Tuesday doldrums

[jethrien]

Having trouble concentrating today. Silly long weekend, and it making me think it's not work-time.

Boston was lovely, as always, and it was delightful to see many friends. The Swan was closed for renovations. I think the consensus was that while tea at the Four Seasons is nice, it's not as nice as the Swan.

In other news, I've finally hit a really bad choice with my pick-random-books-off-the-shelf spree at the library. (I was running late, and didn't have time to do a lot of searching.) The last couple haven't been too bad - a decent mystery, a badly-focused but still interesting history, an engrossing prep school novel, and an odd but still mildly entertaining historical satire. But the one I started this morning is amazingly wretched. One of the worst Marty Stus I've read in quite awhile, in a misogynistic, hackneyed wannabe thriller space opera. With a ridiculous plot.

So far, the honorable cold-eyed killer protagonist who used to be a high level operative but fell from grace because he wasn't sufficiently inefficient and bloodthirsty for the general who has taken over the world because he has a lot of money, has been sent to retrieve the alien that the general was supposed to have impregnated in an effort to prevent the war that would end the General's trade monopoly. Said honorable cold-blooded killer had sex with her instead for no discernable reason. Turns out that if you have sex with one of these aliens, you get addicted to sex with that specific alien. Which is messing with his normal, manly cold-blooded yet honorable thinking by making him all emotional and stuff. He's betrayed her and turned her over to the general (who she ran away from), again for no discernable reason. Oh, and in the process of this retrieval, he conned one of his fellow soldiers into disobeying orders, she totally tried to have sex with him immediately afterwards (for no discernable reason - now abbreviated "FNDR"), and then he killed her (again, FNDR). Oh, and he's totally like an amazing liar. You can tell, because he'll tell a ridiculous and clumsy lie, the person he's lying to believes him (FNDR) and then the narrator informs you that he's totally like an amazing liar.

At this point, I'm basically skimming, mostly because I hate not finishing books, but also because the blurb on the back cover promises an amazingly original ending that no one else would have been able to think of. I'm betting he lies and then women sleep with him, FNDR.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I'm betting not. It is a rare property that features human/alien sex with an actual possibility of reproduction, and an even rarer one where the relevant humans and aliens aren't essentially identical (significant exceptions: Star Trek and Mass Effect)

[maydove.livejournal.com]

...and Futurama (Kiff and Amy).

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

...wait. Were you not listening when I said that this was a terrible, terrible book? Yes, of course they can have viable offspring.

In other news, I think Livejournal has been dropping my posts sometimes when I respond by email. I had an extended rant about how I looked up the sequel and it featured the guy's twin sons, one of whom the evil general raises and the "hero" raises, even though he totally dies in this book, but I guess gets better.

Did I mention that the aliens have three sexes, but this works somehow anyway? Oh, and that she has sex with both him and the general, but tells him that her magic alien ways let her know that the general is infertile, unlike the manly, manly hero?

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Yes - I usually expect good books/movies to actually have consequences to sex like pregnancy and such. It's the bad ones that I expect to have human-alien sex as just fun.