Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

It’s pretty sad if the hero can’t even make the cover of his own book.

I concur. Great review. Going to look up Waziristan now.

Thanks for this review!
So Waziristan is a real existing country with real people in it? I love to learn new things!
I would not have been able to finish this book. The idea of romance is that the main characters get their HEA. Which would make me happy. The idea is not that everyone hates everyone and me as a reader as well hates everyone. Which would not make me happy.

He doesn’t let much—even bad orthodontia—get in the way when he wants some sexin’.

I´m dying to find out details…

My DH is military, and he’s been deployed to Iraq 2 times—once for 15 mos and once for a year. I learned to love my vibe and we made sure the second time to both have laptops with webcams for chatting. Granted, I know plenty of marriages that have ended over cheating during deployment (on both sides). But it’s possible (not fun, but possible) to go a year or more without another person in your bed. So thanks for the warning; I might have read this and been disgusted.

Tori Carrington is two people writing under one name, isn’t it? I’d hate to think they were married.
See, what you’ve described could have made a reasonable menage, treated right. But for an m/f romance? Nah, no way. Because, as you said, it makes them creeps. There are two ways this story might have been redeemed. To make them confess, and let Dari make the decisions, or to make Dari kick them both out of his life, and then go on to find someone else. If the sex had been in some way impulsive, even drunk sex, that might have helped. But planned infidelity while thinking of yourselves first, and not the fallout isn’t romantic and never will be.
Or an exploration of an open relationship, even. Where Dari had given her full permission to sleep with someone else while he was away, and later discovered he can’t take it. Or that he can. Nobody’s ever explored an open relationship kind of marriage or partnership in romance. Or have they?

They get cheated on all the time, Nina. Not only that, but divorced and taken for every penny they’re worth if possible too.

This novel highlighted two things:
a) cheating is being normalised socially
b) the psychological problems of servicemen aren’t being addressed adequately.

I never want to read anything that makes me confused about who the hero is. Plus, I’d like to be able to like both the hero and the heroine. I’ve read one book in recent memory in which the heroine cheated - also a Harlequin Blaze - and it was a Friends sort of situation: the heroine had a boyfriend but things were a bit rocky between them (he was moving too slow for her tastes but I think was too much of a wuss to flat-out tell him so), so she decided they were on a “break” but didn’t actually confirm that her boyfriend felt the same way. The guy she cheated on her boyfriend with was the hero of the book. While the sex scenes were nice, I was peeved at the heroine. If she had actually been married to the other guy, I would have been a good deal more than peeved, and at least the hero wasn’t the boyfriend’s best friend. Reckless Pleasures sounds like it would make me want to stab many of its characters.

Nina:

This is a tough review but it sounds like this book was pretty tough to get through too.  I haven’t read it, but I’m also uncomfortable with issues of infidelity generally.  What seems even worse here than the “sexual” infidelity is the emotional infidelity.  Darius doesn’t just get cheated on, he gets betrayed. 

I’ll give this one a pass based on your review. Thanks for your honesty, but I tremble in fear that you’ll ever take on one of mine!

I do NOT want to read about infidelity in my romance novels. To me, the novels have always been an escape from reality but in a good way. Granted there are some dark storylines, like illness and death, but I WILL NOT EVER be okay reading about infidelity. There’s no “happily ever after” in that. And I’m surprised the couple—and yes, they ARE a married couple!—that wrote this book are even “going there”...disappointing.

Well, Harriet Klausner gave it 5 stars.  She said “Tori Carington puts a powerful spotlight on the human cost of deployments as Dari feels betrayed by his beloved and his BFF while he was in theater. The kidnapping provides tension and twists including a brilliant spin that fans will relish while waiting for the Wicked Pleasures of Linc’s tale. ” 

Sounds like Book Blurb as review.  Also sure doesn’t sound like the book that has been reviewed here and at DA.

“Will you climb down off the cross already? We need the freakin’ wood.”

*mouth agape in horror*  UGH UGH UGH.  This just sounds awful; Megan and (especially) Jason sound creepy and horrible as all get-out.  I mean, maybe if this book was treated as a serious exploration of the effect of deployment on couples—okay.  But, this is a romance!  If the characters who are falling in love aren’t even a little likeable, what’s the point? 

@ Lynne Connolly: I’m pretty sure Tori Carrington is a married couple writing under one name.

I think I’m just as bothered by the sudden lapse into present tense in the third excerpt as I am by the characters, who all sound like whiny, self-absorbed douchebags.  Where was the editor on this?

Wow, they sound like throughly unlikable characters. :( Even if this had turned into a menage it would still suck, but at least you could kind of understand where the writer was coming from. This? Uh-uh.

@Lynne: agreed, having this plotline but with an open relationship would have made the characters a lot more interesting and their angst a lot more palatable. It could have been quite interesting.

captcha: issue57. Even the computer agrees there are at least 57 issues with this book.

Fortunately readers new to romance aren’t likely to pick up a Harlequin Blaze book to start so at least the whole genre won’t be painted with this crappy brush.

I admit to only having read one Carrington book and I got the feeling then that I was reading some male high school student’s idea of what is romantic.  This book brings to mind all the recent (and not so recent) headline grabbing adulterous behavior and the devastation it leaves behind. Blah.

Self indulgent,  hurtful and juvenile behavior is not romantic and not what I look for in romance books.

I know the world is full of different tastes and its difference of opinion that makes horse races and all of that… but I honestly can’t see how a cheating story in a romance that occurs after the hero and heroine have already established their relationship could ever be anything other than enraging. Just thinking about cheating (for either party) makes me furious, and furious isn’t what I want from my love stories.

Obviously I’m not the intended audience here, but I have to wonder who is the intended audience? I’ve always considered people coming together in love, or at least mutual respect, to be the point of the whole romance genre. Cheating undermines both of those… so wtf is it doing in a romance?

Just don’t get it.

Sorry, but this sounds like absolute garbage. What bugs me the most is that the majority of the books put out by this couple always seem to rate as crap. And yet, they continue to get published and paid. <head to desk>
Who would want to read about this self indulgent couple who claim to love their friend so much, but have sex anyway? That is not romance and nor is it handled well. Books like these anger me because plot is important, especially if you are going to tackle a sensitive area such as soldiers facing deployment and then throw in serious betrayal. As an author you better understand the psychological issues and emotional issues of your characters instead of regurgitating some pop psychology crap one read in a blurb in some magazine back in high school.

Harriet Klausner is still around?? I thought she’d fallen by the wayside at some point over the past couple of years.

But anyways, I have less of a problem with infidelity as part of a storyline (if handled appropriately) than I do with the “hey, let’s just use each other like sex toys” storyline. The infidelity here is totally inappropriate because it’s based on just that: two shallow, selfish people who use each other to get off. I’m sorry, but if you love someone, you don’t plan to cheat on them for your own immediate gratification.

Nina, I feel your pain. My review of Shameless was almost this ranty and as bad as that book was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as this one sounds.

It seems to me that, in a weird way, this book was the inevitable next step in the Carrington oeuvre. All their books feature characters who are, IMO, incredibly unlikable and yet some people apparently enjoy the books because they keep selling. TC is apparently determined to push until they find out exactly how bad characters can be before readers rebel.

This sounds remarkably unpleasant for a romance novel. I read these for fun, so no thanks.

