subtle about this desire – nor are any of them capable of taking no for an answer.  In the first book this desire is presented through Ana’s interactions with her friend, José, and boss’ brother, Paul (I believe).  Paul comes off as little more than a persistent and annoying flirt, while José is supposed to be a grade A asshole because one night he got drunk and pushed his case a little too far.  He is the villain here, despite the fact that in the same incident Christian (who was sober) essentially stalked Ana (who was not sober) in order to find out where she was, took her to his hotel, and stripped her while she was passed out.  Forgive me if I find one of these incidents somewhat more troubling than the other.  In the second book there is still the threat of José, to the point that Christian is basically pissy every time her friend is mentioned, as well as the threat of Ethan, the brother of Ana’s best friend, and that of her new boss.  In the case of her new boss Christian essentially has psychic powers, predicting that the man is a scumbag and a threat to Ana before there has been any cause to believe as much.  While I do have to say that yes, the guy did prove to be a scumbag, I think Christian’s reaction pre-scumbaggery was totally over the top.   His girlfriend gets a job and when he’s not able to talk her into giving it up he decides to buy the company.  Then, when his girlfriend is given the opportunity to go on a work trip, he uses his new power to make it not happen.  The boss’ scumbaggery aside, this whole reaction is just completely over the top.  This is the twenty-first century.  It is not appropriate to try to dictate whether or not your girlfriend is allowed to work or go on work related trips.  Buying the company and changing the company rules so that she can’t go on the trip is just another way of throwing a hissy fit.  In a bit of a change of focus, throwing an actual hissy fit because your boyfriend has a continued business relationship with an ex is just as bad as him throwing a hissy fit because you have a continued friendship with a guy who obviously has a thing for you.  Either you need to stop being friends with the guy, or you need to suck it up and accept his friendship with the girl.

My final issue with this book is in regards to the whole proposal.  Christian displays serious mental issues in this book, issues that weren’t really developed in the first one.  The more the book develops the more it seems that he suffers from Bipolar disorder or even a split personality.  One second he’s amiable and fun, the next he’s enraged by the silliest little thing.  At one point when he thinks that Ana is going to leave him again he has a complete breakdown, reverting to a rather infantile state.  Yet, neither he nor Ana question whether or not Christian has a good mental state for marriage.  Further aggravating the situation is the fact that, with the exception of his former lovers, everyone in Christian’s life is all for this quickie marriage – including his therapist – because they believe that a stable relationship with Ana is good for him.  His therapist even goes so far as to basically compare dating Ana to therapy treatments.  None of them seem to question whether or not such a relationship is actually good for Ana.  As good as he might make her feel, and as good as the sex is, I do have to question just what James is saying by having her strong protagonist jump into marriage with someone who is very clearly mentally unbalanced.