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.
Oh my these sound like some charming men. I haven’t tried any of these and not likely to!!
Not my idea of romance, or Romance. Yuck.
“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.”
I’m just not following that. What is it then, if it’s not “violence”?
Hm, sounds eerily similar to the third book in the series.
I personally LOVE this series.
I understand all the points you’ve made but aren’t you forgetting one thing?
These guys are Seminus Demons. They require sex like we require food and water. They are genetically enhanced to attract females.
Their long lives have shaped them into not wanting to “bond” therefore they disconnect themselves from the act of sex.
No, I do not approve of rape or forced sex. That is very, very bad.
This book was my favorite and probably because of Runa and not Shade. She was awesome. Bitchy at times, sure, but awesome.
Harrell’s argument is interesting and convincing. I love it when someone takes literature and dissects it to the point that it enhances me understanding and enjoyment of what I read.
Now I know why I can enjoy some heavily (I won’t say gratuitous) violent novels, and others just disgust me. Balance between violence and nurturing is just as integral within the story as love/hate, good/evil, etc. There must be believable conflict and tension to pull off the need for that balance.
I certainly won’t be reading Desire Unchained anytime soon. Thanks for the heads up
@Jessica Kennedy: I’m glad you have enjoyed the series. I know so many people do. As I said, I did enjoy the first book. I’m certainly willing to try other books by this author.
@willaful: That’s a great question. I guess he means it can’t be “violence proper”, or “Violence with a capital V”, but is rather some diminished, morally and aesthetically questionable version.
I am really wrestling with those principles. Not that I disagree, I just don’t know what to think about them. Okay, I just spaced out for five minutes thinking about them and I’ll stop now. Oh, but I disagree on gratuitous violence as an oxymoron. The three points…I need to think about them, but I’m really interested in them.
Anyway, my point, I absolutely love that you’ve applied the measuring stick to a text/series so many of us are familiar with.
Thanks Carolyn.
And this gives me a chance to articulate something: when I write a post like this, to me it feels a bit like giving a draft paper at a work group conference. I’ve given some thought to what I say, and I am inclined to think I am on to something (at least i.e. partially right), but am still testing it out. I need feedback, in the form of questions like Willaful’s, criticism like Jessica’s, and emendations like yours to help me figure out what I really want to say.
I was just doing some work and I found myself again thinking about this post in terms of JR Ward’s BDB. Do you think that is why everybody was intuitively down on the Omega and Lesser parts? Because the violence in those sections breaks #1 and #3? Does it? There’s a quality of disconnection about that violence that has always disturbed me, though it could simply be that I don’t generally like being frightened.
My question is what is “earned violence”, as opposed to unearned. Surely all violence is wrong. I may be missing the point but is Mr Harrell arguing for a distintion between “good” and “bad” violence?
Secondly, I also enjoyed book of this series but could not read book 2, I gave up on the second chapter.
What are we exploring with a world built on such misogynist principles? where women and men are part of the no-sex class? From the sounds of it, not only does this series portray women badly but it portrays men worse.
What’s the tension to the violence in these books? Is it supposed to be love or something more? For that matter, it sounds like an argument could be made that all sex in this series is gratuitous because there is no opposing side.
Part of my issues with the MaryAnn storyline from TrueBlood. There was no real opposing force shown until the very end. So there was no real tension.
AQ…what I was doing with the world was flipping our world over. We live in a (IMO) good world where bad sometimes happens. So with the Demonica series, I created the opposite…a dark world where good sometimes happens. Because for a lot of people, their world IS a bad place, and hope is very distant for them. I wanted to create that in a demon world, where hope might not be everywhere, but people CAN crawl out of the darkness and survive.
For some readers, I succeeded, and for others, I failed. This definitely seems to be a love or hate series, with not a lot of in-between!
The demon brothers are seminus demons…their entire existence is based on sex. The other female demons are slutty because they need sex like they need air to breathe. Shade can’t help but to screw every female.
