Romance Quest!: oh dear.

[wolffyluna]

It is said that the worst six words a reader can say is "I don't care about these people." I have found a worse one: "I don't care about these rat-bastards."

In other words, I only got about 10 pages into The Kings Pleasure by Heather Graham.

One of the things that put me off the romance genre is because pretty much every novel I'd heard of (eg Fifty Shades or Twilight) the male lead was an abusive bag of dicks, but it was okay because he was protective (read: controlling) and really cared about her (read: still abusive, but the author hasn't noticed) and all the other male characters are worse (read: GAHHHH).

Adrien spends a large amount of his internal monologue thinking about how he really, really wants to strangle his wife-- and it's meant to be endearing, not a sign he might murder her?

But it's okay, because the only other named male character tried to rape her!

...I'm not against rape scenes, but seriously? In the first 10 pages? As a sort of generic peril for our leading man to rescue leading lady from?

The only good thing I got from this book was a chance to think about and articulate why I in particular don't like that attempted rape scene.

For one, I don't like rape scenes when they come across as "Quick, we need to put this female character in peril! What sort of perils do feeeemaaaaales get into?" I also find a lot of those generic-peril-attempted-rape-scenes break my suspension of disbelief. Maybe they shouldn't but they do.

And also, I find that rape scenes are something I need to trust the author with. I need to trust that the author will treat this with some sensitivity, that the author knows where they're going with this, that that scene is there for a reason and they thought about it-- and you don't get that trust in the first 10 pages. And putting a scene like that in the first 10 pages makes me trust the author less, because it means they don't realise there's a need for trust, if that makes sense? It's like they don't realise they're dealing with something heavy, and need to establish themselves as someone who can deal with heavy shit sensibly.

Also, I found it hella offputting that the author felt comfortable putting in an attempted rape scene, but not comfortable using the word 'penis' or any other non-euphemism for it.

Comments

[wolffyluna]

Yeah, that's the nice thing about non fiction.

(Also, even in the non fiction I've read that has had 'twists', they've always been nice ones? Which may just be a combo of the non fiction I've read+how much of it I've read, but still.)