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Book Review: Mindfulness and Grief: With Guided Meditations to Calm Your Mind and Restore Your Spirit by Heather Stang
Summary:
Mindfulness & Grief is an eight-week guide using meditation, yoga, journaling and expressive arts, plus inspirational stories, to help you reduce suffering and emerge transformed on the other side of loss.
Review:
Most of my readers know that I lost my father suddenly and unexpectedly last November (my eulogy). I reached out for books to help me, as I have my whole life. I reviewed the first one I read here. The first book I reached out to was a more raw experience, and I think that’s reflected in that review. For the second book, I was particularly seeking something to guide me so I didn’t become stuck in any one feeling or place. I’m not religious, but I do consider myself to be both science-minded and spiritual, and I know mindfulness holds a lot of esteem in psychology. So when I saw this book offering basically an 8 week course in mindfulness specifically for grief, I thought it’d be a good match.
It’s obvious that it took me much longer than 8 weeks to complete the book. I think putting 8 weeks on there is a bit unrealistic. I often found at the end of the week in question that I wasn’t yet ready to move on to the next phase or that I hadn’t had time to do the activities in the book yet. I think the book often fails to consider how busy the person who is also grieving might be. There is much more going on in your life than the grief and so it must be compartmentalized and dealt with only periodically. That said, I did find the phases to be appropriate and in the right order, and once I gave myself permission to do them at whatever pace I deemed appropriate, I found working through them helpful.
Each chapter talks about where you might be emotionally at this point and offers stories from others who’ve gone through the grief process to help you feel less alone. Each chapter ends with some activities to do. Some of them are guided meditations, others are prompted journaling and still others are activity suggestions such as specific types of yoga or walking. I found the journaling prompts to be the most helpful. They were straight-forward and often pushed me to encounter an uncomfortable feeling I was trying to avoid in my grief and work through it.
The book said that the guided meditations could be accompanied by recordings on the partner website but at the time I was trying to do them I could not find them. It’s not easy to do a guided meditation that you must repeatedly open your eyes and read. I suppose I could have made my own recordings based on what the book said but my energy level was low at the time (due to the grief) and I instead tried to use them with the book, which wasn’t particularly helpful. I think this book could work really well if it came with a digital download of the meditations and maybe even some guided yoga sessions. There were a few written out yoga sessions as well, which I always find difficult to follow.
In spite of the shortcomings, I still found this book helpful in my grief. It wasn’t exactly the program to follow that I was expecting but it did provide timely journaling prompts and stories from others that helped me feel comforted.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 144 pages – short nonfiction
Source: Amazon
Book Review: The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashada
Summary:
Born in 1992 and diagnosed with Autism at the age of 5, Naoki uses an alphabet board to painstakingly write. In this book, he addresses answers to common questions neurotypicals have about people with Autism, such as “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?” and “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?” Mixed in with answers to these questions are short stories that Naoki has written, squashing the myth that those with Autism lack imagination.
Review:
I read this for Katie of Doing Dewey’s Nonfiction Book Club back in April, which was also Autism Awareness Month. I don’t often have the time to do group reads, but this book appealed to me and was short, would count for the Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge I host, and I was able to get a digital copy from the Boston Public Library. I read this in one day in just my morning and evening commutes. It’s a short but mind-opening work.
For those who don’t know, Autism is a spectrum disorder. This basically means that Autism can severely or minorly impact how a person with it functions with the world (and everything in-between). Someone who is high functioning may mostly just strike others as a bit odd, whereas those most severely impacted are unable to communicate at all. You may read more about Autism here.
Naoki’s Autism is more severe. He is mostly unable to speak but he has learned how to communicate by pointing to an alphabet board with an assistant who writes down what he points at. Since Autism is so individualized, bare in mind when reading this book that his answers might not necessarily apply to everyone with Autism. That said, Naoki generally answers the questions with the word we, not I. My suspicion is this may be due to cultural reasons. Naoki is Japanese, which is generally a less individualized culture than our own. Additionally, his words have been filtered through a translator. It’s important, I believe, for a reader to keep all of these things in mind when reading this book.
