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.
Uh uh,
Re AV: artificial vagina, anal virginity…could one be a euphemism for the other?
I was actually doing okay until I got here…
My liver hurts.
my spamword is which54—ok not going there
LMAO! OMG! Do any of your remember a song with the lyrics, Someone saved my life tonight?
Bwhwhahahahaha.
So, I haven’t bought the book yet, but this is the fourth time I’ve read the review. Which is probably an all around better experience than reading the book, anyway.
How awesome is it that Nora Roberts (that’s actually her, right? not my mother-in-law using a nick?) commented on this thread, if only by accident? “Carry on” indeed. 🙂
Going with ‘saving’ lyrics – I can’t get ‘last night a DJ saved my life’ out of my head. When I switch on the radio tomorrow….
My eyes, my eyes!!!
BTW-I read the book. I did not have the..emphetic reaction that Candy did, but damn if she isn’t right about it all. If anyone wants to read it but doesn’t want to buy it, I’d be happy to send it along to you.
methods55: there are 55 ways to do teh buttsecks? wow, I had no idea.
That’s the Elton John song someone (maybe Victoria Dahl?) mentioned above.
Yep, she’s the real deal. She comes around fairly regularly, simply to serve as a shining example to the rest of us. *g*
Randi, if no one else claims it, I’ll take it. I have to admit to a burning curiousity after Candy’s review!
You can pmail me at distante at roadrunner dot com!
Thanks for the awesome read! My daughter and I couldn’t stop laughing at your review. The truly scary part is that someone wrote this—and got it published! Just an example, albeit extreme, of why I don’t read commercial romance anymore.
Ben, would it be OK if I used your fabulous graphic for an icon? It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time! Thanks so much!
LOLPorn… “Fucking her ass. Saving her life.”
Even if I could stop laughing, I’d still be speechless.
Jenyfer…yep, the magic hooha saves the day, again. I think kitten, the virgin, ends up preggers?
Jo…Lots of published authors lurk here (and comment).
I love this review. You made me laugh out loud. Thanks for the warning with three scoops of humor on top!
This whole thread, and nobody brought this up?
“Somebody Save Me” by Remy Zero, theme to Smallville, jumped straight into my head.
Somebody save me
I don’t care how you do it
Just save, save
Come on
I’ve been waiting for you
*dies*
The fact that the heroine has the same name as the keyboard-playing Hologram member from Jem and the Holograms is just sending me to all kinds of horrible mental places.
Please tell me I’m not alone.
I read this review after a friend emailed the link to me with the obligatory, ‘You have to read this!’ I’ve now printed it out and inflicted it on others. It is so delightful.
The book plot is like a psycho-sexual cage match with the hero and heroine competing for who is the biggest head case. It’s rather amazing. Of course, the one I sympathize with is the cousin who now has to find out that his second cousin is having sex with him by proxy to provide plausable deniablity. Gee cuzin, thanks. You’re a prince.
A housemate made an interesting point. The non-existance of birth-control or paternity testing, the excessive elevation of technical virginity, and the fact that everyone in three time zones know what this guy is into all sound like elements that would exist in a regency, so perhaps a tremendous amount of plot absurdity was thought out in a historical contex and then reset for contempory.
Or maybe we’re over thinking it and it’s just a mess.
Oh dear lord.
I know my friends and I are hard on ourselves about our writing but really: “Fucking her ass. Saving her life.”
I think I’m going to bookmark this review for times when my friends need a pep talk!
Yanno, the only reason to buy this book is to sit down with your bestest girlfriends, a big bowl of popcorn and MST3K it…
And prepare to hurt yourselves laughing.
Just when I though there was nothing left, my sweetie has treated me to readings of “Fucking your ass-SAVING YOUR LIFE! OOOHH YEEEAH!”
in both “The Macho Man” Randy Savage and the Kool-Aid Man voices.
Verily, I die. Thank you, Smart Bitches for making us laugh about buggery again!:)
Dear Lord. Please tell me that was just a product of an early April Fool’s shenanigan, and such book really does not exist in real life.
Jesus.
I think I’m going to go back and read some Harry Potter slash now, or something.
I bought Decadent(BIG mistake) expecting the storyteller to give me something for my money besides this feeling of having been ripped-off. Even more disheartening to me is that the author considers her customers to be fools. Fool me once. . .Shayla Black will get no more from me.
Love the review and the lolporn (more laughs than I actually derived from the book).
I read this book after this review just to make sure that it was as awful as you said. You did not lie one little bit.
Another thing that really annoyed me about the book was that Kimber is immediately this multiorgasmic blow job queen after having sex once. She must be a fucking genius (pun entirely intentional).
…Wow, this is officially the most stupid idea ever. On everyone’s part.
Luc: I want you here so your sperm can impregnate a woman! I want BABIES! Alas, I am teh sterile.
Deke: If I devirginize a woman, she’ll get pregnant and die! So I want you there to give me plausible deniability.
Kimber: Well, I guess that is nice of you to make sure all my needs are- wait, plausible deniability?! What about the whole KILLING ME thing!?
Deke: What? You thought I wanted him there so I’d have both ends covered (ha ha) for your sake? Hell no! Covering my own (COUGH) ass.
