Dark Lover

Author: J.R. Ward

Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Erotic Fiction

Rating: B

 Wrath is the King of the Vampires, known as the Blind King, but hasn't really embraced his title.  Then, one day his long time friend and brother in arms Darius asks Wrath to help his daughter, Beth, through her transition to vampire, shortly before being killed by a lesser - the vampires enemies.  Wrath then takes it upon him to help Beth, before slowly coming to realize that it is not enough to fight the lessers with his brothers, he must also lead his people.

There are a few things that should be noted here.  One is that while Dark Lover is not the best book in J.R. Ward's The Black Dagger Brotherhood series it is the one that opens us up to the world within which the series is set - and what an interesting world that is.  The second is that Ward's vampires here are really very different from other vampires, eliminating a lot of the things that really make them a threat to humans - and really removing them from the world of humans.  The third is that these books are to a degree formulaic and once you figure out the formula the ultimate ending to things becomes clear - not that you're not goign to be apprehensive and crying at some point before hand.

This book is fun.  The vampires are awesome, and really love how Ward goes back and forth between a number of different perspectives - telling the story of both the book's core relationship and things that are going on in the periphery.  I really liked the humans in this book too, although I was a bit disappointed to see that with the exception of Beth and Butch they disappear in the later books.  My favourite part, though, is that the vampires are just so different from any other vampires I've ever seen before. I love when I'm reading a fantasy book that seems to be inspired by other fantasy books but are also different and strike out on their own.  The problem that I have with some books is that their authors so clearly don't enjoy reading the genre in which they write, which is something that I never felt in Dark Lover.  It's a good, engrossing, quick read.  Perhaps a bit smutty or trashy, but still fun.

Fifty Shades Freed

Author: E.L. James
Genre: Erotic Fiction
Rating: F

Despite the many flaws of the Fifty Shades books, I can say that there is one thing that I actually really liked about them: the titles.  The name “Fifty Shades” in itself refers to Christian Grey and as you read the books it kind of becomes apparent that the protagonist is not narrator Ana so much as it is her lover, Christian.  Sure, things don’t follow him as nicely, but the story is more about his development and growth than it is about hers.  Fifty Shades of Grey sets up who Christian is, while Fifty Shades Darker divulges deeper into his many, many issues.  The finale, Fifty Shades Freed shows Christian being freed from his plethora of issues.

I really had to force myself to read this book.  I tried to read it when I read the first two, but I just could not get into it.  I spent the first four chapters yelling at the book and rolling my eyes and feeling just overall bothered by it.  So I put it down and moved on to other things.  Then I came back to it, because despite my dislike of the series I did want to finish it.  I like completing things, no matter how bad they are.

At one point in the novel, Ana thinks to herself “I’ve had enough of his cavalier, petulant, and frankly childish behaviour.”  I’m glad that she’s finally had enough of it – I’d had enough of it fairly early on in the first book.  Christian is a fucking child and acts like one – and he treats Ana like a child.  There is no development on this.  For a moment she finally stands up for herself and points out the bullshit way that he treats her and the way that he insists on getting his own way… then he starts talking about sex and she caves.  Because the way to solve all problems is to fuck.  I get that this is erotica, but I really hate going “this really dramatic thing happened and they almost died and now they’re fucking lots” or “fight, fight, fight, Christian basically abuses her, sex.”  I think that’s what I hate most about these books.  It’s not the poor writing or the melodramatic plot, but rather the fact that none of the issues between the two protagonists ever seems to get resolved and everything is just some sort of preamble for them to have sex.  There are a few moments in the series that I found hot, but they tended to not actually be the sex ones.  The scene in Freed when Ana washes Christian’s hair was amazingly hot – right up until Christian started talking about fucking her.  When you think about the hottest moments in a movie or book it’s never the actual sex, that’s just sex.  It’s the moments of tenderness between the characters.  Fifty Shades doesn’t have many of these moments, and the ones that it does have are often quickly ruined by Christian being a douche.

What else… I’m not going to touch on things like the stalking and Ray’s accidents, because simply put I think James’ attempts to introduce suspense to the story are really just ridiculous and over the top.  I’m not going to touch on the pregnancy because… well, really, the whole thing pisses me off and I don’t want to go off on a rant about how much of a giant douche Christian is or about how when I read erotica I don’t want to have to also read about transvaginal ultrasounds and the importance of using protection.  Also, did I mention that Christian’s a giant douche?  And a sexist one at that.

I’m not going to get into any of that because I’ve spent enough time yelling at this book and rolling my eyes while reading it.  I don’t need to do the same while writing a review of it.  I will give Ana credit in one count: when she gets pregnant she does stand up for herself.  The problem is, by this time I’m so used to their ridiculous fights that go nowhere that even as she’s standing up for herself I’m waiting for her to back down and fuck Mr. Perfect.  And really, she didn’t fail me there.  She stood up for herself, but as soon as Christian started giving her the silent treatment she effectively broke.  When your husband flips out on you for getting pregnant (because he of course had nothing to do with it) then goes and gets drunk with his ex you’re not supposed to essentially forgive him – at least through your actions if not your thoughts – within a day.  I think I just came to the conclusion that I would have liked these books a lot more if they had acknowledge Christian’s douchery more.  As messed up as it is, it would have made him a more attractive character.  There’s something hot about things that you know are wrong and bad for you.  There’s nothing hot about things that are wrong and bad for you when they’re presented as being completely normal and okay – and I’m not talking about the sex.  Furthermore, in not really standing up for herself Ana just becomes this wet towel of a character; the type of woman who brushes away domestic abuse because, well, he didn’t really mean to punch her in the face he was just having a bad day and had had a bit too much to drink.  Sure Christian doesn’t physically abuse her (outside of the bedroom, which doesn’t count because that’s part of an agreed upon sexual act that both parties enjoy), but he’s still abusive.

