The thoroughness with which Amazon makes its recommendations is staggering. I didn't even have to have the horrible sample sent to my Kindle; it just automatically found me something that also apparently had a Viking/drek theme: All I Want For Christmas Is... A Viking.
I wasn't going to read and review a Viking themed book, since Eric had already trekked, intrepidly, down that sad, horrible road. However, this book struck me immediately for two reasons. Reason the First being that it was published/excreted on my birthday. Reason the Second being the cover features a rather burly and oddly well scrubbed Viking posing in a helmet... a helmet I own. A helmet I have been pictured in a number of times, as a joke. A hat that I bought at a costume shop and not a sexy costume shop either.
(That's not me in the picture. That's a vodka bottle in the shape of a skull, which would normally be totally kick ass. But it has a dorky Viking helmet on it. Not kick ass.)
Therefore I could not resist.
Upon beginning the book I am greeted with… not even the author’s own words (which later turns out to be a blessing because any words in this book that are not the author’s are a welcome reprieve). Instead, it is the beginning of the Night before Christmas, followed by ‘Bah! Humbug!” This was a pre-warning. If I’d known how many more enthusiastically punctuated sentence fragments I would find in the following pages I might not have had the courage to move on.
Throughout the rest of the first chapter we are introduced to the drunk and whiny “protagonist” who also happens to be a successful lawyer. In the game of “Make Your Character the Least Bit Sympathetic” this author doesn’t even get past the qualifying round. Sure, Holly got dumped on Christmas Eve, and generally that would suck… but you really don’t care. She’s a wealthy lawyer who is whining about not having a man. She’s not even whining about not having the man who dumped her; the author doesn’t allude to whether or not she cared for this man at all. She’s just apparently irritated to have lost her ambulatory penis on Christmas Eve, the Sexiest Night of the Year.
And then there are the “Huh!”s. She ends several paragraphs with “Huh!” As in “Huh… I wonder if the author is going to do that through the entire book.”
The first chapter is mercifully short, or so you think until you move on to the next chapter, in which we meet yet another unsympathetic jerk, who also happens to be a Viking and Santa Claus’s son. No really, stay with me. I can’t make this shit up. And I don’t want to be alone with this thing.
I’m wrong though, I could make this shit up. I just haven’t. Because of the standards and all…
But I digress.
I know I threw a lot of intermittent snark into that so allow me to reiterate that our second character is an immortal, toy delivering Viking. Also? His name is Erik. Erik the Viking. I am, at this point in the book, positively consumed with giggles, gleaning the only enjoyment I get from this nonsense by imagining Tim Robbins in that damned helmet. Also, going on the list of Things That Don’t Add to the Sympathetic Nature of This Character, she asks him if he’s ever raped someone. He said he hadn’t… in a few thousand years. So… yes, but not recently. Oh, Erik, aren’t you just a mensch?
The incredibly thin set up is that Erik is delivering presents, and he’s got a very overdue Business Barbie to give to our inebriated main character. She thinks he’s an intruder, naturally. I’m just going to go out on a limb here and guess that she’s going to hit him over the head with something and is going to have to take care of him. That’s how these things go in real life… right?
*Three pages later* Oh, I stand corrected… She had a crystal candlestick, but she actually wound up pulling the rug out from under him ala Bugs Bunny, and that’s how he hit his head, requiring her to take care of him.
My bad.
I admit I am not a reader of romance novels, but I don’t assume out of hand that they’re going to be bad. However, I don’t read them because many of them are bad and I simply don’t enjoy the subject matter enough to find the ones that aren’t. The primary problem I have with most romance novels is the unbelievable clichés, and this book hits on all of them.
This book is porn… bad porn. Really, really, really bad porn. Which, in retrospect, brings everything into perspective. Of course we don’t care about the main character; she’s just a vagina waiting to be… well, you know, plundered.
Allow me to clarify my point here. I enjoy a good sex scene, and I have nothing against porn/erotica. I am, possibly, the least prudish person you’ve never met. However this isn’t even particularly inventive. I should have known that the paper thin plot would be a paper thin veneer to put over the fact that this is little more than an extended sex scene. When they’re not having sex, they’re thinking about having sex or reminiscing about the sex they already had or making future sex plans.
See: Sexiest Night of the Year.
Still sex.
Now? Nope. Still sex.
They’re going somewhere in the sleigh, I know it. They mention it at some point between sex, but I don’t remember now. The Bahamas, maybe?
