Attack of the Reviews! (2/2)
May. 11th, 2008 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesHerein lies reviews. And also My Thoughts on Romance.
So, this time, I'm reviewing Blue Moonby Lori Handeland, Naked in Death by J D Robb (aka Nora Roberts), and The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Blue Moonby Lori Handeland
He's a rebellious Ojibwe professor with a penchant for activism and a bad reputation. She is a small-town cop with a troubled past. Together... they fightcrime werewolves!
The plot -- Jessie (female MC and narrator) discovering that the rash of odd deaths and disappearances isn't rabies or dumb tourists, but werewolves, lead by someone planning on becoming the Wolf God through Ancient Indian Ritual -- is decent. What I couldn't stomach is how Jessie and Will (male MC and Obligatory Love Interest) interacted. Really, the two of them could be quite interesting, if the plot didn't tend to take a derailing into 'Jessie thinks Will is hot and sexy, which leads to sex'. I mean, I thought Jessie was interesting and Will could be interesting, and the two of them might have had an interesting interaction, except most of the stuff they did when sharing a scene together is basically hump like bunnies.
There was also attempt to make it seem like Will was the antagonist, which didn't work for me, just because the book couldn't make me forget that it was a romance -- in other words, the odds of Designated Love Interest being the villain is about the odds that both main characters take vows of celibacy.
The thing is, that the non-romance plot was decent, and if I could just maybe get some vibe for how Jessie and Will interact besides 'sexsexsexsex', I might have enjoyed the romance. I mean, I don't care how hot a fictional character (especially one in a book) is -- if I wanted to read hot fictional sex, I could take my chances on the internet. Make me care about the characters, and their relationship, and I'll care a lot more about the sex.
The short story I picked this up on was about Jessie and Will's wedding, in which it's revealed that Will's meddling grandma (who has been dead for ten years, but this is a paranormal romance) planted a love charm on both of them. Which might explain the hormonal overdrive, but might just be a retcon.
There are also more in the series, but it appears to follow the romance series pattern of 'couple tangental to the pervious couple meet and fall in love/have hot sex/both'. Which is a shame, as one of my favorite things are seeing how established couples balance work and romance, plus learning more about the actual plot. I'd rather read more about Jessie than get attached to a new character -- who looks to have a Tragic Past involving her husband and kid getting killed by werewolves. Yeah... giving this a pass.
Naked in Death by J D Robb (aka Nora Roberts)
So, this one was recced by![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
zannechaos and as a result of Fandom Wank -- someone linked a romance novel kerfuffle where Nora Roberts was being awesome. So I decided to check out one of the books she wrote that was not explicitly a romance.
The In Death series is a police procedural set in a future NYC. The main character, Eve, is a cop who gets the case to investigate the murder of a prostitute who also happens to be the granddaughter of an influential conservative senator. Soon, there were more murders, turning a Senator's Granddaughter Gets Killed to Serial Killer Kills Prostitutes. The case was moderately interesting -- I kind of pinged the people involved within the first half of the book, and was mostly reading on to see how they did it. Decent airplane reading, but not something I'd keep around.
What tips the scale is the subplot. Eve falls for someone involved in the case -- which again, gets my hackles up. Listen, authors, if you try to create suspense by having Cop-Protragonist's Love Interest be potentially the Killer, it most likely isn't going to work on me. Because I don't think you are the type to have it turn out to be true, then make Protagonist arrest her love interest AND get into serious trouble for dating/having sex with someone involved in a current case. Maybe if it was an existing love interest, or someone would actually have the protagonist make that mistake and reap the consequences.
Add in that I think Eve's love interest is a rich and pompous jerkwad who makes the average cat win prizes for altruism in comparison. Seriously, I got nothing but negative vibes from him -- even when he moved from 'I want in her pants' to 'I really do love her', I still got the impression that his fundamental nature didn't change. Which bugged me, since Eve was changing for him (I'll take 'Healing Cock' for 100, Alex) -- it made the relationship have a bit of an uncomfortable power balance.
Yeah, I was rooting for him to be the Killer even though I knew that the author wouldn't do that to Eve. I wanted to send him through the effing wall.
Yeah, probably not conductive to continuing the series when I'm rooting for the main love interest to just leave. Unless he does, I mean.
The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
Okay, so this is the third book in a four-book series (fourth isn't out yet). It's also fantasy romance -- to the point where people on the Bujold mailing list make a game of guessing whether reviewers are fantasy fen or romance fen by how the reviews read. And, I like it -- enough to have books 2 and 3 in hardcover.