When I read this book, I honestly wondered if it was going to be a menage - which might have been interesting to explore. As written, I couldn’t tell who the hero was supposed to be. The cover model’s dog tags were my only real tip-off.

That’s part of the problem with the story. Just who the hell is the hero, anyway?  Ostensibly, it’s Darius, but he’s absent the first seven chapters of the book.  Asswipe Jason gets as much or more attention.  I’m not even sure which guy is getting his shirt pulled on the cover. Is it Dari or Jason? It’s pretty sad if the hero can’t even make the cover of his own book.

This was my biggest problem in the book. if the story is to explore infidelity, why is jason’s POV important? why do we care about him? isn’t the point to explore how infidelity occurs and then how you overcome and if so, doesn’t that mean we should be talking about the two main protags?

If the first 7 chapters was sequel bait, it was pretty poor sequel bait.

I’m as thoroughly no-no-aigh over cheating as everyone else - but I also get greatly annoyed by factual mistakes. (That’s what started me writing years ago - one mistake too many in a book). Please say that the authors are clear that Waziristan is an actual place, a part of Pakistan, and they don’t present it as one of those fake little countries? And, I’m having a hard time suspending my disbelief over “leg in cast” after an IED hit ... does the hero have shrapnel wounds? Did he nearly lose his leg, and have to have several surgeries? Or is “leg in cast” one of those convenient injuries like Regency limps?

“price49”: The price our soldiers pay for our wars is 49 times higher, no, it’s incalculable, than what we at home pay.

And, I’m having a hard time suspending my disbelief over “leg in cast” after an IED hit…

I wondered about this as well and I don’t have a great deal of confidence that it was explained in any logical way in the book. In Shameless TC described an apartment building as having an “al fresco” painting in the lobby. 

If they didn’t bother to look up the fact that al fresco means outdoors and a fresco is a type of painting I don’t think anyone should be looking for them to have worked out the details of IED injuries.

“dump Megan’s ass and look like a hard-hearted SOB”

I don’t think dumping her would have made him look hard-hearted at all, but I grew up with a Dad who cheated, and adultery has always been one of my hot buttons. I thorougly applauded Mom kicking him to the curb and always enjoyed her sarcastic renditions of “Stand by Your Man”.

Cheating is a huge issue for relationships where one or both members are deployed. It always has been (Dear John letters etc). I couldn’t have read this book without getting ill, though.

If this is Blaze’s attempt to be edgy, I think they missed the mark. There’s nothing romantic about this scenario, and it seems from the review, there is no character growth either.  Distasteful does not = envelope pushing.

I have just seen it in stores. I really wouldn’t buy it and reading your review makes me happy :)

@Lynne Connolly: I think you’re right about the open relationship take on this story, it would have softened the jackass edges these characters seem to have. Megan and Jason still would have felt bad, even though what they’d done had been with Dari’s consent… Dari would have returned, probably feeling something like, “I’m not as okay with this as I thought I would be, and with my best friend of all people.”

Why is slang for female private parts used as an insult to men? I was with this review until “pussy” was used as a synonym for coward.

Come on, Woman, have some self-respect!

I agree @Miranda. Why would removing two poisonous people from your life make you the hard hearted one? Having sex with your significant other’s best friend is hard hearted. Having sex with your best friend’s significant other is hard hearted. The REALISTIC response would’ve been to let two people who obviously deserve each other have each other & go find someone who deserves you.
And what did these two do while they were both active? I know people who’re married to fellow service(wo)men, and they aren’t often deployed at the same time or to the same place. Sometimes they’re lucky if it’s the same country.

As an Army wife, it’s hard to see infidelity (whether on the part of the deployed person, or the one at home).  I’ve known couples where this has happened and it certainly was no picnic.  I haven’t read the book but the review makes it clear that the issue isn’t handled well or realistically at all.

Deployment places a strain on a relationship - I know, I’ve been there several times.  My husband gets deployed again later this year and it will be hard for him to be apart from me and it will be hard for me to be a de facto single parent (although I do it all the time as he’s been in an unaccompanied job for the past eighteen months, only making it home for a couple of days every two to three weeks).

Infidelity is understandable, if unforgiveable when faced with the realities of Service life but it shouldn’t be trivialised like this.

Thanks for the warning! It sounds like a book I want to avoid like the plague. I don’t read romances to dislike the major characters, and I would have felt really cheated by that if I’d bought it.

Ew. As someone whose own marriage disintegrated due to infidelity (his, not mine), no way would I want to read about this in a romance novel. In fact, I was under the impression that infidelity by the hero or heroine was taboo within this genre. And Nina, you’re right that it’s a no-win situation for the cheated-on party. I’m glad I kicked him to the curb, but there are some people who’ve been hostile to me ever since.

So this is the third book reviewed on this site by Tori Carrington.
The first review was done by a guest reviewer who gave it a D-,
then there was the butt book that got an F
and now a third F.
Forget avoiding the book. I would like to avoid the authors.
I don’t know about anyone else but I will buy, or own, or read a book by these people.
It just doesn’t seem worth.
I am so sorry Nina had a bad experience. Nina, we sorry for your pain.

Yuck. I might expect this kind of plotline from a YA novel.

But when I read adult romance, I want the characters to act like grownups.  Flawed, yes, but still grownups.

I think Dari should have dumped them both and moved on with his life. There’s nothing hard-hearted about getting out of a poisonous relationship.

I’m wondering how in the world Tori C is going to turn around and make this jack*ss into a ...and I use the word loosely…“hero”...in another book?! He’s a jerk. He not only cheated with his bf’s gal, but he was all for continuing to LIE about it, saying it wasn’t hurting anyone.

I confess I love Sweet Babou enough to try to fix our marriage if he cheated ... although it would probably be wrecked beyond salvaging. Still, I love him so much I can’t say I would walk for sure, so I understand that the hero may really love the Skank and forgive her, but to blithely forgive Jason? WTF? And WTF was up with her not worrying about the man she is supposed to love so much? Could she not go online and buy a freakin’ vibrator? Seriously? Thanks for the heads up so I can avoid this book like the plague.

You know, a book about a hero/heroine who cheated while under the stress of deployment, then came home filled with remorse and then had to rebuild the trust/love with a significant other—that would actually be something to read, because of the complexity. But this book just sounded grosser than gross. How great would the hero/heroine have to be to win the reader over? I would need him to save a box full of orphans or something.

I get a little nervous when the subject of cheating comes up because of personal experience in various areas of my life, (would this be that ‘trigger’ issue?) but I think it is reasonable for a novelist to deal with the subject even as a platform for a story. Perhaps my problem is once again with the very strict definition of a “Romance” novel.  Harlequin has these very strictly defined niches it seems, and then breaks their own rules. I have not read many of them, so cannot speak authoritively. But what can you call the stories with ambiguous endings or morally questionable situations?  Women’s fiction?  Believe me, you cannot paint the infidelity issue with only the colors black and white. Even if you want to.

“God, are you so stupid you can’t see how much the woman loves you?”

What the FUCK.  she loves you so damned much that she asked me to stick my penis inside her.  it didn’t count though, it was like sextoys. why didn’t she use a fucking sex toy?

OMGOD I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaate infidelity! why is this ok? Infidelity is brought about by people too cowardly or stupid or drunk to just give up on their current relationship to pursue something else.  It should not be forgiven.

Wow. That is an unsavory plot for a “romance” novel. I would have been aghast to read that thing.

