Hello, I'm Morey, and I'll be your Nostalgia Bookworm today.When you look for a book, you look at the cover, the summary, and reviews. If it's something that looks good or interesting, then you check it out of the library or buy it. Sometimes the book you got is amazing and you cherish the story for your whole life. Other times, you get so frustrated with the story and characters you would wish they were real so you can torture them for wasting your time. The latter explanation is Twilight. Unfortunately I want to save my sanity for school, so instead; we'll be digging into this book in its place. What horrid creation of a book can possibly take the place of Twilight? Why Transgressions by Erastes of course. Let's jump in and see how bad this book could get.
To start off, Let's take a look at the cover. At first look, The cover is pretty orderly. When we look closer, we see two men looking towards each other. Below them is a scene of war. We learn five things from this cover:
1.The two men on the cover are the main characters and thus, the lovers.
2.The two men work as blacksmiths.
3.The story will take place in a time of war and might actually have quite a bit of fighting.
4.The blond man is the submissive partner and the brown haired man is the dominant partner.
5.The brown haired man is hard working and the blond man is lazy.
Now the cover looks pretty interesting and actually deals with the story. It could be said to be an original cover if only another book pretty much has the same cover style with a different look. That cover is none other than the cover for False Colors by Alex Beecroft.
Now that we have commented on the cover, Let's review the book. Now to make this review shorter than it would be, I will give a general review and not go into detail of each chapter. If you wish for me to make a review regarding each chapter, then leave a comment saying that and I might consider it. Anyway, There are many things I have that is wrong with the book. To start, Let's see the good things about the book.
To start, the book has an actual plot that doesn't start in the last 100 pages. The plot is basically David and Jonathan get together. David gets in trouble. He runs away and joins the army. David runs away from the army and hooks up with another guy. Jonathan joins a different army. He gets injured and he angst over David. He does some soul searching and joins a group of witch hunters. It's not much of a plot, but it is a plot. It's a mediocre plot at best.
The second good thing about the book is some of the description. This is only coming from an artistic standpoint. When the author describes certain things like how David looks when he's sleeping, I can picture it so vividly in my head that I just want to draw it. This good description is overpowered by the vast lack of description where it is needed. We'll talk more about that later.
The third good thing is one of the very minor characters in the book. That character is the tavern wench who helps David out of a sticky situation. What happens is David is in a tavern with his war buddies having a fun time. David doesn't look to the wench as he is not interested in the female sex. His war buddies Give him a hard time and the wench helps him out. The two paragraphs with her spoke more than anything else in the book. From the two paragraphs, we learn she is understanding and has seen more than the soldiers in that tavern. She could most likely kick the asses of most of the men in the tavern. The book probably would have been better if she was in there more and was given a name.
The last good thing in the book is David's father, Jacob. He and the wench were the only two good characters in the book. The other characters were insufferable with their whiny, selfish, wanton lives while these two were understanding, caring, and actually likable. The problem is that the author always told us that Jacob was mean, hateful, uncaring, super religious, and non-understanding. What we see is the exact opposite. Jacob was caring. He had a reason to hate the people he hated (which were few). What I saw was a loving father raising his son on his own. What we are told is he only cared for his shop. What I saw was he cared for his son greatly. We are told we should hate Jacob for forcing David to marry Elizabeth. What I see is a father caring for his son and not wanting any harm for his son. I could probably write a whole review about how awesome Jacob is, but I shall not.
Now that we are through with the good things, let's talk about what makes this book suck. I should put down this warning. I'm not writing this review because I hate gay men. I actually love reading about gay people. I'm writing this review because the book does suck. Now onward!
Our main character is David. He is the blond guy on the cover. He is a lazy, self-centered douche. He is also a complete Mary-sue. Now for those who don't know what a Mary-sue is (coughsiscough), here is the Wikipedia article of a Mary-sue:
A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".
When we see David, we have to like him and understand him when he does nothing to make us like him. Although David does have a flaw of being lazy, it is severely downplayed and leaves once Jonathan is in the scene. He does have another flaw of always lying fluidly, but again it bloody leaves the scene when it's not needed for the plot! What's wrong with having a flaw that stays and hinders you!? 'But Morey! His lying does hinder him!' It hinders him only once and that's just for the plot. After that it just bloody goes away!
