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Ghost In Her Heart (2005)

by Autumn Dawn(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

New Concepts Publishing

series

Darklands

review 1: This book's writing was not terrible, it would probably warrant a 2 star on it's own. The story is pretty much, "modern day ladies dragged against their will into a regressive world where they are treasured as a rarity (fertile women) as well as subjected to patriarchal rules and norms. They are forced to marry hunky, dreamy warrior men."Ok, that sounds like a pretty common/believable fantasy for women to have, so I wasn't going to critique or judge the book for reinforcing stereotypical gender norms or sexism. I don't see fictional fantasy fulfillment as particularly troublesome or anything.But... for some reason the author decided, toward the end, to just suddenly attack gay men. Yeah. This isn't Christian fic (Or seemingly any other religious-based fiction) so why the a... morettack on homosexuals? And, lest the readers of this review be anti-homosexual, let me explain even further why it sickened me. It was not so much that the author attacked homosexuality---but that she wrote that forcing women into prostitution was not as bad as men choosing to consensually have sex with each other. Yeah. I'm not okay with that. Even if you think homosexuality is wrong, at least the people engaging in it are making that choice and facing the consequences willingly. To say that women being forced into prostitution, essentially raped, is not as bad as men turning to each other to have consensual sex.... WTF is wrong with this author? The hero's culture was supposedly good and healthy; so it had no bi/homosexuals in it or situational homosexuality :/ (yeah I think someone needs to explain to Autumn Dawn how homosexuality actually works...) the culture with homosexuals, however, was completely obliterated.That honestly just sickened me when I read it. I was also squicked when the author wrote that men who had engaged in same-sex acts would not be allowed to have 'pure women' given to them.From the book: "'Just because they're learned to debase their bodies doesn't mean they won't desire women, if they are offered. Unfortunately for them, they won't get the chance. Our laws and beliefs won't tolerate giving pure women to a twisted culture.'"That just lost the story for me. Sorry, that's too much. It's just sickening and gross. Having my body reduced to punishment/reward for men because Dagon's culture hates homosexuals? Not sexy. There were some other problems; especially with the writing and character development. There were a lot of editing mistakes as well, but since they may be corrected in future editions I didn't take them into account in my rating.
review 2: I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book. Its apparently the 6th in a series, which I think I have an earlier one of, but the editing is really poor. I'll forgive grammar ('cause lord knows I'm not good with it), but spelling? And improper word usage (dinner! you eat at dinner and IN a DINER, not the other way around!). Old words inexplicably thrown in (wroth? that's a 1000 years out of date). This doesn't even touch on the somewhat baffling turn of character personalities at times. Vana goes from a fairly level-headed, spirited young woman to...a sex fiend pretty quickly. Her token attempts at still standing up for the women are waylaid by a few smoldering glances. Dagon meanwhile jumps between brooding, to lusting, to being sulky to being demanding, to being confused quite a few times. The sudden shift of focus a couple times helped even less--in the middle a character from the first chapter is re-introduced and suddenly the novel is being split between that storyline, Vana's storyline and Dagon's. The inclusion of that person seemed to only fuel two things: create unnecessary conflict for Dagon/Vana and conveniently hand her someone loyal to her first and foremost. Vana doesn't really build relationships with the other women--the closest is Jen and that's after using her as a hostage. And she fades to the background after a while.In the end this novel made me uneasy with how gender relationships and roles are handled. Inequality is definitely an issue--though Dagon's people claim women are highly revered, the two we see (not from Earth) don't seem to have very much to live for and aren't stellar examples of what the Earth women may turn into if treated the same way.And let's not talk about the handling of same-sex partnerships. The entire subplot was disturbing and given the broadest of strokes to explain WHY it was considered a huge taboo. Also Dagon came off very self-righteous and had his jackass hat on when he briefly talked about it. less

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