The Monster Botherer

    This is one for all the Friday 13th fans that wished Jason would have a little bit more fun with the promiscuous camp counsellors. Slashers have never been wholly human, something monstrous lies within, which would explain why they keep getting better after being laid out in a morgue. The author takes this idea and lets the slasher be a whole new kind of monster, a “Hunter”. Physically human, but faster, sneakier, stabbier and has the whole “immortal” thing going for them, if they get killed all they need to do is bury themselves for an undetermined amount of time and they pop back up, fresh as a daisy and ready to do some more killing.  The story starts, as all good slasher movies do, at a summer camp. Sawyer (the hunter) has slaughtered his way through the camp and has cornered his final girl. He doesn’t want to kill her, he won’t kill her, he wants to do much much more to her instead. As he embraces his “perfect prey” he’s shot in the head by police and whisked awa...

      Anna has finally found her dream job working in a museum dedicated to gargoyles, a bit niche perhaps, but I see the appeal. She even has a crush on one of the “stone carvings”. During a robbery attempt she accidentally wakes her stony sweetheart and wouldn’t you know it, they’re fated mates. While Frey, our ancient gargoyle tries to convince Anna of this while simultaneously trying to woo the literal pants off her, she is running around trying to solve all the problems the world is throwing at her, especially the one that leaves a giant gargoyle frozen in her living room during daylight hours.  Heartsong is a mix of romance and mystery, with less lovey dovey stuff than I would expect from a “monster romance novel”. While the mystery was genuinely quite good, I didn’t see some of the twists coming, and certainly couldn’t work out who the “bad guy" was, the romance was hard to get through. I swung wildly from thinking Frey should back off a little, then onto feel...

  Just before we start, a little warning. “Feathers so Vicious” is a dark romantasy and includes some themes that may be upsetting to others. Your mental health is more important than reading a book (or a book review for that matter). Triggers include rape, miscarriage, bdsm/pain play, anal, MFM and child abuse. More info can be found on Liv Zander’s website.  Romantasy is absolutely a gateway drug to monster romance. We want our love interests a little beastlier, a little rougher than the perfect humanish offerings most romances give us. Dark romantasy pushes that even further, playing with the term monster out to its full potential. In “Feathers so Vicious” we are confronted by the physical kind and the emotional kind, and as the author so aptly states “What this book doesn’t contain is a hero, because villains do it so much better” and she’s quite right. There is a sense of absolute helplessness here, there is no one to really save the day. Only make it a little better. Gal...