kaigou | reviews (electronic books) -- part 1 (Reply)

Quick reviews, along with various commentaries on observed patterns (because I can't go three steps without analysis of some kind... I'd probably analyze geese flying patterns if I didn't have the internet and media). No significant spoilers in this post -- I may do a separate post with spoilerific comments, and link to there, for those who don't care and/or want to read spoilers for a story.

Orange Moon - Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain
Parallel Process - Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain
Silk and Poison - Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain
Soul of the Night - Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain
Deviations: Domination - Chris Owen & Jodi Payne
Deviations: Submission - Chris Owen & Jodi Payne
Currents: Bloodlines - Mechele Armstrong
Heaven - Jet Mykles
A Heart in Shadows - Emily Veinglory
Knowing Patrick - Emily Veinglory
Pilgrim Heart - Emily Veinglory
The Sculptor's Muse - Emily Veinglory
His Beautiful Samurai - Sedonia Guillone
My Father's Lover - D.J. Manly

All stories reviewed in this post are R/MA.

Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain

Orange Moon

Oi, if you take every single fanfic/yaoi/farce/jPop trope and throw them all into a blender... you'd get this story. (Which, if you're in the mood for silly-induced angst, and general silliness, and boybands, then... well, it's probably your cup of tea.) Basically, young ingenue-pop-star meets older/established pop-star and is completely smitten, but oh, goodness, our ingenue has never even been kissed, and here he is with Older!Experienced!man! ... panic sets in, he flees, but rock-star is intrigued (of course) and sets his sights on pursuit.

Except in this case, 'pursuit' involves cross-dressing as a girl, because that's always the best way to get close to your ~~still wet behind the ears~~ ~~barely legal~~ favorite jPop boi. And then, of course, there's misunderstandings and a few public scenes that are outrageously over-the-top, followed by complete/malicious defamation of our ingenue by his jPop handlers (who refuse to allow that one of their little stars might be, gasp, gay). Throw in a few gratuitous on-stage bits, plenty of cringe-worthy (if you take it seriously) jPop references and tropes, and you've got the results of this blender.

A fun, utterly harmless, completely exaggerated and ridiculous story... but I think the only thing that saved it was that the authors themselves didn't seem to be taking it much more seriously than some of the characters. Delivered with a bit of a knowing nod to the overly-high-drama, but not in a wink-wink-nod-nod annoying way, just an aware way.

Silk and Poison

Soul of the Night

Okay, the first? Big fat waste of time, and damn hard to find any redeeming value in the characters. It's a two-part story, set in San Fransisco during the heydey of Chinatown, following the travails of a Japanese son come to America to visit his immigrant-robber-baron father, and the son's mother, sold to the Triad to pay her husband's debts. The son is not just a spoiled wastral, but also a cruel and vicious man who meets the Triad's Chinese assassin -- a truly vicious and cruel person in his own right, who's also hooked on opium along with his kink of torture as foreplay -- and before you know it, the young man's killed one prostitute and happily following the assassin into killing again. Uhm, yay?

Given that I'd read Soul of the Night first, and enjoyed it so much, I had hopes there'd be at least some redeeming elements in this counterpart story, but it was damn hard to find any. The mother's story isn't much better, following Plot #10 of the romance version of Stockholm Syndrome... oh, another dubious yay, and throw in some quietly-suffering angst on the part of her handler falling for her (uhh), and... it's altogether a story that might appeal to those who really like PL Nunn's extreme torture-geared grotesqueries, but not really my cup of tea.

Soul had far more charm, for me: the two protagonists are part of a Japanese kabuki troupe. Kiyo is the Japanese (albeit imported myth) version of a vampire, but his lover, Ryuhei, has no idea of this fact. It's not something that Kiyo necessarily agonizes over -- he doesn't seem to spend a lot of time berating the situation he's in, personally -- but he does worry about Ryuhei's reaction should he ever find out.

