Ashley Kristen: The Golden Dynasty (Fantasyland 2)

I read this book after not liking or hating the first book. Why? Because I WANT to love KA's magical world, she creates a world full of magic that you just can't hate.. I mean TIGERS talk to women. How cool is that?
I juist hate how she tries to make romance out of shitty situations.

The cover, such as the first book, I liked. It's symple yet gets the message across. Nice. the price however.. I hated this book so much more than the first book and it was about triple in price (probably because the first one, Fantasyland, was an absolute joke in price).
I'm not a lightweight when it comes to cursing and using strong language. Not at all. But I feel like it's so out of place and so overused in this book. It just didn't feel right for the character or the situations most of the time. I have to admit, certain moments I would have used a lot worse than what Circe used. But most of the time I was like.. Language!
Secondly, I'm sorry but there is nothing romantic about the situation. She gets raped after being hunted, raped 3 more nights after that... But on the 4th night, he uses some forplay and suddenly she's enjoying it and wants it.
I feel like this is a spit in the face of all women who got raped and will get raped in the future. It's saying if your rapist is handsome just fall in love with him. Everything will be fine. It's saying, if your rapist tries to give you some pleasure, it's okay.
No! It is NOT okay.

I understand that her stories are based on finding the strength and some sort of romance in making the best out of a horrible situation but the whole rape at the start of the book and I love you at the end of the book.. Just.. No... I see that either people rate this book 5 stars, thinking Lahn is hot and hunky and he is romantic.. Or they rate it 0-1 stars because of the rape scenes.

I feel like I want to look past the rape point and find some sort of story of how Circe gets through it. How she makes the best out of it because she has no way out. But there are lines I feel as a woman I don't want to cross. I refuse to believe in love after rape.. In love when your husband gets angry if you ask to not sleep with slaves anymore..

Another thing that bothered me about this book was how it felt SO SO SO much like Game of Thrones. Daenerys and Khal Drogo. I wondered if I was the only person wondering this but Goodreads showed me that about EVERYONE reading this book had the same feeling.. Should there be some rule against that? I mean I think it's obvious to notice where her inspiration came from..

I didn't like the main heroine again.. I liked her more than Fantasyland.. But again the overuse of a certain word. Cool this time. The way she just goes with it. Atleast this time I had a feeling she held more intelligence.. Circe was somewhat able to get more sympathy out of me.

I want to like this world, I want to enjoy these stories... But when rape is excused by saying "it's their way".. I can get it if it's in some historical context but I can't accept it as a novel. An epic tale of romance. I just can't.

By the way.. Circe always seems to be shopping or eating with friends while Lahn is out doing kingly stuff and being too busy to spend time with her.. She being queen and all, should she not be doing something interesting? I feel like nothing really happens in the book...

Cover: 2
Price: 1
Story: 0.5
Characters: 1
Overall:1

this book gets a 5.5.. I wish I could give it more.. Again the world is awesome.. But the situations in the book make it that I just totally want to burn this book out of frustration. I feel like it's disrespectful to women to imply that if you try a little bit you could fall in love with a rapist. I don't know if i'm making a bigger deal out of it than it is but for me, this is a step too far.

Read More

Kristen Ashley: Wildest Dreams (Fantasy Land 1)

Okay soooooo....
I don't really know what to think about this book.. Like sure it was a nice story and all. At first when I started reading I thought it would be a bit like the Divine series by P.C. Cast but soon I saw why exactly it wasn't going to be any bit like it.

First impression: KA has a thing for marking words in cursive. lots of them. On one page. This I felt was more at the start of the book and diminished as I was reading and in a way it gives certain tone to what they are saying..
Second impression: how do you pronounce all these names?!?

So this woman travels to another land, say another dimension, that has a twin copy of everyone. Some people are in one world and aren't in the other and stuff like that.
She marries The Dragon, Frey Drakkar..
I really want to like him! I'm honestly trying to but he is such a jerk. Right I think you get my flow. It's another one of those "super sweet nice girl meets jerk and they fall in love and she changes him" things. But the truth is, sure he can do nice things and it warms you up to him every time he does, but right when you start to like him, he turns right around and you want to strangle him again or hit some sense into Finnie.
Finnie doesn't take all of his crap but in the end she still always gives him exactly what he wants and it infuriates me at times.

I think it's important to look at the historical context to understand this book and not be appalled by what women call romance. It's some kind of medeival setting where emancipation hasn't happened yet. The guy thinks he can get away with anything and that it is his right to decide everything. But seriously everything.
Keeping in mind this context, seeing how they were an arranged match I feel that I'm willing to look past this and when I do I have to admit he does pretty sweet things.
It's just.. In other books guy are jerks at the start, I can deal with that because later on in the book it reveals why they acted this way. Here it's just the basic fact of 'I am the man, I have all the rights, you are the woman and you can be happy if I give you what you want and not happy if I do not'.

I think KA created an amazing world and I love the fact that it's all snow. I love snow! They also have multiple mythological creatures we all just have to love. Although this could have been milked a little bit more but I guess in the end it's a way you decide to get with the book as Author or not. And KA decided not to go there. Which is fine. The one giant downer though was that it just kept going on and on and on and on.. Every time you entered a new room, a new house, a new bar, a new city the descriptions kept being thrown at you and I'm ashamed to admit that somewhere 3/4th into the book I started skimming over the pages when I saw a description and stopped actually paying attention. There is something about books that allows my imagination to run wilde, imagining how the place would look etc.. But KA's need to describe everything down to the fiber of the carpets or the last bead hanging on a necklace drove me crazy! My imagination couldn't follow how specific it all was which made me sad because the place was honestly beautiful..

Another thing I loved in this book was how open sexuality is. As in the wife doesn't have to be a virgin when they get married, sexual relationships pre-marriage happens and it's all fine. No one things badly of it and it doesn't matter if people want guy on guy action, woman on woman action or whatever they feel like. Like I said. Open minded.

The cover of the book is simple and it's a nice step away from the usual hot guy on the cover and CHEAP! Again I bought it as an Ebook and it was 1.99... For that price, this book was more than worth! It was longer than most of the books I've been reading lately which was also a nice change, but I feel like a lot of that being longer didn't actually make the story.. More. It just made everything more detailed.

All in all for the price and considering the other elements this book was a nice opener for a series that, I already checked, continues. It's a nice introduction if you want to keep reading and a nice stand alone story if you don't.

On the scale of book I've been reading it goes something like Selection > Wildest Dreams > Lux...

Cover 2
Price 2
Story 1
Characters .5
Overall 1

Leaving this book at a 6.5, seeing I loved the cover and the price. Which i think is exactly right. It's average, but a lot better than what i had expected... And I have to admit.. In the end even I decided I liked Frey,.. (Although he never REALLY apologized for any of it..)

Note: One thing I did have a problem with, was that the Ebook version holds a lot of mistakes.. Meaning wrong punctiation and sometimes when it should have been "he said. it was "she said. And the other way around. I don't know if the actual book holds the same errors but I felt like this somehow annoyed me a little bit.

Read More