Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Then one day she gets a bad feeling about Ginger. So bad, that merely trying to call her on the phone fills her with dread. Always one to obey her instincts, she leaves for Atlanta immediately.

What she finds is a mess indeed: her sister is nine months pregnant, her shady boyfriend, Malik, has gone missing with a huge amount of money and the thug he stole the money from just got out of jail. As Malik’s girl, she’s a prime candidate for some not-so-gentle interrogation about his whereabouts and where he stashed the money.

Enter Malik’s brother, Rick, and woo damn, does Bless receive the shock of her life when she meets him. He’s the dark, handsome stranger in her dreams. He’s also a cop, and he’s determined to protect Ginger and the foetus. Even more shocking, however, is another realization that shoots through Bless: Ginger’s unborn child is going to be a key leader and savior when Armageddon arrives, and Ginger is just as determined to kill the baby one way or another. She’s so determined that she has enlisted assistance from various demons, who proceed to make Bless’s life very interesting indeed. Between finding love with Rick, protecting the baby from Ginger and fighting off demons, there’s more than enough to occupy Bless (and the reader) in this slim 250-page novel.

And really, the biggest peeve I have with the book is how it needs another hundred pages, easy, to do the story justice. I mean, there’s some kind of crazy apocalyptic fight going on between people of Light and these wack-ass demons, and it’s driving me crazy because the supernatural aspects that don’t involve actual demon fight scenes are almost completely glossed over. For example, Bless can heal, cleanse the spiritual atmosphere and all that good stuff. Do we get details on what this process involves, or even what it feels like to channel energy? Nope. There are some very vague descriptions of seeing auras, of pushing out the darkness, and that’s it—nothing about the sensations that go through Bless as she draws on the healing power and then guides it into someone else. Not even something basic like “There was a sense of pressure on her neck, then a warm tingle in her palms and stomach as she drew the bla bla bla from the bla bla bla and oh behold the dying child healeth etc. etc.”

Bless also has to be skooled in the ancient art of demon asskicking. Do we get details on that? Nope, just some rather vague descriptions like “She blasted some light from her palms, the demon burst into flame, then she woke up sweating and sore because she learned how to ‘splode some demon butt in her dreams.” I’m dying here. I want MORE. I want to know what it feels like to kick demon ass. Again: what does it feel like to channel psychic energy like that? Even the most basic of sensory descriptions would’ve helped: cold, hot, painful, pleasant, tingly, shocking.

So in short, I can see the action, but I can’t feel it down in my bones the way I want to. I spend much of the book feeling as if I’m floating above the characters, completely removed from them, instead of living their lives, breathing their air, feeling their pain and happiness. It wasn’t until the last few chapters of the book, when Bless really starts whupping some serious demon patoot and the action sequences become more detailed, that I felt truly engaged.

There’s also a truly complex, fascinating backstory going on that’s more-or-less ignored. See, Bless, Maris and Ginger are part of an ongoing cycle of three souls who are doomed to re-live the same pattern over and over until somebody breaks the cycle. We get the barest hint of how the cycle got started, but that tantalizing taste is all we get. MORE, DAMMIT, I WANT MORE. That’s the refrain that ran in my head as I read through the book.

The love story itself was all right. Bless and Rick are extremely nice people, but I think of this book as another Soulmates Gone Wild story. Wendy the Super Librarian covered this recently in her Romancing the Blog column, and while the book conveyed very strongly how Bless and Rick are Meant To Be, the actual chemistry between them is no better than luke-warm. I, for one, would’ve liked more scenes from Rick’s point of view. I know why Bless is attracted to Rick; I mean, hell, the man’s been sexing her six ways to Sunday for years in her dreams. I’m just not quite sure why Rick is attracted to Bless. I’m told “she feels right” and that he likes curvy women who know how to cook, but something about the attraction just didn’t ring true. I don’t want just to be told that she feels right, I want to be shown it. The book’s breakneck pacing doesn’t allow this, however, which is a shame.

There are bright spots in the book. Some parts are laugh-out-loud funny, often in a rather dark way. For example, Ginger describing how the Universe tried everything to stop her from having an abortion, up to and including having birds spray her with avian bombs from the air as she’s walking to the clinic, is almost worth the price of admission. And the fight scenes, especially the ones at the end, are really, truly fun to read.