Their cowardly justifications and inability to just leave each other alone…ugh! Megan sounds like an absolutely vacuous tart with Jason winning douchecanoe of the year.

‘Tori Carrington’ is a husband-and-wife team:  Tony Karayianni and Lori Schlachter Karayianni.
They have been writing since the late 1980s, and have published at least 25 novels.  I seem to remember that they produced many of the earliest titles in the ‘Blaze’ line for Harlequin when it was first launched, so they are an experienced team.  I haven’t kept any on their 1980s/90s titles, though I have certainly read many of them, so I infer that I didn’t care too much for them.
I actually agree with all of you who find the plotline of this novel as described in the review rather distasteful, but at the same time, I also find a few of the preceding comments on this thread completely over the top.  There are many themes, especially those that are sexually explicit, that some people find exciting, moving, inspiring or thought-provoking, even cathartic, but that other readers find totally repellent and disgusting.  Before we scream and shout about how evil and wicked they are, we should perhaps reflect that different readers, with different viewpoints, may see them in another light, perhaps even in a light that helps them work through problems of their own. 
To me, from the vantage point of old age and experience, the sheer fury expressed by some of you about an ‘infidelity’ plot seems extreme.  I find sado-masochistic sex and even playful domination/submission games totally, TOTALLY unacceptable;  reading about them makes my gorge rise.  But I try not to scream and shout from a position of outraged virtue when I read a review of a book that includes those themes, because I know that they address needs in some people that I am apparently unable to imagine.
I don’t mean to preach, but it is a fact that all of us find our own beliefs and preconceptions, which are both personally and culturally determined, self-evidently ‘right’.  We need to remember that other people can be different without being fiends from hell.
Once solemn commitments have been made, sexual infidelity is certainly Bad:  emotional infidelity is Worse:  but to me, neither would be The End, or unforgiveable.  For me, the day a partner wanted to tie me up, or asked me to tie him up, that would be the final deal-breaker.  Different culture, different generation, maybe.
This website and its regular contributors are characterised by a considerable degree of openness and tolerance on sexual subjects (not to mention a casual use of blunt language that sometimes makes me gasp), yet here I see a kind of strident self-righteousness about infidelity that one would expect of an altogether more traditional mind-set.
I wouldn’t read the book, because I don’t think I would enjoy it, and in any case, I hate anything that has military elements, but I still remain to be convinced that it has no redeeming features whatever.
:-)

The truth is, it’s not that hard not to fuck somebody. It doesn’t just happen. You don’t go from being around someone you find attractive to fucking them in one step. You have lots and lots and lots of opportunities NOT to cheat before you finally cheat, so there’s never an excuse. I mean, no matter how fast you are, you don’t go from upright and clothed to naked and fucking without realizing it. I’m not sure I buy the drunk excuse either - seems to me that if you’re so plastered you can start fucking someone without meaning to, you should’ve been passed out already.

I know women—real live, actual women - who cheated on their boyfriends or, worse, with their friends’ boyfriends, and then said they’d “tried” to resist but just couldn’t. And I’m like - bitch, I’ve watched you pass up chocolate, wine and fried chicken for three months in order to get into a bathing suit, so don’t tell me you don’t have the self-discipline not to fuck somebody.

If it’s only about needing release from the hornies, you have lots of options. It doesn’t require a real dick.

When people cheat, they’re cheating for some other reason than the one they’re giving. It’s not about loneliness or horniness. There is always an element of revenge, or narcissism, or jealousy, or self-destruction or self-pity or something else.

Maybe it wasn’t the fact that the book includes cheating, but that it treated it in such a clumsy and cavalier fashion.
I agree, cheating to me isn’t a deal-breaker in a book, but it is to many, and I do think it deserves careful treatment to work. especially in a romance.
I haven’t read this book, but I have read others by Carrington, and I have to say that the curt, telling-not-showing style and the lack of romance made me realize the stories weren’t for me.

Maybe it wasn’t the fact that the book includes cheating, but that it treated it in such a clumsy and cavalier fashion.

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know just how poorly written it is but the impression I got from the review was that the issue of infidelity was not well handled at all.

I have no problem with a book that deals with infidelity - there are several great novels out there that are superb explorations of such relationships (Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary for example).

My problem with such a plot is that the infidelity is mixed up with military issues and deployment - something of which I have first-hand experience as a military spouse.  There could have been a great plot surrounding a military couple and the stress and strain placed on them by deployment:  instead, the author(s) appears to have glossed over this side of things and has failed to portray the relationships between the hero and heroine and their friend with any degree of realism.

So, it’s not the infidelity per se or, indeed, that the infidelity involves a military couple but that it is handled in a juvenile fashion.

I really dislike infidelity by the hero or heroine though I have certainly read books in which that happened.  But what will keep me from reading this book is the attitude of Megan and Jason—there’s just no excuse for that!  Other posters have mentioned scenarios that might be worth reading but their behavior is definitely that of a couple of spoiled brats who care only about themselves and scratching an itch!  And Darius has only been gone 4 months!

Call me old-fashioned (in spite of growing up with the song “Love the One You’re With”) but if you really love someone, you’re not really that interested in hooking up with someone else because you care more about your partner’s feelings that your own itch.  And Darius has only been gone 4 months!  Megan and Jason are jerks and Darius should totally kick them both out of his life.

This is the most balanced, thoughtful discussion I have seen on here in weeks.  @AgTigress (as usual) and @Kinsey:  Balm for this troubled mind.  Blessings.  I spend too much time at Mises(dot)org lately.

Cheating is not an auto deal-breaker in a book for me - it really depends on how/why it happens and how/why it is resolved. 

In this instance, we are talking about the woman being alone for 4 months.  Really?  Four months?  She couldn’t go 4 months without sex while her man is off serving his country.  It is called self-control people, and respect both for yourself and your partner.  And then it appears that she and the friend approached it like a business deal.  It wasn’t even a “we can’t help ourselves, we are so in love/lust, must have each other now” kind of thing - it was a “we won’t look at each other or kiss, therefore it won’t count” kind of thing.  Are these people adults?  Ick.  Just ick.

If he had been gone for most of the 18 months; if she and the friend got caught up in the moment and things went too far; if they felt remorse after and were willing to confess to the Hero and own their actions - these things would have made the book, if not acceptable, at least more palatable.  But to approach cheating as a business deal, to lie about it even when confronted, to act as though the Hero who was wronged is somehow in the wrong because he isn’t willing to forgive the girlfriend and the friend who cheated - that makes the book unacceptable to me. 

Relationships can and do recover from infidelity - but only if the cheating partner is sincerely remorseful and the cheated upon partner is willing to forgive and offer another chance.  This HEA just has the making for a really unhappy marriage followed by a really messy divorce.

So this is the third book reviewed on this site by Tori Carrington.
The first review was done by a guest reviewer who gave it a D-,

In all fairness, I gave it a D- because if you just look at the mechanics of the writing, it was fairly-well written.  It wasn’t riddled with spelling and grammar errors (or my biggest pet peeve—homophone errors).  The plot zipped right along and there wasn’t too much tell and not enough show.  In that sense, even a D- might have been too low of a score.  However, I absolutely hated and despised the “hero” and the “best friend” and thought that the heroine was a doormat who bought into the slut-shaming crap that the other two were piling on her until she succumbed to the emotional abuse and accepted the “hero” as her misbegotten due.  I also thought that the title, “Shameless”, was incredibly ironic, considering how much shame they piled onto that girl.  On a personal, button-pushing level, I HATED that book, but I didn’t think it was fair to give it an F based on the fact that I, personally, thought that the hero and his buddy were utter scumbags.  It was one of those, “Your mileage may vary” things, you know?