This is a short book and an easy read, so I won’t say too much beyond the two biggest takeaways I had. First, I think in general people often wonder if people with Autism are similar to neurotypicals inside or are completely foreign. I think Naoki’s book smashes that question with a sledgehammer. It left me with the distinct impression that people with Autism are extremely similar to neurotypicals, but their signals from their bodies interfere with their ability to interact with the world. But Naoki puts this better than me.
It’s as if we’re remote-controlling a faulty robot. (page 16)
My second takeaway was that we should never make assumptions about anyone with Autism. The biggest example of this is that it is generally assumed people with Autism do not have an imagination. (I’ve even seen having an imagination being used as a way to rule out some people as having high functioning Autism). But Naoki, who very clearly has Autism, also very clearly has a bright imagination. His own short stories are inter-mixed throughout the book. They struck me as things any 13-year-old might write. That may sound simple, but that’s a big deal for a person who others might assume is “abnormal” for 13 with “no imagination.”
I do wish that the person interviewing Naoki had asked a wider variety of questions. Some of the questions can get a bit repetitive, and I wondered why they didn’t ask something deeper. Instead of continually asking things like why do you do this or why do you do that ask more about what he enjoys. What his hopes and dreams are. Does he think there’s a god. Things like that.
Overall, though, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about what it’s like to have Autism, as well as to those who do or may come into contact with someone with Autism.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 135 pages – short nonfiction
Source: Library
Counts For:
Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge
Book Review and Giveaway: Black Magic & Mojitos by A.A. Chamberlynn (Series, #1)
Summary:
Supernatural bounty hunter Zyan Star jets down to Rio right before Carnival to meet a potential new client. She’s taken by surprise when that new client just so happens to be Raoul Cabrera, the half demon half faery supernatural overlord of Brazil. He routinely rubs elbows with Lucifer, and Zyan isn’t too keen to work with him. She’s even less inclined to when she finds out he brought in a second bounty hunter, Donovan McGregor. But Raoul persuades her…by threatening her friends. So Zyan finds herself working with Donovan against a herd of Nightmares–horse spirits that torment people with visions of their worst fears before devouring their flesh.
Review:
This was one of my accepted indie ARCs for 2016 (see complete list here). I accepted it for the combination of Rio and evil horse spirits, and I started with reading it first because I was in the mood for some light-hearted urban fantasy. What I found was a novella that set up a world I was quite interested in but left me wanting more.
Zyan is mostly a typical urban fantasy heroine, but her two friends who came with her to Rio intrigued me. I got a Buffy and her friends vibe from the group, and I appreciated an urban fantasy heroine who’s comfortable relying on other people and being open about her friendships right from the get-go. The setting was bright, colorful, and well-described, and Rio isn’t something I’ve personally seen before in an urban fantasy. The Nightmares were everything the description promised to me and more. I found them both adorable and deliciously frightening. The plot twists in a way I wasn’t expecting and brings in a new character I was happy to see.
But this novella did leave me wanting more. It is a fine line between wanting more in a good way and being left with not enough to ever fully get into the story. This fell into the latter end of that. A novella doesn’t have room to set up a ton of backstory but the reader still needs to feel as if the smaller plot within the novella is fully told. While some of the scenes felt fully fleshed-out, others read more like initial outlines for a larger story. For about half of the novella, I felt the author needed to come back through and add some things in, in order for the reader to be able to get fully into the mini-episode of Zayn’s life being told. I also must admit that I wasn’t too keen on the vibe between Zayn and Donovan. I hesitate to call it a romance, as it reads more like a simple sexual attraction. It’s not that I’m against that in an urban fantasy, but it read as a bit forced and took away time in the short novel from the main plot I was more interested in.
Overall, readers looking for a short dip into an urban fantasy world or who just want to see the Nightmares in action will enjoy this read. Readers who are familiar with Zayn from other stories will probably enjoy it most of all, but it’s also a good way to get a taste of Zayn and see if you would like to read more. I know I would certainly like to read a full length book featuring Zayn and her friends.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 46 pages – novella
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Giveaway!
Thanks to the generosity of the author, one lucky Opinions of a Wolf reader can win a copy of this ebook.
How to Enter:
- Leave a comment on this post stating an animal that haunts your dreams.
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The blog comment gets you one entry. Each tweet gets you one entry. You may tweet once per day.
Who Can Enter: International
Contest Ends: April 18th at midnight
Disclaimer: The winner will have their book sent to them by the author. The blogger is not responsible for sending the book. Void where prohibited by law.