When it comes down to it, I would’ve enjoyed the book so much more if it had much more detail than it did, and if it had engaged in more showing, less telling. I think the concept and characters held a whole lot of promise, they just needed fleshing out—especially the supernatural backstory. But then looking at the other reviews for this book, some people were freaked out by the supernatural bits and thought the book was way too graphic. Shit, I thought it wasn’t nearly graphic enough. Which just goes to show: you can’t please everyone all of the time. The only logical conclusion to this is: screw everyone else, Monica. Write books that will please me. I’m all that matters, because dammit, my taste is impeccable and I’m AWESOME.

That’s the short version. The long version goes thusly: The heroine, Audrey, is introduced to the delights of BDSM when she meets a much, much older banker named Sterling while vacationing in Florida. She abandons everything—her job, her friends, her apartment in Washington D.C.—to literally become this man’s sex slave. However, after a few months, she realizes that what she has with Sterling isn’t exactly what you’d call a healthy relationship, so she makes like an Aerosmith song and runs away, runs away from the pain, yeah yeah yeah yeah.

(Sorry. If it’s any consolation, now I have it stuck in my head, too.)

Sterling, on the other hand, isn’t quite ready to let go and takes steps to keep Audrey under his control, even from a distance. He not only sends somebody to track her every move and take photos, he calls a senator who owes him a favor and asks him to keep Audrey safe (and untouched) until Sterling is ready to claim her. The senator in turn contacts his son, Patrick, who coincidentally is also into BDSM. The senator isn’t pleased with the implied blackmail, and tells Patrick he’ll be happy if things don’t turn out quite as Sterling planned.

Audrey, in the meanwhile, has run back into the arms of her best friend, Tommy. Frankly, I liked him better than Patrick, who’s yummy but a pretty standard romance novel hero—tall, dark, commanding, massive wang-a-doodle, etc. etc. Hot, but nothing too special. Tommy, on the other hand, is skinny, very sweet, great in the sack AND a computer geek. RRROWR. Audrey, of course, prefers the tall, dark, commanding, massive wang-a-doodle type, and more than that, she likes ‘em to spank her and chain her up. That doesn’t prevent her from having some scorching-hot fun of the “everything but putting Tab A in Slot B” variety with Tommy (who’s been in love with her since they were kids) while staying at his apartment.

Soon, however, she realizes that that somebody is tailing her. She ducks into a bar, Dugan’s, which is owned by—surprise, surprise—Patrick, who is quite startled to see the woman he’s supposed to keep tabs on. He hires her as a waitress, but he’s determined to keep her closer and ultimately wants her to move in with him. To help her feel more secure about accepting and also to throw off Sterling’s spies, he asks his cross-dressing lounge singer, Basil, to be his beard and temporary roommate. Uncomfortable with Tommy’s burgeoning feelings for her and feeling increasingly unsafe, Audrey agrees to move in with Patrick and Basil.

That’s when the REAL fun begins, starting with when she finds out that Basil isn’t gay, he’s bisexual, and the fun really kicks up when she finds out that Patrick isn’t a homo either, he just plays one on TV.

I gotta give Holly credit: she actually made BDSM sexy to me. While I find certain aspects of it appealing, I don’t find the whole pleasure-in-pain thing all that sexy. It didn’t help that my introduction to BDSM erotica was with A.N. Roquelaure’s Beauty series, which features lots of outright rape and sexual torture, some of it pretty brutal. Velvet Glove didn’t bruise any of my tender sensibilities, since it mostly concentrated on the bondage and domination aspects, not so much sadism and masochism. All of the sex scenes in this book are scorching hot, and some of the scenes with Tommy (and Tommy’s girlfriend)…. Oh my.

One of the best things about the book is Basil. He’s flamboyant but not flaming; with a character like that, the temptation must be there to turn him into Divine. Thank God Holly avoided that particular pitfall. I also liked how Basil coaxed Patrick along the road to man-on-man nookie, because unlike the two primary males in Strange Attractions, Patrick isn’t bi to begin with, and has to learn to accept sex with another man. In a real sense, we get to see Patrick lose his virginity.