The next Mary-sue thing is his 'super-special prettiness'. He is described as having waist-length, unusual white-blond hair, unusual brown/green eyes that can't be considered hazel because they change color all the time, perfectly tanned skin, super pretty, unusually sharp features, and a scar on his ass and thigh. How did he get that scar you ask? By being an idiot and going after a guy that obviously want to fuck him with no commitment. Does David get punished for disobeying his father and getting hurt? Hell no! His father takes care of him and stays up by his side until he's awake. What Jacob should have done was beat the little fucker's ass then send him to his room and force him to sleep on the floor with no dinner.
David still doesn't sound like a Mary-sue to you? Well, all the women drool over him like he's Robert Pattinson and only want his babies. Why? Because he's good looking. That is it. Then there's the whole popularity complex. What do I mean by that? When in high school, there's the popular girl that everyone has to like. If you don't like her, then you obviously must be jealous of her. If a higher authority rightfully punishes her, everyone automatically assume it was unjustly done and the higher authority is an asshole. That's the popularity complex. That is David. When someone punishes him, everyone believes he's done no wrong and the other higher authority is a prick for punishing pure innocent Mary-sue.
Now onto the other main character, Jonathan. Jonathan is the brown haired guy on the cover. He is an apprentice for Jacob. He has the most annoying speech in the book. It's always Bible talk and he always says the 'thees' and 'thous'. How does the author explain the reason for this? He's a Puritan. No, we have to automatically assume he's a Puritan because he's sheltered and David got to the assumption of him being a Puritan. Hey look! More Mary-sue qualities! Everything David says has to be right because he's just that amazing! They never talk about that. It's just David looks at Jonathan and it's automatically 'Puritan'.
A frustrating thing with the narrator describing Jonathan is that he's downgraded to a stupid, ugly brute who has a puppy dog complex. He follows what David and Jacob say to a T. We have to assume he's stupid for following David and not think for his own. He's overprotective and doesn't trust David at all. David describes Jonathan as being flat-faced and ugly. “But that's compared to David's super-special prettiness!” Fuck that! Everyone has to assume he's ugly because David says it and we have to assume he's good looking because David says it. Not everything David says is the law! For all we know Jonathan could be handsome and David is ugly. Jonathan would have been a likable character if he actually had a backbone and not follow what everyone says. I found myself screaming at Jonathan to think for his fucking self.
Another thing that was frustrating was the whole anti-female message I got from the book. There were few female characters in the book. Only three women actually had names. The only strong female character didn't have a name and she was a wench.
All the women in the book are either wanton or just plainly have their lives ruled by the man.
For an example of the first, we'll look at Elizabeth. She is neighbors with David. All of the boys want to sleep with her and she wants to sleep with David. Her entire priority in life is to marry David, fuck him, and have a bunch of his babies. Why does she want David so much? She wants David because he's pretty. Yes, that sound you hear is the Mary-sue-O-Meter exploding from David's Mary-sue qualities. I'll have to fix that later so I can use it for Twilight.
Elizabeth is shown as a spoiled brat who always got what she wants. She went as far as having sex with another man and claiming David raped her just so she could marry David. What's even more annoying is the fact that she's only a plot device. All she was there for was to cause tension between David and Jonathan and for David to run away. Once David runs away, Elizabeth is gone with little after thought. That's the problem with these characters. They're used as plot devices and once their use is gone, you never hear from them again.
Now an example of a female whose life is run by the man would be Jonathan's mother, Alice. All she does is cook, clean, and have babies. 'But wait, mothers take care of the baby and have a say on how to raise them.' No, not this mother. All she does is cook, clean, and weep every time one of her children leave or get into a fight. She doesn't raise the children and she never gives any advice. Jonathan's father and grandfather raise the children and give advice. Alice does absolutely nothing. She does as she is told and never acts like a mother. “It was 1600's. Women were considered property.” A woman's job was to cook, clean, and raise the children. A mother would care for her children even when they are adults. She would give them advise. She would be there when her child needed her. That's the motherly instinct. Care for the child, not sit there and cry when something happens. There have been plenty of stories set in that time period when a mother was strong and cared for her children. Why, then, does this story fail so deeply?
The other unnamed women in the book are either whores wanting to sleep with men or women wanting to get marry and sleep with men. I know this is a gay romance book. I have read many stories solely based on that relationship. Even when there are few female characters in the story, each female were strong characters who could think on their own. One story in particular that I liked had a very likeable female character. She was strong and was able to do things that the men in the story did. She put her respect in how hard you work. She never took shit from the other characters and she was able to make her own decisions. The sad thing is the character I described came from a fanfic.
