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A review by tessisreading2
Touch the Dark by Karen Chance
1.0
Two major flaws: firstly, there was too much going on in this one; Chance goes all-out in the world-building and throws in everything but the kitchen sink, and we’re told about all of it in lengthy info-dumps.
Secondly, it was very, well, Laurell K. Hamilton in terms of the sexy, sexy morally ambiguous vampires (with long sexy hair) and that felt discomfiting; it’s not my thing. I’m going to spoiler-cut for discussion and examples of sexual assault and inappropriateness:
The age-gap is creepy, but in all honesty I find the sexual assault much creepier: the heroine finds this totally okay according to the morals and ethics of the vampire world, but I can’t forget that the author is the one designing and writing this world… and she decided to write sexy on-page rape committed by the romantic protagonist into the narrative. Yikes. A few chapters later Mircea attempts to seduce our narrator because the only way to save her from some bad guys (no, don’t worry about which, there’s too much going on) is for her to lose her virginity. This was also pretty discomfiting, because Mircea basically just starts groping her without explaining what’s going on, and then keeps going as she protests, argues, and stalls. When she finally gets him to stop, he goes down a long list of all the other sexxxy vampires she could have sex with instead.
Basically: this whole world is set up to maximize all the sexiness with no attention paid to issues of consent or sexual assault, because after all if you (the narrator or the reader) are aroused that makes everything okay. (Also, loss of virginity = PIV sex, consensual or not. Digital penetration doesn’t count, but PIV rape would. Again, yikes.)
I enjoyed Chance's Dorina Basarab series, and honestly would have kept reading this series if the sole issue had been everything-and-the-kitchen-sink (it's a debut novel, after all), but the eroticized sexual assault committed by a romantic protagonist (and the "no-means-yes" sex scene later on) just have me too wary to bother, because I have no idea when Chance figured out that this wasn't okay, or if she ever did in this series.
Secondly, it was very, well, Laurell K. Hamilton in terms of the sexy, sexy morally ambiguous vampires (with long sexy hair) and that felt discomfiting; it’s not my thing. I’m going to spoiler-cut for discussion and examples of sexual assault and inappropriateness:
Spoiler
There’s a long and highly-eroticized scene in which sexxxy vampire love interest Mircea, and eventually also his sexxxy vampire cohort, feed on an unwilling male prisoner until he climaxes, in front of multiple witnesses including our narrator/protagonist, for the explicit purpose of humiliating him. It is quite literally a rape scene. Later in the same scene Mircea feeds on our narrator (at her request, although she learns that another vampire had been feeding on her without her knowledge, which upsets her) which she finds a huge sexual turn-on… while remembering sitting on his lap as a child and how much she’d liked him then.The age-gap is creepy, but in all honesty I find the sexual assault much creepier: the heroine finds this totally okay according to the morals and ethics of the vampire world, but I can’t forget that the author is the one designing and writing this world… and she decided to write sexy on-page rape committed by the romantic protagonist into the narrative. Yikes. A few chapters later Mircea attempts to seduce our narrator because the only way to save her from some bad guys (no, don’t worry about which, there’s too much going on) is for her to lose her virginity. This was also pretty discomfiting, because Mircea basically just starts groping her without explaining what’s going on, and then keeps going as she protests, argues, and stalls. When she finally gets him to stop, he goes down a long list of all the other sexxxy vampires she could have sex with instead.
Basically: this whole world is set up to maximize all the sexiness with no attention paid to issues of consent or sexual assault, because after all if you (the narrator or the reader) are aroused that makes everything okay. (Also, loss of virginity = PIV sex, consensual or not. Digital penetration doesn’t count, but PIV rape would. Again, yikes.)
I enjoyed Chance's Dorina Basarab series, and honestly would have kept reading this series if the sole issue had been everything-and-the-kitchen-sink (it's a debut novel, after all), but the eroticized sexual assault committed by a romantic protagonist (and the "no-means-yes" sex scene later on) just have me too wary to bother, because I have no idea when Chance figured out that this wasn't okay, or if she ever did in this series.