Mostly, you learn as the story goes on, because Ryuhei is the utter dramaqueen incarnation of any total gay queen you'd ever see... and yet, at the same time, the character is charming, caring, melodramatic but generous, a little blind to his lover's faults and quick to worry that he's getting old and unattractive and his lover will move on -- and yet, when Ryuhei begins to truly believe that Kiyo has found someone else, despite all the farcial/overblown elements of Ryuhei's personality, his pain is so very quiet, deep, and human, that I couldn't help but feel intensely for him.

Yes, there are rough spots between them, and there's a significant plotline in the story, with some quirky and distinctive supporting characters (in contrast to all but Veinglory's stories, below) in a genre where 'supporting character' seems to be code for 'cardboard that delivers lines when prodded'. But through it, these two keep coming back together, and it makes sense -- it's not just that Kiyo provides a kind of stolid faith that Ryuhei lacks within himself -- or that Ryuhei provides an exhuberant thirst for life that Kiyo lacks in his aged distance -- but also the sense of being two strangers in a strange land.

(Plus, major points to the authors for recognizing the Anglo biases of the time, in not being able to identify/differentiate between Japanese and Chinese. At one point, the cops discover Ryuhei can speak some English, and they stick him in a jail cell with three Cantonese men, to question them for the police. When he protests that he speaks Japanese, not Cantonese, the police can't seem to grasp that there's a difference. Welcome to the Wild, Ignorant, West.)

Parallel Process

Again with the psychic investigator stuff -- this time, about two grad students struggling to assist their advisor in getting funding for their department at the university. Yawn, because I've seen the X-files, I am a skeptic, and after too many shows with people jiggling the camera and wearing night-goggles, it just gets old. The two authors did well on the intercultural elements in their San Franscico stories, but here, it's a bit flatter -- the Japanese-American student dating the All-American student, and at any point things might step off into solid, well-earned angst, the authors pull back.

Throw in a demon attempting to seduce the ever-shy and somewhat geeky Japanese-American protagonist, and you've got a story that either should've been culled down to a succinct novella, or expanded dramatically into something full-length: it keeps seeming to cut itself off at interesting junctures, and if the authors were reluctant to follow the threads of any raised conflict, they should've edited down to the marrow, rather than continuing to raise points and then carrying on past.
Chris Owen & Jodi Payne

Deviations: Domination

Deviations: Submission

I actually picked up a copy of this series (at least the first two) to see how other authors had tackled the issues of intimacy in BDSM, as research for finishing that (ugh long overdue) last few chapters of KmO. I was rather startled to find this series is not just well-written, but does a great job of exploding a lot of the romanticism/myths around BDSM as a lifestyle, and in terms of the personalities involved. Much of the story is from the dom's point of view; he's a rather solitary person, a vet, and in fact is pretty level-headed but has some big issues with intimacy and control (and I don't mean "must tie you up" control, but as an orphan, it's control as related to fears of abandonment).

There are some excellent dynamics/parts where the dom is faced with the fact that in a relationship, sometimes that means you're not always the strong one -- and that in admitting his fears, sometimes, this means the person 'who plays/is the sub' may still take a dominant/nurturing role, and it doesn't/won't negatively impact the overall relationship, nor make the dom 'less' of a person.

Plus, the authors must know a cop, or just do their research well: the sub is a cop, and they have tiny details here and there that just make the story more, hrm, readable for the trueness of those details -- sometimes I suspect it's the myriad details that together accumulate into something for which we can suspend disbelief. Fr'instance, when the sub first comes to spend a weekend with the dom, he hands over two pagers: one is his personal pager given to him by the dom... and the other is for work. He explains, since 9/11, all cops have had to carry 24-hour pagers so they can be contacted anywhere, at any time, in case of city/state emergency. Most writers, I suspect, wouldn't even think of such a tiny detail.

