Book Review

Decadent by Shayla Black

D-

Title: Decadent
Author: Shayla Black
Publication Info: Berkley 2007
ISBN: 9780425217214
Genre: Erotica/Erotic Romance, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy

(Warning: Massive spoilers for this book lie under the fold, as well as a link to a LOLPORN photo. Read on at your own peril.)


Reading Decadent deafened me.

Have you ever had that experience before? You finish reading a book and you feel just a bit numb. Your brain is ringing the way your ears do when leaving a venue with a terrible sound system, after watching a band that’s far too fond of playing very loudly and not nearly fond enough of playing with skill. I haven’t read too many novels that do that to me, so I attempted to analyze why Decadent inspired that reaction, and what I finally figured out was this:

The book was written in such a way that its ideal narrator was the Summer Blockbuster Guy.

“This summer… An innocent beauty learns the price of earning the love she thinks she wants… is finding love in a place she never expected.”

“This summer… A hardened soldier of fortune discovers that gaining the girl of his dreams… means letting go of the girl in his past.”

“This summer… A girl becomes a woman… and learns she can preserve her virginity… by having anal sex with two men.”

“HANG ON,” I can almost hear you saying. “You’re just making shit up, now. Candy, your slice-n-dice reviews have gone too far.”

Psh. You think I’d kid about something that important? You think I would make a crass joke about teh buttsecks to illustrate how incredibly silly this book is? Trust me. I’m not even remotely kidding about that last bit. In fact, there’s no way I can convey how silly this book is. It is so silly that I expected Graham Chapman to appear in Colonel regalia, declaring that this book was too silly to continue.

Alas, the latter would indicate that this book was funny. And it’s not. I initially read this book as a bit of high camp and was able to maintain this mindset (and therefore enjoy it to some degree) for about one third of the way, because the plot was too deliciously cock-eyed for me to take seriously: Kimber Edgington, the heroine, is in love with Jesse McCall, her childhood sweetheart (whom she hasn’t seen in almost a decade—whom she knew only for a summer when she was a kid, really). Jesse happens to be an international rock star with a taste for threesomes. Not the usual boy-girl-girl threesomes that are the stuff of fantasy for millions of males, of course. This dude’s into two guys and a girl. (Structuring this story any other way would’ve involved TEH GAY for the heroine.) So Kimber, in her quest to prove her everlasting love and commitment, decides she needs tutoring in the Ways of the Double Penetration, and seeks out Deke Trenton, a mercenary who used to work for her father and who apparently has a thing for threesomes.

(How does she know this? One of the more hilarious aspects of Deke’s fetish for this bit of vanilla kink is how everybody seems to know about it, from sheltered girls in their twenties to random people in bars to the Kimber’s brothers to Kimber’s dad. Seriously: every time somebody finds out that Kimber is having a relationship with Deke Trenton, there’s usually some sort of horrified gasp (or inarticulate rage on the part of the brothers), followed by “Do you know what he’s into?” It makes me wonder how in the hell they’d find out something like that. Does the dude have a Wikipedia page? If he did, I’d love to see his history/discussion pages.)

And when I say “he has a fetish for threesomes,” I mean it in the clinical sense. (The pedants in the audience will note that the fetish isn’t, strictly speaking, a fetish, because it refers to a sex act instead of an object or a body part. Look, just go along with me, all right? Pretend I said “paraphilia” and call it a day.) Seriously, Deke can’t work his dirk of manly passion unless he has additional male company. No, I’m serious. This dude hath not a workable stiffy unless another dude is there. Specifically, his cousin, celebrity chef Luc Traverson. This initially perked my interest—was Luc the Piers Gaveston to Deke’s Edward II, except kind of incestuous, which would make it somewhat more kinky? Alas, no. The true reasons why these two paragons of masculinity engage almost exclusively in threesomes are both much more hilarious and much more repulsive than using a woman as a conduit to express homosexual urges. But more on that later.

So I trucked along for a while, wallowing cheerfully in the terrible plot, but after a while, the sheer weight of the terrible prose crushed my sense of humor. The only comfort left to me was reading the more ludicrous parts out loud to friends.

The part that broke me? The part that made me throw my hands up and say “I give up”? Was when Kimber decides that her virginity is so special, she needs to save it for Jesse. And by “save her virginity,” I totally mean “have copious amounts of loud, sweaty, multi-orgasmic anal sex with two men she’s known less than a week.”

