Book Review

Mystic by Cheryl Brooks

Mystic by Cheryl Brooks is the second book in a spinoff sci-fi romance series from Brooks’ original Cat Star Chronicles. I have neither read the first book in this spinoff series, Cat Star Legacy, nor the original series, but I’m always down for some bonkers reading from time to time. Not being familiar with any of the book’s predecessors was probably to my detriment, but my inability to understand the world has nothing to do with my rant. Admittedly, I didn’t even have the fortitude to finish the book after hitting two (TWO!) of my big pet peeves. I don’t even want to call them pet peeves because these didn’t just annoy me. They enraged me. If anyone knows a great, replacement phrase for “rage peeves,” let me know.

Before going into this connected series, I knew that the heroes in Brooks’ Cat Star world typically have feline alien DNA and have a hyperactive sex drive. The things you retain when compiling years of books on sale posts! This installment is no different. Aidan’s (the hero) alien race is known for their prowess in the bedroom, and even after Aidan saves the heroine’s life, she remarks on his rumored bang abilities quite frequently in her inner monologues.

Aidan sometimes gets visions of people. He’s unsure if those visions are meant to be prophetic, but he does know that whoever or whatever he sees, he’s meant to assert himself in some way into his envisioned scenario. When his vision shows the heroine, Sula, in a precarious position on a cliff face, he springs into action.

Sula is searching for a cure. Her previous lover died of a disease that many people had assumed was eradicated long ago. While searching for ingredients for a cure, she lands herself in hot water and needs to be rescued. And that’s how Aidan and Sula initially meet. Sula then explains what she’s after and Aidan agrees to help her. He wants to keep her around to figure out why she was in his vision while Sula knows that Aidan has access to people and places that could help in her research.

The world building confused the everloving fuck out of me. There are fictional planets and alien races, but yet, there are Earthly pop culture references. There are Indiana Jones jokes! In the short time I spent reading, I never full grasped on how intergalactic relations worked and how Earth fit into everything. Perhaps it’s not that important in the scheme of the plot, but when it comes to fantasy and sci-fi, I want a world I can understand.

But like I said, that’s not the reason for this rant.

First, let’s get to exhibit A:

Come to think of it, he hadn’t come close to touching her breasts when he’d grabbed her from behind.

He’s either homosexual or the most gentlemanly gentleman imaginable.

Sula does couch this thought by noting his sexual orientation didn’t really matter, but a character being gay as a punchline for someone’s attraction or lack thereof to the main character is something that annoys me to no end.

She’s rationalizing the thought that he didn’t grope her because he’s either not sexually interested in her because he’s gay or he’s just uber polite. Why are those the only two options here? And maybe he is gay. Or asexual. Or he could be heterosexual and she’s simply not his type. (Or maybe he’s a functional being who knows about consent? Why is that not an option?)

Aidan just rescued her and while Elyse has talked about danger boners several times, Aidan has given no indication that he can’t control himself. Sula may be projecting a bit, given that Aidan’s alien race is known for their sexual proclivities. Did she expect to be ravaged the moment he got close to her?

She goes on to question Aidan’s attraction to her a second time:“he wasn’t interested in romance out in the middle of nowhere.”

HELLO! He was saving your ass!

Does she want to stop for a bone break before getting to safety? Her commentary was just yucky and fetishizing. This alien man is trying to do her a solid (NOT IN THAT WAY) and all she can think about (while trying to find a cure for the disease that killed the man she loved) is whether or not this dude is gonna bang her. In the language of my people, the millennials, “I cannot.”

And now to exhibit B. After I read this, I promptly closed the book and said, “I think I’m done here.”

The sudden heaviness of her eyelids made her wonder if Aidan had put a sleeping potion into the lemonade he’d given her. As she drifted off, she realized she didn’t care if he had slipped something into her drink. Sleep was as welcome as he had been when he came to her rescue.

My hero…

Um…ba-scuse me?

Are you excusing the fact that this man, who you’ve known for less than day, could have drugged your drink so you could “sleep better”?

Is this what is happening?

Are we for real?

And need I remind anyone that this book is being released in the year of our lord 2019.

I don’t know about you, but after being saved from certain death, I would have zero problems passing out from exhaustion. But, if I did have a sleeping issue, I would expect my savior to wait until I approached him for some melatonin or Tylenol PM.

What is seriously wrong with these people?

What the fucking fuck

Mary Steenburgen says what the fucking fuck while holding a running water hose.