In gay romance stories, you usually have the dominant partner and the submissive partner. You can usually tell which one's which by physical description, personality, and age. The older, larger man who knows more is the dominant partner while the younger, slighter man who is more childlike is the submissive partner. In Transgressions, The logical assumption would be David is the dominant partner because his personality screams dominant personality. Jonathan would be the submissive partner because he just does as he's told and he just seems submissive. Does this happen? Why of course not! David is the good looking, younger, slighter man, so he obviously has to be the submissive partner. Jonathan is the ugly older, larger man, so he has to be the dominant partner. It gets even worse in the sense of the author screws up her characters and make them out of character just to make the them how she wants them to be.
One last thing about the characters. None of the characters are remarkable. I don't trust David's lovers when the author is forcing us to trust them. We are supposed to hate Jacob even though he acts like an actual father. We are supposed to like David and Jonathan when they do nothing for us to like them. The author tells us David's lovers love him when they don't actually show that they love him.
Talking about the love in the book. None of the characters have that chemistry that shows us they love each other. More often than not, the characters will sleep with each other simply because they're good looking. This leads me to the assumption that it is simply lust instead of love. Here's how all the “love” goes: “He is hot. I am horny. What's your name? I like you. Let's have sex.” They never do anything to show their love. They go to work, come home and have sex. For instance, Tobias is one of David's lovers. He just talks about how much he loves David and he proves his love to David by having sex with him. On the other hand, Tobias' actions speak the opposite. His actions say “I'm horny. Let's have sex and not talk about things later”.
With David and Jonathan (the characters this book is about), They share no chemistry. At best, they're like brothers. Jonathan and Jacob have better chemistry than Jonathan and David. The book probably would have been better if it was about Jonathan and Jacob falling in love and being together with David being jealous and hateful.
This love also leads me to the theme of the book; Forbidden Love. Why is this love forbidden? It's simply because it wasn't right to love another man in the 1600's. This is just cheating so you don't have to point out what was forbidden. When asked how Jonathan's and David's love was forbidden, the author could just point out the fact that the story took place in the 1600's. If we look closely at the story, nothing is shown that their love is forbidden. The author constantly talks about the love being forbidden, but we see the characters being accepting and understanding. We also learn that all the men seem to sleep with each other even though it's not right to have sex with other men. It's just another one of those topics that are talked about and not show.
In books, I like seeing groups of characters corrupting. I like seeing the higher authorities and churches corrupting. What I don't like seeing is the exaggeration of the corruption to the point that it is unlikely to happen. In this book, Jonathan meet up with a group of witch hunters. He is attracted to the youngest member and that guy has the hots for Jonathan (maybe we should test the author in the understanding of what forbidden love is). He ends up wanting to join so he could purify the world. Somehow purifying the world is by killing off innocent people. The group of witch hunters were approved by the rulers of England. Something tells me the leader of the witch hunters group never showed the leader what they do to new members of the group.
What happens is Jonathan wants to join the group. The guy he has the hots for puts him in a dungeon and tortures him because he had to be “tested”. If Jonathan doesn't want to join the group, then he dies because he must be aligned with the devil. So Jonathan is forced to join the group after being tortured for several days. This could have work as a plot except the whole “church let us do it, it's God's work” bullshit. Yeah churches back then were corrupted, but I doubt they would allow innocent people to be tortured for no reason at all. What I get from the book is the author is shoving down our throats that religion is evil and corrupt. She uses such exaggeration to tell us this. Religions are religions. They won't torture people simply because they want to. This is coming from a person who is Irreligious.
As we have looked at the cover, We see a battle scene on the bottom. This would lead us to think the story is in a time of war and will have several bits of war. This, my friends, is false advertising. There is only two scenes of battle and they're not important to the story. The first battle scene is so David is to get the idea that fighting is bad (go see Pok'e'mon The First Movie). David realizes that fighting is not cool. He doesn't want to fight. What does he do? He joins the army forgetting about the whole “fighting is bad” lesson. Really, did the author watch Pok'e'mon The First Movie before she wrote this book? The second fight battle is to say “OMG! We lost! OMG! My BFF is dead! Fighting is bad! I must run away because I'm a stupid coward, but I can't say I'm a stupid coward. So I'll just say I wisely knew this won't end well and left before it got ugly because I'm an annoying Mary-sue.”