I’d already decided, after reading that one, that I would never pick up a Carrington title again.  This decision has only been reenforced with the last two reviews.

I have written and deleted this post several times. I’m just not sure how to put this.

As a military spouse who has gone through two full deployments, and countless smaller separations (schooling, training, more training, training some more…), I’ve witnessed my share of unfaithfulness via other couples within the units. It’s true that people cheat in the military. Both sides, the mm and the dependent. Yes, deployed military members can (and do) find ways to have sex out there in war zones. (Despite it being against UCMJ…but that’s beside the point.) So this is really a realistic part of military life. Not exactly the most flattering aspect, but I’m not naive enough to think it doesn’t happen. Happens every day, unfortunately. And I wouldn’t say that having a cheating significant other of a military member in a work of fiction is trivializing the scenario.

But this is simply my opinion that cheating spouses/significant others as the main hero/heroines in a ROMANCE novel do not belong. Military, civilian or otherwise. I don’t read romance to see cheaters. Especially ON THE PAGE. Men and women make mistakes. But I don’t want to see adultery on the page. It’s not what I want out of the book. I don’t give a hot damn if they’re military or they’re civilian or retired or whatever. It’s not what I want in romance as a personal preference. And I also don’t want to spend so much time without the hero, and almost substituting in another guy instead of the hero. “Tag, you’re it! Oh wait, I’m back in the country now. My turn!”

The lack of the hero’s POV for so long combined with spending more time in the front with a non-hero combined with adultery on page is not something I want in romance, done “well” or not, military or civilian.

The only book I’ve read by the Carrington team that was any good was _Taken_, which was really an action packed blowout.

I don’t mind reading about infidelity in romances that takes place *before the relationship is established* but ones where cheating takes place after the declaration of love makes the cheater look like a real jerk—and I don’t want characters like that to have a happy ending!

I read romance to escape from real life and live vicariously throng the heroine.  That means I really can’t get into a book that makes the characters do things I would find reprehensible ... like cheating!  There are enough ways to introduce conflict between protagonists so they can learn and grow together without having one cheat on her beau with his best friend.  That is a dealbreaker for me.  I would have screamed and tossed the book against the wall-  HARD. Thank you for the (entertaining) warning.

But maybe I’m too hard on the characters. Am I just a judgmental bitch? After all, people get lonely. They make mistakes. Isn’t forgiveness possible?

In my opinion, infidelity is unforgiveable…even moreso IRL.  It certainly has no place in a romance novel.  Now if we were talking Chick Lit (from the good ol’ days of Bridget Jones et al) then maybe it would have a place.  But no heroine that I’m willing to read about will take part in this as a plot line.  If it was something in the past and it “haunts her” I might be able to get through it….but otherwise, I agree with you.  Total assholes.

At least the ridiculousness of the Tori C butt book was ripe with material to make fun of but it’s hard for me to laugh at this one. You just kind of have to go “Really? They really did that? REALLY?” I also noticed that their characters are super lazy when it comes to getting out of bed (or off the piano) to get something. She could have gone looking for her vibrator but it’s all the way over there so might as well just have sex with this guy, right?

TracyP:

In my opinion, infidelity is unforgiveable…

For you, and for many other people/couples, yes, and you have very properly added the rider ‘in my opinion’.  But for others, no;  there are other kinds of irreparable betrayal that may be worse. That’s my point:  sexual infidelity is not invariably the worst thing that can happen in a relationship.  I think some people would be surprised to know how many deeply committed long-term relationships have actually weathered and survived the occasional incident of sexual infidelity and even short-term emotional infatuations with third parties, which are more dangerous than mere copulation.
There are even circumstances in which such elements could feature in a romance (as some have suggested above), though it does not sound as though the book under discussion here qualifies.  I agree totally with those who say that it is ludicrous for anyone to be unable to live without sex for a mere matter of months, or to imagine that sexual gratification must always be provided by a human partner anyway;  the whole story line sounds hopelessly tacky and vulgar.  But if we are going to admit, as most of us do here, that our personal rules of sexual propriety are not the only ones that count in the world, that other people may have other rules, then we must be careful about making sweeping judgements about what is or is not forgiveable.

I don’t want to see adultery on the page.  And I also don’t want to spend so much time without the hero, and almost substituting in another guy instead of the hero.

Me too.  I don’t mind someone stepping out on the other, but don’t put the focus on the “other guy,” and please don’t take me through the boot knocking.  I pick up a book to read about the hero and heroine.  Not his horny best friend.

I HATE reading about cheating (or watching movies about it). It makes me lose all sympathy with the cheating parties if they are the protagonists. The only circumstances in which I can stomach stories about cheating is when the person is in a bad relationship that they cannot get out of (i.e. an abused wife that can’t leave her husband finding solace in another man). I will definitely pass on reading this, thanks for the review.

As so often happens, when one tries to deal with general principles on the basis of a specific case, the case lets one down because of its atypical features.  It is clear that there are a great many disturbing issues with the book reviewed here, and I think that the fact that the protagonists seem to be pretty unpleasant people is the real crux of the matter.  I would also agree with those who discount it as a romance because there is no satisfactory HEA.  The HEA is required.

But I am also struck in a more general way by the implication running through some of the comments here that romance should in any case never deal with really dark and difficult themes.  The defining characteristic of a romance is that it chronicles a love affair that overcomes obstacles and ultimately reaches a happy and permanent resolution;  in many romance novels, the obstacles to be overcome are comparatively trivial or even deliberately humorous — fairly trite misunderstandings and so forth. 

But in others, the difficulties faced by the couple may be gritty themes from the seamier side of real life:  death and betrayal, fear, war and natural disasters, and, yes, maybe even infidelity, incest, cruelty and abuse.  If the love story eventually rises above those horrors, and the protagonists are able to move on into a hopeful future together, then the story is a romance.  Not a light-reading-while-sipping-a-drink-on-the-beach romance, but still a romance.  The genre is a wide one, and a truly major part of the whole storytelling tradition.  We should not be influenced by the house-styles of certain powerful publishers into thinking that romance must always be ‘light’.

I’ve come back just to lend my support to Agtigress, who doesn’t need it, but I’m doing it anyway.

I have been taken aback by the vehemence of some of the responses about cheating. Can’t a couple learn from their mistakes and build a better relationship from it? Is their relationship so trivial that one instance of infidelity can kill it? One of the things I personally dislike is the easy divorce. One mistake and pouf! It’s all gone, the person is a sleaze, not worth continuing with.

This book isn’t the best example of its kind, but in real life I’ve known couples who have gone through dark times and worked together to make it better, instead of taking the easy path and walking away. To my mind that’s as romantic as the fairy tale kind. More so.

I would love to read a story about that, and yes, I’d count it as a romance. One playing away from home shouldn’t break a relationship, if it’s strong and if the couple is committed. What kills it is the true cheating, the lies and subterfuges that follow. Someone who does it and then is strong enough to man (or woman) up about it and take the consequences is worth reading about, surely?

I, too, would relish reading about darker themes in romance. As long as it has the HEA, I’m good to go.