Other tidbits that pleased me: the cop/sub gets Christmas Day off, but not Christmas Eve, and is on call New Year's Day; when the sub meets another sub for dinner, the restaurant is inside his beat, and he's understandably more tense because this is the neighborhood he covers almost daily. Little throwaway bits like that make my detail-geek heart squee.

The overall relationship and dynamic is really well done, goes at a reasonable pace, and both sides of the equation are fraught with doubts and worries but not so much that they come across as stupid -- just human. Both really like the other, not just in a sexual "you make me so hawt!" sense but in a genuine friendship way: you get the feeling that these are two people, sans any BDSM overtones, who'd probably still meet, still fall for each other, still fuddle through and make some mistakes and work it out, and end up solid. That, I must say, is the best part: the working-out of difficulties isn't contrived, nor rushed, but neither is it drawn out.

The BDSM elements contain a great deal more role-playing than I care for -- that's a kink/style that I've never really dug -- but getting to see the scenes from the dom's POV was really fascinating, and well-written, and worth it for that dynamic alone. The dom's thinking process can be a fascinating thing, and the authors made this dom both powerful-skillful, and falliable, at the same time.
Mechele Armstrong

Currents: Bloodlines

Hahahaha, see this post for why I got no further than page three.
Jet Mykles

Heaven

Oh, another boyband (sort of) story -- this one mixed in with what appears to be Plot #14 in romance, of "I don't normally like X, but you're an exception." Fifty years ago, the x-factor was the other person's skin color; from there, we moved onto the x-factor being religion, culture, and now gender. The x-factor plotline always develops the same way, though, with a sterling exception to the rule being just so overwhelming! and sexy! and magnetic! that the protagonist just can't help him/herself.

If Plot #13's virgin-meets-experienced-lover has a catchphrase of "I've never done this before," Plot #14's catchphrase is "I'm not attracted to ___; I'm just attracted to you." Talk about rationalizing one's sex drive by limiting/defining it as the other person's fault. Maybe I should say it's Plot #13, Version 2.0, because the "it's your fault I like you" really stems from the seduction-pattern in Plot #13's helpless virgin swept away by experienced lover/pursuer: I couldn't help myself, he just carried me off!

Not saying the author lets her (male) protagonist go that far into angst/self-denial; despite the experienced/dangerous/risky-living lover being an ubersexy rock star, the protagonist is a hotel manager and relatively pragmatic, for all the questions raised. The one thing that had me gritting my teeth was the premise, really, of the band coming to play at the club attached to the hotel.

Now, granted, when a hotel renovates/updates, it's common for some kind of shindig to happen, but as someone who both roadied and worked hotels, I can only laugh at the notion that the band arrives at the hotel two days before the event, and then is around for another day afterwards -- yes, this gives plenty of time to squeeze the two characters together, but it's so unlikely a snowball has a better chance holding out against a microwave. A band sitting around in a hotel room doing nothing is a band not making money, and when your life's lived on the road touring, who the hell wants to stay in a hotel for a day longer than necessary? It's a day more that you could be home, instead of one more place with little soaps you have to unwrap and glasses that come in flimsy plastic bags -- not to mention the amount of money to put up a band/entertainment, for four days (let alone just one), which would be via gratuity as part of the band's package.

All in all, a quick read, but similar to Orange Moon in its romanticism of life-in-band.
Emily Veinglory

Pilgrim Heart

Knowing Patrick

A Heart Aflame

A Heart in Shadows

I first picked up a copy of A Heart Aflame, and liked the author's style well enough to grab more of her work. She's got a solid, pragmatic, voice, and a few intriguing notions in what's essentially an urban fantasy, of sorts. I should also mention that the author does not use omnipotent POV, and for the most part, focuses almost (if not) entirely, on one character's POV, leaving the rest cloaked in mystery and viewed via the male character's lens. I get so tired of head-hopping in some of the stories, that this author's willingness and ability to focus is a real treat.

