Book Review: Until Justice is Done

This book is from 1994, so it's a tad dated shelf-wise. This doesn't detract from its accuracy on the facets of modern crime-solving such as computer stuff (minimally) and good old-fashioned sleuthing and DNA evidence (mostly).

Normally I stay away from suspense thrillers. I can deal with horror--that doesn't frighten me. It's the expedition into the minds of these characters, which are usually murderers and rapists, of course, that I cannot cope with; being a woman, I'd rather not know. But that's just the point of this review. I forced myself to read this book that I gain the insight that all women should, unfortunately, have.

So. I highly recommend this book to all women and to their loved ones, and the ones who care for them. Christine McGuire is spot on with her harried prosecutor, a woman, whom, in the end comes face to face with the rapist/murderer the police have been desperately searching for and she's been seeking to prosecute. She brings brilliant insight into the mind of a psychopath who carefully chooses his victims with disturbing stalking tactics that make you angry, yes, but that's part of her form of enlightenment. McGuire's writing is so convincing it's nearly impossible to believe it isn't based upon a primary or secondary experience. And she's creative; the only thing her killer doesn't do to murder a victim is put poison in her food. The dialogue, the tension, the inevitabilities--it's all portrayed convincingly enough: The protagonist's emotions conflict over the constant barrage of so many rape/homicide cases. Even she does not want to live in this book. Yet she resists exhaustion with conviction.

Every woman should read this or something similar to it. It should become required reading for all school-age girls. Isn't the HPV vaccination required of high school girls? Why not mandatory classes on this kind of knowledge? It seems it's fine for girls to have sex and possibly contract diseases, but it's irrelevant that they learn how to defend themselves in case said sex becomes violent or non-consensual. It almost seems like we have a nation (and perhaps this is on a global scale, as well) that's determined not to have strong female heroes.  

Prince of Thorns: Book Review

There are some parts of this author's work that I envy. (Just putting that on the table; I’ll always say so when it’s true.) I've read several of his short stories and poems, which have gone beneath the surface and entertained, inspired, and lingered. However, Prince of Thorns was oddly not among those works! This is no insult; it's highly readable and, like a ten car pileup, hard to look away from, but it did seem a slightly different turn from a few darker more meaningful fantasy works I've read. As the author's major publishing debut it offered me a different door into his creativity and the genre market in general, and as an aspiring writer, of course, I sprinted through it.

The cover had me thinking the book was a bit different than what it turned out to be--a strictly sword and sorcery affair rooted in a dark age, medieval times, perhaps, because there are about thirty medieval-looking swords on the cover. But there's a twist: A post-apocalyptic twist. The story apparently takes place after the world has been hit with weapons of mass destruction.

The lesson then is: don't judge a book by its cover. On the cover the prince's stance is a la David and Goliath, yet darker--a warrior victorious over many kills. And it's a stunning image, invoking thoughts of hard-fought battles, triumph, change. But it made me wonder--if a society, post-apocalyptic as this one, once knew how to make missiles and guns, then why does said society revert to using swords? If swords and cross-bows can be smithed, why can't guns?

What further confused me about this element of the story, was why, after the apocalypse, would the remaining people of a society revert to archaic lifestyles--the speech, the dress? I would think, given the many post-apocalyptic theories/films/books out there, that once humanity had been decimated, time would stop rather than revert. I'm thinking of Bethesda’s Fallout 3 (yeah, I’m a game junkie and that one was particularly fun) where the apocalypse happened somewhere between 1920-1950-something, and trends were dictated by the height of technology at the time of its downfall: People still listened to the same music, scavenged for and clung to their guns, computers, appliances, etc. And once the Rapture was over, there wasn't a religious person left on the planet.

