Title: Fifty Shades Darker
Author: E L James
Publisher: The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing
Publication Date: Sept 2011
Classification: Adult Romance Novel
Challenge: None

Content: Adult Erotic Scenes

Summary from Goodreads:

Daunted by the singular sexual tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house.

But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades.

While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her, and make the most important decision of her life.

My Thoughts:

This one starts off right were Fifty Shades of Grey ended, on a cliffhanger ending might I add! So Ana and our lovely Mr. Grey are not currently together and they are both just trying to live their life the best they can. Just a few days after Ana has left, Christian calls her and asks her to still go to her friend’s photo gallery with him. Since it is for her friend Ana agrees to go, never suspecting that Christian’s intent will be to win her back. This part of the book actually upset me quite a bit because I wanted Ana to really make Grey work to get her back, instead she just agrees to be back together with him rather quickly! Where the hell are the scenes where Grey has to show her ‘hearts and flowers’ in order to get her back! I wanted Grey to work for it after what he did in the first book.

I decided to put the book down for just a few days so that I could take a break. I didn’t want to keep reading when I was upset about the fact that Ana didn’t put up a battle. Once I picked the story back up I found my anger was gone and what do you know that Grey actually had a few more tricks, not those type of tricks, get your mind out of his kinky fuckery pocket! Grey was actually making an effort to change for Ana and this was the part of the novel that was the best. Yes, there was a side story to the plot about a stalker ex-sub of Grey’s but what I focused in on was Ana and Grey, it is always about them. The extras to the plot were really cool because it kept the story moving along but at the end of the day I just love the scenes with Ana and Grey. I really loved that Grey was able to start to change for Ana and that everything was slowly working out.

Overall, I don’t want to rant and rave for too long but as I just said the best part of this series so far has been watching Ana and Christian grow and change for the better and for each other. Grey is still who he is, because hello you couldn’t fully get rid of what makes him.. well the Grey we have all come to love, and I loved that he is still true to himself. Grey certainly improves and I do love that Ana was stronger in this novel, not giving in to every demand that Grey might have. I loved the scenes where we got to see how close these two could become. I loved the drama with Mrs. Robinson and I loved the moments where Grey made up for everything. So while I was upset when the novel started because I believed that he didn’t work hard enough for Ana I have to say that all changed by the end. This one gets 4.5 hearts from me for a great novel, I wouldn’t call it erotica and you can certainly see the Twilight moments if you look for them, but there is just something addictive about this series, this captivating couple.

Title: Fifty Shades of Grey
Author: E L James
Publisher: The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing 
Publication Date: May 2011
Classification: Adult Novel
Challenge: None

Content: Adult BDSM, acts of Dom/Submission

My Thoughts:

Everyone in the blogging world is talking about this one and during the first part of the buzz, long before Dr. Drew stuck is nose in something he knows nothing about, I purchased a copy of this book. Ever since Jan I have had one person or another hounding me to read this one. Well I kept putting it off for unknown reasons and now that I have finally gotten to this book I’m a little torn in my feelings for it. Let me explain….

First off I have the most respect for this genre, I have spent years reading adult romance and my first adventure into the genre was when I was 16. I didn’t pick up any old romance, nope I picked up Wicked Pleasure by Lora Leigh which has BDSM and that line between pleasure & pain, plus there is threesome scenes. So needless to say I started out with more erotic romance when I was younger so when I heard about Fifty I knew I had to read his steamy tale…or at least everyone told me it was steamy.

Well turns out that in the beginning of this book our leading man Christian Grey (aka Fifty) doesn’t just jump into such wicked activities with our leading lady, Anastasia Steele (aka Ana). Nope instead we sit around while he explains the lifestyle to her. This is where I checked out a little, I don’t need the BDSM lifestyle explained to me. I’ve read books that feature such relationships and if I needed more info I could have researched it myself. The beginning of the book felt like the author’s research on this topic was laid out for us to see. It ruined part of the passion for me because everything seemed a little too explained. I didn’t want to be told what was going on, I wanted to feel it! I dislike when books tell me the story, make me feel the story, make me feel like I’m right there with the characters. Often during the first half of this book I felt like the book was in a bubble and I was reading it through the bubble, reading it through a barrier and it wasn’t fun. (Wow I think I just made two sexual puns, without meaning to of course.)

I decided to pick the book back up after putting it down for two days due to the lack of connection. I mean I did love Ana’s character and I did have some feelings for Grey and their world but I needed more. Well I found that putting the story down for those two days really helped me to get back into it. I instantly felt that bubble go away and I could finally watch Grey and Ana be where I wanted them to be from the very beginning! I got to watch their intense relationship and passion of each other light up the pages. I finally wasn’t getting lectured on BDSM, it was about time Grey started to make it happen! This was where the book really shined for me, I finally got the connection that so many people were raving about.