Roag is slime and evil, and he is the villain. The good prevails at the end
I adore this series btw!!
Can ya tell? I think they are very entertaining and witty!
@Larissa:
Do the inhabitants of this world think it’s bad or would they think of their world like we think of ours: it’s just the world.
I’m always curious to understand “evil” or “bad” people / universes to learn what makes them tick. But I’m also inclined to think that they typically don’t think of themselves as “bad” or “evil.” How difficult was it for you to balance this element in the world you created?
Hmm. I still want to read these. I was just talking about characters with questionable morals on my blog. I’m sure that many readers consider Ione’s heroes redeemable, and find it very satisfying to see a man who believes himself incapable of emotion fall in love. This element played a part in my enjoyment of Anne Stuart’s Ice series.
I can’t find fault with a demon killing, as it follows logic that they would. As far as rape, it seems that you forgave Gaffney’s Sebastian for this act, on the page…
@AQ:
AQ, really great questions!
Okay, to answer the first…some of the inhabitants see the world as we do; it’s just the world. They don’t know anything different. But the inhabitants are also very different themselves. There are a LOT of different species that live in the world, some who live entirely in the demon part of it, and some who live amongst humans. All have different moral codes, ethics, etc. Some are truly evil (in fact, there’s a scale of evil in the books, which is explained in the compendium included in Passion Unleashed (and is actually offered as a free read on my site.)
So, for example, a level 5 demon is one who takes great pleasure in causing pain and killing. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he gets off on it. But another demon that eats its prey alive might be a level 1 — because he’s just doing what he does, without any inkling that what he’s doing is “wrong.” Sort of like how hyenas will sometimes start feeding on a wildebeest before it’s dead. That’s not evil — it’s horrible, yes, but hyenas are only doing what they do.
Now, the demon heroes of these books are all very different — raised by different parents even though they all had the same biological father. So each has his own distinct moral code. In Shade’s case, he’s actually a pretty decent guy (I realize this is a matter of interpretation! *g*) Deep down, he wants a family and babies — lots of them. But he was cursed to a fate worse than death if he ever feels anything for a female. So he’s got to keep his distance, is very callous in his actions not because he WANTS to be, but because he HAS to be…and he hates himself for it, even if he can’t admit that until the end of the book.
Again, those aspects of him are subject to personal interpretation — some readers saw it in him, and others either didn’t, or his behavior and deeds were bad enough in their eyes to cancel it out. (And there are actually readers who think these guys aren’t bad ENOUGH!)
As for how difficult it was to balance the good vs. evil element in the characters…well, in some ways it was very difficult, because these are demons, and creating likable demons? Not so easy…not because I didn’t include likable ones in the world (I’ve even got some vegetarian demons!) but because most people just hear the word, “demon,” and automatically start thinking “evil.” That’s our world, how we’ve been conditioned.
So I had to try to get past that first hurdle and make the world one where there are a lot of shades of gray. I had to make our own world very gray too, because I didn’t want the humans being the “good” guys and the demons being the “bad” ones. I wanted good and bad on both sides, with both sides thinking THEY are the good guys.
So just as we think our world is what it is, so do the demons. But because there are so many different species, so many places they live, they all have different perspectives on just how evil their world is. Some think humans are lowlife, evil scum. Others think that of their own kind.
Yes, balancing was, at times, challenging…more so when writing the main characters than in writing the world. To me, the world came fairly easily, but the heroes, especially Eidolon, a demon doctor, were hard to write at times.
Shade was hard because he is very dark, and he had to do things that I knew was going to make him unlikable to many readers.
Wraith was hard because he’s so damaged, and deep down, he hates himself…though oddly enough, his book, the third one, turned out to be the lightest and least violent of all of the books. It’s also most readers’ favorite.
Anyway, I don’t know if my rambling response answered your question at all, but if you’re curious about the types of demons and their evil scales and stuff, the link to the compendium ishere. (Scroll down to Free Reads.)