I’ve known couples who have gone through dark times and worked together to make it better, instead of taking the easy path and walking away. To my mind that’s as romantic as the fairy tale kind. More so.

Lynne, very well put.

I don’t have a problem with “dark themes” in romance novels. Sherry Thomas writes some wonderful dark romance novels, and I eat them up with a spoon.

I have a problem with infidelity specifically, not because it is “dark” but because it is not romantic. Infidelity by hero or heroine is a great topic to explore in women’s fiction, general fiction, literary fiction, YA, even crime fiction or SFF. But I don’t want to see it in a romance novel. In my opinion, one of the key features of a romance novel is the romantic fantasy that once the hero and heroine find each other, they are such a perfect match that neither of them wants to be with anybody else. I’m aware it’s just a fantasy, not very realistic, but I don’t care—it’s the fantasy I want when I read a romance novel. I get enough of real life in, well, real life.

Alpha Lyra, you said it perfectly. I should have been more specific in my comment, I don’t mind reading about infidelity at all, just not in romance novels where one of the MC’s is a cheater. It can be used for a background character, perhaps an ex of the MC, but when the main characters cheat, I just find that I’m unable to forgive them and I don’t want their love interest to.

Not romantic at all.  Reminds me of one of Emily Giffin’s novels.

Alpha Lyra:

In my opinion, one of the key features of a romance novel is the romantic fantasy that once the hero and heroine find each other, they are such a perfect match that neither of them wants to be with anybody else.

I think that is a perfectly reasonable personal preference for a specific type of romance, but I would still argue that it is absolutely not a general definition of ‘romance’.  The key to the romance concept is that it all comes right in the end.  The hero and heroine may heartily dislike, despise and mistrust each other at first (a very common trope in 1980s category romance, as it happens), and/or they may only realise that they are destined to bond permanently quite late in the story.  They may weather all sorts of major catastrophes before their path appears clearly before them.  Like Lynne, I usually find the successful resolution of serious difficulties much more romantic than the fairy-tale fantasy in which the couple know they are right for each other immediately.  It is just a matter of personal taste, and neither approach is ‘better’ than the other, but both certainly come under the heading ‘romance’, so regardless of personal preference, we cannot exclude those stories in which gritty and difficult themes appear, or in which hero, heroine or both are flawed characters.

Hi all,  I am the ranter who wrote the review. I know I came down very hard on the book, but really, I found it very unpleasant and frankly unrealistic. Now I know that infidelity happens and I’m not against the topic as a theme in a romance. I’ve read stories where I think it was handled well. Not so in this case.

The review was not meant as an attack on the author(s). I don’t know them and have nothing against them personally. I just hated this book.

@Mary Anne Graham: I’m a nice person in real life, HONEST!

@Lynne Connolly: Yes, a menage or open relationship theme might have worked in this story. It could have been interesting. I think the author likes to “tease” the reader with the possibility (the same thing happened in “Shameless”) and then draw back—“oh, no, we’re not going there.”

@AgTigress: I’m not against edgy, I’m not against flawed characters. But as I said in the review, there were parts of the story that made me want to cry because I felt so bad for Darius. He was put in an impossible situation by two selfish people. Yes, it is all a matter of personal taste, but I did not buy the HEA. It was not a happy ending to me—because Darius had to swallow his hurt and take back his “friend” so that an unbelievable HEA could be tacked on to fulfill romance conventions. 
Maybe this topic is too big to be addressed in a 200 page category romance format.

@SOA: Hey, you got me! I think my self-respect is in pretty good shape, but I guess I was on roll. Anyway, when I think of my private parts, that particular word does not come to mind.

There are so many amazing comments to the review and my mind is all over the place. Just to address a few other things:

Waziristan is a real place. It is a Taliban stronghold and there seems to be a kerfuffle on Wikipedia over whether it is an emirate (I had to look up “emirate” after I looked up Waziristan) or part of Pakistan.  But learning this makes what Megan and Jason did even worse, because Dari was in such a dangerous and unfriendly place.

About the IED—I don’t know anything about this stuff. In the interest of brevity, I didn’t go into the full extent of Dari’s wounds. He had to have surgery and if I remember rightly, his bone was replaced by steel or whatever it is doctors use. I don’t want to make it sound like the authors didn’t do their homework. But he was wearing a cast.

I do think there was a germ of an interesting story here, that could have dealt with loneliness, the pressures of being in the military, how couples deal with the stress, etc. Maybe this issue will be revisited in the series and addressed in a more serious way. We’ll see.

One more thing—in the third excerpt “When Megan tries to leave, Jason grabs her arm” was ME describing the action to explain the dialogue. The authors didn’t break into present tense. The quoting got a bit mixed up.

Nina, thank you for coming back and commenting on the comments.  :-) 
I think you have conveyed the impression the book made on you very vividly indeed, in your review and in these follow-up comments, and you have easily persuaded us all that this is a wholly unsatisfactory novel, with central characters who are not merely flawed, but incredibly selfish and deeply unlikeable.  Most of us as readers are simply not very interested in the affairs of characters we heartily dislike.

The caveats I have expressed (and I haven’t read the book, though I have read, and disliked, older books by this writing team) have only been about matters that touch on the general definition of ‘romance’ or on the sharply differing perceptions of sexual infidelity as a plot element, which some see as an unforgiveable sin totally inimical to a romance story in itself, while others, however disapproving, do not.

It has been an interesting and lively discussion.

When people cheat, they’re cheating for some other reason than the one they’re giving. It’s not about loneliness or horniness. There is always an element of revenge, or narcissism, or jealousy, or self-destruction or self-pity or something else.

@Kinsey: I think you’re absolutely right. When I read this book, I had the feeling that Jason was somehow jealous of Dari-perhaps for being with Megan, or maybe because Dari could commit to a relationship while Jason couldn’t. Or maybe afraid of losing his friend to a woman. So Jason had to get in there and mess with Dari’s relationship.  None of this was overt but just part of the overall creepy feeling I got from Jason.

Kinsey was concise.  Pretty much, I think, we can all assume if you are hitting it with your “best friends” partner there is a lot more going on then simple infidelity or simply being weak and giving into an urge.  Should be about 65,000 words.
Spam filter:  seems85.  There ya go. . .

UGH… This sounds like a horrible book.  I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.  Thanks for reading so that others could avoid it.

Here’s a question… is there now a “sub-genre” of romance that includes cheating as a sexual kink?  Or perhaps a fetish?  Because I’ve seen it in others that I’ve browsed on the shelves.

Not that “I thought you were dead and moved on!  It’s been 10 years!” stuff.  But deployment and “Oh I’m so attracted to the other person so I will fuck them to get it out of my system” scenarios.

It feels… alarming.  And reading it turns off, instantly, all the warm fuzzies I normally get in reading a romance novel.  Perhaps I’m missing the point?  Perhaps it’s a “flawed persons” type of story?

Here’s a question… is there now a “sub-genre” of romance that includes cheating as a sexual kink?

No, I don’t think so. Infidelity has never been, and is still not, classifiable as a sexual ‘kink’.  I think the prevalence of infidelity in real life varies according to social conditions as well as accepted mores, and of course warfare, with long absences of spouses serving in the armed forces, is a major factor.  If the theme occurs more often in books now than it did, say, 30 years ago, it may simply be a reflection of the fact that it might have become a more common problem in real life.

Perhaps it’s a “flawed persons” type of story?

It can be, I think.  I believe it might also be used as a fairly extreme example of a major conflict/problem in the progress of a relationship. 