If this had been written with any sort of tongue in cheek tone, or with any sort of nod or wink to the sorts of people for whom anal sex is somehow a culturally acceptable way of preserving a façade of sexual purity (read: stupid, horny teenagers for whom obeying the letter of the law is much more important than adhering to the spirit), I would’ve cheered it for the bit of high camp it was. Unfortunately, the story tried to sell the heroine as being a smart, spirited young woman a little too hard while showing just the opposite in every turn.

Come on, now. Preserving your virginity with buttsecks. Look, I’m all for people enjoying the hell out of anal sex, and I’m all for people having it with as many partners as they can stand at one time. Just don’t pretend that you’re somehow protecting your sexual purity by having it—whatever sort of definition of “sex” you may subscribe to, I’m pretty goddamn sure just about everyone would agree that that having a man stick his cock up your ass qualifies as “having sex” with him.

But wait, there’s more! Deke, besides being incapable of fucking a woman unless Luc is there (NOT GAY NO NOT AT ALL), has a really, really strange complex about virgins. Namely, he’s convinced that fucking a virgin in the va-jay-jay means she’ll die. This is made into a Really Big Deal, and is also part and parcel of his sexual dysfunction in general and with Kimber in particular (NO REALLY NOT AT ALL GAY). This results in the best conversational exchange in any erotic romance novel, ever, when Kimber finally offers to allow Deke entrance into her cinnabar cavern of feminine wonder (because what she feels for Deke is even more speshul than what she feels for Jesse), and Deke, after pondering and sweating and struggling over this decision heroically, takes decisive action:

“Fuck!” he snarled.

He tilted her up again, her legs now resting on his shoulders, and positioned himself and began to push.

Into her back entrance.

Kimber drew in a great, shocked gasp, her hazel eyes wide. “Deke?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Luc barked.

Tensing a little more with every inch he pushed inside Kimber’s tight passage, the tendons on his neck standing out, the muscles in his arms shaking, assailed by the amazing sensations of being slowly enveloped by her tight, ready flesh, Deke could barely form a word. “Fucking her ass. Saving her life.”

 

Wow. Talk about a lifesaving procedure you’ll never see on-camera on, say, Grey’s Anatomy.

But wait, there’s more! When I read this part aloud to my friend Ben (who was the first victim of many), his immediate response, after he’d picked himself up from the floor, was “I’m in ur ass, saving ur life.”

And being the enterprising nerd that he is, he actually hunted down a picture and captioned it, LOLCat-style.
(Warning: the picture is pornographic. It seriously is. Don’t click on it, for the love of God, if you’re anywhere in the office, or if there are little kids or animals or sweet, sheltered little old grandparents within a direct line of sight of your monitor.)

So behold! The first instance of LOLPorn found on Smart Bitches.

Recovered from that yet?

No?

Too bad.

After that marvellous bit of characterization, the story chugs along completely predictable lines: Kimber is dumped brutally by Deke (who’s utterly freaked out at how attached he has become), after which she promptly reunites with Jesse, finds him to be not at all what her memories have made him to be, and is repulsed by Jesse’s regular threesome partner, a pretty boy with tattoos who drinks before lunch—evidence of moral turpitude if we’ve ever seen it.

And then a wacky suspense plot springs up out of nowhere and ambushes the rest of the storyline, putting Kimber in danger (remember, kids: it’s never acceptable to have the heroine save the hero’s ass, because that might mean he’s a pansy who can’t get it up unless another man’s also…oh, wait). All of this is a convenient way of getting Deke back together with Kimber so he can open up about his Deep, Dark, Loathsome, Virgin-Killing past—the explanation for why he never fucks virgins, and why he always has to have a wingman in bed. Are you ready for the secret?

Back when Deke was a teenager, he de-virginized his beautiful but highly unstable girlfriend, who became pregnant, got crazy, and killed herself.

That’s it. That’s the big, dark, tormented secret of Deke’s past. Which is actually a pretty good tormented secret, except that his reactions are both nonsensical and morally repulsive. When you attempt to unpack the implications, you come up with the following:

1. His avoidance of sleeping with virgins only makes sense if you accept that virgins are much more likely to become pregnant than other women. Because it’s not as if there’s such a thing as fertile non-virgins, or, you know, BIRTH CONTROL THAT WORKS RELIABLY.

2. Deke needs another man in bed so that if the woman becomes pregnant, he’d have another man to blame. Because in Deke’s universe, paternity tests, like birth control, do not exist.

