FMK #3: I heard there was some real kinky stuff in these, y'all*

[melannen]

Okay! Now that I have gone through all the paperbacks and have a better idea of what I actually have, this should be a fun one. :D

Results from last week's FMK.

How FMK works: I am trying to clear out my unread books piles. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away, immediately and with prejudice. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I am going to start officially closing the poll and picking winners on Friday nights because I don't always have time on Sunday to read a whole novel. (although not actually closing it probably, people can still vote.)

Link to long version of explanation (on previous poll)

Poll #18074 FMK #3: I heard there was some real kinky stuff in these, y'all*

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 49

View Respondents

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel (1980)

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F
16 (40.0%)

M
7 (17.5%)

K
17 (42.5%)

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqcueline Carey (2001)

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F
32 (74.4%)

M
6 (14.0%)

K
5 (11.6%)

The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure by Storm Constantine (2003)

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F
14 (60.9%)

M
5 (21.7%)

K
4 (17.4%)

Touched by Venom by Janine Cross (2005)

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F
11 (50.0%)

M
4 (18.2%)

K
7 (31.8%)

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

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F
16 (42.1%)

M
6 (15.8%)

K
16 (42.1%)

Guilty Pleasures by Laurel K. Hamilton (1993)

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F
12 (41.4%)

M
2 (6.9%)

K
15 (51.7%)

House of Zeor by Jacqueline Lichtenberg (1974)

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F
15 (71.4%)

M
4 (19.0%)

K
2 (9.5%)

High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris (1977)

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F
15 (71.4%)

M
4 (19.0%)

K
2 (9.5%)

Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman (1966)

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F
6 (17.6%)

M
1 (2.9%)

K
27 (79.4%)

The Healing of Crossroads by Nick O'Donohoe (1990)

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F
11 (50.0%)

M
2 (9.1%)

K
9 (40.9%)

Kildar by John Ringo (2006)

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F
7 (29.2%)

M
1 (4.2%)

K
16 (66.7%)

*I may have heard wrong

Comments

[cyprinella]

Oh man, I read the first Crossroads book probably around when it first came out. I had no idea there were sequels.

[melannen]

skygiants has been bookblogging them and it has been a glorious journey. Not the one I own yet, though, so it could still have amazing surprises in store.

Eta: wait, no, apparently it was, it's just the back of the book bears 0 resemblance to skygiants'summary.

[watersword]

Oh man there are so many wonderfully terrible books in this list! I am verklempt with joy to know there is a book called The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure by someone named Storm Constantine, this is the BEST NEWS.

[melannen]

All I remember about it is that at some point I was informed that there is Technicolor semen and you know you have met your soulmate if the semen colour matches!

[muccamukk]

I think almost all of these are sort of not very good, but if you hit the right idporn they're FABULOUS. I voted kill on the ones that creeped me out, and fuck on the ones that are worth a tumble. I'm not sure I'd marry any of the before I tried them :D

[melannen]

That's probably a good rule for kinky stuff in general!

TW

[alexseanchai]

"Kinky" is not the word for the Auel. "Rapey" is the word for the Auel. I loved that book to bits as a teen, though, and afaik Auel isn't skeevy like MZB, and the rapey isn't in later books as I recall, and for those reasons I voted F rather than K. But I figured I'd give you a heads up.

I have a recollection of rapey somewhere in the Kushiel series but I don't think Dart is the one. The whole Kushiel series is HELLA kinky, though.

idk the rest, though I've heard Ringo's name. Or rather, I've heard "OH JOHN RINGO NO"...

Re: TW

[melannen]

Yeah I have that book mostly out of a sense of residual guilt over my part in spreading OH JOHN RINGO NO.

[vass]

I voted Marry for The Healing of Crossroads, but I very strongly vote for reading the first two books in that trilogy first.

You should be warned that I voted F for the Gor and Kildar not in your best interests but because I thought the review might be entertaining for me. So be warned.

[melannen]

I figured there would be a lot of that (I suspect all of the Touched by Venom F votes are that.) It's okay, I knew what I was getting into. :P

I don't have the other two books in the Crossroads trilogy! Although if it doesn't win the poll I am reasonably likely to stumble on them by the time I get around to it. Although I've read the bookblogs I linked above so I'm reasonably spoiled for that one anyway.