I think that stories that actually do feature rather specialised sexual tastes, such as multiple couplings, bisexual connections, fetishism, bondage and so forth, have moved from the area of pornography into the sub-genres of romance.  This simply reflects more tolerant social attitudes.  The popularity of fantasy shape-shifter stories gets perilously close to bestiality, a ‘kink’ that most people still find repellent in real life.

Modern sexual rules and morals, especially in the USA, are not always very consistent, but then, they never have been.  The same person can be open-handedly tolerant about one formerly verboten practice, while being hysterically, traditionally strait-laced about others.

no, Flo, I’ve not seen “cheating” in any books about kink.
Books that include three-ways or BDSM with other people are always with consent by all parties. So, by definition, it’s not cheating.
I do shape-shifter stories, and love writing them. All my shape-shifters are mythical beasts (griffins, dragons and so on) so they are already removed from the animal world that we know. Occasionally they will partially shift during sex, but only to produce wings or a tail or a forked tongue. But bestiality isn’t something I think about or feel when I’m writing the stories. It’s more the savage nature, akin to the “savagery” of the sheikh or the American native, or the Highlander in other books.
But a book taking these themes has to go deeper than just a wild fling and instant forgiveness. It has to go into the real motives behind the acts, not just instalust. For instance, as AgTigress says, what if the third party was jealous and eaten up with it? His struggle would make an interesting story,  if not a romance.

For instance, as AgTigress says, what if the third party was jealous and eaten up with it? His struggle would make an interesting story,  if not a romance.

I wasn’t the one who said that, Lynne, though for what it’s worth, I agree. 
:-)

I can understand how both writers and readers of shape-shifting stories can detach themselves completely from any association with actual cross-species copulation.  I can’t (even if the animals are mythical), because of the way my mind works.  No doubt some of the people who have a fit of the vapours over adultery are quite happy with a werewolf hero;  I can cope with unfaithfulness as an element in a love-story, but not with the idea of a human’s lover being a part-time canid.  Neither of us is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’:  just different.
;-)

If I may be so bold, It seems the general consensus about the book itself is that it had the skeleton of a powerful story or even several stories - there could have been a menage, there could have been a serious treatment of infidelity in general (or in the military specifically), and there could have been a powerful story about the rehabilitation of a broken relationship as well as the redemption of a broken person.  Unfortunately, none of these were possible because two profoundly juvenile characters, Jason and the heroine, drag the only adult in this story, Dari, down with them, and the authors themselves take something powerful and turn it into a mere surface level, nigh on selfish, emotional farce.  In essence, what this shows is that a great idea/concept is not enough to create a great story or novel.  A great story/book contains a powerful concept but that concept also has to be nurtured by the author until it grows into something spectacular that makes the reader think about and feel something akin to Aristotle’s notion of catharsis.  We have no emotional investment in this novel because Romance is meant, no matter how dark or seemingly impossible the beginning may be, the end works out.  Here, as stated by multiple posters above, the HEA (the catharsis) is absent, and so the novel fails. 

This is one of the reasons why I edit, but I do not write.  I am great at ideas, I can catch inconsistencies (ex. I really hate it when a characters physical description suddenly changes halfway through the novel.  When a hero’s eyes are green on page one and chocolate brown on page 140, it drives me NUTS!!), and I can (and do) offer thorough reading notes to author friends of mine when asked.  However, carrying the ideas I come up with to a satisfying end, fully growing characters, and making something truly cathartic out of an idea is so not my forte.  And, while I do not want to be cruel, perhaps it is not the forte of The Writers Carrington either?  Regardless, I won’t be reading any of their books anytime soon.

Having read most of the comments, I think Carrington’s real sin was not in portraying infidelity or the fallout therefrom. I think their real unforgiveable was in giving us characters we cannot care about. That facet alone would’ve made this a wallbanger for me.

The characters could’ve tried to work through their pain in various other ways that would’ve made us cheer them on. I can think of quite a few ways the authors could’ve chosen to show these people, despite their errors, as human and willing to try to redeem their situation. If I can think of other solutions, I’m sure authors as experienced as this pair could’ve given the readers sympathetic characters, as well.

Nevertheless, they got the publishing contract, the career, the name, and more ink here than any other forum or venue in the world.

It sounds like some of the cliche swinger novels that came out in the late 70’s- early 80’s.

Someone bought them back then, there must be a market somewhere. Sometimes writing a fast and sleazy is about collecting a quick paycheck and nothing more.

A lot of books are about wish fulfillment. I like reading about fighter pilots but I’d never want to be one. This is probably written for women like reading about cheating but would never do it.

It’s one of the last taboos. It’s going to get exploited.

Joanna S., you make excellent points.  (So does Deb Kinnard, in pointing out again that the biggest problem is that the reader cannot empathise with the leading characters).

We have to remember, too, that the length of a category romance can and does affect the type of story that will work.  For example, it is simply impossible to develop multiple sub-plots in a book that is maybe 75,000 words or even less.  It is also difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to produce a thoughtful and nuanced treatment— one that enables the reader to understand and sympathise with the characters — of very difficult and sensitive subjects, like infidelity within the context of military service.

The chief raison d’être of the Blaze line is to provide a setting for some hot sex.  The authors have simply created a context in which that can take place without really considering all the implications of that setting to readers who have strong feelings about honour and duty.  I am slightly surprised that an apparently experienced writing team should have made such an error.

Well this book is not on my list anymore…
Mouth ulcers

Ok, this is off topic but I have to riff off AgTigress’ comment about not being able to read about shifters w/o thinking “beastiality.”

For 2 years following publication of my first novel (a werewolf romance) I was able to keep my darling, devoutly Christian and deeply prudish mother from knowing my pen name.  Mama loves me bunches and while she’s proud that my books sell, she’s pretty horrified at the idea of me writing explicit sex. So when she kept bugging me to let her read them, I refused. “Mom, you’d hate them. You don’t like fantasy or SF, you don’t like sex scenes, you’re not going to like a book about werewolves and sex.” My sister was more concise: “ORAL SEX, Mom. There’s ORAL SEX.”  (Mom thinks oral sex was invented by hippies and the thought of it makes her sick.)

So she was proud of me, but she thought I was wasting my writing talent by writing romance. And she’d almost physically shudder when she mentioned the subject of my books.

Then one day I found out why.

She thought my books featured beastiality. I.e., women copulating with wolves, or with big shaggy man-wolf monsters like in the movies.

So I explained to her that 1) to my knowledge there are no books in which women do it with animals and 2) OMG MAMA, DID YOU REALLY THINK I’D WRITE THAT?????

It is, as Ag says, a personal thing. I can’t read any vampire romances but JR Ward’s because sex with traditional vampires is necrophilia and besides, how do dead guys get stiffies? Huh? Tell me that! No heart beat=no blood flow=no boners. Really, really bugs me…..

Are vampires considered “dead”?  I thought that would be a zombie.  I thought vampires were undead.  I find reality based novels confusing at times.  This is too much for me.  I didn’t read that Twilight series but when I heard Bella had a half and half baby I started wondering what that was going to do to the DNA databank.

Well, you’re right - they are undead. But lots of vampire books and movies have mentioned how they have no heartbeats, no pulse. Offhand I’m thinking of Buffy, True Blood (and the Sookie books) and the Anita Blake series. All those vamps shag like crazy sans blood flow.

