A terrible month for books

It has been a truly shitty month for books for me.  No, I'm not talking about the official release timeline.  I'm talking about my personal reading timeline.  It feels like every book I've been looking forward to reading is determined to deliberately suck at me personally.

The first two culprits that spring to mind are Unholy Magic by Stacia Kane and Twice Bitten by Chloe Neill.  If you haven't read either of these, you should probably stop reading now because there will be spoilers of some degree farther on.  You have been warned.

Oh, a bit more before I get into it.  I'm perfectly aware that the target audience of these books is pretty much entirely female.  At least I hope it is, otherwise someone fucked up fairly epically.  Also, if you have an inability to tell the difference between an opinion and a fact, please don't bother arguing in comments;  I will most assuredly make you look like a retard if you do.

I'd been really psyched to read Unholy Magic since I finished and gave a glowing review to Unholy Ghosts.  Having a book suck when you expected awesomeness is far more disappointing than one you expected to suck from the beginning.  Therein lies the source of piss-offitude I have for Unholy Magic.

Unholy Ghosts: Female MC, not a chick book¹.  Unholy Magic goes entirely the other direction and brings the Lex, Chess, Terrible triangle up as part of the primary plot.  Seriously?  If I wanted primary plot romance I'd be reading something with models in suggestive poses on the cover for fuck's sake.  You were supposed to give me Urban Fantasy, Stacia, not goddamn Paranormal Romance².

Add to that Chess's seemingly complete inability in Unholy Magic to make a fucking decision and accept the consequences of it.  I'm specifically referring to her inability to decide if she wants to be with Terrible or Lex in the first place and her fucking around about telling Terrible important shit he would have needed to know if they were even going to just remain friends.  If your female MC appears to have been written by by Melvin Udal³, men⁴ will fucking hate reading her.

Twice Bitten I've read about halfway through and been stuck immediately after Ethan decides he can't have any romantic involvement with Merit because his protectiveness towards her could interfere with what's good for his House.  Epic alpha male character writing fail.  A man⁵ would have been quiet on the ride back and thought something like this:

Ethan's Brain:  This shit is going to be a problem.
Ethan's Brain:  OK, so which do I care about more?  My duty to the House or Merit?
Ethan's Brain:  The House, obviously.  I'm a guy who puts more importance on duty than personal feelings.
Ethan's Brain:  Right then, you fucked up.  Don't let it happen again.

He would then have told her that the House will always come first to him and he's sorry if she thinks that it makes him a rat bastard but he hopes she still wants to be with him.  Personal responsibility for your words and actions, it's a big thing with men.  Blaming her as the cause of his fuck-up and ending the relationship rather than owning up to his failure is the fundamental opposite of what a man would do.

I might get past that alone but there's also the bit with the RG in the first chapter.  The world hates those who betray a trust⁶ more than anything else and she most definitely would be betraying the trust of her House if she joined the RG without leaving it first.  That Merit even considers it lost her any respect I had for her.  Permanent disgust.  Full stop.  End of discussion.

So anyway, that's why I'm having a hell of a time finding the desire to read this month.  Hope you all are having a better time of it.

~The Mighty Buzzard

¹  For now defined as being chock full of romantic drama that the story suffers for.
²  No, the difference between the two is not the guarantee of a HEA.  The difference is Urban Fantasy has no requirement of any romance at all and never has romance as the primary focus of the MC.  If the romance is more important than the rest of what's going on to the MC, you wrote some sort of romance novel rather than UF.
³  "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability."
⁴  Yes, I'm aware some people in possession of a penis are indecisive too.  They may be male humans but they are not men.
⁵  Again, man not male human.
⁶  Traitors of course but also date rapists, child molesters, adulterers, Enron, politicians, and so on.  The commonality being they all betrayed the trust that was either implicitly or explicitly given them.

On Romance for @alebodden11

@alebodden11 @TMBuzzard I do have one question though- What are YOUR thoughts on Romantic comedies or books?

@TMBuzzard @alebodden11 I've currently no use for them unless the rest of the story is good enough to be awesome by itself.

@alebodden11 @TMBuzzard Can I ask why?

What it all boils down to is men pretty much just do not care about romance.

Chick who doesn't get it: You're full of shit. Some men are really romantic!

Some men are plumbers too.  That doesn't mean they go around giving a damn about whether your toilet is clogged or not aside from that you'll pay to have it unclogged.

The same goes for romance in our actual lives.  If we're doing something romantic it's because we care about either the woman we're being romantic to or about her getting naked in the near future.  Yeah, OK, or both.  The romance itself we couldn't really give less of a shit about if we tried.  It's strictly a case of doing something to illicit a response in her.

It's probably at least partially cultural.  Men aren't generally raised to look outside themselves for the validation of our worth that romance provides.  Barring an abnormally low self-esteem, we default to thinking we rock.  Witness our non-use of makeup¹ and amazingly less volatile fashion industry².  We never look at another man and hate him because he's better looking than us.  If you see a guy worried over his appearance to the point that he uses makeup³ or worries about fashion beyond not looking like a retard who dresses in the dark, you can bet the farm that he has severe self-esteem issues.