[fairestcat]

I voted M for the first Outlander book, because I quite liked the first couple books in that series, but I advise against getting too invested, the series becomes the bad kind of soap opera really quickly.

[melannen]

I own the first three, I think (And some of the Lord John). These days I have a time-management-based aversion to super-long series where every book is a brick, so I suspect I will be lucky to get through just the three. (Also in my experience nearly every series turns into a bad soap opera by at least book 10, with a few very special exceptions.)

[rushthatspeaks]

I wound up reading that entire John Ringo series because I wanted to find out if the OH JOHN RINGO NO review was accurate. It was. Then I felt rather as though I had eaten my weight in marzipan: impressed with myself, nauseated, and worried that I'd gotten some on me. DON'T DO IT. Or if you do, remember that Kildar is probably the best and least offensive of these, and avoid the others like the plague they are.

Kushiel's Dart is legit a good book.

If you really feel the need to read a Gor book, I can send you a link to Gay Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor, the parody a friend wrote which also happens to duplicate everything you might want about the actual Gor reading experience.

[melannen]

I *have* read Houseplants of Gor (which mostly just made me wonder if the writer had read Good Omens recently. Gay Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor sounds like an important SF work in its own right, though!

Yeah, most of the books in this poll are supposed to be pretty Not Good, mostly because if I owned a *good* SF book with non-standard sex I have probably already read it. :P The exception is Kushiel, which I have only not read because the books are GIANT BRICKS OF THINGS. IF it wins you are probably getting another late update next week because, literally as thick as my paperback Les Mis.

[nicki]

So I didn't vote on Guilty Pleasures because it is, in and of itself, a perfectly OK book, but series turns out... not. It's like a first date that goes reasonably well but eventually leads to a toxic relationship full of fighting and fucking that eventually ends up mostly with fighting and even the thought of sex leaves you nauseous.

Fair warning though, I was in the LKH anti-fandom for years so I might be a bit prejudiced.

[melannen]

I've heard that about the series, yeah. That's the only one of the series I own, and I suspect that even if I read it I will not be inspired to go find the rest. But it *was* one of the first big urban fantasy/paranormal romance books.

[rachelmanija]

I really like Kushiel's Dart but it's a love it or hate it book. It has a very distinctive narrative voice that you will probably love or hate within two pages, so it's an ideal candidate for a fuck. The kink is almost entirely BDSM; the heroine was born blessed by the angel of S&M (seriously) and so has supernatural masochism (seriously) in a country where sex work is holy and consensual, and everyone is very, very pretty. There's lots of luscious description and politicking. Bisexuality and poly or open relationships are the norm, and while the main romance is straight, the heroine's most interesting (foe-yay) romance is with another woman. I don't recall rape in book one but it does have underage characters in sexual situations in a world in which the age of consent is lower, and consent issues involving that and a lack of safe/sane/consensual.

I also honestly like Clan of the Cave Bear, which I realize is a minority opinion. Later books are ridiculous but the first is an engrossing work of anthropological historical fiction with tons of cool cultural worldbuilding, some interesting characters, and soap opera. It does have a rape.

And (this is starting to become a theme): parts of Outlander are lots of fun. The first half or so is pretty enjoyable cross-genre time-travel romance with some unusual genre aspects. There is a romance which I was not so into and which has some sketchy issues (though also some unusual genre aspects - the heroine is married in her own time and the hero is a virgin) and there are rape threats and rape. Though that ALSO has unusual genre issues as it's a man who's raped. There's a really WTF healing vagina scene. The whole book is original in ways it doesn't get credited for because of the problematic/trashy/unappealing elements.

The Healing of Crossroads is book three in a trilogy about veterinarians in fantasyland. It is a bizarre mix of charming and incredibly grimdark and WTF. I would fuck book one (The Magic and the Healing first. No rape! Lots and lots of torture and animal harm, though.

Please fuck Touched by Venom. I am not going to defend that one. It is hilaribad. Also, rapetastic.

I have not read the Storm Constantine book but I hear it has flowery prose and flower-shaped penises.