Kinsey, I don’t want to upset or offend anyone who writes or reads shapeshifter stories (or vampire stories, come to that, which also disgust me).  It all depends on how one’s mind works, and the mysterious and often hazy borderline that all of us place between reality and fantasy. 

Human/animal copulation is, of course, common enough in ancient mythology, but when I read about Leda or Pasiphaë I am in ‘work’ mode rather than ‘fiction-reading’ mode, so I can take it.  Even Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, though indubitably a novel (probably the first true ‘shape-shifter’ novel) is too imbued with the worship of Isis for me to think literally about the protagonist’s sexual conduct when in donkey form.  The same applies when I am studying or describing ancient art and artefacts that depict cross-species copulation.  I apply scholarly detachment as a matter of course.  Personal feelings would be inappropriate to the process of research.

But in something that is written as a modern fictional love-story, then I’m afraid that I visualise in a different, and very literal way;  personal response is normal and expected when reading stories for entertainment.  It’s part of the point of the exercise.  Bestiality, or zoophilia, does exist in real life, as I’m sure you know, not only in the form of the male peasant who makes use of a ewe when his wife is indisposed, but in the form of women who seem like you and me, but whose love for their male dogs goes well beyond what is seemly or biologically sensible. 

Maybe years of reading (and writing) about ancient sexuality and about erotic art has made it more difficult for me to avoid literal visualisation when characters are presented as people with whom we are expected to identify to some degree. 

I cannot identify with a character who copulates with even a part-time wolf or dog, any more than I wish to associate with a creature, dead or ‘undead’, that sucks my blood.

The whole subject is one that deserves fuller study, because the growth of the fairy tale for adults, which may include sexual themes, is comparatively recent (last 20/25 years, though started, I suppose, by the ghastly Tolkien), and it must be saying things about our society,  I don’t know what things, but they are certainly foreign to my thinking.
:-)

Just to add to my point above about ‘dividing lines’.  Readers can and do prattle away happily about were-creatures, discussing different shape-shifter characters without a cringe, but if someone who is not carried away by the fantasy were to ask one of them about her own physical relationship with her dog/horse/wombat or whatever, she would be (understandably) extremely upset and offended.  Just different dividing lines.  Those who can read and enjoy fantasy can set it beyond the boundaries of real life in a way that we more literal souls can not.

I can’t help thinking about mechanical problems, not only the blood-flow one that affects vampires, but in the case of shape-shifters, the problems about different types of genitalia and sexual behaviour.  Does a were-feline still have a barbed penis when in semi-human form?  Ouch!  Does a werewolf’s penis develop the tie while mating (20 minutes just waiting for him to disengage…  Boring.)  Does a were-bovine (all right, I don’t suppose there are any in modern fantasy) get the mating over in 3 seconds?  What sort of equipment does a dragon have?  Any intromittent organ at all?  (Heraldry is not consistent on the subject, naturally).

I know this is not the way readers of fantasy think, but for those of us with a more than passing interest in zoology and in sexual behaviour, including deviant behaviour, in all species, it just intrudes. 

:-)

I am loving this thread. It’s like a good conversation in a pub, the longer it goes on, the wilder and more varied it gets. Unless we get someone who insists on getting back to the point. That person also reads dictionaries.

Vampires - you see vampires are so pervasive because the myths are so varied. You can pick the bits you want, or you can make up your own shit.
I’m currently writing a vampire book. I don’t do many, but I enjoy the hell out of the ones I do. My vampires are merely a different “type” of human. I mean, you get hyenas, coyotes and wolves and they’re all dogs, so why not different kinds of humans? So my vampires breathe, they have beating hearts, they just possess a special organ that processes fresh, human blood. It’s a dreadful inconvenience to them, to have to take blood every so often so they can survive, but it means that between sundown and sunup, they have the superspeshulness of vampireness. As well as retractable fangs.

See what I mean? Not all vampires are dead. They’re not all undead, either.

And my shapeshifters are mythical beasts. No dogs in my world, only barghests. Though I haven’t done one of those yet. I like dragons.

Ag: I took no offense at all, and may I add how much I enjoy reading your comments. Your erudition is intimidating, I always learn something, and you’re freaking hilarious.

Oh yeah - I’m familiar with zoophilia - I live in Texas. ;)  In fact, to this day I’ve never read a Larry McMurtry book because at age 11, I picked up The Last Picture Show, which opens with a discussion of frustrated country boys and the heifers who love them. [It’s been over 30 years so I can’t recall the exact material, but it did a number on my 11 year old brain, I can tell you.]

As for bovine shifter romances - Jane Litte’s #romfail last Friday featured Scarlett Rose and the Seven Longhorns - 7 shapeshifting Texas longhorn brothers. I can’t bring myself to read it because all the men in my family are Aggies.

Also: tentacle sex.

Lynne: I’m going to check out your vamps. Living, breathing vamps don’t bother me. In fact, I’m a Vishous fangirl.

Oh yeah - I’m familiar with zoophilia - I live in Texas.

A memorable quote, that! 

Seven Texas Longhorns:  even Pasiphaë would be impressed.  Though I think that Zeus’s Bull from the Sea was almost certainly an aurochs in the early phases of the myth, rather than a mere domestic bull, and therefore even bigger (and certainly badder) than a Texas Longhorn.

I must say that even in genuine, namely ancient, myth, I like the sexual conjugations to be with mammals rather than birds, reptiles, amphibians and cephalopods.  The Japanese erotica featuring octopuses (or octopodes, if you want to be pedantic) seem extremely unattractive to me.  I don’t fancy the Zeus-swan, either, even though swans do have an intromittent male organ.

Lynne:  the idea of vampires as a separate hominid species would work much better, in my view, than the traditional concept of somehow altered humans.  No doubt someone has already written fiction featuring the poor Neanderthalers, who probably did hybridise with H. sapiens on occasion.  There could be some real pathos there, though I doubt whether most of us would find our Palaeolithic ancestors, human or near-human, all that much more appealing than an octopus as sex partners.

I just looked up Scarlett Rose and the Seven Longhorns on Amazon UK, and found this genre summary:

Erotic Cowboy Paranormal Menage Romance, M/F/M/M/M/M/M/M, Longhorn shape-shifters, exhibitionism & voyeurism, bondage

The sheer comprehensiveness of it takes my breath away!

They do those “guide” type books for following Harry Potter and others.  A guide to paranormal sex practices and equipment might be a good seller.  At exactly what point in the fang and fur (or scale or feather) emerging process do the other changes emerge?  We would need to be sure to include that guy that came out of that egg.

Mom thinks oral sex was invented by hippies…

@Kinsey—Oh, I loved that! Thanks for the chuckle! (No offense to your Mom intended.)

A guide to paranormal sex practices and equipment might be a good seller.

I think you’re right.  It can’t be easy, keeping up.  And putting together the real, ancient mythology and the modern inventions, some derivative and others quite new, that have burgeoned over the last couple of decades would be fascinating.

Which guy that came out of what egg?  In some versions of the Mithraic creation myth, the god Mithras was born from an egg.  And of course some of Leda’s offspring by the Zeus-swan were hatched from eggs, but as the stories are a bit vague about which amongst Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux and others whose names escape me were engendered by the god and which by Leda’s husband Tyndareus, it’s a bit of a muddle.  I think in most versions Castor and Pollux hatched from one egg, evidently a double-yolker.  History does not record whether poor Leda had to sit on the egg(s) for months to incubate them.  That’s obviously a less entertaining subject for art than the huge swan grabbing her violently with its beak and claws.