Book Review: Porcelain: A Novelette by William Hage
Summary:
Out near the Pine Barrens in New Jersey sits the Whateley Bed & Breakfast, home of a wide collection of knick-knacks and antiques for its guests to view, including a beautifully ornate porcelain doll. However, after the Whateley’s latest guest purchases the doll as a gift, a horrifying series of nightmarish events begins to unfold.
Review:
This is the final review for the 2015 ARCs I accepted (6 total). Woo! This 8,000 word novelette was the perfect way to wrap up my year of ARCs. Bite sized, it kept me entertained for almost precisely the duration of the public transit portion of my commute.
This short horror involves a father buying a doll for his daughter, only to have the doll wind up to be evil. I don’t consider that a spoiler, because I think it’s pretty clear from the cover and the description that is what is about to go down. While some of the evil doll aspects were about what I was expecting, others were not. The scenes happened at just the right pace to hold interest, and I did find myself hoping I’d have time to finish the novelette without having to stop. I think the story is helped by reading it in one sitting, so I would advise picking it up when you know you have enough time to finish it in one go.
All of this said, while I enjoyed it and it is well-written, it just didn’t linger with me. I wound up feeling quite neutral about it. Perhaps because the novelette is so short that there’s no time to establish an emotional connection with the main character. It’s also possible that the ending just failed to wow me. That said, other readers who are more generally into short fiction than I am will probably enjoy it more than I did.
Overall, this is a well-written piece of short fiction that should be read in one sitting. Recommended to fans of short horror.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 23 pages – novella
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: The Mediator Pattern by J.D. Lee
Summary:
In an alternate history, the personal fax machine, not computers, became the quintessential technology, and one company, BelisCo, is running much of the United States. San Jose is now run entirely by BelisCo, and it boasts all the best of modern planned living: adult-only zones, smoking and non-smoking zones, clean and reliable transportation, and legal weed. Marcus Metiline is a PI in San Jose, and his whole world gets turned upside down when he agrees to take a job for BelisCo itself.
Review:
This is one of my accepted ARCs for 2015, and I went for it due to its interesting slight twist on the noir genre. I was intrigued at the idea of a PI in an alternate world where fax machines were the status quo instead of PCs. It felt almost like a steampunk. Techpunk? There should be a world for this when the old tech isn’t steam-power. In any case, although I found the world very interesting and I enjoyed visiting it, the plot left me dissatisfied.
This book is an enjoyable read even when the plot is doing weird things. The sentences flow smoothly, and the settings and characters are clearly rendered. I really enjoyed this alternate world. I liked it so much that I was disappointed by how little time we spend in it. Marcus is quickly scooped out and plopped into another world, and I didn’t like that one nearly as much or find it as interesting. The first world Marcus inhabits is creative and new. The other worlds are more dull and are things I’ve seen before.
It’s difficult to review this book without giving much away, but suffice to say that there is physics in the book, and while I appreciate the fact that science of it is good and well-explained, it also is a physics I’ve seen in scifi many times before, and I don’t think this particular rendering brought anything fresh to the table.
There are three really important characters in the book: Marcus, the owner of BelisCo, and a doctor. All three of them are male. This makes the book read a bit like a boys’ club, and it bugged me. The book would have instantly been more unique and interesting if, say, Marcus had been a hard-boiled woman PI. When every main character is basically the same (an intelligent white male), it’s just dull.
So, the non-spoiler reason of why I wasn’t into the plot is that I felt it took things just one twist too far, rendering things a bit ridiculous. If you want more explanation, see the spoiler-filled paragraph below.
*spoilers*
Basically, Marcus finds out that San Jose is some sort of Matrix-like simulation aka not the real world, and he is encouraged to break out of it. When he does, the buildings of San Jose start falling apart and people are mad at him. We discover that the reason for this is that the simulation was being done on a bunch of cancer patients. The science here didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but basically they would live longer if they were in the simulation, giving them more of a chance to beat the cancer. Everyone entered the simulation through Marcus, and they had to keep him believing it to keep the experiment going. This whole experiment is highly illegal, and they blow up the building to get rid of the evidence. There are then hints that there are more worlds and simulations than these. First, I found the whole we’re in a simulation and this isn’t real life thing to be a very been there done that plot. It took us out of the much more interesting simulation world and into a computer simulation that I’ve seen before. The second twist of it actually being cancer treatment and them needing Marcus to stay in the world just sent the whole thing off into left field for me. Particularly since I found the science of the cancer treatment to be weak compared to the physics earlier. While I appreciate to others it may read more like a cool idea, to me it just took things on a path from super interesting to I’ve seen this before to wtf was that. It just really didn’t work for me.
