My Take in Brief: The worst book I have read since I started this blog. But see below for a reviewing MYSTERY!
Series?: Yes, this is the first in the Blood Ties series, of which three books are in print. It’s not clear if a fourth is coming or not.
Plot: Doctor Carrie is unwillingly vamperized and has to decide between joining the good vamps or the bad vamps, both of whom she likes to fuck.
Setting: Present day Michigan. Bookstore and fancy vamp mansion.
Characters: Carrie is single, just out of med school in her twenties, unattached, with a selfish streak a mile wide and a habit of uttering inappropriate jokes in very bad situations. She’s supposed to be conflicted and sympathetic, but I can honestly tell you that I hated her with a passion I have rarely felt for anyone, real or imagined (now there’s a writing coup, seriously!). Nathan is a Scottish book seller (sweaters, jeans, and a nice brogue to go with his warm cup of tea blood). Think Liam Neeson with maternal tendencies (he has an adopted human son, Ziggy), a hot bod, and whole lot of brooding and guilt over his past. Cyrus, Carrie’s sire, is straight out of Goth Vamp Casting 101 (think Bill Nighy in Underworld), with his long blond locks and bare feet poking out of silky robe. He’s The Bad Vamp, loving his vamp lifestyle with its pathetic blood slaves, incompetent minions, badly furnished mansion. etc, etc..
Word on the Web (mixed):
Urban Fantasy Land: C-, “I wanted to like this book. I tried.”
Dear Author, Jane, B+
Greenman Review, negative
Book Loons: 3 books (highest rating)
Vampire Romance Books, very positive
Lauren Dane, not a full review , but she really liked the first two books in this series
Audible.com, 3.61 after 354 ratings
Amazon.com, 4 stars after 74 reiews
Help me solve a mystery: AAR Laurie blogged that she reviewed Blood Ties for PW. The PW review is very positive, but Laurie’s review for AAR is scathingly negative. Have I made a mistake?
Armintrout’s bold debut, the first book in a violent vampire series, bares its fangs early, unafraid to spill blood and vital organs from its very first pages. ER resident The book’s level of gory detail—the narrator is, after all, a newly minted emergency room doctor—may put off all but the most stalwart of readers, but if you’ve got the stomach for it, this fast, furious novel is a squirm-inducing treat. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From AAR Laurie’s best and worst of the year (2007):
Blood Ties: The Turning, Jennifer Armintrout (2006) – This debut by a fairly young author (she’s 26) of the first in a violent vampire fiction series isn’t a major disappointment, and it isn’t boring. It’s downright awful. My conclusion is that this is post-9/11 fiction for nihilists. Though the author created a couple of interesting characters and a difficult and intriguing tentative relationship for them, any interest I had was destroyed by one intimate scene that is the stuff of a true sadist’s dream. I’ve no problem with gore in general; indeed, an oddly favorite moment in one of Anne Rice’s vampire books features a couple of vampires literally breaking people’s bones and devouring their bodies, yet a similar moment in this book nearly brought up my lunch. This was, for me, the worst book of the year.
Audionote: I listened to this one, read by Elanna Stauffer, who narrated Megan Hart’s Dirty, one of my favorites. Stauffer does a fine job with the first person narration of a twenty something contemporary female, but her Scottish brogue (for Nathan) was Irish to my ears, her voicing of Uber Bad Guy “the Soul Eater” was a squeaky copy of Ralph Fiennes’ Voldemort, and disparate characters like a female witch and a teen boy had identical high scratchy Valley Girl voices. I’m thinking of developing a traffic-light themed rating system for narrators, and if I do, Stauffer would get a “yellow” for “caution”.
The Racy Romance Review:
I was so stoked when I started listening to this. I loved the first chapter, when Carrie is turned. But then… something happened.
Dumb reasons not to like it:
1. It’s a Harlequin, but there is no HEA. My reply: get over it, and while you’re at it, congratulate Harlequin’s Mira line for taking a chance and pushing the boundaries. There’s certainly some romance here, and substantial sexual content.
2. It is too gory. My reply: Yes, this is very gory (think gouging-out-eyes gory, and stealing-hearts-out-of-sternums gory). Gore may not be to your taste, but I give the author props for telling it like it is in her vamp world. Too many paranormal authors sugarcoat “the life”.
3. A doctor like Carrie would not smoke. Drive by your local hospital this week and note how many white coats are puffing away 100 feet from the building. Never mind nicotine… an addiction specialist friend of mine has an entire practice of physicians who are heroin addicts.
Good reasons not to like this book:
1. The lead protagonist, Carrie, is Everything That is Wrong With America. Seriously. Vain, shallow, selfish, indecisive, and stupid, I have never met a female lead character I liked less. At the end of the book, after being violently turned, after learning that she cannot have children, or have any kind of a normal human life, after dying gruesomely not once, but twice, and after witnessing violence and carnage that make an trauma surgeon’s day look like nursery school, she decides she’s glad she’s a vamp. Huh?
