It feels like this week has gone on forever. Certainly I haven’t posted since last year! But I’ve read 11 stories in the last 9 days, started a book about buying a house (which I probably won’t review here), and also acquired a new cat. So it’s been a very full year already. And thus I might be scratching my brain for at least a few of these stories.

All of which were decent, most of which were short, all of which I finished, and the summation of which leaves me with only 96 stories left to read!

Drawn Together by J.R. Barten: This was good. It was about a couple who had a typical college romance, but split up at the end, and then were reunited. It had drag queens and politicians in it, and the series of events was…I’d say it was fairly realistic, compared with other things, anyway. Neither character was good nor evil, they changed and grew, but didn’t …have a redemption arc. It was good.

Do What You Want by Vicktor Alexander: A D/s story. It was fairly good, as such things go. Had some interesting bits about the guys also having real lives.

Shadow’s Heart by Kathleen Hayes: A strange gender-fluid tale about…some guys. The plot was on the “easily resolved” side of things, though it’s a short and decent tale.

Lush in Lace by AJ Ridges: Yeeeesssss. All the yes. The first scene was almost too much for me, but the rest of the story…I didn’t even think I was into guys in lace. It was just…so much UST, so much characters, so much rough spots and smooth spots, and HOT, but also so much more than just sex.

Light and Motion by Natalia Stevens: A photographer gets caught in a scandal, and ends up with a sort of working vacation, which ends up with plenty of fun, too. It’s pretty short, but a nice escapee romance.

Escaping in Oz by Aria Grace: A coming of age story with two guys who are just figuring things out. And a classic tutor/tutee tale. Decent.

Focus by Phoebe Sean: A photographer, and the model he quickly learns is a wonderful and real person. The story is pretty short, although the two guys take it wonderfully slow before hooking up.

Almost But Not Quite by Amy Spector: You could almost call this a return-to-innocence tale, since it’s about a heavy drinker who by the end of the story is…on the road to recovery. It seems realistic enough (though not gritty about it), at least in the mentions of the drinking, but the plot is…weak. Like a bunch of stuff happens at the end to explain something that was better left as a literary mystery. And much like midiclorians, everything would have been better if it hadn’t. Moreover the events in the book didn’t make a lot of sense.

Loving Rush by Sofia Grey: A famous movie star returns to his hometown and the best friend he’d mostly lost touch with. Sweet, some UST, some muscle cars.

In the Court of the Forgotten by J.J. Cassidy: This story contained non-con; see below for further discussion. Aside from the non-con, this was a good story. It’s the fae-in-the-real-world flavor of paranormal, except they don’t really do much more the reference “reality.” The writing was a bit stilted, though. There was also twincest and a threesome in this book, in case you were wondering.

A Shadow on the Sun by Sera Trevor: This was a longer book, but while a few parts could have been stronger, it was REALLY good. I especially liked that the antagonist was walked the line between humanity and insanity wonderfully well, and there were times when the characters thought maybe they liked him, sorta… it was just great that he wasn’t a stock-variety villain, but rather a realistic person with a multi-faceted personality.

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But let’s return, briefly, to In the Court of Shadows. If you were paying attention in my last post, you may have noticed that I said something about a new analysis tool for rape/non-con in stories. Well, here I’m going to break down that part of the story with my tool. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Two characters, E and A are imprisoned. T breaks them out. Just on the verge of escape, they are captured by Sennett, and taken to his court. Once there we learn that he’s tortured and raped T, and probably everyone else in his “kingdom.” Because T tried to free A and E, Sennett starts to whip and rape him, but A and E intervene, ending with all three in a different prison. A gets taken for whip/rape torture, the other two sort-of break out and see bits of it, then when A is returned, all three break out. Later, at the top of the plot, A and E return to save T from getting raped again by Sennett.

So. Main question: Was the rape essential to the story? Depressing answer: yes.

Don’t kill me yet! Hang on. See, because the story is really uncomplex, and the author went right to using rape to make the villain Evil (because all rapists are immediately and irredeemably evil, much like Nazis, and women who wear makeup), it wouldn’t have made sense for Sennett NOT to abuse one of the highly attractive-and-recently-defiant young men in his prison. Nor to hold himself back when confronted with the two instances of T’s disobedience. If the author had gone with any other method of making Sennett Evil, it either wouldn’t have held water, or it would have made the story much more complex and interesting, which would have been nice, but which also would have altered the story’s “essence.” Thus because the story was only slightly better than mediocre writing, it was “essential” to have rape in there.

Secondary Question: Was the rape dealt with appropriately? Not having had any personal experiences with the topic, this is a difficult question for me to really answer, but I’m still not sure that it was. T (who’d been raped repeatedly in a society where everyone had been raped repeatedly by Sennett) gave it experiential weight, but not emotional weight (“that was a Bad Thing that happened to me,” but not “I am unable to love two other men sexually because of this”), which might not be unreasonable if it was just the way the society was run, although it still felt weird. A, on the other hand, said something like “I didn’t expect to be rescued,” and then was totally fine. Which I don’t think was the right way for one to go about after being raped.

But, hey, he was half-elf-half-fae, so what do I know? Maybe that’s just how they are.

In conclusion, I’d say this wasn’t for anyone who thinks non-con should be treated only as a very serious issue, nor who is triggered by it (although technically the details were off-screen). It is also probably not for people who wish that we could have less lazy reasons/ways for characters to be Evil.