Books Review

[elfs]

So, I'm about 10% of the way into The Algebraist and... I don't know. It just drags. It feels like Banks, but farmed out: all the tropes are there, the cosmic ideas and notions, all of them in service to something so pedestrian that I'm unmoved. So far, I haven't found a plot worth caring about.

But that's not what I'm writing about. I'm here to write about Ellora's Cave, a romance/erotica publishing house that specializes in SF/Fantasy/Supernatural romance, usually using all the "right" words to describe the sex scenes. I've read a few things from EC and the quality is, well, uneven. The best story I was a contemporary were-jaguar story with lots of sex; the worst was a skiffy ("scifi") thing where functional neurophysiology is tantamount to mind control.

I decided to give them a fresh try with a story called Nyssa's Guardian, by "Gaby Reese." Yes, I was attracted to the name first, given that the fem protagonist shares it with one of my main characters.

Oh, my, this is a silly book. The SF is sub-Star Trek. The dialogue is terrible. The premise about as ridiculous as you can imagine. Our heroine is a "fem", she lives in a bisexual polymorphously perverse culture she shares with egalitarian (ne' emasculated) "mems" ("sensitive, caring males who understand my female equality"), and her world only persists because of its warrior class, the "Primales" ("Primales were all like this: Insanely confident, duty-bound to the point of obsession, sickeningly, tediously brave-- and totally fucking gorgeous. Super all over. Hugely endowed with incredible endurance. And a surprisingly keen ability to tune in to the female body for the purpose of delivering slow, maddening pleasure culminating in mind-blowing orgasm.") whom Nyssa is not allowed to get near because, due to their ubermasculine nature they become absolutely monogamously committed to the first woman they fuck, which would be unfair to both her and him. For Primales, there is an underclass of women, the "obedients," who are wired to monogamy the way Primales are.

Nyssa has been secretly bred to lead the world to a more "natural" state, the Council of Elders™ having decided that its current condition is too decadent, and by her exceptional nature she overwhelms the Sensitive New Age People all around her. She is unaware of this breeding program. She has made enemies (apparently even SNAPs will contemplate murder when challenged) and a Primale is assigned to be her bodyguard. Both of them find this intolerable: she thinks he's a sexist barbarian pig who she secretly wishes she could fuck senseless while not being "cursed" to be his sole mate, and he, well: "Never had he witnessed such insolent behavior. Never had he seen such utter disregard for propriety. Never had he viewed...such an ass. So maddeningly pert, so perfectly shaped, designed for no other purpose than to inflame the blood of a man."

I'm sorry. "Gaby" is a man. I don't believe a woman would write that. Hell, I wouldn't write like that. I'd be embarassed to write that.

Then again, maybe that's my problem.

Comments

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I'd be embarassed to write like that! "pert?" AUGH! *flees screaming to her book case, but swoons, holds up small sign that reas "revive with Proust".*

I mean I thought I was tacky, doing a kinky gay Pygmalion that was absolutely transparent as such. But I never used pert. Nothing was perky either. Nor do the men sport "enormous eight inch man-rods of love."

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

The Algebraist didn't actually start to pick up and get (a little, relatively) interesting until about 9/10ths of the way through. By that point I was past caring and was mostly just reading to finish the damn thing. Worse yet, plot-wise it feels suspiciously similar to a lot of his earlier works. I hate to say it, but the man could use a vacation.

[kengr]

I'm sorry. "Gaby" is a man. I don't believe a woman would write that. Hell, I wouldn't write like that. I'd be embarassed to write that.

Sharon Green... the writer of the series of books that's a female equivalent of Gor. I don't feel like digging out the one I picked up just to see if it was any good.

I'm still trying to finish it.

So I assume you're talking about the "Warrior" series?

[(Anonymous)]

You could also be talking about the "Mida" series. She only writes trashy romances in fantasy settings. Of her books, the most readable are ones she wrote in the late 80's (she's been around since the late 70's). Hidden Realms is the only title I can recall (from a series of ~4 books). She also wrote a duology ("The Far Side of Forever" and "Hellhound Magic") which was barely readable. However, her most recent stuff, (the "Blending" and "Blending Enthroned" series), has _such_ bad characterization, and _such_ bad dialogue, that it's like a root canal without anaesthesia. I remember enjoying The Far Side of Forever -- even after realizing that it was a trashy romance novel. Not so anymore, her writing style has gotten much worse.

Most amusingly, I've seen her Warrior books at the thrice-yearly Fetish Flea in San Francisco -- but have not seen the Gor books there.

-Malthus

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Apart from the generally dire writing, the way the underlying fantasy pattern looks does seem pretty male, and maybe a certain sort of male. There's a pattern in your writing, but it doesn't have that same, rather sexist, lock-in on masculinity.

If it comes to that, there's some pretty dire book covers out there. There seems to be a particular, rather uncomfortably shaped, hole in the market where that sort of stuff fits. And it fits well. But I don't think it's where you fit, and it's certainly not where I do.

And that hole is real enough for publishers to make money. Don't use "dirty " words. All the assumptions about sexuality, and what's the right behaviour. Why there's so many people who think that way, I wouldn't care to speculate.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

If I wanted to write sexually daring future engineered societies with lots of reasons for my characters to get all flustered and everybody's hot, I could come up with way better premises than that.

You, Elf, already have done better than that....

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

John Norman rides again?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

"An obedient is an extension of her dominant. He adores and treasures her above all else. He will accept nothng less from her than everything. And everything is what she gives. It is the deepest form of love. Stonger than any feat of primale strength."

Yah. You could say that. Only with Hugo Gernsback asking for more spaceships.

[fagricipni.livejournal.com]

I don't believe a woman would write that.

I wouldn't bet anything you couldn't afford to lose on that. One person writing of the kind a perversity I am thinking of wrote (paraphrased), "So many slaves love their chains", and he was speaking of men. Perhaps, though, it would be more accurate to say that "so many slaves are so used to their chains, that they can neither see how they would live without them, nor have faith that they can find a way to live without them". That's my only answer to how a woman could write things of the nature of that which you are complaining about. (Or perhaps it's intended as a dystopian fiction. :^) )