Thanks for the questions!
@Jill Sorenson:
*waves to Jill*
OMG, I LOVE Ann Stuart’s Ice books! I find the heroes to be utterly fascinating. I don’t usually like them for the first half of the book (even if I’m fascinated by them,) but I end up swooning when they fall for the heroine. Sigh.
About the rape (I hate to sound like a defensive jerk author, but since you brought it up…*g*) When Shade did it, he was in a life and death situation. He was crazed, and if he didn’t get what he needed, he’d die. He didn’t even fully realize what he was doing at the time. Now, I realize that doesn’t make a difference for some readers, and it’s perfectly understandable! But I did want to point out that he didn’t go out and rape just for fun.
BTW, I have your first book in my TBR pile and can’t wait to dig in after this next deadline!
@Larissa:
Nice job.
@Helen Burgess: Harrell is not talking about violence in real life, only within a fictional narrative. So don’t see the word “earned” as “morally ok in real life.”, but rather, as mattering in a fictional world where there is also good, and violence destroys some of that good.
I like morally flawed characters, as my like of Sebastian in To Have and To Hold reveals. The issue for me in this book is the lack of countervailing good. In Black Ice, the heroine represents that goodness, as does her family, and others. It isn’t the fact that the hero in Desire Unchained committed rape, but that he views his victims only though his own eyes and his own needs (as apparently do many readers). Sebastian comes to see what he did as grievously morally wrong and spends half the book making up for it.
I understand this argument but it does not persuade me. It’s interesting that the Seminus demons are morally blameless for what they do since it is “in their nature” but the females who sleep with them are “slutty.” This is not enjoyable reading for me because it replicates too closely a dynamic that in real life disempowers women who either refuse sex with aggressive males or who seek to have mutually beneficial and respectful casual sex without attracting moral disapproval.
I get it that the Seminus demon has to have sex to stay alive. I have to eat to stay alive. But I have a choice as to how I acquire that food, and the Seminus demons also have a choice as to how they acquire sex.
Again, I see nothing at all wrong with a book that portrays characters with terrible flaws, but for me there needs to be balance, either in other characters in the book, or hopefully within the flawed character him or herself. Everyone has to decide for herself where her tipping point is. Reading is a kind of relationship, and that alchemy works differently in different readers’ encounters with the text. What I am saying here may say more about me than about the text.
I have to think more about this, but it occurs to me that I might not be as bothered by this in a different type of book (my view may not be quite as encompassing as Harrell’s). However the HEA is not a mere description of the way a romance has to end. That is, when I read a romance, the fact of the HEA is something I don’t just know about but have to want. For a romance to be successful, the reader must actively desire the HEA. And that requires believing that on some level the two partners deserve some measure of happiness.
I want to thank Larissa Ione for coming here and explaining her viewpoint and process. It is helping me to see other perspectives on the book. (and yeah, I am just postmodern enough to see the author’s point of view as one more perspective).
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Great discussion! I read the first in the series and decided it wasn’t one for me. I always prefer authors who play with shades of gray rather than writing black and white characters, but in this case the book I tried just didn’t work for me. I think I “get” intellectually why things are written they way they are… I just didn’t buy that there was enough goodness in these demon characters to make them the kind of heroes I want in a romance.
I think the problem is you have missed the entire point of the Demonica series. It’s not that these men are evil. It’s that men who believe themselves to be unfeeling and evil is not always what they are. No man (or woman) is a throwaway person/character. The heroes in these books (this one especially) grows from what appears at first to be an irredeemable man into someone that learns from love how life actually can be better.
Yes, the villain is evil to the max and enjoys rape and more.
Yes, the hero in this book started out like alot of young men (and young women) in human society – pushing the envelope, believing it’s their right to do what they are, because dang it, it’s the way they were born.
It’s when those people and characters rise above “the way they were born” that makes us say YES, that character (or person) IS redeemable!
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.
