With words like, “beguiling” and “yummy” taking up a major portion of the word count of this novel, what can you expect from it, really?
The book was horrible. Basically, Kyrian of Thrace (or Dark-Hunter/Hunter, as seems to be a popular replacement for his name) is a 2000-year-old vampiric, soulless vampire hunter who meets Amanda, a girl hating everything paranormal, and falls in love with her. But he can’t love her, because he was betrayed in the past by his wife. He also needs to focus on destroying Desiderius, the biggest possible threat imaginable to mankind. Can you say cheesy?
Now, I’m not exactly the type who reads romance novels, but at first I thought this was a mockery of vampire romance novels. I mean, the soulless vampire without feelings falls in love. Millenia-old European vampires use American colloquialisms and slang incessantly. The vampire-hunting society in the novel has a website called Dark-Hunter.com. Really, how much more absurd could this novel get? In my mind, the author had to have been kidding when she wrote this monstrous piece of trash.
The fact that the novel sounded like a stupid parody of a Buffy episode aside, when I see the term romance novel in my mind, I think either of a knight in shining armour who comes and whisks his lady love away from pain or of lots and lots of sex. This book had neither element. I was not amused.
I mean, if I’m going to read a plotless story, then I at least expect the characters to be making whoopie all the time so that the book holds my attention for more than half a minute. They didn’t have sex once until about page 200. Actually, I think they only had sex about five times throughout the novel… which is hardly any sex at all, considering all the sexual tension the author tried to build by constantly talking about how much they desired each other with every fibre of their beings. God, the book was so repetitive it wasn’t even funny. And of the five sex scenes, there was only one that was more interesting than reading about the standard missionary position.
God, what a horrendous novel. I don’t ever want to read anything by Sherrilyn Kenyon ever again.
Favourite Quotation:
Actually, when it comes to bad phrases, sentences, or even just horrible word usage, this book is pretty much rife with all of them… so I just had to pick more than one.
“Amanda’s face burned as his erection bulged disturbingly against her pelvis. The man might not be dead, but he was certainly stiff. And this had nothing to do with rigor mortis.” (18) – Long live bad puns!
“I don’t think I’ve ever asked him to do something he didn’t complain about it.” (141) – This sentence doesn’t even make grammatical sense…
“He was sex.” (169) – It’s funny because the book is just filled with corny lines like this one.
“‘It seems old Bacchus got horny one night and made out with an Apollite babe. . . .’” (249) – Yep, that’s definitely something I would expect a two-thousand-year-old vampire-like creature to say…
“It’s unnatural. It’s against the Bible. The will of God is for a man and woman to procreate. Marriage is to allow a man and woman procreate lawfully and by grace of God. If two men (or women) want to marry, at least call it something other than marriage, and don’t ruin the sanctity of it.”
“Sanctity of marriage? Don’t talk about the sanctity of marriage when the divorce rate of the United States is somewhere around fifty per cent of the marriage rate1. Marriage isn’t sacred if half of the people who get married wind up dissolving their marriages.”
“It’s still unnatural. Our bodies were made a certain way, and the bodies of the two sexes fit together, almost like a puzzle, naturally. Men were not made to be with men, the same way women were not made to be with women.”
“And if their minds were? Homosexuals can’t control their urges. Some of us are born that way, some of us change and turn that way, but we can’t control. It isn’t like it’s mind over matter that allows someone to stop being a homosexual. And we should have the same rights as heterosexual couples. The same benefits. We should be allowed to marry.”
“No you shouldn’t.”
My little argumentative “spiel” aside, I don’t really care whether homosexuals can marry or not. In my mind, they should be allowed to simply because it’s a human right that needs to be granted, but ultimately, it doesn’t affect me very much. I’m not a homosexual, and I can get married as much as I want. Even if I were, I would be able to, being a Canadian. But still, I feel the need to voice my opinion. Homosexuals should be allowed to marry, plain and simple. It’s not necessarily a religious issue with me, either. It’s a human rights type of thing. All human beings should be allowed to marry each other. Now, I’m not saying I’m all for polygamy or anything (since ultimately, that doesn’t affect me either because I wouldn’t go marrying a polygamist), but homosexuals should be allowed to marry. It’s not like they’re having children together and making those children homosexuals. Really. So those people against them being married can’t say that their marriages screw up other peoples’ lives. So honestly, they should be allowed. Personally, I don’t think, what with the division of church and state, that it’s even an arguable topic.
But whatever, that’s my opinion. Homosexuals should marry, mainly because it’s their right, but also because it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
Let them marry.
If judging from my previous two (angrier) opinion posts, you’re probably going to think that I’m one of those angry feminazis who’s definitely for abortion because in my opinion women are better than men and can do whatever they want regardless of what “patriarchal society” dictates. And you’re right.
No, no, I’m just kidding. Actually, I’m one of the grey-area people when it comes to abortion. I believe that the right to abort depends solely on circumstances.
For example: A woman is dating a man. She’s taking the pill, he’s wearing condoms. She finds out she’s pregnant and that the reason she’s pregnant is because her pills aren’t working and he’s been poking holes into the condoms so that she’ll get pregnant and marry him. In my opinion, she should be allowed to choose abortion, since everyone knows she isn’t going to want to stay with a man who got her pregnant just so that she’ll be tied to him.
Another example: This time, it’s two teenagers having unprotected sex. Girl gets pregnant, wants to abort. Boyfriend says he doesn’t want her to abort, that he would like to take care of the baby. A lot of people I know would say, “Oh, well HE doesn’t have to carry the thing for nine months and then birth it.” Maybe not, but he did contribute his share of the child, and if he wants to be the one responsible for it (ultimately), then I don’t believe the girl has the right to abort.
I also think victims of rape should have the right to abort their babies, for some pretty obvious reasons. Imagine the emotional trauma you would cause both yourself and your child if every time you looked at it, all you could think of was how you were raped? Honestly, I would rather you abort the child than you keep it and harm both yourself and your child.
So yes, I’m still pretty much in the grey area concerning abortion and everything. Anyone else?