2. The moral outlook: I appreciate that the author was going for moral ambivalence. I want to read about a new vamp who is enticed by the vamp life. But let’s review Cyrus’s pedigree: rape and mutilate and murder little girls and boys indiscriminately, enslave teen runaways to use as blood slaves, kill other humans randomly in imaginatively painful ways for no reason, and other sexual perversities. And yet Carrie not only has sex with him (the scene where she’s working herself up and down his ice cold penis was priceless), but feels sorry for him, because he had a bad childhood (and not just when she is under the spell of the Blood Tie, but long after). Guess I’m just not open minded enough to get that one.
One interesting feature of the world was the concept of the Blood Tie, which allows sire and fledgling to read each others’ minds and in some ways control each other. But mind reading is very tricky to do well, and in this book it was “on” when the author needed it to be and “off” when it would interfere with suspense. Also, the Blood Tie and its ability to get Carrie to do things, while potentially a very fertile field of exploration, was similarly “on” when needed, and “off” when inconvenient.
3. The obvious and clunky intrusion of the author’s plans into the action. There are too many instances of this to name, but one example would be this scene: Cyrus decides to have a huge, splashy vamp new years’ party at his mansion, with, naturally, no special security precautions. This enables Nathan and the Good Vamps to storm the premises, intent on killing them all. Now, as the action unfolds, all the main characters end up together. And then the Big Bad comes – the Soul Eater, the King of the Vamps. Guess what happens? The good guys RUN AWAY. I am not kidding. It was like the Monty Python skit from The Search for the Holy Grail.
This series has three books in print, and the author has a new series coming out. Clearly, it is popular with a lot of readers. Just as clearly, I am not one of them.
Yikes! “I hated her with a passion I have rarely felt for anyone, real or imagined.” This is a fabulous line! I want to emblazon it somewhere.
I get that attitude toward the sort of heroine you describe and it is frequently the cause of me not finishing books.
I wanted to say, if you look closely at the PW review, it doesn’t say anything good. More just if you’re into gore, this is a treat. But it is so interesting to see them side by side. I would love you to interview Laurie on this. Okay?
carolyn jean wrote:
Good idea. I just emailed her.
You’re right, they don’t exactly contradict each other, but you get a drastically different sense of her opinion of the book when reading the AAR comments. I wonder if PW has some sort of rule that you if you can’t say anything nice, you can’t say anything at all?
I checked my original review draft, along with my notes accompanying the review. And then I looked at the print version of the review that you posted above. The editor made some changes. Beyond that I cannot comment.
Laurie Gold
Here’s what I enjoyed about it – it wasn’t a carbon copy of every other book I’d read at that time. I liked that Carrie was a flawed character and I hoped to see her grow over time – the second book took a very odd turn, but it was a bold writing move and I liked it for that reason.
The thing I really dug was the villain. Cyrus wasn’t one dimensional at all. I like it when villains are villains for a reason. He’s bad, no doubt about it. He’s not someone I liked, but at the same time, there were moments when I found myself wondering what he’d have been like without his childhood. Especially in the second book when you see a totally different side to him.
However, I will say that despite my admiration for the turn the second book takes, the changes between third and first POV really yanked me from the story in places and it felt jerky and confusing in parts. Also, love triangles are hard to sustain, I began to tire of the will she/won’t she thing between cyrus and Nathan. I haven’t read the third, but I liked the first one quite a bit and the second one was a good read.
I’m not a fan of love triangles, urban fantasy, or series books with no/? HEAs. But I love the idea of an ER doctor vampire wallowing in blood and apathy. Or maybe I’m just in a weird mood. It’s been an up and down week.
@ Laurie Gold: Thank you for your comment. That’s very interesting.
@ Lauren:
Thanks for commenting. I think that admiration for bold moves is sort of like an effort grade, and it’s something I’ve seen authors and very seasoned romance reviewers do, but that I, being a novice, tend to do less of.
Your point that we get an explanation for why the bad guy is bad is a good one, but I am getting slightly impatient with the past being a motivator for characters’ present behavior. Actually, I am working on a post “The Long Shadow of the Past in Romance” which explores this.
Jill Sorenson wrote:
I loved that part, too, and I think my disappointment with how Carrie turned out reflects the high expectations that the premise and first chapter led me to have.
[...] of RacyRomanceReviews pointed something out on her blog the other day. Laurie Gold wrote the PW review of Jennifer [...]
Okay, so, sometimes late at night I google “Jennifer Armintrout sucks” just because I need to get knocked down a few pegs every now and again.
I find your review quite apt and funny.