So, I'm going to try not to spoil books 1 and 2 for this. The book has kind of a post-apocalyptic fantasy feel to it. Dag, Male Main Character, is a member of a group of people called Lakewalkers, who use their magic to kill monsters called malices that would otherwise suck dry all of the life force on the continent. (They are also descended from a group of mage-kings who used to run the area and caused the malices to come into being, so it's sort of an ancestral guilt thing.) Fawn, Female Main Character, is a Farmer (non-magic settler in the area) who, at the start of the book, is running away from home thanks to getting knocked up out of wedlock. Fawn happens to get kidnapped by a malice's goons, and Dag is present to help save her -- though Fawn is actually the one who delivers the final blow to the malice. Since this is a romance, they end up falling in love -- which creates problems, since Lakewalkers and Farmers don't trust each other, and barely interact. Dag's people are unhappy, Fawn's people are unhappy -- we have conflict (you know, besides the malices who will eat the world).
Now, this could turn predictable, but Bujold uses Dag and Fawn's romance to explore how the Lakewalkers and Farmer interact. And it isn't simple -- by Book 3, Dag and Fawn are out to find a way to bring their two cultures together, since the other two models (avoid each other, and have mages rule non-mages) don't seem to work. Dag also promised Fawn a trip to see the ocean, so they are heading down the river by boat. The geography is similar to the Great Lakes/Southeast US -- Bujold has a history of doing that with her fantasy -- so you can imagine the two of them heading down the Ohio/Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. By Book 3, Dag and Fawn are comfortable in their relationship -- which makes me squee.
Overall, this series does a bit better than the other series I'm reviewing. I could get a sense of both Dag and Fawn as characters and how their relationship grew. Also both of them had problems and brought things to the relationship -- both characters had family issues, Fawn had the twit of the guy who got her pregnant (who she had a crush on, but he was just interested in an easy lay), and Dag was a widower (his wife was killed by malices -- he also lost an arm in this). Having both characters POVs let me see the other from their eyes, which was nice.
So, yeah, I like this series, and can't wait to see how it concludes.
And, in the time it took me to write these reviews, I already read two other books. And need to reshelve all of mine. And maybe find a spot for a new bookshelf.
So, this time, I'm reviewing Blue Moonby Lori Handeland, Naked in Death by J D Robb (aka Nora Roberts), and The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Blue Moonby Lori Handeland
He's a rebellious Ojibwe professor with a penchant for activism and a bad reputation. She is a small-town cop with a troubled past. Together... they fight
The plot -- Jessie (female MC and narrator) discovering that the rash of odd deaths and disappearances isn't rabies or dumb tourists, but werewolves, lead by someone planning on becoming the Wolf God through Ancient Indian Ritual -- is decent. What I couldn't stomach is how Jessie and Will (male MC and Obligatory Love Interest) interacted. Really, the two of them could be quite interesting, if the plot didn't tend to take a derailing into 'Jessie thinks Will is hot and sexy, which leads to sex'. I mean, I thought Jessie was interesting and Will could be interesting, and the two of them might have had an interesting interaction, except most of the stuff they did when sharing a scene together is basically hump like bunnies.
There was also attempt to make it seem like Will was the antagonist, which didn't work for me, just because the book couldn't make me forget that it was a romance -- in other words, the odds of Designated Love Interest being the villain is about the odds that both main characters take vows of celibacy.
The thing is, that the non-romance plot was decent, and if I could just maybe get some vibe for how Jessie and Will interact besides 'sexsexsexsex', I might have enjoyed the romance. I mean, I don't care how hot a fictional character (especially one in a book) is -- if I wanted to read hot fictional sex, I could take my chances on the internet. Make me care about the characters, and their relationship, and I'll care a lot more about the sex.
The short story I picked this up on was about Jessie and Will's wedding, in which it's revealed that Will's meddling grandma (who has been dead for ten years, but this is a paranormal romance) planted a love charm on both of them. Which might explain the hormonal overdrive, but might just be a retcon.
There are also more in the series, but it appears to follow the romance series pattern of 'couple tangental to the pervious couple meet and fall in love/have hot sex/both'. Which is a shame, as one of my favorite things are seeing how established couples balance work and romance, plus learning more about the actual plot. I'd rather read more about Jessie than get attached to a new character -- who looks to have a Tragic Past involving her husband and kid getting killed by werewolves. Yeah... giving this a pass.