It seems that what the author has done here is revert society back to the dark ages, pre-Renaissance and sans Humanism, instead of showing the way society was at the time of the apocalypse, which is actually a long-running theory about humanity’s “true” progression depending on which anthropological theorist you subscribe to. But it just doesn’t sit well. The overall ambience, after the point in the story when I realized it was post-apocalyptic, changed for me. I felt splashed cold with this element. This doesn't detract from the author's talent, though. As a writer, you learn to hold things up to the light and look at them critically, to look through them to find how they work. As a reader, you just go with the author's flow, and if they're talented, as this author undeniably is, then you enjoy the ride.

The writing is worthwhile: A blend of fantasy trope and voice-driven literary fiction. Every sentence is taut, Jorg's observations fiercely confident. Many passages hearken to the author's earlier poems. If, by chance, you're an aspiring poet, join his Yahoo! poetry group, be kind to some folks who want their poetry read. Just don't download any files. :) If you can find them, read the author's poems. Search them out online. For analytical types they provide an excellent context for his prose.

While the story might appeal more to the male sect, given its packaging, it's a universally blasphemous fun read in the vein of "A Clockwork Orange" that for many moments had me rooting for vengeance. What compelled me to finish Jorg's story was a strong empathy for him; hope, perhaps, that vengeance against everyone who crossed him wasn't all there was to his legacy. Mostly, it wasn't. Impressive moments range between the socially and the emotionally relevant: Love is felt by Jorg in the poetical form of hooks sinking into his heart; it absolutely affects pain in him, and this is conveyed with the kind of coarse beauty one would expect from a tortured soul. Poignant philosophies and brilliant sarcasm are scattered little gems all the way to the end. But strangely, this is all conveyed through a fifteen-year-old boy, which does feel partly cliché (hormonal teenage angst in effect) and highly improbable (c'mon, no matter what he's seen, he's still just. . . a kid).

Never mind the genre. Genres are utterly confining and you will skip over things you should have read because you discriminated against the genre or you paid too much attention to reviews. I say the same for music, shows, or movies. Judge for yourself, possibly be surprised by this ambiguous character as author Mark Lawrence blurs the lines between lovable and detestable, noble and evil, retribution and vengeance.

Shades of Dislike

My first book review on this blog. I wish it could’ve been a book that I liked better, but Amazon recommended it, I got it, here we are. Like any erotica, once you start reading Fifty Shades of Grey you become a bit hooked, if for nothing else than the short-lived naughty thrill of peeping into someone’s else’s sex life. And that’s really all this book has. If it’s interesting fresh personalities you’re after, or perhaps prose with creative distinctiveness, don’t listen to Amazon and the New York Times.

To be fair, as I said, the lure of naughtiness might keep you reading. Obviously, titillating is an easy sale. But make no mistake, it’s nothing new and the writing leaves a lot to be desired. Certain phrases, word for word, appear in so many different chapters that I often thought I’d accidentally cycled my e-reader back to a previous page (which happens frequently with the iBooks app).

I sound like a complainy-puss, but I don’t like wasting my time with things I had high hopes for. I’m also rather cynical when it comes to erotica; it’s difficult to find unique stuff in a cliché-dependent genre. But it wasn’t the genre that closed the book for me; there are a number of things I take issue with. For one, Author E.L. James’ teensy, seemingly innocuous injections of toxic propaganda. Namely, a conversation where a supporting character, Mia, suggests that the city of Paris is great, except for Parisians (“Boo, French people!”), and an awkward scene where the mother of Christian Grey, Grace, a pediatrician, is called to the phone—a setup clumsily built around her opinion that all children should be vaccinated (“Boo, freedom of choice!”). There are more examples. I’m not writing a thesis on it, though. Suffice it to say it’s almost like Fox News drones on at low volume in the background. And it’s kind of a really big turn-off for an erotic novel. . . unless of course, you’re into that.


