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Exmond posted:I got 15% into Written in Red, didn't like it compared to the Black Jewels Trilogy. I stopped due to ALPHA WOLF MALE trope that I was a bit tired of. Does it really just wipe out the native americans? I've read most of these and honestly I don't even remember. What I do remember is being so thoroughly annoyed by the cutesy baby talk that ALL the characters do constantly. Bishop did it in The Black Jewels trilogy too, but I never found it nearly as annoying because of the world she had built for that series. For the Others series, she basically just does an alt history of America where the indigenous are all supernatural and they all live in special territories, but they somehow are in charge? This is one of those series where I'm honestly sad I wasted my time on it, and I've read every single Anita Blake and Merry Gentry book. I even have a blog where I hate read and review the MG series chapter by chapter and I still hate the Others series more.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:51
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StrixNebulosa posted:Merry Gentry 1: 300 pages in, and the queen is dressing up her royal guard like sexpot strippers and I suspect the purpose is so she can gift all of them to Merry for loving purposes. Oh you're in for a loving treat in book 4. It contains one of the most  sex scenes I've ever read. I was inspired to start a book review blog where I review books I hate-read based off that scene alone.
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Mar 25, 2020 19:48
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Omi no Kami posted:Could we get a spoilered synopsis? I was just about to start #1 on the basis that I've seen multiple people go "Oh wtf is this garbage," then I saw it was Anita Blake and realized I'd never even get past the first book. Sure thing. So the entire gist of the Merry Gentry series is that Merry and her cousin Cel are in a gently caress-off to see who can either become pregnant/get someone pregnant first. Whoever conceives first becomes the official heir of the Unseelie court. This is LKH's way of writing a sex-filled series without angering her fans (like me) who loved the Anita Blake books for what they were before they became ridiculous and based very heavily on Anita having sex constantly. Anyway, in book 4 (at least I think it's early in book 4 or at some point in book 3), Merry is loving some side character guard named Amatheon in a dead garden. During their sexcapades, Amatheon SINKS INTO THE GROUND and the garden starts coming back to life. Throughout the series, Merry starts channeling their faerie goddess who obviously wants to bring life back to their dying faerie kingdom, and in this scene they kind of realize that the goddess took Amatheon as a sacrifice in order to bring life back to the garden. So, back to the scene in question, which is in chapter 38 (the second to last chapter). Merry and some other random guard, Adair, who is not one of her main dudes and really has no huge role in the series before or after this, are having sex. Here's the rest of the scene, direct from the book (bolding mine): He entered me like a sword finding, at last, its perfect sheath. The magic seemed to draw back for a moment, like a giant taking a breath. We lay on the bed in that most intimate of embraces, as close as man and woman can be, and it was like coming home. It was as if I had waited lifetimes for this man to hold me, for this body to be inside mine. I saw the same wonder in his face. I watched the glow at the center of his body begin to spread outward again. I felt the magic begin to swell, the giant was about to exhale, and with the sensation of that rising magic, Adair began to draw himself out of me. He pulled himself out until only the round head of him remained inside me. The magic blazed to life, and a heartbeat before the power took us, he slid himself home deep inside me. He brought my upper body off the bed, screaming, my nails digging into his flesh, trying to hold on to something, anything, while his body, his magic, thrust inside me again and again. Until I was no longer certain which was flesh and which was magic, pounding through my body. Then the world shifted. Through the blaze of white and yellow light that was our magic, our bodies, I saw a great dark space rearing above us. We were no longer in the queen’s chambers. Doyle, Rhys, and Frost climbed to their feet, and stood watch over us. Part of me wondered where the sithen had taken us, but most of me didn’t care. I cared for nothing in that moment but the feel for Adair between my legs. Our magic shattered the dark into shadows and dancing light, and still Adair thrust between my legs. Still the power pulsed and grew until I thought my skin could no longer hold it. That I would melt away and become the light. I screamed my pleasure into the fire-shadows of our lovemaking, and still it was not done. I felt my nails tear along his skin, watched his body bleed yellow and gold like sunlight. The ground underneath my body began to move under the thrust and push of Adair’s body, as if I would sink into the ground as Amatheon had done in vision. The ground boiled and for a moment the earth was water, pouring around my body in a thick, warm tide. The water spilled inside me, so that Adair pushed himself through it, and forced that blood-warm water deep inside me. Hands came out of that warm liquid. Hands and flesh pressed against me, following where the liquid ran. Muscles, skin, a body, whole and real, formed beneath me. I knew who it was before Amatheon raised his face up enough for me to meet his flower-petal eyes. His body was already inside me when it became solid. Inside me, as Adair thrust inside, so that their bodies shared me. Yep. Merry fucks a mud man into existence. The chapter then ends with the queen coming into the bedroom, interrupting the post-coital cuddling session before the two men had a chance to exit her. One slips out due to surprise, which causes Merry's vag to tighten down on the other dick. So the other guards in the room have to literally pull Merry off the dude to separate them. High loving literature right there. There's a ton of sex scenes in this series, but this was the one that will forever stick with me. You cannot unread that.