*end spoilers*
Overall, readers who are intrigued by the world in the summary and who don’t mind multiple plot twists and a predominantly male cast will enjoy this read. It is well-written and interesting, but readers expecting to linger in the fax machine world of the plot summary should know that this world is soon left behind.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 114 pages – novella
Source: Kindle copy in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: Cowboys and Aliens by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg (Graphic Novel)
Summary:
In the American Wild West, invading aliens show up, intent to colonize the planet and enslave or destroy the humans. The warring white settlers and Native Americans must put aside their own battle for control of the land and defend it from offworlders.
Review:
This was given as a gift to me, because when the movie Cowboys and Aliens came out in 2011, I was super into the idea of two of my favorite things being combined–a western and scifi. A friend gifted this to me, and it languished on my TBR Pile for years. I finally picked it up, and while I enjoyed the read and the art, I did not enjoy it as much as the movie, finding it to be too heavy-handed and obvious in its message, as well as a bit too stereotypical in how it handled its Native American characters.
The art is bright and colorful with easy-to-follow panels. The book opens with a clearly laid out parallel between the colonizing alien species and the white settlers in America. It’s clever to make a group actively colonizing another group suddenly the victim of colonizers themselves. However, the direct juxtaposition jumping back and forth between the two visually is too heavy-handed. Readers know about colonization on our own planet. Just tell the story of the aliens and let us see the white settler characters slowly realize that they’re doing the same thing to others. Instead, the readers are shown several times both the parallels between the two and one of the white settlers suddenly dramatically realizing the similarities in the situations.
The Native American characters aren’t horribly handed, however they are treated a bit too much magically for my taste. Thankfully, how they help fight the aliens mostly comes from ingenuity, not magic.
Both of those things said, the aliens in the story are diverse and interestingly drawn. Seeing Native Americans and white settlers battle the aliens with a combination of their own gear and stolen alien items was really fun to read. Just not as much fun or as well-developed of a plot as it was in the movie.
Overall, this is a quick graphic novel that would be a fun read for either hardcore fans of the movie or those interested in the basic idea but who prefer graphic novels to movies.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 112 pages – novella
Source: Gift
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
Book Review: Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King
Summary:
Something evil is haunting the small town of Tarker Mills, Maine. Every month another person is found dead, brutally ripped apart. Can they solve what is haunting their town before the terror consumes them all?
Review:
I picked this up in a used book basement because I’m generally trying to read most everything Stephen King has written, and this particular print book was beautifully illustrated. Each chapter (or month…or murder) had at least one full-color illustration, and that just spoke to me. The story itself wound up being rather ho-hum to me, but part of that may be due to the fact that I’m rather hard to shock these days.
My favorite part of the book is that it opens with a note from King stating that astute readers will notice that the full moon couldn’t possibly have fallen on all of the big holidays he has it fall on, but that he’s taken artistic license to make it do so. The passage reads like it has a wink at the end, and I like that King assertively addresses what could bother some readers or be a controversy and acknowledges that his facts are wrong, but he did it for artistic reasons. Personally, I’m not a fan of books that take artistic licenses, but if you’re going to, this is the way to do it. Acknowledge it (don’t hide from it) and move on.
This feels like an early Stephen King book. The usual small town New England stock characters are there, but they’re not fully fleshed-out. There’s even a spunky kid in a wheelchair who reminds me of an earlier version of Susannah from The Dark Tower series (the book about Susannah was first published in 2004). The stock, rather two-dimensional characters work in this book, since the storytelling approach is basically one of folklore. We don’t need to know much more about these characters than we see on the surface, and that’s fine.
Each chapter is a different month in the year, and they sort of feel like connected short stories. By the last half of the year, the reader starts to know what’s going on, and the “short stories” become even more connected.
