(no subject)

I am constantly amazed at how awful published fiction can be. I don't necessarily mean the writing quality, just the... world view, I guess. I picked something up because it was book 1 of at least 22 so if it's even readable then hey, something to do. From the cover and blurb it's clearly a 'shagging with a side of urban fantasy' story rather than my preferred 'urban fantasy with maybe shagging', but whatever, those seem popular. But I seem to have stalled half way through the book.

So the set up is ( Read more... )

So basically the book is saying they're both better than literal nothing, or actively painful being treated like a thing. So romantic!

Like, I know I've said it before, but finding someone who treats you like a human is not 'omg true love happily ever after', it's a minimum requirement.

After that you've got to figure out if your lives fit together on the important points, which in the books I read tend to include attitudes to killing vampires and so forth, and then if you can fit your lives and careers together, and get on with each other's families, etc etc etc

Making sure your characters have either no family or abusive family so they can finally find someone to make a family with... again, 'better than nothing' or 'better than awful' isn't as romantic as entire genres seem to think it is.



Fanfic is frequently so much better than this. Even fanfic built on the same premise. ... yes I've read plural stories where one or the other of the OTP was a summonable supernatural entity usually used as a sex slave. Humans, go figure.

ugh, romance books

have finished the fantasy book with the magic sex slave.
that was really very super rubbish.

the blurb on the back said that a sex therapist who has gone right off sex after hearing her patients go on about it accidentally summons this dude under an enchantment where he has to have sex with his owner, and then they figure out if love can break the curse.

and pretty quickly the terms of the curse breaking are defined as not having sex with the supernaturally hot guy for the whole month he's summoned for.

so, okay. treat each other as people. that'll work out.

( Read more... )

So basically the book blurb wasn't very promising, and the story it describes is rather better than the one that was actually inside the book.

But I think that's basically because it's from very outside my genre. I mean, if you're just looking for a romance novel with some time travelling dude to beat up that creepy guy from work and that creepy guy from college and then choose you instead of a life of fortune and glory, tada, it hits those beats. It's just from where I'm standing that's a creepy sort of fantasy I can entirely live without.