In case you’re thinking that I’m inferring point number 2, let me assure you that I’m not. I am, in fact, quoting “another man to blame” verbatim from the book.

I could go on, but I think you get the point: this book is a trainwreck of unintentional hilarity. If ever there was a book ripe for MST3K treatment or a drinking game (take a shot every time a character starts a musing with “Damn”), this would be it. The sex scenes are pretty hot, I’ll give it that, but even those are subject to gems like “Fucking her ass. Saving her life.”

If you’re really into copious quantities of sweaty, distressingly hetero buttsex and a menage that wimps out in the end, you might enjoy this book. Me? I’m still recovering from the LOLPorn.

And really, if I had to summarize the book, I think the look on the porn actress’s face in the LOLPorn photo says it all.

Comments are Closed

  1. NHS says:

    This stuff gets published when I can’t even find an agent?

    Life is Cruel.

  2. shaunee says:

    Question:

    If the heroine was a vaginal virgin (VV), can we assume that she was an anal virgin (AV) as well?  And if she was an AV, Candy would you be willing to describe, briefly, the de-virgin(n)ing scene?  Was it painless and orgasmic?  Was there discussion about how the AV should be taken?  Perhaps an argument Wherein Luc was in favor of the vaginal de-virginization and was finally convinced to go the other route by Deke’s emotional outburst of, “But man, I’m trying to save her freakin’ life!”

    (I’m not at all interested in reading the book, naturally.  I’d just like to hear more of Candy’s review.)

  3. Candy says:

    Victoria: Luc was hoping Deke would run the pussy patrol, if you know what I mean.  I didn’t cover Luc’s incredibly retarded conflict and reasons for having threesomes in my review, because holy jebus it’s retarded, but here it is: he’s sterile, and he’s hoping that Deke’s super-sperm will impregnate a woman and he can have a happy threesome family 4-evah.

    I honestly don’t have a problem with a stable triad (that’s kind of a contradiction in terms, because triads are notoriously unstable), either fictionally or in real life. But the fact that Luc not only lies by hiding his infertility from Deke, but that he’s actively working so that Deke’s worst nightmare comes true without ever discussing this with Deke makes him a morally repulsive douchebag, too.

    And really, what’s with the lack of paternity testing? Did this book take place in an alternate reality?

  4. Oh, God, Candy. Thank you for the explanation. Seriously, you went above and beyond the call of doody.

    Now I am picturing Luc dirty-sanchezing his name above “his” hole.

    Luc’s place. Viable sperm stay out!

  5. Deb says:

    OMG, there truly is no need to read this book.  NO way could it compare to Candy’s review.  I’m still laughing from it and the comments. (Because it’s either that or cry in horror!)

    Candy, my 8-year-old and his friends are planning their band (when they’re 13 they’re going to be rock stars).  It’s called The Flamin’ Zombies.  I think the Dead Virgins would be a primo opening act for them!!!

  6. R. says:

    Ye gods and little prairie dogs.  This week is off to a tearing start – how can Wednesday/‘Hump Day’ possibly live up to this?

    persons94 = no-no-no, way too many

  7. lijakaca says:

    Man, not only does the review make me almost laugh out loud in my cube, but the comments do too!  The only thing saving my job right now is my restraint in not clickng that link…but you guys srsly make me want to work from home, just so I can see all the lolporn goodness! (badness?  good badness? whutevah)

  8. OMG, I still can’t stop laughing.  And, having convinced my husband that the SBs are truly the funniest women I’ve (virtually) met, he got a good chuckle out of it too.  And he didn’t even see the LOL stuff.

    I agree with NHS – how does this sh*t get published when there are lots of brilliant writers getting overlooked because they’re, er,… logical?

    Spam blocker: method 81, as in, “Quick, Deke, method 80 for saving a virgin’s life isn’t working.  Let’s try method 81!”

  9. Candy says:

    Shaunee: Yes, Kimber was completely untouched—she’d barely even kissed a boy, because tall, gorgeous, slightly tomboyish girls are such turnoffs for men. Can’t think of a single dude who’d look twice at a girl who’d wear (gasp) cargo pants.

    And yes, she was an anal virgin. They started off small, with a vibrator, which made her come all over the place. When actual buttfuckin’ happened, there was burning and pain, followed shortly thereafter by screaming orgasms—which, to be honest, isn’t too different from most other types of of deflowering scenes in Romancelandia.