She's also not particularly 'ladylike' in the sense of being prim, but she doesn't really belabor the sex scenes, either -- in fact, the author's unafraid to let a character's perspective color an intimate scene into something more bittersweet. In Heart, we're introduced to Archer, a young Aussie rough who at some point in the past discovered that a) he has a skill with psychic fire, and b) he's destined for a bond-relationship with an elf, Roman. Their relationship is already established as the story begins, during a time when Archer is working as what amounts to the (fairy) queen's executioner -- in this author's England, there are psychically-powerful humans and elves, who have joined together to fight against both dark-power users (yada yada) but also the ultra-conservative fundamentalist-standins, the League of Maewyn.

While Archer's idea of a good time is going to the pub with his mates, have a few beers, a few tokes, chill out, he's somehow attached to an elf who's a scholar, who is both gorgeous and brilliant (and rather picky/prim about things being Just So, as well) -- and the sad truth is, Archer can't for the life of him figure out why they're together. He just doesn't see what, in him, could possibly attract -- let alone keep -- the attentions of one like Roman.

The author has some little characterization moments that just caught my attention, and are a big part of why this is one of the few ebooks I've found myself re-reading:

There were really only two things Archer contributed to the world. He was the elf-queen’s loyal soldier, and he loved Roman -- even when the damned elf was primly nudging an unwashed sock back over the precise midline of the room with his toe -- and Archer was prepared to admit that he was well on the way to putting Roman off.
That sort of misplaced, why-are-you-here, sadness permeates everything, including Archer's impression that what makes the sex between them so wonderful isn't he himself, but Roman's elf-magic responding to the magical/mystical fire welling up from inside Archer -- a fire, it's important to note, that Archer doesn't entirely believe is his, just as he doesn't believe Roman is truly 'his' (not in the possessive sense, but in the longterm security of a relationship sense).

The power of the single, focused POV comes through when an author allows such a tainted lens to colour every part of the story, including sex (which most authors, it seems, will make 'so awesome and wonderful!' that you end up wondering why the character's such a twit that s/he can't see just how awesome! wonderful! everything must be if the sex is so great):

Roman moaned. Archer pressed up tight against him ... until the elf bucked against him, coming with a cry. With a compulsive jerk, Archer followed him into the grey aftermath of love.
I love that visual, that concludes that paragraph: it so perfectly captures Archer's POV, the grayness colouring everything in his world. Even the final paragraph in the scene underlines this, but without the heavy-handed purple touches you'd usually get in this genre:

The television continued to drone on as dusk very slowly started to fall in the garden outside the window. A strange sadness settled, like a falling veil, over Archer, even as he lay pressed into Roman’s body. He put off the moment of parting where damp skin grew cold and all the stupid cares of life returned.
This novel is part of a series, which began with Knowing Patrick and continued with Patrick's further adventures (leaving the League of Maewyn, and joining the crazy blend of personalities in the house where Archer and Roman live with the rest of their cell) in Pilgrim Heart -- but I didn't find those first two stories all that much, honestly.

First, I really dislike the whole "we were destined to be together!" plotline -- especially when it's magical. There's a certain amount of godlike manipulation that must take place behind the scenes, and as much as I dislike the idea of being manipulated by forces unseen, I especially dislike the notion when it comes to something as powerful and intimate as love; it is downright repugnant to me to consider that someone might be with me solely because of something else -- as opposed to genuinely with me, for me. While Patrick's stories grapple (to a certain extent) with his abrupt and unlooked-for bond with the elf Veleur (and I'm sorry, I kept thinking of velour while reading), Patrick's more focused on the sudden discovery that this bond also indicates he has magic, although the story revolves around the cell's difficulty of discovering just what that magic-skill really is. (We also see Archer from outside, in this story, and he does come across as a hot-headed, not-too-bright, young hoodlum.)

