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Games & Players (2008)

by Manna Francis(Favorite Author)

4.49 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1934081108 (ISBN13: 9781934081105)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Casperian Books

series

The Administration

review 1: Ugh. I've read everything in this book except for "Rules of Engagement," which is the only story in the collection that's not available free online... Unless it's called "Fuck of the Day" on the author's website. That's likely given that she places it between "As Long as It Lasted" and "Wine, Women, and Cushions" on her website, same placement as "Rules of Engagement" in the book. So, moving on... The book overall struck me as being pretty good, but not the high point of the series. More like a period of relative 'meh' given that the books that bracket it (esp. Mind Fuck and Quid Pro Quo) are so awesome. I'm just going to review each story individually. This could take a while.~~"Game, Set" (at ~94 pgs, I believe this is the majority of the book): ***Carnac. Ugh, Carnac.I ... morefound it a bit hard to believe that Toreth would be so interested in having a drawn-out affair with this slimebag, especially when his taste is usually better (yes, I'm thinking of Warrick), but I guess everyone has lapses in judgment.~~"As Long as It Lasted": **I feel like this short story didn't need to be written. The other stories in the series make clear what happened between Sara and Toreth, that one time they had sex while drunk. No need to give every detail of the act itself! I imagine Francis would justify it by saying it adds more depth to readers' understanding of their friendship, or was an indulgence, just an excuse to write a little plotless banter and sex. And to some extent, I can see that. The banter was enjoyable; Francis never fails to write with wry humor thrown in. But the sex felt almost incestuous... I mean, I really don't ship Toreth and Sara like that. They are totally bros and their genitals should not be touching, ever.There was one excellent quote that really stood out to me from the story:“ 'Love you.'So that was what it sounded like when someone knew you, and they still meant it."~~"Rules of Engagement / Fuck of the Day": not ratedThis one's only a page or two long, not worth its own review.~~"Wine, Women, and Cushions": **This story satisfied some of my curiosity about Dillian's life, but overall, meh. It's pleasant enough, I guess, and as some other GR reviewers have said, kudos to the author for making something so plotless engaging enough to read in a single sitting. But... I don't really care about them enough for it to work for me. Cele is a spirited woman, probably would make a decent main character if Francis wanted to go there, but as it currently stands, she is not someone I know very well or am very invested in. Same with Dillian. On the one hand, I respect her for a lot of things, such as the slap she gives Toreth at New Year's in the story "Family"--I mean, I love Toreth, but the guy needs slapping sometimes (a lot of times). And the glimpses we get of Dillian show her to be a cool person. I mean, she's an engineer who travels to other planets to build innovative architecture! Intelligent and a woman with guts, I like it. But on the other hand, she doesn't play a significant enough role in other stories for my curiosity about her love life to be sparked. This story answers a question I didn't ask. A story about her career off-world, even just a tiny fic, a "day in the life of Dillian on Mars," would pique my interest more. That's the side of her life that I'm really most curious about, as it would show us a part of the universe of The Administration series that the usual POV characters don't give us the chance to see.TL;DR: This was definitely just an aside to the rest of the series, and kind of read like filler, tbh. It's not giving us world-building, just relationship drama between two minor characters that's nearly 100% irrelevant to the main characters. As such, this story doesn't add anything of great value to my experience of the series as a whole.~~"Playing with Fire": ***All you really need to know is that Toreth is consistently, hypocritically jealous/possessive, and Warrick does something that Toreth makes him regret for a long time; it even comes up as an issue between them in later fics, most of all Quis Custodiet.Oh, and there is also skiing.~~"All Work and No Play": not rated“The world is so beautiful, when you look at it.So detailed. So sharp. Everything’s just there--so much more than we need. Light we can’t see, sounds we can’t hear. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what it takes to make it real.”One of the things that consistently draws me back to this series is the fact that it's set in the future, and a dystopian one at that (my weakness!). There are all these little world-building details. And in scenes like this, that world feels so vivid, foreign yet familiar. Manna Francis manages to do what the above quote describes: her world is vast, and we as readers just brush against the small part of it that's Toreth's/Warrick's life, but that's enough. The suggestion of more is enough, when done right, and of course, Francis does do it right.~~"Gee": **Basically all that happens here is that Toreth tells Sara about his time in a rehab center that amounts to repeated sexual abuse, and not only that, but sexual abuse when he was just a kid. I like getting this further insight to Toreth's life and what has made him who he is, and I especially appreciated seeing the way he reacts to seeing his abuser again and reliving the memory. It illustrates some of his psychological quirks well. After all, a normal person would probably be a lot more disturbed by these experiences than Toreth seems to be. My complaint with this story is that Toreth goes into a lot of detail when he's telling Sara about it, and it's really more than I wanted to know about Gee Evans (the abuser). At the end of the fic, Sara recalls that she shook hands with Evans and is left feeling dirty and wanting to wash her hands. I felt similarly after reading this. My reaction to Evans was basically, "Ew. Creepy pedophile old man. TMI. Moving on to the next story now and not looking back."~~"Shopping and Fucking": not rated~~"Pool School": **This fic is pointless and a lot of it was not a pleasant reading experience for me. Mostly it's that I find strip clubs distasteful and don't want to spend a whole short story reading about one.~~"Without the Game": **...OK? This was a tiny little fic. I was expecting more to happen. The whole story is Toreth arguing with Warrick about something they want to do in bed. Warrick is being stupid about it, which felt out of character to me. He's not usually stupid; that's Toreth's job, at least when it comes to being in a relationship. Spoiler: Toreth wins the argument. The end. Moving on.
review 2: Holy mackerel... I think I may be in love with Warrick...felt a little sick for him at some points in this book. Jeez I can't these books down and it's worrying! First one was a great book in a brilliant world with awesome and charismatic characters, now I'm addicted. I think I will need therapy after these. On the plus side it's made me want to write more flaws into my own characters personalities :D less

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