    The first actual double-penetration scene was hilarious, though—as the two cocks start registering on Kimber’s (admittedly somewhat dim) brain and she realizes what’s about to happen, Deke says something like “That’s right, kitten. Welcome to ménage. Prepare to learn the meaning of multiple orgasms.” Or words to that effect. I’ll have to look up the exact phrasing when I’m back home and have the book in front of me.

    Do you guys see what I mean about the summer blockbuster guy?

  10. Ladypeyton says:

    “Fucking her ass.  Saving her life.”

    BWA!  That should be the Heroes tagline for next season!

    Laughing too hard to type anything else…..

  11. RStewie says:

    Ohh, that’s hilarious!  So both of them were trying to be the ass-man, due to their own various, and admittedly stoopid, hangups!!

    DUDE, I’M the ass-man!  My sperm don’t work!

    NO!  I’M the ass-man!  She’s a virgin and I’ve GOT TO SAVE HER!

    OMG, dueling assmen FTW!!

    need46: I’m good with one, honestly…

  12. Rebecca says:

    The Romantic Times gives it 4.5 stars.
    http://www.romantictimes.com/books_review.php?book=33378

    I think this tells us more about the RT than about Decadent.

    Spamblocker word: back51
    In my next life I want to come up with a propos spamwords.

  13. badgerbag says:

    I’m crying with laughter…. seriously… that was GREAT.

    Thanks for sharing the pain and glory.

  14. I was driving home from the store when it occurred to me that this is now going to be my favorite euphemism ever in the entire history of man or beast.

    “Honey, you really saved my life last night.”

    “Yes. Yes, I did.”

    “Seriously, you should be a lifeguard. ‘Cause that was some serious saving.”

    “No doubt.”

    “Man, I am so hung over.”

    You can imagine the looks on my neighbors’ faces as I drove by, cackling hysterically. Thank you for making my week.

  15. Victoria Dahl says:

    Oh, I forgot…

    *cue “How to Save a Live” from the Grey’s Anatomy Soundtrack*

  16. Candy says:

    Victoria: you’re not the only one. My friends and I have started doing that, too.

    “Man, I can’t believe how loud I was last night. I sounded like a little Asian girl who was…getting her life saved.”

    “Hey, baby. Want me to save your life tonight?”

    “Darling, let’s go out and SAVE LIVES.”

  17. shaunee says:

    Oh Candy, please, please will you look up the exact phrasing and share with the class?

    I almost want to read the book after this review.  On a scale of 1-10, 10 being a split second of anger and frustration before your head explodes:  how badly will I want to throw the book against the wall?

  18. robinb says:

    I, uh, liked the book.  🙂  I’m just saying! 

    I liked the review better, but I *did* like the book too!

  19. Aimee says:

    i keep trying to write something pithy here.  but honestly?  i have no words.

  20. My favorite quote from an Amazon review:

    My own experience with this one was to forget to eat.

    Ri-i-ight. Thanks for an entertaining Monday, Candy. Can’t wait to get home to look at the porn.

  21. Angelina says:

    ROFLMAO! Oh you Bitches! All I can hear right now is elton John singing “Someone saved my life tonight”. Do you think this is what he meant?

    My word small 52 – WTF I am gonna get fired if I don’t stop laughing!

  22. fiveandfour says:

    OK, this:

    Deke Trenton – he’s not gay, he just wants to know what his cousin’s penis tastes like.

    and this:

    “That’s right, kitten. Welcome to ménage. Prepare to learn the meaning of multiple orgasms.”

    caused something to break inside just now.  Laughing discretely while hemorrhaging inside isn’t as easy as it sounds.

  23. asrai says:

    Menage a trois books are not new. They’re all the rage in the romantica epublishing world. But it’s almost exclusively Two guys and a girl (and a pizza place … huh, why wasn’t that show porn parodied?).

    Why are there so few bisexual heroines in the romance world? Because there are a lot of bi chicks out there. *sigh* I need more time to write.

  24. rebyj says:

    ANGELINA QUOTE: All I can hear right now is elton John singing “Someone saved my life tonight”. Do you think this is what he meant? UNQUOTE

    I think i broke a rib Angelina,  cuz the very next thing that went thru my mind was elton john’s ” circle of life”

    this may be the “thread that never ends” cuz i think there are still 4,000,001 jokes left.

