What Are You Reading?

Books, music, movies, your love life...anything goes.
catalyst
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:50 am

Re: What Are You Reading?

Post by catalyst »

The Kushiel books are surprisingly good for what is effectively fantasy bdsm smut. I liked the second trilogy better as well, probably because the main character of the first trilogy was essentially a superhero.
Talanall
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2022 3:13 pm
Location: Northern Louisiana, USA

Re: What Are You Reading?

Post by Talanall »

Weirdly, I didn't find the Kushiel books all that smutty.

Like, I get that as a series, Carey's work deals frankly with queer characters who are involved in sex work, kink, and so on. And it's integral to the plot, sometimes. But I don't think that these books are really "about" the sex stuff, in the fashion that I would associate with erotica.

I have similar feelings about Anne Rice's vampire novels; famously, one reviewer wrote of Interview with the Vampire, "To pretend that it has any purpose beyond suckling eroticism is rank hypocrisy." Which I don't understand at all. It was full of homoeroticism, for sure, but that's . . . not really the same thing. The difference is all the more pointed in Rice's case; she did, after all, write a tetralogy of actual BDSM erotica which was very much "about" the sex.

So I don't think this is so much a, "this is erotica but it doesn't do anything for me," situation, so much as it's a "people are talking about this like it's erotica, but this isn't erotica by my understanding of the term."
Fixxxer
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:45 pm

Re: What Are You Reading?

Post by Fixxxer »

I agree. My ex wife read the books before I did, and she was very into reading romance and smut, so I never really gave much credence to her claims that I'd like them. I figured they were just trashy smut stories in a fantasy setting. After reading them, I realized I was very wrong. The sex is there, obviously. And it's a big thing built into the main character. But I don't feel like the story is entirely reliant on the sex. And I also don't feel like the bits that contain sex are written in a trashy kind of way. Rather, the character's perceptions of the events is used to give deeper understanding to the reader.
HVB
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon May 16, 2022 3:12 pm

Re: What Are You Reading?

Post by HVB »

Having only read the first Kushiel book, I'd not classify it as smut or erotica either. The main reason I didn't continue on in the series was because it seemed like the politics and intrigue were about to really pick up and my brain just wasn't in the right place for that at the time.

After trying a few other books but not getting past the first few chapters,, right now I am reading the Fatemarked series [David Estes]. This is pretty good and is managing to hold my attention.
deaddmwalking
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2022 7:30 pm

Re: What Are You Reading?

Post by deaddmwalking »

Years and years ago, I read Shogun by James Clavell. I just read it again, and learned that it's considered part of his 'Asian Saga' which are basically completely unrelated books except that they're set in Asia. Still, given that I liked Shogun well enough I'm starting in on Tai-Pan. It may be difficult to enjoy since it appears that the main characters are involved in the Opium Trade and it begins with the Chinese signing over Hong Kong as a British territory. But we'll see!
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