It's the fourth story in the series, A Heart in Shadows, where the author turns things around, much to my satisfaction. Throughout the second and third stories, there's been a human seer in the cell, Giffen, who remains unattached (other than a slight crush on Patrick, if unrequited). Giffen is in his fifties, a former punk, a sardonic and cynical seer who's seen too much in his human life and now as a magical person, who once upon a time had a vision of the bond he'd eventually achieve/be granted -- and that person never showed up. It's left him a bit too willing to shut others out, put up a snarky front (though that snark is witty and sharp, which makes it less angsty and more just plain enjoyable to read).

Things come to a head for him, though, when he starts having visions/visits from an unknown elf who insists that a) they're supposed to be bonded, and b) the fairy-queen's current direction of letting human/elf relationships is misguided, and c) if Giffen renounces his seelie vow and joins the unseelie, he'd finally achieve union with the love of his life (to which, admittedly, he does feel mightily attracted despite finding everything else about the elf to be quite repulsive, especially the elf's politics/loyalties). In the course of trying to assist the cell with figuring out the latest moves by the bad guys -- and trying to sort out what he should do (and even whether he can 'fight' or deny the magically-bestowed love-bond), he ends up with an unlikely little incubus as sidekick.

Who, I must add, is a delightful character in his own right, despite Giffen's original (and correct) assumption that the 'sidekick' was sent as part of the queen's attempt to match-make on Giffen.

“We’re a small group. One family [of incubi] is all that’s left, as far as I know, and I’m something of the white sheep in the family,” Derek said. “Incubus librarian -- you can probably work out the problem.”
It's entirely charming, and more importantly (to me), it's a story that takes the previous three and skewers the entire "magically bonded into love" notion, but without necessarily denying or belittling the love that did occur in such bonds.

The author hinted at this in Patrick's story(s), where Patrick admits he feels both love and lust for Veleur, and yet is baffled and frustrated by the fact that they can't seem to have a simple conversation, as two friends would -- and, Patrick notes, isn't friendship itself that forms the basis of a solid relationship? Archer's story goes a step further, trying to purposefully break the bond and/or end the love, again much of the reason being that all logic would indicate he and Roman are so mismatched as to be utterly incompatible outside anything but a powerful external shove together: a magical bond may be the impetus, but the couple must still work to maintain/strengthen the relationship or it's a relationship in bed only. And in Giffen's story, the author doesn't just 'come around,' but skillfully brings the reader around, to recognizing that what may be destined, in the end, is less important than being with someone you truly, genuinely, like even when you're not naked and sweaty -- that companionship can only be created from within.

Given all the other stories out there with 'my one (destined) tru wuv!"... this particular series turned out to be a real treat. (Plus, Giffen, being an aging punk who's fifty and has all the usual self-consciousness of someone far past his twenties... that was nice, too, to read a character who's not only falliable on a psychological level, but imperfect on a physical level. I get so tired of all the nubile young protagonists of either gender.)

The Sculptor's Muse

The idea was mildly intriguing (and I'd liked her other works, so I was additionally willing to give it a shot), and while readable, was otherwise rather flat. Just... a bit too far-fetched in some ways, plus, I'm learning I find muse- and angel-based storylines utterly boring. When the character's boss is a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient being, where's the drama, the conflict, the real risk?

Either the character goes against the party line and loses it all, or goes along, and... what? How am I supposed to believe in the falliability of a critter who, mythologically, has no real independence outside the godhead-boss? Especially when the god-boss allegedly says, "thou shalt not fall in love with your artist." When the muse does, either the god-boss was lying, or there was a loophole the god-boss didn't mention, or the god-boss was wrong and the muse's actions have corrected the god-boss' ways.

Really, talk about a deus ex machina taken to a literal point. Sheesh.
D.J. Manly

My Father's Lover

This was more of a trainwreck than a story, honestly. I was halfway tempted to write the author and point out to her, assuming I could manage it diplomatically, that making the protagonist into a major jerk for the purposes of creating conflict can backfire on you all too easily: when you start trying to resolve the conflict, it might be too late. I may already be convinced the character is a total jerkwad and want nothing more to do with him.