Audrey is quite charming; like Charity of Strange Attractions, she’s a free spirit and a pocket hedonist. The two of them are virtually interchangeable, really, except that Audrey is a bit younger. I do find it refreshing that a woman gets to have lots and lots of hot, sweaty, slutty fun throughout the book and still come up the winner, because the preponderance of literature tends to hammer home the message that sluts (female sluts, anyway) are either mentally imbalanced, evil or deserving of death for having unsanctioned orgasms. I do hope the next Emma Holly heroine I encounter will be different, though, because I’ll tire of non-stop Charity/Audrey clones real quick.

Patrick is also quite appealing. Like I said, he’s quite standard romance novel hero material—poor baby was abandoned by mommy and has problems forming attachments, boo hoo hoo—but Holly takes care to show how different his Mastering technique is from Sterling’s. In other words: Patrick is alpha, but not an asshole. Yay! However, I do wish Holly would stop belaboring certain aspects of his appearance, like his twinkling eyes; yes, I get it, they twinkle. Twinkle twinkle, like little stars. Puh-leeease.

But the part that really made my eyes roll in the book is the short erotic story Patrick tells Audrey while engaging in one of their games. It has a certain 1001 Arabian nights flavor, which is all right, but swear to God, the phrase “fleshy sword” is used, not just once, but a few times. That term should be outlawed from romance novels of any sort. I hope this is not an indication of Holly’s historical voice, because I have her two Victorians winging their way to me from Amazon.com as I write this.

As a villain, Sterling is pretty standard romance novel stuff. He’s kind of nuts, although in an interesting twist that most romance novels don’t feature, he’s the one who gives Audrey all the initial lessons about pleasure, instead of the hero. And speaking of villains: There is a completely extraneous chapter featuring the photographer/gumshoe Sterling sics on Audrey that could’ve easily been cut from the book. It adds absolutely nothing to the story, and it actually gives the impression that this guy is going to play a much larger role than he does. Instead, we briefly see him acting all skeezy and creepy, then poof, no mention of him ever again for the rest of the book.

The romance itself is believable, and in some ways is more fully fleshed-out than the love story in Strange Attractions. Not having a suspense plot and quantum mechanics to mangle gave her a bit more room to develop the relationship, I think, and there are a few vignettes in which we see Audrey and Patrick just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company even though they’re not taking part in any sexual games. Brief though these scenes are, they do establish that these people genuinely like each other instead of being enamored merely with the hot monkey sex. And that is probably why I enjoy Emma Holly’s books so much: not only does she smash all sorts of taboos with great panache and glee, and not only is the sex explicit and well-written, but the protagonists are extremely likeable, the story is generally well-written and I close the book with that warm, fuzzy, satisfied feeling an HEA ending gives me.

The setup is pretty simple: B.G. Grantham is a Scientist of Very Big Brain who lives and conducts research in a mansion located in an isolated part of Washington. When he’s tired of conducting research into the more arcane aspects of quantum physics, he turns his attention to human psychology. Specifically, he’s interested in the mechanics of desire and how people behave when the circumstances surrounding their sexual release are tightly regulated, and to this end his entire household participates in a sexual game in which he has the ultimate control. Every once in a while he invites new candidates to the mansion to participate in the game. He’s assisted in this endeavor by his childhood friend and long-time lover, Eric Berne, who becomes the guest’s “keeper” throughout his or her stay.

Their latest candidate is Charity Wills, who’s beyoootiful (aren’t they always?) and sassy but not exactly on the fast-track to success. Charity is initially skeptical, but agrees after they promise to pay for a college education—a promise that’ll be honored whether or not she decides to play the game for the entire duration. Eric rating five out of five rrrowrs on the Studliness Scale doesn’t hurt, either. Eric, of course, finds himself moved in all sorts of uncomfortable ways by Charity.

The rest of the story can be summarized thus: Much Crazy Sex Happens, occasionally interrupted by the aforementioned squishy claptrap and suspense plot. Along the way, Eric falls in love with Charity, B.G. finds more than his trouser monster being moved by Charity, and Charity? She has two hot men sexing her up and then some. That lucky bitch is having a ball.

Er. I swear the pun was completely unintended. But it’s making me snicker and it’s pretty appropriate, so I’m leaving it in.

The sex scenes and the love story in general break several taboos held dear by many traditional romance novels, namely:

1. The hero and heroine shall be straight as an arrow. If anyone has gay urges, it’s going to be the villain, y’hear? Bonus points if he molests children, double bonus points if the children are his, triple bonus points if he molests the family pet and THEN the children.