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Mar 27, 2020 02:52
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StrixNebulosa posted:As for "who is the audience" it's LKH. This is straight up id-fic that normally doesn't get shared, let alone published. Reading Merry is a front row seat to the inside of LKH's horny brain, and it is fascinating. YUP. I totally feel like once the Anita Blake series got popular enough to let LKH run free with it, she went off the deep end. She's reined herself in with the last few books in that series and has tried to give it more of an early series go again (still with lots of sex thrown in, but not nearly as many chapters devoted to that), but it's just not anywhere near as good as it was before sex became a major plot point, at least in my opinion. The Merry Gentry series starts off crazy and gets even more insane. The entire series is either chapters of super boring nonsense/bickering that should have been edited out, or pedal to the floor insanity/body horror/sex.
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Mar 27, 2020 03:10
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StrixNebulosa posted:But let's try to spice it up - what UF are y'all reading currently? Anything new? Anything really comforting for pandemic times? Anything with some really hot werewolves in it? Dunno if it's considered UF, but I'm rereading the Sookie Stackhouse series. It's dumb, but it's fun, easy dumb. In between, reading the Mercy Thompson series, but I keep having to wait for whoever else is reading it from my online library to return books (they have been keeping them for the entire 21 days without returning when finished), so that's been slower going. Last year I read the entire Malazan Book of the Fallen series (every single book. even the ICE ones) so this year I decided I was just going to read easy, dumb books that didn't require a lot of thought.
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Apr 1, 2020 20:32
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StrixNebulosa posted:- Jane Yellowrock series by Faith Hunter; I enjoy how the vampires are typical yet not - but honestly I'm reading this for Jane herself Been reading this series based off your very first recommendation of it in this thread and yep, can confirm, it's really good. I just finished book 5 and of course my library only has books 1-5 and 10 of the series, so I think I'll be purchasing the next 4 because I can't put it down.
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May 21, 2020 21:36
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For me with the Anita Blake series, it wasn't so much the change of Anita's character and introduction of really interesting sex that reduced my enjoyment of the series. I found that the actual writing got worse and worse as more books came out. Suddenly, I was constantly spotting things a good editor should have caught, lots of inconsistency, etc. The worst, though, was how one dimensional a lot of the new characters seemed to be. I remember one character whose only defining aspect is that he's a sociopath and we know this because he's constantly telling us or reminding Anita that he's a sociopath. Also, everything about Cyn just leaves me feeling real gross and dirty. I will always love this series, at least the series through Obsidian Butterfly, but I have a hard time enjoying the latter books because of all that. I still read them, though. I'm planning on doing a full reread of the series fairly soon, mostly inspired by some of the thorough analysis of the series you guys have done in this thread.
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Jul 13, 2020 15:41
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Dramatika posted:In non Dresden matters, I'm gonna be honest, it didn't really scratch my urban fantasy itch. Is the October Daye series worth checking out for eight bucks for the first book? I've really liked everything I've read by Seanan McGuire, read the entire Wayward Children series in a week in February, and just finished Middlegame last weekend (which was a drat good book). If you've liked everything else you've read of hers, you'll probably like October Daye too. It's my current favorite UF, and I love her take on faerie. But you can regularly find the 1st book digitally for $2.99. I don't know that I'd pay more than that for the first book of a series, especially when I'm not sure if I'd like it or not.
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Jul 20, 2020 17:43
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Kitto is the worst loving character and I forever hate anytime he's involved in the story. They treat him like a child.
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Jul 27, 2020 20:00
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StrixNebulosa posted:Okay one more note: I'm impressed that so far between 11 Anita Blake books and 3 Merry Gentry books despite the plethora of romantic interests in them, none of them are clones of the other? I'm still burned by reading like ten Nalini Singhs in a row and I love those stupid paranormal romances so much but she has a real problem with writing the same two people falling in love over and over despite giving them different names and powers. Short fierce woman/big tall protective man, no nuance at all. Meanwhile LKH's dudes have enough complexity and poo poo going on that I can pick out who is who at fifty paces, even accounting for her love of long hair and angst. The only two characters who I think might be the same/similar in inspiration for her are Asher and Frost, and even then I'm just picking that out because they're both whiny to the point of irritating their lovers. I think you and I have read very different LKH books, because I've read the Anita Blake series at least twice, and have read the Merry Gentry series 4x, and, especially in the MG series, I have to constantly scroll back to figure out who Merry is having relations with or talking to during scenes because aside from some very superficial details all her men are incredibly interchangeable. The same thing happens once Anita expands her sex pard to include basically anyone who happens to be in the room whenever Anita must feed. I'm happy you're enjoying the books so much and are so enthusiastic about them. I used to love them a lot too (and STILL love the first like 7 AB books, which is why I've reread them so much) but I've never gotten even remotely the same feels you've got out of them.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:57
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We do not deserve Craig Schaefer.
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Sep 30, 2021 20:51
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Deptfordx posted:Apparently there's some new Dresden File novella, anybody read it? Yeah, it's not great. It's on Kindle Unlimited if people want to check it out. It's an easy read, at least.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:18
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ToxicFrog posted:I've never even heard of these but they sound like they might be something I'd enjoy, thanks! It's a pretty decent series. I'm currently rereading it because I missed the last three books and am now excited that it's wrapped up. I found the series after seeing the author go viral on Twitter for torturing her cranky neighbor with inflatable dragon decorations one year.
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Dec 1, 2022 02:27
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