We are in the midst of the #MeToo movement, where sexual abusers are getting their asses called out every which way. There is still more to do, especially when it comes to the sexual abuse of men and minority communities, but the scene above is not the sort of behavior I want to see in my romances. I don’t want any excuses being made for drinks being drugged, even if the heroine assumes the hero was only doing it in her best interest.

I also don’t want any heroes to think it’s cool to give anyone anything without their permission. And yeah, I get that Aidan saved Sula’s life and now the however-many-suns-their-planet has all shine out of his ass, but there are many people currently, right now, reading this sentence who are conditioned AND RIGHT [italics] to be wary of men who seem nice.

When it comes to things like darker romances, I know what I’m getting into. I know there could be dubious consent or people who do terrible things. But to me, that is vastly different than going into a romance where these sorts of elements are commonplace and are viewed as noble or casual or just “how things are”. It’s a shock to the system.

All I wanted was a crazysauce space adventure with a sexy cat alien man (shout out to all my Mass Effect Garrus lovers!). Instead, I caught a severe case of agita.

Simon Cowell rolling his eyes with the caption, it's a no from me.

This book is available from:
  • Available at Amazon
  • Order this book from apple books

  • Order this book from Barnes & Noble
  • Order this book from Kobo
  • Order this book from Google Play

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

Mystic by Cheryl Brooksq

View Book Info Page

Add Your Comment →

  1. Ren Benton says:

    I had a mandatory reading list recently that made me consider in a serious way that there’s a conspiracy to promote social regression to women-as-livestock times and it’s being deployed through fiction primarily aimed at women. “If a man isn’t grabbing your tits in a crisis situation, he’s defective” and associated expectation and happy acceptance of various abuses are way more prevalent than they should be toward the end of the second decade of the 21st century.

    And I didn’t have the luxury of DNFing or ranting in detail, so I’m stuck with SO MUCH OUTRAGE. *weeps in self-pity*

  2. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    Instead of “pet peeve” try “bete noire”—it’s idiomatic French for something that annoys you greatly or that you hate/avoid. I remember it used to show up in novels about the British upper-crust: “Oh, Aunt Daphne’s droning on about her gardens is my bete noire, darling!” That sort of thing. Its literal translation is “black beast” but I couldn’t see anywhere that there was a racial component to its meaning or origin (other bitches may further enlighten us), so I think it could be used without giving unintended offense—plus you feel like a character in a Nancy Mitford novel.

  3. The Other Kate says:

    GARRUS + FEMSHEP 4EVAR! (represses tears because I’m still not over the end of ME3)

  4. DonnaMarie says:

    @DiscoDollyDeb, we can always count on you for a great little tidbit like this. I’ve always loved this term. Bete noire has always been used to describe something you abhor, a dark spirit, a nemesis or something intensely disliked or dreaded, but we live in dark times where people can always find a reason to be offended or twist a latin root into something it was never meant to be.

    @Amanda, sorry you had to go through this. I thumbed through one of the first series a looooong time ago standing in Borders’ romance section. Oh, how I miss Borders… Any way, I was looking for something new. Cat-like aliens in outer space? Sounded like a winner, because Vincent/Beauty and the Beast. Five minutes later I noped out hard and ended up with Dark Lover which became a whole other black hole, but I digress.

  5. Mrs Obed Marsh says:

    @Ren Benton

    I think it’s kinda the opposite: even though women have gained a lot of political and social rights, a lot of us still internalize misogyny, and some of us will express that misogyny through our writing. Patriarchal ideas and attitudes don’t necessarily go away just because women get the right to vote or hold down a job, much like how American racism didn’t disappear when we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965. And as long as misogyny continues to exist, some of us will internalize it as a coping mechanism. We’ll strive to live by certain patriarchal ideals, judge the women around us for not living up to those ideals, pass the ideals on to our kids, and – if we are artists – express those ideals in our art. No secret conspiracy required: it’s all self-perpetuating and happening in plain sight.

  6. MaryK says:

    I’ve dipped into the Cat Star Chronicles enough to keep them in my TBR pile, but I recently picked up the last book at a library sale and when I skimmed it, it was really bad. To the point where I questioned whether it was the same author. I ended up skim reading the whole thing in a sort of train wreck fashion. The writing style was different and it had an old school feel to it. I put it down convinced that either someone else had written it or the author had blocked out a story and filled it in mechanically.

Add Your Comment

Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

↑ Back to Top