Fans of an underdog hero will enjoy who ends up battling the werewolf plaguing the town, as will those who enjoy seeing the trope of a trusted citizen being someone who should not be trusted. (That’s as much as I can say without being too spoilery).
This all sounds rather positive, so why did I feel ho-hum about it? The tension building didn’t work for me. Nothing that happened really scared me. The character in the wheelchair feels like a less bad-ass version of Susannah, and what I would want would be Susannah. This is perhaps unfair of me to say, since Susannah came about further down the line, but I do think it points to how King’s writing improved with time (as does everyone’s). I also just found the villain to be rather expected and cliche, although I’m sure it wasn’t when the book first came out. In general, this book just doesn’t feel like it aged particularly well, especially when compared to other older King books.
Overall, if a reader is looking for a quick, beautifully illustrated folklore style retelling of a werewolf story, they will enjoy this book. Those looking for high levels of tension or gore or in-depth character development will want to give it a pass.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 128 pages – novella
Source: Brookline Booksmith, used books basement
Book Review: Fables, Vol. 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham et al. (Series, #1) (Graphic Novel)
Summary:
All the characters from the fairy tales we know actually lived in that folklore world but were forced out into exile in modern-day New York thanks to an enemy known only as The Adversary. Snow White, right-hand to the ruler of Fabletown, seeks to keep everyone in line. But that gets more difficult when her own sister, Rose Red, is murdered. A reformed Big Bad Wolf, now their sheriff, promises to help her track down his killer.
Review:
Being a long-time fan of The 10th Kingdom, a story about the characters of folklore existing in a parallel universe to our own that some modern-day Americans accidentally visit, I was intrigued by this idea of a similar story in reverse. Instead of being engaging and a fun escape, though, my experience with it is best summed-up as meh. It’s a cool idea that is saddled to a ho-hum plot and flat characters, thereby rendering it a mediocre read.
The basic idea is some unseen Adversary has driven the fairy tale folk out of their land and into exile in our own. In our land, they’ve all agreed to give everyone a clean slate to start over. So far so good. From here though things go from interesting and semi-unique to basically a noir plot we’ve all read before wrapped up in 2-dimensional fairy tale characters. Big Bad Wolf is the hard-boiled detective. Snow White is his lady assistant. A noir version of a fairy tale could have been good, but instead the flattest elements of both genres are mashed together, rather than the best of each. What you end up with is a wolf without his fangs or a hard-boiled detective without his cigarettes and womanizing ways. The grit is just removed leaving an overly-sanitized world.
I do enjoy a mystery plot but I also expect them to keep me guessing. I knew the solution long before the end, and I’m guessing most other readers would too.
The art is mostly good, although the depiction of the talking pig gave me goosebumps in a bad way. He doesn’t really fit in to the feel of the rest of the art. However, the art is colorful and easy to follow, and made reading the story go quickly.
Overall, if a reader loves fairy tales and graphic novels and likes the idea of seeing fairy tale characters in modern-day New York, they will probably enjoy this book. Readers looking for an in-depth exploration of a fairy tale character or to see them more well-rounded in a non-fairy tale setting will be disappointed. Similarly, readers looking for a tough mystery to solve will want to look elsewhere.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 128 pages – novella
Source: I remember I bought it at a comic book store, but I don’t remember which one.
Counts For:
Book Review: Bits of Bliss – Volume 1 by Andrea Trask (Series, #1)
Summary:
A collection of nine erotica short stories, mostly featuring elements of fantasy. Covering everything from fairy tale retellings to vampires to a bit of scifi.
Review:
This erotica short story collection was quite hit or miss for me. The stories that excelled were creative and unique, but the stories that did not featured some problematic elements that prevented me from enjoying the erotica.
When I read a short story collection, I always individually rate the stories. My rating of the collection as a whole is just the average of those ratings. The highest rating any story in this collection received from me was four stars. There were three stories I gave four stars, and two of them were the first two stories in the collection, so it definitely started out strong for me. One is a F/F story featuring a woman who is also a flower (or a flower who is also a woman). It is poetic and heart-quickening. The second story features a sentient house that has missed its owner and demands attention. This made me laugh, and I enjoyed the oddity. It read like a lighter-hearted, erotica version of dark fantasies where there is an evil house–this one is just horny. The third four star read was enjoyable for a different reason. It’s a scifi erotica where two lovers are in a spaceship that is running out of air. They decide to make love, even though they will die quicker. It was so heart-breaking and beautiful that I wished it was a whole book.