This would be Plot #7, in which Utter Cad Finds Love In Good Man And It Changes Him For the Better. Except that, to have an utter cad redeemable, the potential for redemption must be visible to some degree from the beginning, and not thrown in halfway through. This is yet another story -- verging on Plot #3, the general blanket fic, in which two potentially compatible souls are thrown together under the unlikeliest (and most contrived) of circumstances -- where the protagonist's deceased father has decreed that all heirs must live together, and whomever still resides in the house (or owns/manages the business, in this case), gets the full estate.

Naturally, this requires we believe a certain amount of greed on a person's part, that they'd be willing to put up with strangers and/or intrustions in one's private sphere, a forced-family kind of existence... and such greed is not, I'm finding, the best quality upon which to first introduce a character I'm supposed to root for, when s/he falls in luuuuurve.

Too long story way short, Mike comes to stay at his estranged deceased father's house, surrounded by cross-dressing queens, and has to work at his father's nightclub, a venue for drag queen acts. Mike is a neo-homosexual, or some kind of label like that, the kind that believes drag is both offensive and damaging to the 'gay cause', in a political sense. Mike's father had 'remarried' after leaving Mike's mother, and the two men had then adopted two street kids, who now work/manage the club.

Enter Mike and his "make a pass at anything that moves" mindset, throw in the younger adoptee being secretly in love with the eldest brother, and of course the brother's best friend (oh, look, it's another gay character who's in a band!) is also in love with him, and I've got several questions, here. Why did no one just lay Mike flat out with a single punch after the first obnoxious, purposefully offensive pass he made (and beyond that, why let everyone make stupid assumptions and not provide explanations for the newcomer/visitor -- a gimmick that works in comedy, but just comes across as blind stupidity anywhere else)... and why, oh why, must everyone fall in love with the elder brother, other than maybe the excellent-manager, devoted-son, so-strong-for-us, privately-passionate, gorgeous-long-hair, elements? One character is so screwed in the head he's almost painful to read, and the other's few flaws aren't really flaws so much as temporary attempts by the author to introduce a mild 'not really perfect, see, he wears reading glasses!' kind of flaw.

Like Parallel Process (but to a far worse degree), it felt like this author kept running into potential conflicts that would've created some juicy, soul-deep issue-raising... and then running away again. Every point where I started to think, okay, now we'll get to the bottom of this -- because if the character's an absolute prick, I'd like to see him flayed open on a psychological or intimate level before I'll believe he's just "turned into a better person" -- and then whammo, the author retreats and the next scene, the characters are talking like nothing's happened. Now, I get that in some conflicts, "playing like it's normal" is an expected and believeable coping mechanism, but it's usually accompanied by a certain amount of discomfort, or surrealness: just ten minutes ago I know he was about to push me on point A, and now we're discussing what brand of oatmeal we prefer, hunh? But it still has to come around again.

I mean, the author has the two (not really) brothers-in-name-only have sex, and at the end, Mike is amazed he had enjoyable sex without the need for roleplaying, or games, or even being tied up: that, in fact, he just enjoyed 'vanilla' sex. Hunh, now that's intriguing, I'd say, and maybe it's tied into why he's such a jerk... but does she address it? Nope. She toys with it, then the two are back to 'playing normal' (but without significant disconcertion on their parts about this), and then it's sex again, and no more mention of what had previously seemed like a deep-rooted intimacy issue for one of the characters. Oh, did I mention the elder brother is also a sex god? Of course.

Yawn, yawn, yawn, though I do recommend this book as a great example of how not to write a romance.
Sedonia Guillone

His Beautiful Samurai

Hahahaha. And, HA. Reviewed here.

Okay, kinda long, and I have stuff to do... must break here. I'll review the rest in the next day or two.