Am I, however, a seething cauldron of rage upon finding out that Laurielikesbooks is the person who wrote the review that is quoted on every freaking one of my subsequent releases after she called me a sadist and didn’t even bother to get the title of my freaking book correct when she did so. I’m usually cool with bad reviews, because I’m not living under the delusion that I’m churning out high art over here, but hers was way too personal and it made my mom cry.
You have given me much to think on, and probably blog about.
Jen Armintrout wrote:
Oh, you should try Rate My Professors. Talk about come down! At least your looks don’t get thrown under the bus!
Wow. Thank you.
I agree that attacking the author in a review is a bad idea, on both ethical and epistemological grounds (it’s harm to innocents without a corresponding benefit, and you really can’t determine anything for sure about the author by reading the book anyway).
I don’t know Laurie or her frame of mind when she wrote that review. And believe me, between RMP and getting my academic papers reviewed by peers regularly, I sympathize with how shitty it feels to be sharply criticized, especially if you feel it wasn’t deserved. However, looking again at what I quoted from that review, I take it she hated the book, but I don’t see the personal attack. AAR did not even write a formal review of your book — that was just a paragraph in Laurie’s year end review. But maybe I see it this way because I’m not you.
I hope you do blog about the line between attacking an author and her work. I would be very interested to read it.
Thanks for your visit and comments.
Gore? I’m SO there. I just bought this book a couple of weeks ago, and it’s buried under my TBR…but I’ve just moved it to the top. *g*
To be honest, I blogged about how much it sucks to find out that a positive review that is quoted on all of your subsequent releases is a flat out lie perpetrated by the publishers of said review. I’ve also asked Harlequin to remove the review quote from any upcoming releases.
I feel not only dreadful that someone might have seen the review and bought the book based on it, thinking that was the reviewer’s honest opinion, but I feel super crappy for Laurie. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have someone change your words around and misrepresent your opinion.
As for the review on AAR, and I know that this is incredibly silly, but the thing that bothered me most about it is that my MOM read it. She was so upset. And while I generally take negative review comments under consideration and examine what I’m working on to make sure I’m not pulling the same dumb mistakes over and over, that one just got under my skin. I didn’t word my comment last night very well, probably owing to the fact that my head was about to spin around and explode over the PW thing. I should have said that I found that review needlessly harsh, rather than “too personal.” I took it too personally, I guess, would be a better way of describing it.
Because I somehow missed this book on its release and from this review, I just went and bought it from Fictionwise. The difference between Jane and Jessica’s reactions is just too intriguing, and the whole PW change makes it even more perversely irresistible. Also, FWIW, it’s marked as Fantasy/Mainstream at Fictionwise, even though Harlequin primarily denotes Romance to readers.
Jen,
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I can see how unbelievably irritating that situation must be for you, to have someone’s quote on your covers who has written so negatively about your book. I think “chap my ass” might be the phase I would use in that context. It was bad for her, bad for you, and bad for PW.
Thank you again for your visit and for sharing your persepctive.
Robin,
I listened to The Turning on audio. So, what I heard was both Ms. Armintrout’s writing, and an interpretation of it. It may be that this book did not work well on audio. That sometimes happens.
I’ll look forward to yours and Larissa’s thoughts.
I hadn’t realized when writing my annual “year in reading” column at the end of 2006 that a single paragraph containing 130 words in a column of more than 6,000 words would create such a stir more than two years later. Indeed, the vast majority of the 6,000+ word column detailed what I loved reading during 2006 – just six paragraphs (for six books) described what failed for me as a reader.
I apologize to Ms. Armintrout for getting the name of her series wrong in that long-ago ATBF column. I’m glad to contact the site’s new management and have them fix that if she would like.
My PW mass market reviews (I review hardcover as well) are sent in at 200 words. In that word count I must provide brief synopsis and character information, as well as some critique. Which means using specific language to describe things in as few words as possible. And because PW reviews are written in what I consider “staff” format – ie, anonymously so as to eliminate the individual reviewer’s “voice” – there is no leeway whatsoever for the theatrics found in my then-blog, my reviews at AAR, or in my ATBF columns.
The review form in use at that time, though, did include some questions so as to provide further information to the editor. Upon emailing my review and answering those questions to the editor, that was the end of the line for me on any particular review, unless I requested a book earn a star (and those final determinations were/are made higher up the food chain). Until recently PW reviewers did not have full access to the web-version of the magazine. Occasionally my editor would mail me a print version of the magazine if it contained one of my reviews, but more often than not, I’d see the final version on Amazon when the book went up for sale.
I’ve learned a tremendous amount over the years from *all* my editors, but both of my current editors engage in perhaps a more active give and take than some of the earlier ones. Both will often email me their edits and ask if everything is copacetic, and in that way, matters of tone can be resolved, as well as anything factual. Regardless, every writer knows that her work will be edited; it’s simply a fact of life. I can remember when I was in municipal management the first time an interim boss changed what I wrote. I was so full of myself I made a stink, but that experience has served me well. Everything improves with editing.