Four of the stories received three stars. In each case I felt the story either didn’t take an idea far enough or the story wasn’t long enough to tell the story. Take it farther, and these all could be just as good as the first three I discussed.
Unfortunately, there were two stories that were big clunkers for me, with each receiving only one star, and they both had almost the same problem. “Hunting Hound” has a woman mating with a werewolf. She meets him when she is out riding, and they start making out against a tree, with her a willing participant. Then this happens.
“Stop” she said, and his face darted in toward her own with a low growl. “Too late to stop.” (loc 1650)
He proceeds to penetrate her. There is nothing sexy about a woman asking a man to stop and him claiming it’s too late and proceeding to rape her. It is never too late to stop, and it’s never too late for a partner to change their mind. It really bothers me that this type of scene is still being presented as sexy. I know everyone gets off to their own thing, but this is such a clear scene of consent being removed and then ignored that I just cannot say to each their own in this case. I also want to mention that the book blurb claims that this story features “consensual sexual violence” but it definitely did not read that way to me.
“Summer Nights,” which also received one star, has a similar problem. This story features a woman who keeps seeing the same mysterious man at parties. She goes out to the woods behind the house at one of these parties, and he follows her. She finds out he’s a vampire. She stands in the woods talking to him, holding a wineglass, when this happens:
“he struck like a train, his swinging backhand sending the wineglass flying toward the treeline, and I faintly registered the tinkling shatter of it, perhaps hitting a rock, or a fallen log.” (loc 5654)
She finds the fact that he just hit a glass out of her hand to be massively sexy and proceeds to bang him. This is, again, something I feel like I shouldn’t need to say, but there is nothing sexy about a partner violently hitting something out of your hand. Nothing. Sexy. This is not a sign that oh man she should totally bang this vampire. It is a sign she should run because she is alone in the woods with a violent motherfucker. This could have so easily been foreplay if, instead of hitting a glass out of her hand, he said something like, “I want you now,” and he gently took the glass from her hand and tossed it away. Or if she said, “I want you so much,” and tossed the glass over her shoulder. It would be so easy to have the same erotica about a powerful vampire alone in the woods with a woman without it turning into problematic territory.
I truly wish these last two stories were not in the collection. The rest of the collection is creative, features some fun queer content (the F/F story and a gender-swapping story), and in the case of the best three stories, has some unique ideas. Where the collection flounders is, interestingly enough, with the two most mainstream stories that take the agency out of the hands of the women in them and instead retreats to the tired idea of violent men being sexy.
Overall, if a reader is looking for some quick fantasy erotica, most of the stories in this book will satisfy this need, although I would recommend skipping over “Hunting Hound” and “Summer Nights.” The reader who enjoys the other stories for their uniqueness will most likely be disappointed by the “sexy violence” in these two.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 53 pages – novella
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: Set Adrift by D.S. Kenn (Series, #1)
Summary:
Terric, nickname T, a half shifter half demon, and his girlfriend Jordyn, full vampire, have decided to move from New York City to Provincetown, Massachusetts. T has an opportunity to work as head of security at a nightclub and bar that caters to the supernatural, and he thinks the move will be good for he and Jordyn. Jordyn had a nightmarishly abusive past, and T has been helping her heal through a safe, consenting BDSM relationship. But his love for Jordyn is not one of a mate; it is one of a friend. He intuitively knows that his mate will be a man but he struggles to accept this, due to suffering he has endured in the demon realm. When Jordyn decides it is time for her to stand on her own two feet and move out, she also encourages T to confront himself and grow as well. But all T feels is set adrift.
Review:
Every November/December I open up to submissions for books to review in the upcoming year on my blog. When I saw this one in the submissions, I was excited. Not very much paranormal romance is submitted to me, and paranormal romance with a bisexual main character is nigh on impossible to find. Plus, I love Provincetown. This paranormal romance features a unique set of characters and a wide variety of sex scenes but its world building struggles some.