Okay, maybe… ? But no. Sex.
There’s an upside here though: I can skip ahead by quite a bit and not really feel like I’ve missed anything. Seriously, the sad thing is, there could be good parts here. There could be good writing in there, and I’m so exasperated with all the damn sex that I would never know. Not that I think the writing has gotten good. I’m just saying if it did… I… well, I don’t really care anymore. Keep having the sex, by all means. If I flip forward and see the words “wet” “bronzed”, or “shaft” anywhere on the page I just skip it. At this rate I can get through this book faster than Erik the Viking got into Holly the Horny’s panties. And that, my dear friends, is wicked fast.
Oh, wait! They’re on a beach now, maybe they’ll talk or – nope. Sex.
Sex with sand. That’s the only difference.
NO, hold on, she’s describing the sea! Yay, something… no, wait. Now she’s comparing it to their sex. Seriously.
And now she’s crying. Sex and crying. Great. She’s known the guy for one day, and he has to go back to the North Pole, and she’s crying. Woman, don’t you know there is no crying in Viking Santa Porn (which, by the way, goes on the list of Things I Never Thought I’d Say). This is so obviously an attempt to engage the reader in a novel that otherwise moves the reader to no emotion at all aside from bewilderment and despair that I just become even more irritated at the effort.
Oh, now she’s all tired and sad because they’ve been apart. He’s back, and he’s concerned that she’s so clearly exhausted and distraught and he draws her a bath and…
Yup. You guessed it.
Less than ten percent to go… I can do this… I am going to finish this thing tonight so that no more of my days are polluted with this work.
Someone remind me why I’m doing this again?
Oh, thank god, the last 2% was “about the author.” Which was, much to my dismay and confusion, written quite well, which is just adding insult to injury. I seriously hate this book with the all consuming power of a hundred billion suns. The author makes up a ridiculous plot with tiresome characters, writes it poorly, gives us sex scenes that aren’t even good, then gives us a single paragraph about her that is well written? I feel as though someone I trusted threw a big shit in my face and then told me that they had the choice of either throwing the shit in my face or nicely feeding me a chocolate cream pie and they knowingly chose the poo flinging. Not only have I suffered, it appears I have suffered needlessly. Yes people, this book makes me feel like my best friend is a spider monkey.
Now that we’ve gotten the entirety of the hackneyed plot out of the way, let’s address some of the issues revolving around language usage.
She refers to his skin as ‘bronzed.’ A Viking… from the North Pole… “Bronzed”? Honey, you’re not thinking enough about your fantasy. You either want bronzed or a Viking, and trust me, never the twain shall meet.
“The sack rattled emptily, and Holly had to stretch to reach the only box." To me, this is right up there with "I was born and raised an 18 year old Viking vampire." How does something rattle emptily? If it rattles, that would probably (to the logical thinker) indicate that it is not empty. If you don’t even know what “empty” means, you should not be a writer.
Dear Author of This Book, Learn words. Love, Me.
“Lying on his back, she’d have expected him to look less imposing, not more so. And kind of vulnerable. Even unconscious, he didn’t seem to do ‘vulnerable.’”
Then later…. “… Definitely not so scary when he was asleep.”
So wait… is he less imposing or more when he’s asleep? I’m confused. So are you. So is the author… oh, never mind. Apparently these things just depend on where in the ridiculous fantasy we are…
And here at the very last Erik mentions Thor and Loki like they’re old buddies, but his own back story is never given. What the hell? He doesn’t indicate that he or his father (who is, in case you’d willfully forgotten, motherfucking Santa Claus) are actually Norse gods. We get no explanation as to how a Viking got to be A) Immortal B.) motherfucking Santa Claus. Are we supposed to assume that all Vikings are immortal? Are we meant to just gather on our own that all Vikings are in the running to become fat, jolly toy deliverers? And if so… how the hell did THAT happen? Who looked at the fucking Vikings and went “Well, they’re known for raping, pillaging and sacking. Let’s give them the power to pop down people’s chimneys whenever they’d like and set them up to be adored by young children!” I don’t typically mind if some things are left to the imagination but there’s really no reasonable explanation one can come to on their own here. Which probably also tells us why the author didn’t give us a reasonable explanation either.
So to sum up, the whole Erik the Toy Delivering Viking thing was just a thin ruse to *ahem* get him down her chimney.
Oh, but for the record, my best friend is not a spider monkey, though it must be said that she has also never fed me chocolate cream pie.
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