I didn’t get as many stories read this week as I’d wanted, but I was busy. And I will be busy again next week. Plus the stories were long this week, which meant it took me longer to admit they sucked and give up on them. Or whatever it is I’m doing here.

The Sacrificial Knight by Kestrel Drake: A young lordling is one of those Chosen to be one of the dragons’ potential …sacrifices? the story makes a big deal one page about how it’s not a sacrifice, and then calls them sacrifices anyway. And the dragon is really pushy and….frankly the dragon is an asshole. “Ooohh, look at the pretty, I will go visit him while disguised as a human! and he is immediately attracted to me! But he has to be pure to be a sacrifice, so I’ll promise not to push our attraction, since he doesn’t know who I am! And then I will kiss him next chapter! That’s not being pushy at all, and there was no other way to get him to stop talking, anyway.” AND the tags warned for rape, which would make sense only one way in the story line, which meant that either the story would be painfully depressingly predictable or the rape would be gratuitous and pointless, and I would be even MORE disappointed, so I DNF this one.

Poetry & Engineering by A.R. Noble: DNF because I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I mean, two guys, a cat, got that. The beyond-relationship things, like their jobs, the places where reality should have existed, but did not. That’s where I stopped.

When the Stars Go Cold by Destiny Kyle: An interesting little sci-fi Mpreg story. This is not the best writing (the dialogue, especially, was stilted), but somehow it’s still a really great story about love and loss and truth and secrets.

Sans Souci by Aubrey E. Dyett: A story written letter-style. I think maybe it was trying to use archaic language (with poor success), but whether that was the reason or not, I oculdn’t understand or care about what was going on. DNF

Sacrifices Worth Making by Mike Greyson: I read all of this one, but I don’t know why. The two characters spent the first two-thirds of the book having a storyline (not sure I would call it a plot), but no sex, and the last third having oodles of sex, but no storyline. Also, it was clear the author did their research because they smashed it in our faces: LOOK I RESEARCHED THE MUSEUMS IN THE CITY AT THE TIME OF THE STORY AND THE CHARACTERS SAW THIS THERE BECAUSE IT WAS REALLY THERE, and so forth for everybloodything, which were all described in excruciating detail, but not actually experienced by the characters/us. No, the things we go to experience in great detail were family dinners. Toiletry processes. Explanations about snow boarding gear. The boring things. Everything interesting was just summarized after the fact.

From Acid to Ashes by Enne Karina: This one just didn’t do it for me, not sure why. DNF

Olin’s Sacrifice by Drako: I am still reading this one, but will probably go finish it after posting this because it’s short, and I think I know what’s going on in it. It’s so far on the predictable side, and the writing isn’t all that great, but it’s okay.