Naked in Death by J D Robb (aka Nora Roberts)
So, this one was recced by
zannechaos and as a result of Fandom Wank -- someone linked a romance novel kerfuffle where Nora Roberts was being awesome. So I decided to check out one of the books she wrote that was not explicitly a romance.The In Death series is a police procedural set in a future NYC. The main character, Eve, is a cop who gets the case to investigate the murder of a prostitute who also happens to be the granddaughter of an influential conservative senator. Soon, there were more murders, turning a Senator's Granddaughter Gets Killed to Serial Killer Kills Prostitutes. The case was moderately interesting -- I kind of pinged the people involved within the first half of the book, and was mostly reading on to see how they did it. Decent airplane reading, but not something I'd keep around.
What tips the scale is the subplot. Eve falls for someone involved in the case -- which again, gets my hackles up. Listen, authors, if you try to create suspense by having Cop-Protragonist's Love Interest be potentially the Killer, it most likely isn't going to work on me. Because I don't think you are the type to have it turn out to be true, then make Protagonist arrest her love interest AND get into serious trouble for dating/having sex with someone involved in a current case. Maybe if it was an existing love interest, or someone would actually have the protagonist make that mistake and reap the consequences.
Add in that I think Eve's love interest is a rich and pompous jerkwad who makes the average cat win prizes for altruism in comparison. Seriously, I got nothing but negative vibes from him -- even when he moved from 'I want in her pants' to 'I really do love her', I still got the impression that his fundamental nature didn't change. Which bugged me, since Eve was changing for him (I'll take 'Healing Cock' for 100, Alex) -- it made the relationship have a bit of an uncomfortable power balance.
Yeah, I was rooting for him to be the Killer even though I knew that the author wouldn't do that to Eve. I wanted to send him through the effing wall.
Yeah, probably not conductive to continuing the series when I'm rooting for the main love interest to just leave. Unless he does, I mean.
The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
Okay, so this is the third book in a four-book series (fourth isn't out yet). It's also fantasy romance -- to the point where people on the Bujold mailing list make a game of guessing whether reviewers are fantasy fen or romance fen by how the reviews read. And, I like it -- enough to have books 2 and 3 in hardcover.
So, I'm going to try not to spoil books 1 and 2 for this. The book has kind of a post-apocalyptic fantasy feel to it. Dag, Male Main Character, is a member of a group of people called Lakewalkers, who use their magic to kill monsters called malices that would otherwise suck dry all of the life force on the continent. (They are also descended from a group of mage-kings who used to run the area and caused the malices to come into being, so it's sort of an ancestral guilt thing.) Fawn, Female Main Character, is a Farmer (non-magic settler in the area) who, at the start of the book, is running away from home thanks to getting knocked up out of wedlock. Fawn happens to get kidnapped by a malice's goons, and Dag is present to help save her -- though Fawn is actually the one who delivers the final blow to the malice. Since this is a romance, they end up falling in love -- which creates problems, since Lakewalkers and Farmers don't trust each other, and barely interact. Dag's people are unhappy, Fawn's people are unhappy -- we have conflict (you know, besides the malices who will eat the world).
Now, this could turn predictable, but Bujold uses Dag and Fawn's romance to explore how the Lakewalkers and Farmer interact. And it isn't simple -- by Book 3, Dag and Fawn are out to find a way to bring their two cultures together, since the other two models (avoid each other, and have mages rule non-mages) don't seem to work. Dag also promised Fawn a trip to see the ocean, so they are heading down the river by boat. The geography is similar to the Great Lakes/Southeast US -- Bujold has a history of doing that with her fantasy -- so you can imagine the two of them heading down the Ohio/Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. By Book 3, Dag and Fawn are comfortable in their relationship -- which makes me squee.
Overall, this series does a bit better than the other series I'm reviewing. I could get a sense of both Dag and Fawn as characters and how their relationship grew. Also both of them had problems and brought things to the relationship -- both characters had family issues, Fawn had the twit of the guy who got her pregnant (who she had a crush on, but he was just interested in an easy lay), and Dag was a widower (his wife was killed by malices -- he also lost an arm in this). Having both characters POVs let me see the other from their eyes, which was nice.
So, yeah, I like this series, and can't wait to see how it concludes.
And, in the time it took me to write these reviews, I already read two other books. And need to reshelve all of mine. And maybe find a spot for a new bookshelf.
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Date: 2008-05-11 11:23 pm (UTC)As a non sequitur, is that art from the Blue Rose RPG in your icon?
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Date: 2008-05-12 06:33 am (UTC)And that is Blue Rose art -- I think I made the icon for JournalFen, back when I was dealing with drama on Green Ronin's forums. (I need to play it again -- I ran a game for friends before I left for grad school, and always meant to do another one.)