  25. Helen M says:

    Oh god, I think I pulled something laughing so hard. The book sounds like an absolute train wreck, the existence of LOLPorn is fantastic, and I think I’m going to have to go read the review again, just tomake sure I didn’t miss anything when wiping my eyes.

  26. mlg says:

    I think I have a horror fascination with
    this book. Candy, please don’t say he really called her “kitten”?!?! And strangely, I was waiting for someone to mention some dirty sanchez (thanks Victoria) I think this is so much better than reading the book!

  27. Jenns says:

    LOL, Victoria! I was hearing “How To Save A Life” too. Hopefully the good doctors on Grey’s don’t learn this method next season …

    And I goofed when I wrote about how I was glad I was drinking coffee – left out the n’t. I wasn’t this time… Okay. It’s pretty obvious I was still cracking up.

  28. Melissandre says:

    So I clicked on the Lolporn link…and my internet suffered an internal error.  Coincidence?  Or is my computer trying to tell me something?

  29. Erastes says:

    Someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear
    He almost had his cock in me, didn’t you dear…

  30. DS says:

    Ok, so I had to prove to myself the book really exists. I went to Amazon. The review there…and I quote, “Though she’s saved herself for Jesse, Kimber soon learns that he’s not the man adept at stoking her aching, endless need. That’s Deke, and he can’t resist when Kimber begs for more-and more.” Also, this is a sequel! And finally, four out of five stars….
    Posted by mlg on 03/17 at 08:23 AM

    OMG when I first looked at this I thought the technical virgin had saved herself for Jesus!

  31. Candy says:

    Circle of Life.

    Oh God. I may never stop laughing.

    Oh, and the exact quote, with context, because the context makes it even better:

    A rip, a tear. Oh, God, she knew the sound of a condom wrapper. Surely, Deke didn’t plan to…

    The sinful smile on Luc’s face told her that Deke did.

    “Hold still, sweetheart.” Luc gripped her hips to ensure she did.

    “But Deke…He’s going to—”

    “Fuck you while Luc fucks you,” Deke growled into her ear, the aroused gravel in his tone making her hot and shivery. “Welcome to ménage, kitten. Get ready to know the meaning of multiple orgasms.”

    You know, all things considered, I got the quote eerily accurate, seeing as I read this book and started the review about two months ago.

    As for headsploderation potential, I highly, highly recommend reading this in the company of sympathetic company. For variety, use Disney Movie Guy voice, Romantic Comedy guy voice, or Art House Tragedy guy voice just to mix things up.

    And robinb: I’m glad you enjoyed the book.

  32. Ben says:

    “Oh how the mouse hovers over the lolporn link and oh how my finger hovers over the button.

    I wanna click!”

    In haiku form:

    lolporn entices
    finger hovers on button
    i wanna click it

  33. Candy says:

    I just realized something else:

    I will never look at Lifesavers the same way again.

  34. robinb says:

    ha!  Thanks, Candy.

    Hey, if you can’t laugh at your own appreciation for badly written, buttsecks books, then you have no sense of humor!

    Besides, I can always blame 3.5 years of law school for doing this to me!

  35. This so reminds me of something you’d find in The Pearl, which of course means if it had been written in Victorian times it would have become a bestseller over the years and mimicked by countless erotica authors.

  36. Rebecca says:

    I think I need to buy this book.  I’m hovering just under the free shipping limit for chapters.ca for books I actually need … can anyone give me a good reason why I shouldn’t?  I have to see for myself …

    (girls29. heh.)

  37. shaunee says:

    Candy, I can’t believe you reviewed this book without first reviewing the first in the series!  That’s got to be bad reviewer etiquette.  Somewhere. 

    I insist that you review the first in the series this very second.  I know you’re doing the law school thing, but shit aren’t you doing that in whatever time you have leftover after catering to the needs of the Bitchery?

  38. Nora Roberts says:

    ~“They are simply using [their policy] as a tactic to keep a small press from submitting contest entries. It also looks to me like they are trying to control the outcome of who wins by who they allow in the contest.” ~

    Comes off as bollocks to me. Arrogant and whiny bollocks.

    Read. The. Rules. Sister.

  39. Nora Roberts says:

    Eeek. So sorry. The above posted on the wrong thread.

    Carry on with porn, please.

    Okay, spam word is cut69. Har.

  40. Lauren Dane says:

    You warned me and I clicked anyway. I have no one to blame but myself. The look on her face is actually etched into my retinas.

Comments are closed.

↑ Back to Top