Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
The library had their used book sale the other week, which is just terribly dangerous. Mass market paperbacks for $2 each is just irresistible.

First up on the small mountain I picked up, Black Blade Blues, an urban fantasy that, from the outside looks like every other urban fantasy from 10 years ago. Hot babe strong female protagonist with a sword, some indication of some magic stuff, and a cover quote from somebody I guess to be another urban fantasy author. Inside it is actually not that.

Also spoilers below, in case you care about spoilers for a decade old obscure C tier novel. You don't, so just keep reading.

For starters our protagonist is lesbian. Not bi but only actually hooks up with hunky alpha werewolf dudes, hard Kinsey 6 no interest in dudes lesbian. So that's different. She's also got a pretty severe case of internalized homophobia, which causes her to be frequently a giant jerk and also drives the more interesting conflicts in the book. Because when Sarah, our hero, isn't getting seriously tilted about shower sex with her girlfriend whom everybody knows is her girlfriend, there's the actual plot which is something something dragon something magic sword something she has to kill the dragon.

Yeah, the fantasy bit is seriously underwhelming. There's a couple twists so obvious and so foreshadowed I don't think they count, and a bad guy whom we are repeatedly assured is super mega ultra bad, but like, over there, doing bad things to some non-specific people we don't know for most of the novel.

The human drama however is good. Now as a tremendously boring Kinsey 0 straight dude, I have no personal experience with internalized homophobia, but it seems well done here. Sarah likes women, a fact her extremely horny internal monolog makes very clear, but due to awful parents irrationally can't deal with this. There are a lot of fireworks, to the author's credit he actually lets the protagonist make actually big painful mistakes and not just coast by consequence free, and it's well done, engaging stuff.

...and then we get to the surreally horny bit. Like, a chapter so utterly baffling in its horniness it was honestly worth the price of admission right there on its own.

So there's a rather rote battle where a bunch of side characters with nearly three paragraphs per person of characterization get killed. Sarah comes to, and notices the Valkyries choosing the slain. She needs to borrow one of their winged horses to go kill the dragon, but (horny internal monolog ro the rescue!) cannot help but notice the valkyries are totally banging turbo-babes. The Valkyrie in question is like "you too are mega hot, we should go boink right now, because I haven't gotten laid in a long time."

They don't, but this is an actual chapter that got written and included in the actual published novel. And I am just so, so baffled by this chapter. It makes no tonal sense, it goes nowhere (for a book this horny there's not a lot of actual sex) has nothing to do with the plot, and just, what? Vast, epic levels of what?

This is why I read weird trashy stuff. A normal good book would never do anything this transcendentally strange, but would proceed predictably towards its normal conclusion, with sensible seen-it-before character arcs and tone. I'm not saying this works, because it absolutely doesn't, but it doesn't work in glorious, unpredictable fashion.

Competence is boring. Give me weird incompetence every time.
This one ALSO has an audio book. Time to pick it up. I can listen to it after the My Cousin Vinny book. Which I started yesterday and am about half an hour into and is almost surreal.