2. The hero and heroine shall be monogamous. Once the hero meets the heroine, that’s it, he’s found his soulmate, and he won’t be able to get it up with his mistress even if he tries because the power of True Lurve® will have sucked all the vigor from his dicky-poo, said vigor being restored only by the unschooled yet wildly arousing touch of the heroine.

3. Hot, skanky, meaningless sex with minor characters shall be indulged in ONLY by either the villain(s) or the hero before he meets the heroine.

4. Heroes shall be plentifully be-furred, especially on their chests, to indicate their virility. Shaving body hair is for women and faggots, and you know how we feel about faggots. See point 1 for reference.

Holly breaks all these taboos with great glee, and hoo boy is it fun to read. Like the first time Eric and B.G. get down when Eric comes back from college for summer vacation? Damn. And when Eric and Charity finally hop in bed with B.G. and decide that he needs to be hoist with his own petard? GOOD GODDAMN.

It’s not that I haven’t read other books with lots of rumpy pumpy in them. I’ve read a fair share of Susan Johnson, for example, but reading too much of one of her books in a sitting often leaves me feeling mentally numb because those geysers of love are just squirting non-stop in them thar hills and well, it gets kind of monotonous after a while. What makes Strange Attractions stand out from other sex-fest novels is how Holly creates genuinely likeable characters. Eric, Charity and B.G. all have baggage, but they’re decent people and minimally annoying, despite B.G.’s resemblance to a particularly lifeless android when he talks. Holly also introduces a lot of variety in the scenes, and she makes the characters wait. And wait. And wait. AND WAIT. B.G. figures out early on that Charity savors the sexual suffering of others brought on by pent-up desire. All I can say is: me and her both, buddy.

The book, alas, isn’t perfect. B.G. is a typical romance novel geek, for one, a peeve which I’ve already discussed at tedious length. When he’s having sex, or when Holly isn’t paying attention and allows B.G. to talk and act like a human instead of an RNG, he’s pretty damn sweet.

And then there’s the parts in the book where the author extrapolates the science wildly and sloppily, like countless other people who read about quantum mechanics and subsequently have their minds blown by the idea of wavefunctions, or by the fact that quantum entanglement (a.k.a. non-locality) has been proven to exist. This leads to mush-minded talk about how “consciousness creates reality” and “you are a quantum being and you embody all possibilities"—shit a knowledgeable quantum mechanician like B.G. should’ve been embarrassed to say because it so grossly misrepresents the science. I’m not going to address all the silliness in this review (I know, big sigh of relief all around!), but if you’re interested, this excellent article debunks some popular misconceptions revolving around quantum mechanics.

One particularly heinous part I will mention, though. Towards the latter half of the book, B.G. explains that particle accelerators can warp spacetime severely enough that the effect can be felt by the whole mansion. Why? Ostensibly because the sub-particles it generates from the collisions travel at the speed of light and therefore pull “pure, undigested quantum stuff” into our dimension. Leaving aside pressing questions such as “What in the fuck is ‘quantum stuff’?” and “What does a quantum gastrointestinal tract look like?” this badly misrepresents how particle accelerators may be able to affect time.

Yes, I know it’s a romance novel. Honestly, I’m not expecting rigorous scientific detail along the lines of hard science fiction, but I would’ve appreciated it if the appalling pseudoscience had been left out. Quantum mechanics is pretty fucking cool as it is—why add extra kookishness to it?

Oh, and the suspense side-plot: really, the less said about it, the better. Let’s just say that some of B.G.’s experiments have yielded unexpected and not necessarily desirable results, and ultimately it’s all a very transparent machination to speed up the HEA. I don’t object to suspense plots in general; I just want them to feel less slapdash.

However, despite all my bitching and moaning, this book is definitely a keeper. It has the honor of being the first novel specifically labeled as “erotic romance” that I’ve enjoyed reading. It’s also the first love story I’ve read in which the affection and attraction felt by two men equals, if not surpasses, that felt between the hero and heroine—but this is the first romance I’ve read that involves two bisexual heroes who love to play.

May it not be last.

Night Pleasures is the story of Kyrian of Thrace, a Dark-Hunter (and why the hyphen? Is this like the Waldorf=Astoria differentiating itself with an equal sign?) who surrendered his soul to fight Daimons, who prey on humans. Daimons have wonderfully potent assorted powers but a lifespan of only 27 years (paging Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, please report to Sherrilyn Kenyon’s house for use as inspiration for Daimon characters, STAT) and so they start consuming human souls to extend their lives.

