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

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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.

[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]

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.

[melannen]

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

[muccamukk]

I voted against Gor more on grounds that it's Terribly written though. I didn't even make it to the kink to see if I liked it or not. Just AWFUL.

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.

Re: TW

[alexseanchai]

I don't even remember what OJRN IS.

[melannen]

I was kind of expecting Gor to take K easily because I dint know that I've ever heard anything good about it except that it was influential. But influential is enough that I kinda want to at least try. Maybe. Hence owning it still. (And there are plenty of other contenders here.)

Re: TW

[melannen]

Good, I can feel less guilty about it if everyone forgot. :p

[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.

[muccamukk]

It's pretty short. Given how much terrible, terrible prose you'd skim, you could probably just buzz through it. I feel like you'd be sorry tho.

[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.

[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.

[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.

Re: TW

[gehayi]

The Cro-Magnon Ayla gets raped repeatedly in The Clan of the Cave Bear by the Neanderthal Broud; the two loathe each other, and it's stated that he's doing it not for sex but to publicly humiliate her.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[petra]

Likewise. Claire (Clare? I don't remember and I've read a lot of Gabaldon's doorstoppers) takes a specific kind of person to be relatable in the beginning.

And then comes the m/f domestic discipline and m/m rape.

[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.).

[stellar_dust]

Ikr? Willfully-historically-ignorant-person-gets-schooled-by-time-travel CAN be an interesting trope, but I just wasn't feeling it in this case.