The strongest aspect of the book is that its main character Terric is so unique in paranormal romance. Terric actually describes himself perfectly:
I’m an anomaly. A fucking bisexual demon shifter. Not really all of any one thing…. I don’t really fit in most categories, you know. (page 33)
First, I love love love the fact that the hero of the book isn’t just bisexual, but he actually uses the term to describe himself as such. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is quite rare to have a character self-identify as bisexual and simultaneously have that character be one of the good guy leads. I really applaud the author for going there. Terric struggles with his sexuality but not for the reasons the reader might expect. Provincetown, for those who don’t know, is known for being a small town with a large accepting queer community. T’s community would accept him for who he is, but he struggles with accepting and loving himself. The reason given for this is that when he is summoned to the demon realm (as a half demon, he is subject to hell’s dominion), he is sometimes subject to punishment that consists of rape by other male demons (or half demons). The reason he has trouble imagining being mated with a man is due to this trauma. Bisexual men experience a higher rate of rape than straight or gay men (source), and I think it’s a good thing that the author works this into T’s past within the context of his supernatural world. The rape is not misrepresented as causing his bisexuality but rather as a trauma he must get over to fully embrace his sexuality for what it is. It’s not a storyline seen very often, and it’s handled well.
Similarly, the BDSM subplot in the first half of the book is also handled well. The BDSM is completely presented as something both partners have consented to with pre-agreed upon boundaries that are respected. It is also shown as something that is therapeutically used to help Jordyn overcome her past trauma. This is a use for BDSM that some readers may not know but it is clearly well-understood by the author and well presented in the book. Plus, the BDSM scenes are well-written and just the right level of steamy.
Unfortunately, the world that T and Jordyn live in is not as well fleshed-out as they are. In particular, the workings of the supernatural world are never fully explained and can be a bit confusing. For instance, vampires can apparently have children (as in, conceive and give birth to them, not as in turning humans into vampires), but it is never explained how. Also the logistics of mixing different supernatural races are unclear. For instance, there is one character who is 100% shifter, but his parents are both half vampire and half shifter. Even the character himself doesn’t know how that worked out to him being pure shifter. Some readers probably wouldn’t be bothered by the lack of details and world building regarding the supernatural and just how it works in this world, but others will be.
There are a few minor editing mistakes, the most startling of which is that the book on page 142 suddenly changes from indenting new paragraphs to having a line space between them (like how paragraphs appear on this blog). I have no preference for one over the other, but consistency throughout the book is preferred. There is also one plot point that bothered me. At one point a character is established as being tipsy. He then kisses someone and, freaked out about it, decides to leave and states that he can because he is “sober as a judge,” and the other character agrees he is fit to drive (page 152). Unless that kiss lasted an hour or two, there’s no way he went from tipsy to sober as a judge in the span of one kiss (unless something supernatural was going on that was not explained). Similarly, sometimes the book veers too far into telling rather than showing, particularly in the scenes that are not sex scenes. For instance, in one scene, this occurs:
He told Kevin a little bit about his own upbringing, just the basics. (page 144)
At this point, the reader does not know much about this character’s upbringing. Why not write out the dialogue in which the character tells Kevin about it, rather than telling the reader that the character tells Kevin? The sex scenes never veer into this telling rather than showing zone, and it would be nice if the plot points didn’t either.
There is also a chapter that is called the “epilogue,” which kind of bothered me since it is a direct continuance of the plot in the previous chapters. No significant time is skipped, nothing in the future is explained. It is basically the last chapter in the book. I am uncertain as to why it is thus called an epilogue. I was expecting it to update me on the future of these characters, not simply continue the story in a direct linear fashion from the last chapter.
Sex acts in the book include: anal sex (male on female), BDSM (male dom, female sub), and M/M kissing/touching. Rape is mentioned as an occurrence in the past but is not depicted. Those readers looking for more in-depth M/M scenes should keep their eye out for the next book in the series, as it appears that a M/M relationship will be building to greater intimacy in the next book.
Overall, this is a welcome addition to the paranormal romance genre, featuring a unique cast of characters, including a bisexual half-demon, half-shifter male hero. The book contains a wide variety of sex scenes, including M/F BDSM and M/M kissing/touching. Readers interested in in-depth world building may be disappointed by the lack of explanation of the supernatural world these characters inhabit. Those looking for a quick, steamy read will enjoy these characters and the development of them that goes on in-between their well-written sex scenes.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 139 pages – novella
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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