Some rather entertaining academic discussion has taken place about the detailed internal and external anatomy of creatures such as Centaurs (horse+human), griffins (lion+eagle) and various winged entities.  Six-limbed monsters were commonplace (four legs plus two human arms), but it becomes even more fun when they have wings as well.  How do you attach them all to the skeleton?  What happens to the spine?  The earliest Greek centaurs had human genitals as well as equine ones.  Just thought you’d all like to know that.  And yes, there are centauresses, who must, I suppose, have a mare’s udder as well as a woman’s breasts.

Yep, plenty of scope for a guide here, just with the Classical material…

:-)

@AgTigress.  In a previous rant I was a little hurt that a women had published a book about a girl who operated an interplanetary salvage ship and once the cargo was eggs containing genetically engineered male sex slaves with two penii.  One hatched early and bonded with her.  She had such problems. 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote “Women who Run with the Wolves”, and she deconstructs fairy tales.  But not on the level of actual anatomy.  She talks about the symbolism, etc. in the old children’s stories like Red Riding Hood.  My idea would have to be completely tongue in cheek and hers is quiet serious, kind of a Golden Bough approach.  I found it hard going and never finished it, but glance at it every now and then.

The symbolism in traditional folk-tales is usually linked with or based upon pagan religion, and is really fairly straightforward in broad terms.  What I find most interesting is the religious and psychological basis of the pagan tales as ways of explaining the world, and this is one of the reasons why I can’t easily cope with modern fictional recreations, because they lack the essential context that gave the ancient mythology meaning.  But that’s my problem.

I love the challenge of working out things like the physiology of an impossible hybrid.

Some animals, such as some snake species, actually do have paired penises (or penes).  I can’t offhand remember why.  I know more about mammals than reptiles.
;-) :-)

Yeah.  The croc I know has a hemi-penis which I think is one that ends in two.  Never looked but it might explain the crocodile’s smile.

...it might explain the crocodile’s smile.

Maybe, though I suspect it just makes things more complicated…
:-)

I’m with AgTigress on the subject of cross-class copulation. Mammals shouldn’t be getting it on with reptiles or birds or amphibians.

Are there any centaur romances? I recall on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, there were some hunky centaurs married to women. (We’re watching Percy Jackson: The Lightening Thief). My daughter just alerted me to the fact that mammals can’t have more than four limbs. I did not know this.

My daughter just alerted me to the fact that mammals can’t have more than four limbs.

Nor can birds and reptiles:  that’s why birds have only two legs;  their other limbs are their wings.  In the natural world, it is only when one gets into the realms of insects, spiders, crustacea and the like that limbs start to proliferate.

Centaurs:  although some legendary centaurs were wise and scholarly individuals, notably Chiron, the teacher of Achilles, their general reputation in Classical myth was of wild, savage beasts, given to heavy drinking and the rape of passing (human) females.  By about the 4th century BC, they are always shown with a human torso down to the waist or belly, but not as far as the crotch, attached to a very robust, powerful horse’s body, so they have only equine genitals (unlike the 6thC BC types which sometimes had a complete male human body with the horse torso attached at the small of the back, so those had human and equine genitals).  How many stomachs, hearts, lungs?  If there’s a horse stomach and gut, it needs grass and hay, which cannot be masticated by the creature’s human dentition.  You see how complex it all gets!

Mating with a centaur would be like being mounted by a small cart-horse stallion, and if that is anyone’s dearest fantasy, it is certainly not mine.  Apart from being squashed flat unless some very inventive position were adopted, it would be quite difficult for a human female to accommodate any equine male organ without sustaining some internal damage.  But at least it wouldn’t last long.  Ancient representations of horse/woman sex always show quite small ponies, and of course we can assume that Lucius, Apuleius’s ‘golden ass’, was quite a little beast, like modern North African donkeys.  Even so…

As you see, I can’t help getting literal about it all, and being far more interested in the physiological contradictions than in symbolic, fantasy whatsits, let alone in erotic possibilities. 

:-)

Forgot to mention that bony fishes have four limbs, too, namely their (paired) pectoral and pelvic fins.  The single dorsal and anal fins are not attached to the spine in the same way, and the caudal fin is the tail, of course.  The same basic skeletal plan serves for mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and most fishes, in spite of the many variations of detail.  I find real life so much more wondrous and exciting than fantasy…
:-)
I’ll shut up now.

You can’t shut up till you give me your take on the Catherine the G legend. Surely just a malicious smear, right? (That’s tongue in cheek but not sarcastic - I really thing it’s an historical smear manufactured by guys who didn’t like powerful women but I’ve never really researched it….)

Some guy wrote a poem about a girl going out to the barn and making love (to?) (with?) her horse.  I thought it was Wallace Stevens but it’s not and the person who told me about it doesn’t remember.  This is unrelated to the Equus thing about which I also have limited knowledge.

There, wasn’t that helpful? 

Tell us all about Catherine the Great.

CtheG was supposed to have been sexually insatiable - her husband wasn’t quite up to it and, IIRC, he was crazy as well (most of the Romanovs were). And the story goes that Catherine had a whole contraption devised whereby she could get it on with a horse.

I should go look it up on Wikipedia or something but I’ll bet you AgT knows and she’s way more clever and erudite than Wikipedia eds.

Surely there is an historical novel out there somewhere regarding this.

I’m afraid I have no idea about the historical facts concerning Catherine the Great.  But claiming that a woman was able and willing to copulate with a horse is a fairly obvious way of saying that she was a total monster of sexual excess and depravity.  I take it to be a legend rather than a fact.  Great physical size allied with extreme rapidity of mating actually does not seem to me to be a recipe for human sexual satisfaction, but we all have different tastes.

One thing that is seldom considered in legends of this sort is that some ingenuity would usually be needed to induce a male animal to actually mate with a human female, because the male must take an active role, and mating behaviour is triggered by all sorts of species-specific scents and actions which the human, however randy, is not fulfilling.  In the Minos legend, Pasiphaë had a hollow statue of a cow made, into which she was able to enter to entice the interest and passion of the Cretan Bull:  result, the Minotaur.  Bad idea.  Something rather similar, though cruder, is actually used today for collecting bovine semen for use in artificial insemination (without the woman inside, of course). 

Male dog / human female seems more understandable to me, because dogs, having lived with humans for perhaps as much as 100,000 years, are extremely good at reading and understanding our behavioural signals, and can probably detect a sexually-aroused woman almost as easily as they can a bitch in oestrus.  As animals of high intelligence and adaptability,  I don’t think it would take much to induce some dogs to copulate with a woman.  In any case, we know it happens.

The sexual exploitation of female livestock animals by human males, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward.  The male tendency to insert protruding objects into any likely-looking hole takes over, and sheep, cows and other female domestic animals are so accustomed to being manhandled in strange and unnatural ways by their human masters that they probably merely roll their eyes and think, ‘what the hell is he doing now?’

I’ll bet you AgT knows and she’s way more clever and erudite than Wikipedia eds.

Not sure how to take that, Kinsey, since I am an occasional Wikipedia editor!  But not on any of the subjects that arise here:  only on those that relate to my professional knowledge.
;-)

I’ve read this entire thread with great fascination!  I feel like I’ve learned so much!