[melannen]

Based on everything I've heard about Kushiel, I will either love it or hate it, it's mainly the length that's kept me away.

I understood Clan of the Cave Bear had weird size kink stuff and also mammoth sex as well as the rapeyness, but maybe that's not until later in the series?

I am so there for flowery penises, though.

I don't personally need rape warnings and TBH, I usually just assume that any published book with sex in it is going to have rape and/or other consent issues unless it's been specifically recommended to me as not having them. Rape culture, man. I strongly object to books where the author doesn't seem to know the difference between "rape" and "building a foundation for a loving relationship", though, which, as you know bob, comes up a lot. Also books where the author thinks "she was raped", all by itself counts as "a complex and unique backstory".

(Grimspace had a rape threat that the MC decided to defuse by having consensual sex with him because he was hot anyway, which was interrupted by Designated Love Interest dragging her off in a jealous fit, at which point they had first-time sex up against a wall, after which she learned that Rape Dude had been using a pheromonal perfume that removed her ability to say no and DLI knew about it. And then they have to flee the planet to keep Rape Dude from kidnapping her as a brood mare and the attempted rape and pheromones never get mentioned again.)

(And it's sold as an SF romance but that's the only actual sex scene in the book)

(Sunbird didn't have any sex or explicitly sexual threats but it sure did manage the slavery and torture and discipline scenes)

(Maybe I should start having a special section in my reviews just for "here are the bits with noncon or dubcon" because I suspect I will almost always have *something* for that square.)

[gehayi]

I remember reading the Zeor series when I was a teenager, and I didn't see anything kinky about it. Humanity has been divided into two types, the Simes (predators) and the Gens (prey). Differentiation between the two appears in puberty, when a Sime goes through changeover, which means fever, convulsions and, after hours or days of agony, the emergence of tentacles on their forearms. Two sets are for gripping the forearms of a Gen; the third seizes the life energy called selyn produced by Gens, without which a Sime cannot survive. Simes who can take selyn from Gens without killing them and who can transfer selyn to other Simes are called "channels." Unfortunately, channels are rare. A Gen in Sime territory (at least at the beginning) is likely to be captured, penned and killed, like cattle. A Sime in Gen territory is likely to be killed by terrified Gens.

All of the books I read formed a generational saga, as they follow a family of channels, the Farrises, over time.

I suppose that transfer--when a Sime takes selyn from a Gen--might have looked kinky in 1974, as transfer involves forearm-to-forearm grip and lip contact. So it looks like two people kissing while in an awkward hug. And since the lead Sime and Gen in House of Zeor are both male, some people might have found this shocking in the Seventies. Plus it's basically science-fiction vampires. However, IIRC, transfer is not treated as sexual or exciting but life-threatening. Honestly, the focus of the series is on Simes and Gens finding ways to live with each other and recognize each other as people.

[melannen]

I've seen other recommendations of it. I think it got on this list in my head as a combination of a) tentacles, b) queer in the seventies, and c) the way the Sime/Gen relationships work socially outside the transfer.

Also because it was frequently associated with Kraith, which is like the great-great-grandmother of D/s verse fanfic.

[stellar_dust]

I started Outlander and couldn't get past the first chapter. The main character was like "but WHY do I HAVE TO stay in an adorable b&b in a remote Scottish highland village just because my BORING HUSBAND wants to do POINTLESS HISTORICAL RESEARCH?? Ugh so boring my life sucks"... I just went, yeah, I am probably not the demographic for this. And it wasn't compellingly written enough to overcome that, so I gave myself permission to stop.

[gehayi]

I have to say that staying in an adorable B&B in the Scottish highlands and doing historical research sounds like Paradise to me!

[marginaliana]

Voted K on a few just because of my (decidedly incomplete) knowledge of them, voted F on several I know nothing about just for the titles (High Couch of Silistra! What a great ridiculous title.).

[melannen]

It's got an amazing Boris Vallejo cover to match the title, too.

[skygiants]

every time someone else indicates they might read the Crossroads books a fallen angel gets its wings in my heart

(My dad gave me his copy of Clan of the Cave Bear to read when I was ten or eleven and sulking because I'd been barred from the library for excessive fines. This is one of my favorite stories about my parents.)