In looking at my records, I can see that I read and reviewed the book in question in March, 2006. When it came time to write my year-end column – some nine months later – all the books I’d loved and hated throughout the year had had a chance to percolate, so to speak, in my head. For 2006 four books earned F grades from me and five earned A’s. As if often the case, my feelings for books on both ends of the spectrum solidified over time; if I loved it in January, I loved it even more in retrospect. The same goes for the books that didn’t work for me. I had a whole year’s worth of reading to compare them to, after all.
It’s never enjoyable to be confronted by an author after giving her book a bad grade. To be honest, I’d hoped that after retiring last November, I’d never face that again. I continue to stand by what I write for PW and what I wrote online at AAR, my blog, and TRR over the years. But if some reconciling between publications is necessary, I’m glad to respond, which is why I took the time to do so here…and now.
Something that was not addressed in any of my writings about the book relates to its marketing; in my notes to my PW editor, I questioned who the book’s market was and indicated that straight horror readers might appreciate it better than romance readers. My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that this confusion may have led to the final edits as they were.
And to end this endless comment, let me add that it bothers me terribly that Ms. Armintrout feels as though her subsequent books have a lie printed on them. She must feel horrible, and for that I fully empathize.
Laurie Gold
Laurie,
You have no obligation to me to explain yourself, and I do appreciate you coming here twice (out of retirement, as it were) to do so.
I confess that your second comment has confused me.
So, if you feel like coming back yet a 3rd time, I would love just a straight reply to this question:
The PW review and the AAR cannot, in my mind, be reconciled at all by referring to a change in “tone”. They cannot both be views one person held at the same time about the same book.
So either the positive view was never your view (and the PW review represents the editor’s view, not yours — this was what I inferred from your first comment), or it was initially your view, but stopped being your view by the end of the year (I sense this from your second).
If I may ask, which is it?
All I can do is refer back to what I surmised near the end of my endless post…that because I mentioned in my notes to the editor confusion over the book’s market and that straight horror readers might find it more enjoyable than romance readers, the overall review changed.
I read and reviewed a Stephen King novel many years ago, and much of it was really terrific…until it became a true horror novel and I no longer enjoyed it. Today I read quite a bit of urban fantasy and urban fantasy romance, and while straight urban fantasy can be pretty intense in terms of graphic violence, straight horror often crosses a line for me. This book did as well.
So, when I put my draft review as sent to the editor together with my follow-up about who might like it more, it seems reasonable to me that the editor migh have combined what I’d written, particularly given my overall confusion as to the book’s market.
But let’s not forget what I also included in that endless post…that nine months after reading and reviewing the book I’d had a chance to think more about it than I had a week after reading it. For me, great becomes greater and bad becomes worse.
To go back again to my endless post, I talk about matters of tone…but also about factual stuff. Had I seen the finalized review prior to its being well and truly finalized, I would have asked for some reworking so the review would not read as a recommendation.
Second guessing is something I try never to indulge in – either in my PW reviews, or in the reviews I wrote or edited at AAR. Trying to put yourself in another reader’s shoes is dicey, so I attempted in my draft review to present my own opinions, then to provide some counterweight in my notes to the editor. It’s possible, though, that I failed, and that my original review really wasn’t strong enough.
At this point all I can do is reiterate the market confusion and that it may have affected either my draft review for PW, my editor’s edits…or both.
One last thing…I’ve reviewed more than 200 books for PW and I don’t recall any other instance in which my PW review as finalized didn’t “match” the substance of my draft for the magazine.
I hesitate to comment even further because to spend more time on this would be to give it more weight than it should and reflect poorly on PW. I am immensely proud of my association with PW and think of it as the bible of the publishing industry. In no way would I like to think of this “discussion” as hurting the magazine’s reputation.
There are so many things that I hated about this book that I can hardly list all of them. Carrie, the protagonist, is a total failure in every sense of the word. She’s supposed to be a doctor, but she’s mind-bogglingly incompetent. She’s also stupid and fickle, changing her mind about how to cope with her new life as a vampire every other minute. Well, I would have enjoyed the book more if she had found a way to die permanently and, preferably, no later than page 100.
I really enjoyed all 4 books by Jennifer Armintrout’s Blood Ties series and I especially liked that it had a kinda “new” spin on the paranormal/romance genre. I love some horror in my novels, personally. I thought the book was enticing and well-written.
The only thing I didn’t really like was the “head-hopping” (is that the correct term?) in the other books. Just my opinion. I know in the Twilight books Meyer did it too and it bugged me. But overall, I loved these books and will read more by the author in the future.
I must add that there are MANY different authors out there for a reason. Authors appeal to different readers for a variety of reasons, and that’s a good thing. It just means there’s something out there for everyone.