Apparently I'm reading a romance book...
Other than a short period in high school, I've never read romance books. In truth, I now mentally scoffed at them. As it's been decades since I last read one, I'm aware I could be off-base in looking down on them, but I've never been curious enough to read one and see if I needed to revise my opinion.
A while back my To Read pile was getting small, so I was looking at recommendations and reviews. Someone posted a review of Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 1), and there were a lot more comments left than usual, so I read through them. Seemed everyone either LOVED that series or hated it endlessly. It sounded interesting though, so warily I bought a copy.
Why warily? It's about vampires. While I haven't read Twilight, I've read enough reviews and live readings of it to feel burned on the whole vampire genre.
And so the book sat in my To Read pile, getting further and further buried. Sometimes I have to just randomly pick a book from the bottom, otherwise I'll never get around to the oldest ones. Over the weekend, I did that, and came up with Dark Lover.
I almost gave up on the book before it began. I've mentioned before how much I enjoy it when an author trusts their readers enough to not lay out every detail of the world and plot right from the start. This book did the polar opposite of that: Before the story it had a many-paged glossary of terms, words, and phrases used in that world. ARG! No! Bad author! No cookie! If you must use other words for things, use them in a way that explains the meaning as part of the story! If I wrote:
I know most people don't like mossroot, but it's good for you, so I have it with dinner a couple times a week. Plus, it grows like weeds around here.
You may not know exactly what mossroot is, but you know enough for the story! You can get plenty of details out that way! /froth /froth
Anyway. Surprisingly I'm liking the story. A lot. The glossary isn't the author's only sin (her characters are named things like Rhage, Zsadist, Dhestroyer, Vishous, and Phury, which makes me froth at the mouth ARG THERE BETTER BE A GOOD IN-WORLD REASON FOR THEM USING STUPIDLY MISSPELLED NAMES*!), but still. It's one of those books I think about during the times I'm not able to read, wishing I could get back to it.
Her writing style is very familiar. It reminds me a lot of fanfic (which is ironic, since she's one of those anti-fanfic writers). Her writing feels like it comes from LJ or some other blog site. It surprises me how comfortable and familiar a style can seem -- the author feels like she's one of us. (Which, again, ironic that she's anti-fanfic.)
In googling to find if she had previously written fanfic, I found out Dark Lover was classified as a paranormal romance. Ack! I would never have guessed! There's been no romance at all so far... (One sex scene, but no romance at all, the two were strangers. Oh, and one attempted rape scene, but that of course is the other end of the spectrum from romance.)
I'm only about a third of the way into it, but if it keeps up as it's going, it's going to get quite the positive review from me.
* I skipped reading the glossary, so if the reason for the misspelled names is in there, I'm going to laugh at myself. Also, dear author, I'm reading your book just fine having skipped it, so please leave it out from now on? Trust your readers, we're not stupid!
A while back my To Read pile was getting small, so I was looking at recommendations and reviews. Someone posted a review of Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 1), and there were a lot more comments left than usual, so I read through them. Seemed everyone either LOVED that series or hated it endlessly. It sounded interesting though, so warily I bought a copy.
Why warily? It's about vampires. While I haven't read Twilight, I've read enough reviews and live readings of it to feel burned on the whole vampire genre.
And so the book sat in my To Read pile, getting further and further buried. Sometimes I have to just randomly pick a book from the bottom, otherwise I'll never get around to the oldest ones. Over the weekend, I did that, and came up with Dark Lover.
I almost gave up on the book before it began. I've mentioned before how much I enjoy it when an author trusts their readers enough to not lay out every detail of the world and plot right from the start. This book did the polar opposite of that: Before the story it had a many-paged glossary of terms, words, and phrases used in that world. ARG! No! Bad author! No cookie! If you must use other words for things, use them in a way that explains the meaning as part of the story! If I wrote:
I know most people don't like mossroot, but it's good for you, so I have it with dinner a couple times a week. Plus, it grows like weeds around here.
You may not know exactly what mossroot is, but you know enough for the story! You can get plenty of details out that way! /froth /froth
Anyway. Surprisingly I'm liking the story. A lot. The glossary isn't the author's only sin (her characters are named things like Rhage, Zsadist, Dhestroyer, Vishous, and Phury, which makes me froth at the mouth ARG THERE BETTER BE A GOOD IN-WORLD REASON FOR THEM USING STUPIDLY MISSPELLED NAMES*!), but still. It's one of those books I think about during the times I'm not able to read, wishing I could get back to it.
Her writing style is very familiar. It reminds me a lot of fanfic (which is ironic, since she's one of those anti-fanfic writers). Her writing feels like it comes from LJ or some other blog site. It surprises me how comfortable and familiar a style can seem -- the author feels like she's one of us. (Which, again, ironic that she's anti-fanfic.)
In googling to find if she had previously written fanfic, I found out Dark Lover was classified as a paranormal romance. Ack! I would never have guessed! There's been no romance at all so far... (One sex scene, but no romance at all, the two were strangers. Oh, and one attempted rape scene, but that of course is the other end of the spectrum from romance.)
I'm only about a third of the way into it, but if it keeps up as it's going, it's going to get quite the positive review from me.
* I skipped reading the glossary, so if the reason for the misspelled names is in there, I'm going to laugh at myself. Also, dear author, I'm reading your book just fine having skipped it, so please leave it out from now on? Trust your readers, we're not stupid!