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Books 2012: lesbian skiffy romance
Apr. 22nd, 2012 06:07 pmBooks 2012: 61
61. KS Augustin, War Games. Ebook provided by the author.
There is a sad dearth of skiffy lesbians in my reading material. And despite the fact that romance qua romance as a genre doesn't hit many of my narrative kinks,* I found the premise of War Games attractive: What do you do when you fall in love with the woman you meant to kill?
I'm predisposed, a priori, to want to think well of books with lesbians in them. War Games is promising on a number of levels.
I like spies, and Laisen Carros is a covert agent positioned within the military of the Perlim Empire. Posing as Colonel Cheloi Sie, her job is to over-extend the Empire's troop commitment on the rebel planet of Menon, and play her role in the plans her superiors have to hasten the Empire's collapse. Lith Yinalna knows Carros only as a butcher and a war criminal, and she's infiltrated the Perlim military on Menon with the goal of assassinating Cheloi Sie. The position she acquires as Sie's aide, however, brings her into close contact with the infamous colonel's more human side. Lust and complicated romance ahoy?
We'll get to that. Meanwhile, Cheloi Sie's ambitious and scheming subordinate, Koul Grakal-Ski, is trying to get her out of the way to clear his way to command by any means necessary, up to and including assassination. It doesn't help that Perlim is a male-dominated society with rather extreme views on homosexuality: if Sie and Yinalna are caught out as lesbian, much less as anything else, death is the least they can expect.
You'd think with this stew of tensions and personalities in the middle of a warzone, you'd be in for a rollicking ride. Unfortunately, while there's potential here, the narrative never lives up to its promise.
The worldbuilding is shallowly sketched. Which I give a pass to, because this is romance, and it's not like straight skiffy romance does all that great on that front.
More troubling is the way the narrative never quite comes smoothly together. Many scenes feel like disconnected incidents, without the structural support that would turn them into an integrated whole. Koul's presence as a point of view character pulls the focus away from our pair of undercover-at-cross-purposes lovebirds. Everyone's schemes are just that bit too complicated and too pulled out of the air to be really believable. Yinalna changes her mind about Sie on what feels like short notice and very slim grounds, going from someone who's agreed to kill the colonel, to someone risking her life to rescue her, and the rationale for her choice is never given.
And even for romance, not a genre reknowned for nailbiting tension, the pace and shape of the narrative is off. So, at times, is the logic, despite the fact that there's an entire section in the middle that hits me in a pretty rock-solid narrative kink. The prose is adequate, on par with that of the fantasy romance published by Bold Strokes Books which I've read, but nothing to write home about.
That on the whole I enjoyed it doesn't make it good. (And I have standards to live up to as a cranky, hard-to-please reviewer who engages in ad hominem attacks on self-published authors, don't I?) But that said, the fact remains than lesbian romance in spaaaaaace is vanishingly rare - and with a bare handful of exceptions, I've yet to find a genre romance of any orientation that I didn't want to pick to pieces.
This isn't the best book I've ever read, but it hits enough of my narrative kinks that I don't regret reading it.
*Although lesbians make everything better. For a start, a book with a pair of lesbians just about has to pass the Bechdel Test.
61. KS Augustin, War Games. Ebook provided by the author.
There is a sad dearth of skiffy lesbians in my reading material. And despite the fact that romance qua romance as a genre doesn't hit many of my narrative kinks,* I found the premise of War Games attractive: What do you do when you fall in love with the woman you meant to kill?
I'm predisposed, a priori, to want to think well of books with lesbians in them. War Games is promising on a number of levels.
I like spies, and Laisen Carros is a covert agent positioned within the military of the Perlim Empire. Posing as Colonel Cheloi Sie, her job is to over-extend the Empire's troop commitment on the rebel planet of Menon, and play her role in the plans her superiors have to hasten the Empire's collapse. Lith Yinalna knows Carros only as a butcher and a war criminal, and she's infiltrated the Perlim military on Menon with the goal of assassinating Cheloi Sie. The position she acquires as Sie's aide, however, brings her into close contact with the infamous colonel's more human side. Lust and complicated romance ahoy?
We'll get to that. Meanwhile, Cheloi Sie's ambitious and scheming subordinate, Koul Grakal-Ski, is trying to get her out of the way to clear his way to command by any means necessary, up to and including assassination. It doesn't help that Perlim is a male-dominated society with rather extreme views on homosexuality: if Sie and Yinalna are caught out as lesbian, much less as anything else, death is the least they can expect.
You'd think with this stew of tensions and personalities in the middle of a warzone, you'd be in for a rollicking ride. Unfortunately, while there's potential here, the narrative never lives up to its promise.
The worldbuilding is shallowly sketched. Which I give a pass to, because this is romance, and it's not like straight skiffy romance does all that great on that front.
More troubling is the way the narrative never quite comes smoothly together. Many scenes feel like disconnected incidents, without the structural support that would turn them into an integrated whole. Koul's presence as a point of view character pulls the focus away from our pair of undercover-at-cross-purposes lovebirds. Everyone's schemes are just that bit too complicated and too pulled out of the air to be really believable. Yinalna changes her mind about Sie on what feels like short notice and very slim grounds, going from someone who's agreed to kill the colonel, to someone risking her life to rescue her, and the rationale for her choice is never given.
And even for romance, not a genre reknowned for nailbiting tension, the pace and shape of the narrative is off. So, at times, is the logic, despite the fact that there's an entire section in the middle that hits me in a pretty rock-solid narrative kink. The prose is adequate, on par with that of the fantasy romance published by Bold Strokes Books which I've read, but nothing to write home about.
That on the whole I enjoyed it doesn't make it good. (And I have standards to live up to as a cranky, hard-to-please reviewer who engages in ad hominem attacks on self-published authors, don't I?) But that said, the fact remains than lesbian romance in spaaaaaace is vanishingly rare - and with a bare handful of exceptions, I've yet to find a genre romance of any orientation that I didn't want to pick to pieces.
This isn't the best book I've ever read, but it hits enough of my narrative kinks that I don't regret reading it.
*Although lesbians make everything better. For a start, a book with a pair of lesbians just about has to pass the Bechdel Test.