I think I need to wrap this up.  When I was in high school I was always told that when providing criticism I should do so in what my teachers called “feedback sandwiches” (or something to that extent) and I called “shit sandwiches.”  According to them you were supposed to say a good thing, then a bad thing, then another good thing, and repeat for each bad thing that you said.  The way I’ve always done it, however, is to say at least one good thing, then all the bad things (sometimes with a few other good things tossed in there), and then finish on a good thing.  Instead of the feedback sandwiches that overload you on all the good stuff and thus potentially lose the bad stuff, I try to provide the manwich of shit sandwiches.  So, to close this review of Fifty Shades Freed, I’m going to end on a good note, something that I’m happy about in regards to this novel.  I’m happy that it’s finished and that I will most likely never again read another book by E.L. James.  Oh, also, the Epilogue made me feel much better about the Epilogue in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I'm even okay with "Albus Severus Potter."

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.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Author: E.L. James

Genre: Erotic Fiction

Rating: F

I don’t know how Fifty Shades of Grey became a bestseller.  I don’t even know how Fifty Shades of Grey became a published novel.  There is much that can be said about the novel, little of it that is good.  In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I very rarely read full out romance novels, almost never read erotica, and am not into BDSM.  None of that is what made me dislike this novel, however.  The reason why I disliked Fifty Shades of Grey is because it’s a bad novel.

To sum up the plot: Anastasia Steele is an innocent, virginal soon-to-be university graduate who, at the start of the novel, has to interview billionaire, CEO, and late twenty to early thirty-something Christian Grey.  Grey is a domineering, controlling douche who essentially takes to stalking Ana, despite the fact that he repeatedly tells her that he’s bad news and a danger to her.  Despite all the signs that pursuing a relationship with Grey might be a bad thing, Ana lets Mr. Grey sweep her off her feet, all while protesting against his actions.  It turns out that Grey is a dominant looking for a new submissive and despite the fact that Ana resists him on everything, he thinks she’d be the perfect one.  For reasons that I can’t really figure out, Ana decides that, despite the fact that she has no desire to be controlled and is afraid of what Christian might do to her, he is the man for her.  Because, of course, stalker tendencies, anger issues, and an inability to take no for an answer, are no match for beauty.  I kid you not – Christian’s only redeeming quality is his physical attraction (his money is redeeming as well, but as Ana gets upset every time Christian tries to buy her anything, I’m fairly certain that’s not why she’s attracted to him).

This novel started out as Twilight fan fiction and really should have stayed there.  I have to give James points for attempting to write in first person, present tense, only because doing so successfully is extremely difficult.  However, she doesn’t successfully do so.  Her attempt at creating a plot is ludicrous.  Ana provides her readers the most mundane details about absolutely everything, even treating the reader to scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot.  Entire characters are created with no purpose to the story – Ana is given not one, but two secondary love interests, just to establish that she is attractive to the male population.  One of them serves a point in pushing forward the plot, the other just makes you question how our protagonist made it to almost twenty-two without ever having so much as a kiss. 

Sadly, the flaws with the characters do not stop at pointless secondary characters.  James seems to think that by adding melodrama elements to her characters she makes them deeper, but this isn’t true.  There is no real depth to Ana or Christian, and the details that she adds just makes them more and more ridiculous.  Ana is written as if James has no clue what a twenty-something university student is like – which is entirely possible, given as it has been a while since she was a twenty-something anything.

I have a hard time buying that there are attractive twenty-two year old students who have never had sex or gotten drunk (without having some specific reason for having never done either), and don’t own their own computer.  I’m also a bit confused as to just how Ana has never gotten drunk prior to her graduation, given just how often she drinks alcohol and her obvious lightweight status.  I’m also not buying her overall innocence; sure she’s a virgin and never been kissed, but in the age of the internet (which as a twenty-something, she grew up in), the average person is at least aware of many of the sexual practices that come up in the novel.  They’re definitely aware of the concept of blow jobs, although Ana is blown away by the suggestion that Christian might enjoy one.  Every time she is shocked by something that he suggests I can’t help but feel the same way I do whenever Taylor Swift is surprised that she won another award.

Then of course, there’s Christian Grey.  While James has cast Ana in the role of the unbelievable innocent, she’s cast Grey in the role of the horribly damned – he’s the serpent to Ana’s Eve.  In addition to being a billionaire and the C.E.O. of his own company, Grey was adopted at the age of four by a ‘perfect’ family (his words, not mine), to which he never really fit in.  Grey’s birth mother was a crack whore who was unable to support her son and possibly burned him with cigarettes, consequently Grey has issues with people wasting food and doesn’t like to be touched.  As a teenager he entered into a sexual relationship with one of his mother’s friends; she was the dominant, he was the submissive.  Since then he’s become the dominant, having had fifteen significant partners and countless others.  Grey spends much of the book trying to convince Ana to trust him and saying that the submissive has all the power in the relationship because the submissive has the ability to say no – completely disregarding the fact that almost every time Ana says no he either completely disregards her wishes or gets angry with her and threatens physical harm – at one point he even threatens to tie her up in a crate and put her in the cargo hold of a plane.  It’s impossible to tell when Christian’s joking and when he’s serious because both his jokes and his behaviour cross the line.  He outright stalks Ana at points in the novel, having gone so far as to put a tracking device on her phone so that he can always know where she is.  But did I mention that he’s hot?  Because in the world of E.L. James, that’s really all that seems to matter.

When it comes down to it, this book is trash.  To call it “Mommy Porn” is to insult the intelligence of mother’s everywhere.  James should have stuck to writing fan fiction.