Back from that slight tangent, this leaves us with an entire gender that aren't junkies to this particular set of emotions.  The chemicals our brain gets flooded with during romance are somewhat pleasant but they don't feed a deep emotional need in us.  We're in a position where not just any romance will do to make us appreciate it;  it must be well written.  Consequently, we require stories (be they books, movies, or television) give us either a story that is good without the included romance or one that is passable with a very well written romantic sub-plot.  Romance as a primary plot line is a non-starter for us unless the writing is absolutely epic.  Probably not even then since I, at least, don't tend to go around believing marketing hype that something is epic and wouldn't even start consuming the media to begin with.

Also, romance novels in particular tend to either be written from either an exaggerated female perspective or a horribly, amazingly, astoundingly wrong male perspective.  This makes it damned hard to work up the necessary empathy with the main character to enjoy the book.  Believable male secondary characters can make the difference between an enjoyable female MC book and a "Why the fuck did I spend money on this" experience but they're just as rare.  I won't go into what makes a male character believable in this post, it's entirely long enough already.

Hope that helps.

~The Mighty Buzzard

¹  KISS aside.  The music industry is highly competitive.
²  The tuxedo hasn't changed much in centuries.
³  Yes, I'm looking at you, goth and emo kids.

Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

In an astoundingly uncommon display of good judgement, Marvel Studios has called Joss Whedon in from the bullpen to direct the upcoming Avengers Movie. I have no idea how they managed to come up with the idea to pick a director that actually knew the material for a comic book movie, maybe they asked a ten year old boy.

~The Mighty Buzzard

Family, alcohol, and twitter

What do they all have in common? They're all major impediments to getting any actual work done. Hell, they had me so turned around this past week and change that I didn't even remember to drop a link here to my guest post over at Kindle Vixen's site. I know, sad, right?

Anyway, I've still got to get a review for Julie Kenner's Demon Ex Machina out of my head and then there's Jim Butcher's Changes coming out Tuesday. I should have the former done tonight or early morning and expect a Changes review Wednesday or late Tuesday.

~The Mighty Buzzard

Holy Tap-Dancing Fuck

Every now and then there comes along something that is either going to be a work of genius or pure shit. I think I just found one such book. Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter by Dan McGirt. It's even a freebie over on his website. I seriously wish I hadn't agreed to start right in on Happy Hour of the Damned tomorrow now. Guess I can wait another day though.

~The Mighty Buzzard

My Crazy-Assed Rating System

My rating system is confusing, even to me. So far it's been simply the word or phrase I'd use in describing the book/series to a friend but that doesn't really tell you all that much if you haven't known me for quite a while. In the interest of clarity, I'll codify it here publicly, equate it to a five star rating system, and stick to the ratings I set down for future books.

• Rating: Fucking Awful(0 stars)
• Rating: Awful(0.5 stars)
• Rating: Really Fucking Bad(1 star)
• Rating: Pretty Damned Bad(1.5 stars)
• Rating: Barely Worth Reading(2 stars)
• Rating: Worth Reading(2.5 stars)
• Rating: Well Worth Reading(3 stars)
• Rating: Pretty Damned Good(3.5 stars)
• Rating: Really Fucking Good(4 stars)
• Rating: Awesome(4.5 stars)
• Rating: Fucking Awesome(5 stars)
• Rating: Jim Butcher(∞ stars)

If I talk about tiers, they go like this... Awesome to Jim Butcher = top tier/tier one. Buy them in hardcover because you'll wear out a paperback. Pretty Damned good to Really Fucking Good = second tier. Buy them, format according to what you can afford at the time. Worth Reading to Well Worth Reading = third tier. Buy them if you're out of tier one and two books you haven't read, probably paperback unless you just have a hardcover fetish. Barely Worth Reading = fourth tier. Skip these unless you're really hard up for something to read and even then go paperback so as to encourage the writer to do better next time. Really Fucking Bad to Pretty Damned Bad = fifth tier. Don't buy these. You might try reading them if you get them as a gift but don't expect to be able to finish them. Fucking Awful to Awful = don't even get a tier. They're either complete shit or terrible work by an author you expect top tier or second tier work from. Don't read them unless forced at gunpoint. Even then, the bullet might be kinder.

Hope that clears things up.

~The Mighty Buzzard

Beautiful Blogger Award

I normally don't do these things on the grounds of them being quite silly but, since I haven't gotten around to filling my About Page, I'll make an exception tonight.

7 things about me:

1. I dig punk over metal because I prefer manic violence over rage violence. Most anything with a pit at the concert is fine by me though. Which band is my favorite depends entirely on what day you ask me. Today, it's NOFX.
2. I prefer a good villain over a good hero in my fiction. They have greater depth of character and I lack any empathy whatsoever with someone agonizing over the decisions they've made.
3. I've done more jobs than I can count but my favorite, by far, was soldier.
4. I bottle fed a baby squirrel today.
5. I'm 34 years old, 5'6", weigh 170-180, usually clean shaven on the face, and normally have the sides and back of my head shaved as well.
6. I have two closed up piercings from my teenage years and three tattoos (left pec, left forearm, left hand).
7. I have an uncanny weakness for women with unnaturally colored hair.

This is the part where I'm supposed to tag this off to ten other folks but it's not going to happen. I'm evil and enjoy breaking chains.

~The Mighty Buzzard