Due to their predilection for soul consumption, and their general evilness, Daimons are the targets of the Dark-Hunters and have been for thousands of years, dating back to the times of the Greek gods and goddesses. Kenyon bases her paranormal world on a great deal of Greek mythology, and gods such as Artemis and Apollo make appearances in the history of the fictional world the characters inhabit. The world itself is fascinating, and presents an epic good vs. evil struggle of which all humans remain blissfully unaware, but the hero and heroine of this particular story do not really live up to the noble and epic backdrop on which they meet.

Amanda Deveraux is the plain-Jane twin sister of a vampire huntress named Tabitha. Amanda is an accountant and is constantly embarrassed by her psychically gifted and beyond-paranormal family, as they are each weird in their own way. One is a sorceress, Tabitha’s a huntress, and their mother sees auras. And one of them is a midwife- nice way to subtly imply the midwife/witch historical rumor, there. They are all magically delicious, and Amanda can’t stand it. She’s looking for as plain a vanilla life as she can get.

Kyrian of Thrace is chasing an uber-Daimon who has unheard-of powers and has bested several Dark-Hunters. Betrayed by his wife back when he was a royal Greek mortal two thousand years prior, Kyrian was given the chance for vengeance and immortality by becoming a Dark-Hunter. Thus, Kyrian is strong, handsome, immortal, noble, brave, loyal, and utterly, fabulously wealthy, and therefore, annoyingly perfect. His only flaw, and it’s not even much of one, is that he doesn’t trust women and is tormented by his memories of his mortal life, in which he was a bit of a bastard to his family. A little sex ought to take care of that, don’t you think?

Amanda is equally perfect, and though she cannot stand anything paranormal, the minute she and Kyrian meet, it is hot lusty looks and endlessly expressed wishes for physical intimacy. It’s always great when the hero and heroine are humpingly hot for one another, but when that’s the only thing drawing them together, it’s not satisfying, it’s not romantic, and it’s certainly not memorable.

The duration of their epic battle against evil is fraught with much peril, and the endless cycle of “his and hers” drama: Will we be able to Be Together? Can I Trust Her? Does he Want Me? The author constantly reassures the reader of their undying lust and they are constantly gazing at each other with the hunger one might see in my eyes at sundown on Yom Kippur after a 24 hour fast. I look at a bagel with plenty of lust, let me tell you.

But there is little development of their emotional attachment, so their relationship seems simple, flat, and transparent. They have lust, therefore they are drawn together. He is perfect and noble. She is brave and feisty, and appropriately gifted with clever skills and powers at the perfect moment. Perfection in all regards: except there is very little emotional development on either side once that lust is acknowledged and acted upon. The personal issues they overcome to be worthy of one another, which are usually a key element in an epic struggle and romance, are pithy at best and seem too easily remedied, usually by some hot bumpy humpin’.

For example after Kyrian and Amanda get it on, he loses his power. Seriously. He came and it went. He enjoys the afterglow and realizes he’s a helpless weakling with a bad, bad headache. His squire and another Dark-Hunter correctly assume that this is only temporary, and indeed it is, though it comes at a time when Kyrian can ill afford to be vulnerable. A few pages later, he’s got his mojo back, but there’s little revealed about how his recovery came about. Was it a gradual recharge or did he wake up a day later able to kick ass and take names again? And of course, let me just continue to spread the giggles: for the rest of their sexual encounters, he refrains from orgasm because he cannot be powerless, so he implores her to “come for both of them.” Yeah. I know. I’m right there with you. AS IF.

And thus my major beef with this book: throughout the entirety, I couldn’t figure out if I liked it. I like paranormals. I like vampire fiction. I dig romance. I like hot sex in a romance. I like cool weapons, battles with supernatural powers, and characters that rise up to the occasion and kick some serious patoot. Night Pleasures has all of these and still manages to be plain. It’s served up like food from a restaurant that is reported to be fabulous but then makes you yearn for Hamburger Helper and the tv remote. Unmemorable in this respect means terribly disappointing, particularly when one considers that it could have been so very much better. I keep reading back over this review and am surprised at how scathing I am, but one of my major peeves with romance is the amount of dreck that comes out that sounds like it’s going to be a gangbusters novel and is so routine and mass-produced that it pisses me off. This book falls square in the low grade territory because my reaction was “Don’t Waste My Money and Don’t Waste My Time.” And also, “Grrrr!” peppered with “As if!”