First I need to ask the electrician if the Mary-sue-O-Meter is working again. It is? Very good. You might have to stand on by because I think it might break again. Good good. Now it would take years to be the best of the best in fighting. David has only been in the army for a year and he's super awesome at fighting and can hit his target all the time. All we are shown of training is the leaders showing the recruits how to march and clean. A year later, David is a super awesome killing machine who can do anything. Damn it! Look what your character did Erastes! He broke the meter again! How ever can I review Twilight without it?
We shall now go onto a different subject while the meter is being fixed again. Earlier I had said that some of the description was good in an artistic standpoint. The problem with the description is that it just plainly sucks. In Greek Mythology, there would be lots of description in the war. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there was vast description in the setting and what's happening in the story. In Harlequin novels, there is description in the sex. Hell, with the My Immortal fanfiction and Twilight, there were descriptions of the characters. This book has very little good description. The war never describes the blood or guts spilling out. The setting never gets enough description. The sex always ends up becoming blackout sex when it gets to the good parts. The characters are the only ones that get the description and even that is just average description. The only character who gets vast amounts of description is David.
Another problem with the description is the lack of knowing what the time line is. We know that the story starts in 1642. Then we lose track of the time line and we don't know how much time has passed until halfway through the book. We never knew if a year has passed or ten years have passed. With that, we never know the characters' age. From what we're shown, David is possibly 17 and Jonathan is possibly 18 when the story starts.
Description can be good as well as terrible to have. Somehow this author is able to do little description while what description there is would either be very good or very disturbing. Here is a quote from the book of a disturbing description. I must warn you. Get some brain bleach before reading. You have it? Good. This is on the bottom of page 243 and continues onto the next page.
As he felt it overcoming him, he was plunged forward into the same vision he had when first he had fucked the Devil;he again he saw the Angel at the end of the path, a flaming sword in his hands, and the sword was his own cock, splendid and on fire with a righteous light.
I guess the line was supposed to be hot, but it just turned out disturbing and creepy.
Now that we have chewed on the story line, let's talk about the writing. In simple words, the writing sucks. The grammar is painful to look at. As you can see from the above quote, the writing is very amateur with run on sentences and multiple commas. When you have ten or more commas in one sentence, then you might want to reword your sentence. When it looks like you should end the sentence, end the bloody sentence! The author also uses multiple words which could be left out. I have also found quite a few mistakes that an editor should have picked up. When I see those mistakes, I question if an editor was used and if one was used, was he so high on drugs that he let mistakes pass without note?
The author also seem to like making up words. Many words would be a regular word and the author just shoves a negative to the front of it. Add to that, she also loves using the Stephenie Meyer technique and rape the thesaurus. What does that mean? Why she loves to take a word and twist its meaning to fit her so she could say she's so smart for using big words. Use simple words. If you're not writing like Tolkien or writing a Gothic novel, then it's best to use simple words. If you want to have your writing with the time the story takes place, then look at other writings of that period and try matching that. No one will take you seriously when you put these complicated words and mix them with modern terms like 'cock' and 'fuck'.
Something this author fails to do is the 'show, don't tell' rule. What is that rule? The rule is to show an emotion or characterization with description instead of telling us what the character is feeling and how they act. What the author says and what we see can be two totally different things. There have been many examples of the author telling us what to think and we see something different. Those examples would be things like the forbidden love bullshit, Tobias' character, David, what to think of Jacob, and Jonathan being a Puritan. When an author tells us what to think instead of showing us so we can get our own interpretation, the author tends to be considered lazy. Now, in my opinion, it's fine to tell the reader things, but don't do it often. Practically every word in the book is telling me what to think about certain characters instead of letting me figure it out. Many people don't like to be force into an opinion, so don't bloody force them.
To end this I just have to say that the story – at best – is mediocre. At worst, it could possibly be worse than Twilight. The writing sucked. The story telling sucked. I only liked a couple of the characters. It left me wishing to take back the precious hours wasted reading this garbage. My suggestion if you were considering reading this book, don't read it. If you want to read about gay men in a forbidden relationship in historical times, then read fanfiction not from Fanfiction.net. A good place I suggest are the many communities on Livejournal. The fanfiction there is far better than this shit. Now you know the monstrosity that could take Twilight's place. I shall take my own advice and read some better written slash fanfiction.
I'm Morey Bibliophage signing out.
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