jstepp's review
1.0
This is, without question, the worst piece of writing which I have ever encountered. This "novel", if one can even call it that, has absolutely no redeeming value. It is filled with grammatical errors. One of the more glaring errors, involves the nauseating scene in which Kyle, the antagonist, rapes the "emancipated" body of a comatose woman. I can only assume that the author simply does not know the meaning of the word "emancipated". This conclusion is based upon the rest of this horrifically written piece of trash. She routinely writes incomprehensible sentences, and has no conception of how to actually formulate a sentence. An example of this is her use of quotations in which she has the character speak, and then ends the sentence, at which time she begins a new sentence and declares that a character has spoken. This, of course, is not how anyone actually describes a conversation within a book. From this I can only assume that J.E. Taylor has never in fact taken high school English, nor has she taken any advanced course in writing.
As bad as her grammatical errors are, they pale in comparison with the atrocious nature of the plot, insofar as there is a plot that is. The book is more of a series of rape scenes interspersed with people killing each other, rather than a "crime novel". If you're afraid of spoilers, you shouldn't be because nothing can spoil this work more than actually reading it. The "plot" is that Kyle, a serial killer/assassin/drug dealer/bad guy from an earlier work escapes from a van on the way to prison, and then proceeds to rape Steve's comatose wife, because we all need to read about that happening. The fact that people have described this work, and others by J.E. Taylor, as "believable" is outright stunning. I'm not sure if the other reviewers have no conception of reality, or just have a twisted interpretation of it, because nothing, I repeat, nothing about this so called "plot" is even remotely believable. The fact that Taylor has a combined serial killer/assassin description for a character is absurd. Serial killers feel a compulsion to kill victims based upon a particular type, whereas assassins kill for money and/or out of loyalty. Those two psychological types are completely incompatible, and Taylor just decides to put them together to make the character Kyle out to be a more dangerous individual. He's not just a serial killer who rapes women and then slits their throats while he orgasms, but he's also the top hitman for some mafia group! Oh no!
This cheap plot device shows how devoid of substance this work truly is. The protagonist, Steve, spends the novel tracking down Kyle and then exacting revenge, while of course gaining psychic powers which aid him in tracking Kyle. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention that he nearly cheats on his comatose wife with another woman, because you know that's what good guys do. Or was it more of her realism? If we go with the "realism" argument, then we have to at the same time admit that the rest of the plot is patently unrealistic. I mean, come on, psychic powers for FBI agents which allow them to heal themselves and read the minds of killers, is unrealistic. As such, we are left with two conclusions, either Steve is a horrible person, or J.E. Taylor has no idea how to write or what reality is. My bet is that it is a combination of the two.
The worst aspect of this "novel" is its blatant misogyny. Women exist solely as objects of rape and have absolutely no agency. They are perpetually victims and lack the ability to help themselves. First there is Jennifer, the comatose wife who is routinely raped by Kyle. Then there is the effectively pointless woman that Kyle meets in a bar and kills. Sara, the police officer that Steve nearly cheats with, also lacks any form of agency. She is a toy for Steve to play with, and then is captured and raped by Kyle before Steve, who was crucified at the time, saves her by psychically putting his hand in front of her throat. Literally every woman in this book who has any significance is brutally raped by Kyle. This doesn't make the book "edgy" or "dark" it just makes it a sick commentary on the role of women in society. They have no role other than to be objects of the sexual aggression of men, and a fully incapable of defending themselves. The women in this book are not human, but rather are objects. They cannot act of their own accord, and are constantly in peril. This book reads like the script to a bad grindhouse film, except for the fact that it lacks any of the merits which one can find in any other work of fiction which I have ever encountered.
The fact that this book was even published is an insult to writers everywhere, and is an insult to trees, insofar as they were cut down for this book to be printed. It is not even worth the paper that it was printed on, and the world is a worse place for it having been written. J.E. Taylor needs to find a new hobby, or at least find a way in which she can express herself "artistically" which doesn't involve rampant misogyny. Even though I am not a woman, I am offended on the behalf of all women that I have ever met. This work does more to implicitly propagate the notion that women are not equal with men, than anything which I have ever read. The females in this book are treated like women in warzones. They are objects of rape and conquest, and nothing else. Only one woman, Jessica, in the entire book "defends" herself, and even then all she does is threaten to bite off Kyle's penis if he puts it in her mouth. At which time he inserts the vibrating handle of a riding crop into her vaginal canal in order to force her to orgasm. The last part of the book, in which this scene takes place, is closer to the script of a violent pornographic film, than it is to a work of "literature". I hesitate to even use the word literature here because I feel that doing so insults every piece of prose fiction ever written, but at the same time the work intends itself to be a work of "literature" and as such I have to use the word as a comparative in order to fully address the nature and self conceptualization of the work. The last few chapters just involve Kyle raping women while Steve watches and then Ty Arris/Chris Ryan coming in, fighting Kyle and dying and becoming some sort of angel. Also, the fact that Sara kills Kyle is not an act of a woman defending herself, given that Ty/Chris had already blinded Kyle by forcing his eyeballs to explode within their sockets. Sara is merely a plot device which allows Taylor to be able to claim that the work isn't misogynistic because look here's some woman that doesn't have a big role, is brutally raped, and is saved by the psychic powers of her male protector, even though there is a psychic woman in the room, is able to kill Kyle. YAY! J.E. Taylor empowers women through violence! Oh wait, no she doesn't, she degrades them and makes them objects of violence. Also, the last couple of chapters become not just disgusting, but also completely absurd, when one realizes that almost every character is fully nude, and doesn't seem to notice or care. No this is not a brilliant philosophical commentary on the nature of clothing, nor is it a "realistic" portrayal of how people would act, insofar as nothing in this book is even remotely "realistic". It's far more realistic to have people scrambling for clothing than it is to have people psychically attacking someone. Moreover, the women who are raped seem to have no ill effects from the experience and carry on is if they had just been slapped, rather than raped. They have "white hot anger", but lack any true sense of violation. That is not "realistic", but rather a disgustingly false portrayal of the emotional state of rape victims.