Luc: …Dude. STER. ILE. If she gets pregnant, it’s you. I NO CAN HAZ SPERM.
Okay, I admit it, I actually was laughing so hard I started crying while reading this—- and though I am usually a very jovial person, I am rarely reduced to actual tears rolling down my face. I can’t even read the comments yet because it’s all I can do just to type.
Now I’m humming “I need a hero” from Bonnie Tyler.
I turn 21 in a month, and I’m going to Vegas with a few of my cousins, my aunt, and my mom.
This book is coming with us, because I am already planning a drinking game for it.
(…I actually bought the book- used and dirt cheap, natch, because there’s free bad porn all over the net, and I refuse to pay fifteen bucks for it- of Amazon after reading this review, because there are only so many times you can do the LKH ‘Take a shot every single time a sex act/organ is referred to by some odd euphemism that is just funny and not OMG HAWT AND SO ARTISTIC like the author assumes’ drinking game before you die of liver poisoning or it stops being fun. Whichever comes first.)
Also? I read the ‘in ur ass, savin ur life’ scene to my best friend, and I can safely say this book brings pervs with weird senses of humor closer together.
So: awesome review, and thank you for introducing me to something that will only get funnier as I get drunker.
…Also? The thing that made me laugh the hardest: Deke screws Kimber (WTF is with that name, by the way? I live in goddamn California, have my entire life, and even I have NEVER met a chick named ‘Kimber’.) up the ass with, like, no lube, but when they go at it vaginally, he uses, like, three gallons of lube.
One would think more lube would be appreciated on a passage that is NOT self-lubricating, but clearly life-saving anal sex is magic beyond its life-saving capabilities, so what do I know?
“Fucking her ass. Saving her life.â€
Now see, I’ve run across these boink-to-save-the-Galaxy (planet, kingdom, whatever) plots in SF/F/Paranormal romance, and they can be pretty hilarious under those circumstances. But this degree of specificity (has to be anal, other dude must be there, etc.) plus the contemporary setting freakin’ blows my mind.
Spam word: service51
Oh, noes! Two is plenty!
OMFG!! UR LOLporn Wuz Aswum!!1 Mai Syte Haz LOLpron 2!!
You Can Has LOLpron!
EXTREMELY NSFW !!!
Hilarious.
And I’m mostly commenting to post my spamword, and I promise you I’m not making this up:
filled25
A friend gave me this link a long time ago and now she gave it to me again and I can’t stop laughing! I wish I could wright stuff like that and I’m not talking about the book I’m talking about the review! Hi-freaking-laurious.
So if I take it up teh ass I’m saving my own life or maybe I’m saving someone elses life to? Because if I take it up teh ass someone else don’t have to suffer the horrible deed of being deflowered by that person right? So girls, I think we must take one for the team here, if we all do it we could save the whole world and everyone will live in peace and harmony forever… wait didn’t the hippies already invent that? Alas…damn hippies.
And I think we all should have some more LOLporn in our lives.
spam word: hold62… hold on a second…?
I really want to know… if it’s double penetration, and they’re both ass men, were they both doing her up the ass at the same time? Talk about needing lube…
omg…i have not laughed this much in…i think ever. i will never ever look at the lion king in the same light again…just so glad that neither of those songs were playing on my Ipod as I read this.
No wonder lifesavers have a whole in them, that’s where the dick goes!
LOLPorn—I fucking love it.
I got the link to this from something with reviews of really bad books and the comments/review are literally making me laugh until I cry. This is one piece of trash I will never buy.
My spam word is involved75.
My ass hurts in sympathy from all that buttsecks, and my sides hurt from your review and all of the comments.
Ok, I cannot believe I missed this entire post – truly mind-boggling (not to mention all the buttsecks! lol)
I started this at work, came home to finish and was totally delirious by the time I got to the LOLporn.
I’ve spent the last 10 mins reading this to my husband – he’s a fireman and rescue will never be the same! lol
Spamword: fire45 lol
I just recently discovered your site…I’ve been missing out. That review is funnnnnnny. I read it because, I too, read this book. I just wish I was half as clever so I could critique it as you did. Instead, I just kept shaking my head wondering how so many people in one hole err, I mean house, could be so freakin’ stoopid.
The worst part about this is I also read the previous book and thought it was stoopid too. Man, I think I need an intervention. Is tacky to plan and throw your own? What would Kimber do?
It’s a good thing the sexxing is hawt.
Oh, my! My dear friend forwards these entries to me and I must say, you have a gift. I don’t normally read trash novels, but I am tempted to start…just to see if I can find hilarity.
I just wanted to share:
my friend got the new Kindle (v2), and Decadent is Kindle-ized, so we downloaded the sample and made the Kindle read it out loud with the new text-to-speech feature. That vaguely female, robotic voice reading that book was as epic as I imagined it could be.
There was something missing from the LOLPorn, but I fixed that for you:
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/8BHwSTCof9fB6k1MtUQeoj5-d8hlgfXOPB13TniBrJVaTiz-bKuDPBZYvY_nrVYE8vJ_QCVj29uNtQxrqLxyJQ/LOLCunts/inurass-sm.jpg
And if that link doesn’t work, look at the first pic here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Super-Pics6/files/LOLCunts/