The resolution of the battle is just as perfect as the main characters. Having once again been tricked by the evil uber-Daimon, who comes across as a whiny, petulant two-year-old with nuclear strength toys and no friends rather than as a scary evil dude, Kyrian and Amanda must face him down to defeat his evil. In a twist on the drunk-father-made-me-evil bit, uber-Daimon’s father is revealed to have been Bacchus, who gave his son the royal shaft by refusing to intervene when uber-D’s lifespan is almost up. Now he pursues Amanda, because he senses her incredible untapped power and he wants his for his very, very own.

Allow me to ruminate for a moment, here. The balance of power is one of the key elements of a paranormal for me, and how each author handles a pair where only one contains the superpowers is always interesting. One expects the hero to be rich, and some authors of historicals play with the idea of the heroine having the money. One expects one or both to be attractive; again, some play with average looks but eventually fall onto another attribute that makes the plain character unique. Other authors charge the hero with emotional growth such that he gets over his expectation that his girl be a supermodel and learns to appreciate a real-sized, sharp-witted average woman as a sign of his worthiness. So what to do when one person can lift cars and move objects with a thought, and the other can’t?

It’s akin to the idea of an aristocrat marrying a commoner. Some authors arrange for the discovery of an unknown title, thus bringing both characters to the same social level. Others allow the social imbalance to be one of the issues the couple must work through, and refuse to “save” the commoner with the long-lost earldom.

In the case of paranormals and power imbalance, if one character is superhuman and the other is merely human, any number of things can happen, just as in a historical novel. Sometimes the human is revealed to be a secret superhuman, or has the ability to become superhuman. Other times the superhuman must return to human status, a convention I often find disappointing. Either way, a conversion takes place, and now restored to quasi-equal status, they can live happily ever after. This is almost expected when one character is immortal, as the reader cannot believe in happily ever after if the reader knows one character will age and die while the other remains permanently youthful.

But what to do when one character will undoubtedly have powers that the other lacks? In the case of this novel, the power balance shifts dramatically back and forth in the final pages, and the resolution is so unsatisfying I sneered over the ending. In the course of kidnapping and controlling the heroine, the bad guy easily “unlocks” the long denied and despised Whitman’s sampler of powers in the heroine. After years of denying and locking up her considerable paranormal resources, one bad guy with the ability to get inside her head can allow her to flex her considerable psychic muscle. Suddenly she can make shit fly across the room, though of course she allows her now-human but still powerful man to fight the final battle and destroy the evil bad guy while she clutches a Barbie doll with a weapon hidden in her feet. No I’m not making that up. Talk about symbolism!

Once they walk into the sunshine and into their happily ever after, an epilogue informs us of the new balance of powers. She is indeed a sorceress, but is he a mere mortal beside her? Of course not. His powers remain, or some of them, after his mortal soul is restored, even though prior explanations of how a Dark-Hunter gets his soul back imply that once he regained mortality, he would be a normal mortal human. But he can’t be weaker than his now-sorceress girl, now can he? That wouldn’t wash. So his superpowers, in diluted and never-fully-explained form, remain. He is off the hook as far as Dark-Hunting is concerned, but he has enough mojo leftover to “protect them.” Meanwhile, she can likely glance at a building and move it three feet to the left, so what protection does she need, really? At least the reassurance is there, so we won’t remember him walking off into the sunset, emasculated beside his Powerpuff Girl of a wife.

All About Romance’s review of this book fell between one reviewer who gave it a marginally higher grade, and another who loathed it. The reviewer who enjoyed it said, “Sometimes you just have to go with it, you know?” Usually I have that attitude, but the mediocrity and processed perfection of the book made it rote and boring, so I couldn’t go with it. I felt like reading this book was akin to watching a rerun, or worse, an entirely and frustratingly predictable new episode of a show I usually like. In fact, an Amazon reviewer likened it to “a poorly scripted, poorly acted made-for-TV movie on the Sci-Fi channel.” Amen to that. I’ve read plenty of books that sounded good but ended up average. It’s somewhat more rare for a book to have limitless potential and fall so far short of memorable that it pissed me off.