Note: This review contains material not suitable for minors.

Harrell’s take on violence in literature:

My students and I read Jack Harrell’s “What Violence in Literature Must Teach Us”. Like Orson Scott Card, whose essay on evil in fiction was the topic of my last post, Harrell is a Mormon. He is a professor of creative writing at Brigham Young U.-Idaho, and fiction writer and essayist (he wrote Vernal Promises (2003))

Harrell says that “gratuitous violence” is an oxymoron, because gratuitous means “unearned” or “unwarranted” and violence must have meaning or consequence to count as violence.

He says that when a writer writes violence, three conditions must be met in order for the violence to be warranted, i.e. to have moral and aesthetic value:

1. We must care about the characters, and it’s the writers job to depict them in such a way that we do. This requires that the reader is given insight about a character.

2. The violence must be inevitable, given the plot and circumstances. Art orders and shapes. The violence has to make sense within the narrative.

3. Tension: the violence must be challenged by an equal and opposing force. There must be conflict. The violence in the story must serve the creative force, the meaning-making force, which is what it means to be alive.

The violence of a story must show the reader that life, security, civilization, freedom, and growth are really worth the struggle against the forces of death, danger, anarchy, slavery and entropy”

Hearkening back to the Orson Scott Card essay, Harrell contends that since something is only violence when it threatens something of value, gratuitous violence “isn’t true.”

The DNF:

Several months ago I read and positively reviewed the first book in Larissa Ione’s Demonica Series. I liked the fun new world, the action packed larger than life conflicts, the ridiculous sexxoring (how many mentions of tenting scrubs can an author pack into one book?), and looked forward to the second, Desire Unchained. But I couldn’t get into it. I kept picking it up and putting it down. I’ve read about half and skimmed the rest. I don’t care to finish it. I now think it’s because it violates at least the 1st and 3rd of Harrell’s requirements.

Here’s the synopsis:

“Runa Wagner never meant to fall in love with the sexy stranger who seemed to know her every deepest desire. But she couldn’t resist the unbelievable passion that burned between them, a passion that died when she discovered his betrayal and found herself forever changed. Now, determined to make Shade pay for the transformation that haunts her, Runa searches for him, only to be taken prisoner by his darkest enemy.

A Seminus Demon with a love-curse that threatens him with eternal torment, Shade hoped he’d seen the last of Runa and her irresistible charm. But when he wakes up in a dank dungeon chained next to an enraged and mysteriously powerful Runa, he realizes that her effect on him is more dangerous than ever.

As their captor casts a spell that bonds them as lifemates, Shade and Runa must fight for their lives and their hearts-or succumb to a madman’s evil plans.

Shade is not just a guy with flaws, he is not even slightly likable. A description from Shade of his “relationship” with Runa: “When they’d dated — if screwing like rabbits could be called dating — she’d been shy, needy, and easy to control, which had fed his need to dominate, but had grown boring.”

Their first sexual encounter was a few minutes after they met, in an alley. After it was over, Runa experienced several aftershocks, thanks to Shade’s super demon seed. Ever the gentleman, he said, “‘You might want to hide out in an office or break room for a few’ He waited until she was steady on her feet, and then he sauntered off.”

Later, Runa found Shade having sex with two vampires. When she confronted him, he said “you weren’t supposed to come to my place that night. You said you were busy.” and later, “See, this is why I make it a rule to not sleep with a human more than once. Your females are clingy.”

Also? A rapist. At one point, Shade remembers the early days his transition: “Yeah. I went out. Prowling for females, taking what I needed. And when I say take, I mean it.”

Shade gets involuntarily mated to Runa (by the bad guy. Runa had nothing to do with it). Shade informs her, without inflection or concern: “You’re no longer fully human, so the bonding shouldn’t kill you.”

The bonding will activate a curse that will make Shade invisible, eternally horny and unable to have sex. Shade’s brothers, Eidolon and Wraith, decide quickly and easily how to fix this situation. Wraith says: “It’s an easy fix. We just kill Runa–”. There was not even a second of discussion about this.

Shade growls his disapproval, but when Eidolon says Wrath is right, Shade admits he is.

When he senses Shade is a little apprehensive about the plan to execute the woman he has just had sex with, Wraith calls him “pussy whipped” and “stupid.”

This is the point I realized I might not be able to finish this book.

After agreeing to the plan, Shade has sex with Runa again. Ugh. But something puts a damper on Shade’s “postorgasmic bliss.” What is it? Oh yeah, he is going to have her killed to save his own ass.

Perhaps it’s “in his nature” as Shade so often says. His dad “raped a woman between the transition between human and vampire, impregnated her, and then used his gift — the same gift Shade had — to keep her body alive so the fetus would grow until she gave birth.”

Runa’s parents weren’t much better. Her alcoholic father beat her and cheated on her mother, who then committed suicide.

Another character, Kynan, found out his wife had betrayed their anti-demon cause, and had not one but two lovers. Kynan’s own parents were no better: “He’d grown up the son of a call girl who had gotten out of the business when his wealthy, married father paid her a large sum to keep quiet.”

Wraith is a misogynist who make Zsadist of Lover Awakened look like Ray Romano. This is signaled by much more than his desire — not mere resolve, but active desire –  to kill Runa. When someone asks him where Shade is, he sneers, “Probably fucking his mate by now.” He can usually be found emerging from a storeroom zipping up his pants with a random woman. When he leaves a room, he can be heard shouting “Hey female! Come here!” Later, this:  “Wraith waited until the lab technician he’s just screwed closed the door to the supply closet in which they’d just bumped uglies. Strike that — he’d bumped ugly. With her underbite, overgrown lower canines, and patchy fur, she wasn’t the most attractive Slogthu he’d ever banged.” Another reminiscence “He’d been minding his own business, fucking a couple of faeries in the back of the pub…”. I could go on (and on) but you get the idea. He gets his own book, but as with Shade, no amount of lovey dovey with the heroine will redeem this character for me.

Another brother Roag, raped a woman to death. Just the imagery of that is upsetting to me. (Granted, he’s the “bad brother”, but I think a sliding scale is in order.) After a while it felt every few pages, a raped or mutilated female was being brought in to the demon hospital. At the same time, it seemed like every healthy woman other than the heroine (whom I have spared in this post for the sake of length, but have definite opinions about) was a complete slut or conniving bitch.

Harrell wrote:

“when the violence in the story is challenged by sufficient, opposing forces, readers sense that some things are worth fighting for. Before readers pick up a story, they know there is violence, even senseless violence. What they want to know is that somehow, despite the violence, despite the senselessness, it is worth it to keep the world spinning for another day.”

I didn’t feel that way about the world of Desire Unchained.  That’s why I didn’t stay there.

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