The plot follows young, innocent-minded Anastasia Steele, a college student whom falls in love with a psychotic domineering billionaire with cult-like BDSM tendencies—Christian Grey. Her conflict arises from an obsessive sexual attraction for him, despite the fact that he is incapable of love. His idea of a relationship consists of beating, humiliating, and essentially owning Anastasia; he’s done so with every other woman he’s ever known. It begins intriguingly enough. You want to see her rise against this vitiating dude, and for a while she does. Yet plot problems arise as she weakens and succumbs to him, luring herself into a “compromise” with a sexual deviant, which seems inconsistent as far as psychology and human instinct:


There doesn’t seem to be anything in Anastasia’s past to suggest she was destined to be a “submissive” lover—a sex-slave, to be blunt. Moreover, certain details suggest she’d be smarter than that, such as the essentially wholesome, harmless, educated and privileged lifestyle she’s had up until meeting Christian Grey. There are worse things than having a mother who remarries when the seasons change; I thought this facet of Anastasia’s past would’ve made her more adaptive to change and thus more mature, but for all that, she remains “innocent” and “naïve” in the face of insane decisions like whether or not her psychotic lover is an abuser for wholly dominating and humiliating her, desiring to bruise her and punish her like a child. But he’s “hot”, so hot apparently, that she cannot walk away and spends a great deal of time flailing and crying over her indecision.


In the long run, she accepts his bizarre idea of a relationship—going so far as to sign a non-disclosure agreement so that she’ll not try to sue him if he should happen go past her “limits”—and allows herself to believe that his tragic past has screwed him up, but she can change him. Is that not the proverbial mantra of a doomed relationship—“I can fix him/her.” Yes, it’s a black day for true love; womanhood too, for goddess’s sake. Continual references to the protag’s inner goddess is salt in the wound.


There’s no corroborating scene from her past to explain why she retains a grade-school mentality, yet it persists. Numerous references to this twenty-something’s innocence and her childlike mannerisms began to irk me. I stuck around until the middle of Book 2 for some kind of affirmation for why—why is she like this. And when I got sick of waiting, ill from the repetitive not-quite-healthy sex and dialogue, I gave up.


A far better read in this vein is Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series, where the writing lives up to the immense challenge of commercializing BDSM. Carey exceeds expectation through genuinely flawed and lovable characters, vivid Renaissance imagery (requiring research), and of course, the sensual backdrop of fallen angels interbred with mortals. Her erotica feels far less gratuitous, repetitive, and clichéd; at the same time, it offers the same naughty little peeks that attract genre fans. Her characters develop with less emphasis on pathos via repetitive mannerisms (i.e., angrily raking fingers through hair and nervously biting the lip—over and over and over); more emphasis instead on an impressive command of emotional vocabulary and metaphor to evoke poetic heroes, villains, sex goddesses, cities and conflicts. While James’ erotica shows familiar sexual tension and adolescent-style confusion, Carey’s shows the potency of sensual language, and she effectively conveys the purpose of her protagonist’s suffering; forget the BDSM, forget it. The woman carves literary sculptures from silk and pain, treachery and true love. If you’ve already read her, you have likely raised your brow at Fifty Shades. If you like this book series, then, much like Twilight fans, you cannot be helped.


Now I know that Fifty Shades is on the New York Times Bestseller list. I don’t claim to understand the NYT, aside from “who does one have to fuck to make the list?” This novel seems inauthentic, hesitant, and pensive in the genre. . . but it has sexy results. Perhaps readers buy controversy; it worked for Dan Brown. Who am I to say. These are opinions. I don’t know how long the author worked, but it is necessary for me to point out that I’ve read better, where it baffled me on just how long the author must have worked, how much blood and sweat went into an obviously spectacular project that deserves whatever accolades. There are authors that I envy, that I long to be compared to. Others, I have to shake my head and wonder if they didn’t know somebody in the business. As a disclaimer, I am cheerfully cynical, as stated above, when it comes to these things. To me, re-doing an idea again and again after it was initially executed well seems like an arrogant waste of time. However, the New York Times and Amazon’s Top 100 are proof of otherwise—that good old fashioned kinky titillation wins out over creativity and substance in a pitifully massive way.

Another excellent read, far and away from this vein, is Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.