[melannen]

I am pretty sure you are the only reason I picked that one up when it passed before me.

(My Clan of the Cave Bear story is that when I was quite young, we had copies of both The Wild Mammoth Hunters (which was kids' nonfiction with a really striking art style) and The Mammoth Hunters (which...wasn't) on the same shelf, and I kept picking up the second one thinking it would be just as interesting and then being very, very disappointed that it wasn't.

Residual disappointment is probably why I never got around to reading them even when I was old enough to do books without pictures.)

[oracne]

Zeor is Teh Crackz.

Everyone seems to like Kushiel except me - I did not find it sexy in the least. It's all, spank her and she comes, the end. No tension.

CAVE BEAR is EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW RAPEY.

At least Outlander is interesting from a genre pov - it sort of mixes the big epic historical romance with time travel, which I think is the first time I saw that mixture.

The first Laurel K. Hamilton is interesting because it's noir paranormal, not very romance-y at all, but I think it sparked off the Paranormal Romance boom.

I've met John Norman. Do not read his books.

[melannen]

>>I've met John Norman.

I'm sorry to hear that. <_<

I go to Pennsic War sometimes and they always have a contingent of Gor LARPers along for the ride and it's worrying.

[ambyr]

Since no one else has mentioned it . . . I have read (okay, skimmed) High Couch of Silistra. It is definitely a collection of pages bound within covers. I am not really sure what else to say about it beyond that. You may wish to have a brief fling for amusement value, but I see no reason for it to live on in your permanent collection.

[melannen]

Ah, but my copy is a collection of pages bound in DAW yellow with a Boris Vallejo painting on the front! I'm tempted to keep it just for that tbh. I suspect that's why I've kept it so far...

[synecdochic]

Oooh, finally some I've actually read!

[melannen]

Yeah, last week was kind of hard mode! I think I will have to space those out.

[calvinahobbes]

Hey, some titles I actually know and have opinions on!

People have already said this stuff in greater detail, but I voted K on Auel and Gabaldon for the rapey-ness of those particular books. I read Auel as a young teenager as well, and Clan of the Cave Bear is super gross in a way that the sequels really are not, so if you haven't read those I would actually recommend the next in the series just to get a sense of what those books were about. I only read Gabaldon very recently and rage-quit it - the author really loves how the MC's Scottish clansman husband has to constantly ~teach her a lesson, and I really hated it.

The first Anita Blake books are not necessarily bad as such, just intensely vampire idfic-y? The series just goes on way too long. So - F.

And I haven't read Kushiel's Dart, but so many people are enthusiastic about those so I want you to read it and report back, so also F.

[melannen]

Oh, huh. I'd totally be up for starting with Mammoth Hunters instead if that actually makes sense as a strategy.

>>the author really loves how the MC's Scottish clansman husband has to constantly ~teach her a lesson

augh.

But I can be into vampire idfic sometimes!

[elanya]

Reading through the comments here, if you are not put off by the very concept of reading about a fictional character getting raped and having how that affects her, you should at least give Auel a shot. That said it has been like 15 years since I read it. I did a book report on it in grade 9. I don't remember how far into the sequels I got, but not very. Still smh at the male lead from the second book that all the virgin girls wanted to be their first because he was so well hung. Ambitious, that!

[melannen]

Wanting to be with the well-hung guy as your first does seem a bit unrealistic. Practice first, girls!

Auel is getting very interestingly mixed votes, so we'll see.

[jadelennox]

I had a tired eyes moment and thought you were saying that there is a book called Transman of Gor and thought "...that is not what I expect from the Gor universe."

[melannen]

...would SO VERY MUCH read that, though.

Mammoths

[katherine]

The fourth in Auel's series has mammoths in considerable detail and the human characters getting inspired. Maybe some mammoth roleplay if you squint and this is me resisting flipping through to confirm...

The wording of the mammoth's activities is strongly borrowed from Cynthia Moss' non-fiction Elephant Memories.

[sylvaine]

I am terribly fond of Storm Constantine's Wraeththu series, though I suspect it's even cringier than I remember :D

[stellar_dust]

Somebody at HÍ thinks you should read the gor book I guess