Hill, Joey W. - The Vampire's Claim
Mon, Apr. 13th, 2009 01:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI blame this on Dear Author! They had previously written up some of Joey Hill's other books and mentioned that she does dominant women and submissive men, which is a huge chnage from so much published in romance.
The Vampire's Claim is set in the same world as the Dear Author reviewed books that intrigued me, The Vampire Queen's Servant and Mark of the Vampire Queen. It's set in 1950s Australia, when Lady Daniela (Danny) is trying to win back her territory from an evil vampire guy. She meets Devlin, an angsty guy, and ends up marking him as her servant (this takes several stages). Together,they fight crime they have a lot of explicit sex!
To begin with, I have zero knowledge of Australian vocabulary, so when I say it sounded very forced to me, I am basing this on nothing whatsoever. Dev is a quarter aboriginal Australian, although he has red hair and green eyes. I felt the use of his ancestry was extremely problematic; Hill refers mostly to his Scottish and Irish ancestry when she's talking about him and only notes his aboriginal ancestry when she goes on about how great he is at navigating the wilds of Australia and walkabout and what an awesome hunter he is blah blah blah. Also, she dresses the Japanese character Chiyoko in Japanese clothing... cheongsam. ?!?! I thought this might be a mistake, but Hill later refers to another character wearing Japanese-inspired clothes described as having a mandarin collar and frog closures. Hint: if something is "mandarin," it is NOT Japanese.
That said, I didn't actually get too mad at the book just because some of the writing was not so great. It is definitely not on the level of burping penises or spinning like a top while having sex, but a good deal of it is over the top, and I could have used with much less description of Danny's spun-gold hair and brilliant blue eyes.
Even so, the book is interesting. I like very much that Danny is the master in the relationship and Dev is the servant; there's a bit of non-consensual stuff going on that I'm not quite good with, but it is different in that it's a woman having the power to do something non-consensual to a man. I like that Danny's physical power is never downplayed, and that she is clearly dangerous and scary. On the other hand, I wasn't too caught up in the worldbuilding, and several of the sex scenes felt perfunctory, particularly the ones that include Lady Lyssa, the main character of the other vampire books.
So I'm not quite sure what to think! The book is extremely, extremely flawed, but on the other hand, it's also tackling things that I don't get to see very much in romance at all, which I like.
The Vampire's Claim is set in the same world as the Dear Author reviewed books that intrigued me, The Vampire Queen's Servant and Mark of the Vampire Queen. It's set in 1950s Australia, when Lady Daniela (Danny) is trying to win back her territory from an evil vampire guy. She meets Devlin, an angsty guy, and ends up marking him as her servant (this takes several stages). Together,
To begin with, I have zero knowledge of Australian vocabulary, so when I say it sounded very forced to me, I am basing this on nothing whatsoever. Dev is a quarter aboriginal Australian, although he has red hair and green eyes. I felt the use of his ancestry was extremely problematic; Hill refers mostly to his Scottish and Irish ancestry when she's talking about him and only notes his aboriginal ancestry when she goes on about how great he is at navigating the wilds of Australia and walkabout and what an awesome hunter he is blah blah blah. Also, she dresses the Japanese character Chiyoko in Japanese clothing... cheongsam. ?!?! I thought this might be a mistake, but Hill later refers to another character wearing Japanese-inspired clothes described as having a mandarin collar and frog closures. Hint: if something is "mandarin," it is NOT Japanese.
That said, I didn't actually get too mad at the book just because some of the writing was not so great. It is definitely not on the level of burping penises or spinning like a top while having sex, but a good deal of it is over the top, and I could have used with much less description of Danny's spun-gold hair and brilliant blue eyes.
Even so, the book is interesting. I like very much that Danny is the master in the relationship and Dev is the servant; there's a bit of non-consensual stuff going on that I'm not quite good with, but it is different in that it's a woman having the power to do something non-consensual to a man. I like that Danny's physical power is never downplayed, and that she is clearly dangerous and scary. On the other hand, I wasn't too caught up in the worldbuilding, and several of the sex scenes felt perfunctory, particularly the ones that include Lady Lyssa, the main character of the other vampire books.
So I'm not quite sure what to think! The book is extremely, extremely flawed, but on the other hand, it's also tackling things that I don't get to see very much in romance at all, which I like.
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Mon, Apr. 13th, 2009 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Mon, Apr. 13th, 2009 09:29 pm (UTC)It doesn't have speculative elements, and I don't know if was juggling those or a requested tone shift for Berkley, or what, but the Vampire Queen's Servant didn't grab me enough for me to finish it. I mean, she can write sex, and D/s (in the same way I expect a level of competence from, say Emma Holly), but with Natural Law, the relationship and the situation gelled for me. It's intense w/ the D/s and BDSM in general stuff, but it actually coalesed into a plot and characters that hung together. I wasn't RIVETED by the plot, or how it turned out, but it was definitely a cut above most other romances I've read, print or ebook, even if you take the extreme BDSM elements and the uncommon emotional accuracy with which she applies them.
It's not a hyperrealistic documentary on sex/s&m clubs, but it manages to feel real way, way more than most books I've read do. And I fell for both the hero and the heroine. I look forward to seeing what you think. :)