Overall, the last 100ish pages can not make up for my dislike in the first part of the story but it does help to make me want to read book two. Yes, book one had editing problems and too often Grey and Ana played the name game going between all of their names so often that it left you feeling a little in  daze of feeling they should get over the use of their own names! I also felt a few portions were repeated and that might have been cleaned up in editing, my only hope is now that a big name publisher has picked this book up that editing time will be spent on this book in order to clean up some of the issues! So I have the most respect for this genre and I even feel like I have to say that this novel has been pretty tame when compared with other novels of it’s kind. Plus at the end of the day this is Twilight fanfiction and you can certainly see that at parts. However, by the time the explosive ending comes about I knew I had to at least try book two to find out what happens with these characters. As much as I didn’t connect with them in the beginning, is how much of a 180 this was at the end. So I have mixed feelings about this book but it gets 3.5 hearts from me.

Title: A Princess of Mars
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: Jan 2007
Classification: Adult Fiction Novel

My Thoughts:

What does one do if one wishes to have their words last a lifetime? WRITE IT DOWN! In the early 20th century, a new genre in literature was in its infancy and little did anyone realize that this certain genre would redefine books forever. Science Fiction is where the true dreams dwell and dare to go into the unknown. They use this world as an escape from reality and are able to stretch and even break the limits of this world as their world is limitless. When someone speaks to me of Science Fiction and its early beginnings, three names instantly come to mind; H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edward Rice Burroughs. H.G. Wells is well known for penning ‘War of the Worlds’ and Jules Verne is probably to be considered the father of Science Fiction. His book ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ is one of if not the first Science Fiction tale. Both of these men were pioneers and helped to usher in this new genre into the limelight, but I have always been a fan of the obtuse and the offbeat. That might fit Edward Rice Burroughs to a T. He is probably most well known for ‘Tarzan; King of the Apes’, but it is his Martian Tales Saga that really seemed to cement his legacy, at least in this man’s opinion (Be honest– a man in a loincloth swinging from vine to vine, obsessed in a weird and perverse quasi sexual way about a woman named Jane OR a badass former Confederate soldier that gets mysteriously transported to Mars and falls in love with a gorgeous princess all while jumping around higher than an olympic pole vaulter. Who would you go for?)

Since this book was written many years ago, its writing style was vastly different than most other things I have read in a long time. It was not poetic ala Shakespeare but it was unique in its own way. For instance, the book was mostly exposition for a good thirty plus pages until there was actual signs of dialogue between characters. That is an impressive feat for two reasons: it shows the writers strength in being able to carry on a storyline without human interaction and it also signifies that he is able to develop the story in a unique brand. When the dialogue did occur, it was not ‘Oh hello Alexa. Do you wish to shake on it?’. It was instead very formal and regal. Prim and proper is perhaps the best way to describe the writing style of this novel. It was not written in a human context as I have yet to meet two people carry on a direct line of conversation  involving the words ‘hark’, ‘fear not dear maiden’, or ‘damn the gods for my eyes shan’t see no more beauty’ (ok so maybe those are not direct quotes from the book but I believe my point has been made).

Aside from my objection in regards to the writing style, I found the book itself to be teeming with life. It was chocked full of fresh characters (I WANT TO OWN WOOLA. Good puppy..creature…thing) and a glorious, arid alien world known as Barsoom (Mars to you plain folk). I could only imagine what Dejah Torhis looked like. Was she as radiant and decadent as John Carter made her out to be? Well thanks in large part to the movie, I found this to be true. She is a fox! She is no Alexa Kalas but she is still mighty fine . The world of Barsoom was vibrant even if it is a dry land. It was rich and powerful in its scope and ERB made good use of his vivid depictions of the 4th rock from the Sun.  The story itself did seem to jump around at points, which I suppose would be another drawback of this book. I had a hard time focusing in on the actual storyline and instead focused in on the world around the characters and action. I am unsure if it was how the dialogue was permitted or if it was just the writing style itself but I did find myself rereading portions of passages and flipping back to figure out what exactly I might have missed.

In a brief side note, some of you might be aware that this novel was translated into a film ‘John Carter’. It spent many years in developmental hell and the end result was a bit lackluster at points. The story was vastly different from the book and only had glimmers of the actual source material. It might be considered a loose adaptation or instead it was inspired by this novel.  It turned out to be one of the biggest cinematic flops but then again, it was listed with a budget of a quarter of a billion dollars. It would have had to pull out huge numbers just to cover its costs before even thinking about turning a profit. Check the film out and let me know what you think.

All in all, the book was not a homerun for me nor was it a flop. It was decent. Like I previously stated, I fell in love with world and not so much the storyline. I will give the second chapter a shot though. Might as well. It came in a bind up .