Absolutely. If you read the first book in this series, you’d already have a relationship with the hero in this book, though not so much the heroine. You’d already know the pain he’d been through that brought him to this point. But, it’s a great author who starts with a character who’s irredeemable and turns him into someone you can care about.
2. The violence must be inevitable, given the plot and circumstances. Art orders and shapes. The violence has to make sense within the narrative.
I had no problems with the violence in this book. Yes, it is probably more than most people see in real life, but this is paranormal, bordering on horror. You will see more and more descriptive violence in these genre’s. If you aren’t interested in seeing where this develops, than it’s not the genre for you. That’s fine. There are genres I don’t like.
One of the comments was made about the couple having sex the first time they meet. I was reading a book by a well known contemporary author, (Admittedly several years back) where the heroine meets the hero and in less than 10 seconds he has her flat up against her house, kissing her, his hand under her skirt. To me, this was too much. It was unbelievable. She didn’t know his name, or if he was a killer or anything else, but was ready to go at it against the outside of her house with everyone watching? At least in paranormal’s, there’s something added, like magic or something more. I no longer read this author’s work. Others found it titillating and exciting. It’s their choice.
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 one thing I found in this book was huge amounts of conflict. The heroine who was so taken with a man, then finds out he isn’t what she wants. She blames him for her circumstances. He blames himself for her circumstances. Then there is the “Race issue” so to speak. How can two such different people overcome?
The entire concept of any “mixed race” book, be it human, human/demon, human/vamp or human/shifter is overcoming their differences and continuing despite the judgment of others. If Shade hadn’t grown, he would have killed her, at his brother’s suggestion. Which he didn’t. If Runa didn’t accept him as what he was, then neither of them could overcome their own conflicts.
I guess I don’t understand the problem with the book as mentioned by the reviewer. Yes, everyone has their own tastes. Larissa has created a dark, and intricate world which entwines some of humans darkest secrets, only put in “characters” who aren’t human.
It’s a mirror of sorts.
Funny, I have less problem reading about demons who are evil or not as evil as everyone thought, than I do about the new trend: Angels, who are not as good as we thought.
Just want to state my view, and not seeking to “quarrel” with anyone.
I have to admit, I didn’t like Slade at first, because he “cheated” on Runa with the two female vamps. But that was before I knew he was a Seminus demon and his nature. Even when I knew, it was hard for me to take. I think I didn’t like him much in book 1 either. But as I read on, I could see Slade changing in terms of how he thinks of Runa–not just a female he has to have sex with, but as someone he loves/could love, and may even give up his life for. Actually, the way I read the book, his seeming callous comments to and about Runa are his ways to cope with/deny his growing feelings for her, that maybe, she’s not just a female to f—, but someone he could love and have a relationship with. Even then, he’s trying to resist, because of the curse which would lead to eternal, unending torment for him. (We all know about self-preservation.) Isn’t that the same with almost every hero that we read about?
I have a review coming up for Desire Unchained in The Raving Readers, which will open on Dec 21, but here’s a snippet on how I felt about Slade:
“Shade’s secret longings and curse were also revealed, and I couldn’t help but like him, even rooted for him to have his HEA with Runa. Shade’s eventual strong feelings for Runa could have been because of the bond, but I like that Ms Ione clarified for us that no, Shade already felt something for Runa even before, which was why he ran like hell from her. I like that toward the end, Shade’s nature as a Seminus warred with his own feelings for Runa…”
And well, guess what? The book got the highest rating from me because of…yeah, Slade. That said, I’m actually eager to read about Wraith. He’s the baddest of the bad boys, and I guess I’m eager to see if he’ll be redeemed in my eyes.
O.M.G. Sorry for the typo. It’s Shade. SHADE.
@Silver:
You know that from now on, thanks to your typo, when I read a Demonica book I’ll have Slade’s Cum On, Feel the Noize running through my brain? And the worst part about that? Shade’s long hair + Dave Hill’s unique haircut (eg ultra short fringe).
YouTube video of Slade’s COFTN