The middle sections of the book are pointless. Basically Steve meets Eric, Jessica's psychic son and the stepson of Ty Arris. They room together at Quantico, and then Eric is shot, but not before he transfers his psychic powers to Steve. Why is he shot? Your guess is as good as mine, but from what I can tell it was to give Ty a reason to be involved in the plot and to get rid of a character. He, much like everyone else in this "novel", is never actually developed as a character and is merely there to give background information for later scenes in the book and to allow those who have not read Taylor's other "adults only" books to get a basic understanding of later characters like Ty and Jessica. And by basic understanding, I mean know random unconnected pieces of information about them which only serve to confuse readers who haven't suffered through End Game. I will be honest, this is the only J.E. Taylor book which I have read, and I cannot imagine how violently pornographic her "adults only" books are if this one was supposed to be mainstream. Not only are there descriptions of rape throughout, but the author goes so far as to have Kyle make the women orgasm, in order to fully take away everything from them and make them complete objects. The fact that Kyle can make the women orgasm is absolutely disgusting. The orgasm derives from pleasure and enjoyment, not suffering. Kyle's ability to make women orgasm through rape implicitly argues that yes rape can be enjoyed, and as such is not nearly as psychologically a destructive experience as it really is. These parts of the novel have nothing to do with "realistic" portrayals, but are just another example of Taylor's rampant misogyny. This book does not reveal the state of rape victims and make one empathetic towards them, but rather makes them throwaway objects that one does not actually care about.
Rather than reading this book I recommend that anyone even considering opening the book instead put it down, and do something worthwhile. You could watch paint dry, or grass grow. Maybe you could read a worthwhile piece of literature. If you have some desire to understand the psychological state of rape victims, don't bother with this work, instead read anything else which deals with the subject. Maybe you could get involved at a rape crisis center and positively contribute to society instead of wasting your time with this piece of trash. Go to a library and grab a book, any book, and it will be better written and more meaningful than this thing. The only reason that I gave it a 1 star review is because I cannot rate it any lower while at the same time rating it. This book should not be considered a novel or a piece of literature, but rather a semi-comprehensible misogynistic rant. I urge you to avoid reading this at all costs, because you cannot get your time back. You will never get back the precious minutes and hours spent reading this piece of trash. I cannot stress enough that this is not worth taking 20 minutes to even skim through. I guarantee there is a more important thing which you can do with your life instead of reading this and suffering through it. Spend time with family or friends, or read a different book. Seriously, grab a book a random, go to a book store, spin in a circle, point to a shelf, and grab a book. It will be better than this, and it will probably be far less misogynistic.
I sincerely hope that J.E. Taylor reads this review and decides to change her writing style, and actually put together comprehensible prose which is not misogynistic. According to her author bio this is herlife's dream. Well if writing misogynistic rants about rape is your dream, then she needs a new one. If writing is her dream, then she should write on another topic and take some classes at a local community college about how to properly write and how to edit for grammar. Also, she should get a new editor because whoever edited this thing deserves to be fired. The errors in grammar and lexicon should have been spotted by the person that she presumably paid to edit this thing. Instead they were left in the final edition, and just added to its terrible nature. Please, for the love of all that is decent in the world, J.E. Taylor needs to stop writing these things, and produce something which doesn't blatantly insult women and all decency there is. Stop making women objects of rape, and stop having them be objects which are able to achieve pleasure from the experience of rape. Taylor needs to grant the women of her works some agency, and let them be human beings, rather than objects and plot devices. Also, she needs to make her characters believable and sympathetic. I hope that you follow my suggestions and if you are a potential reader that you do something else, and if you are J.E. Taylor that you stop writing these pieces of trash, and do something else worthwhile, either by writing books which are good, or by giving up writing and finding a new hobby.
As bad as her grammatical errors are, they pale in comparison with the atrocious nature of the plot, insofar as there is a plot that is. The book is more of a series of rape scenes interspersed with people killing each other, rather than a "crime novel". If you're afraid of spoilers, you shouldn't be because nothing can spoil this work more than actually reading it. The "plot" is that Kyle, a serial killer/assassin/drug dealer/bad guy from an earlier work escapes from a van on the way to prison, and then proceeds to rape Steve's comatose wife, because we all need to read about that happening. The fact that people have described this work, and others by J.E. Taylor, as "believable" is outright stunning. I'm not sure if the other reviewers have no conception of reality, or just have a twisted interpretation of it, because nothing, I repeat, nothing about this so called "plot" is even remotely believable. The fact that Taylor has a combined serial killer/assassin description for a character is absurd. Serial killers feel a compulsion to kill victims based upon a particular type, whereas assassins kill for money and/or out of loyalty. Those two psychological types are completely incompatible, and Taylor just decides to put them together to make the character Kyle out to be a more dangerous individual. He's not just a serial killer who rapes women and then slits their throats while he orgasms, but he's also the top hitman for some mafia group! Oh no!
This cheap plot device shows how devoid of substance this work truly is. The protagonist, Steve, spends the novel tracking down Kyle and then exacting revenge, while of course gaining psychic powers which aid him in tracking Kyle. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention that he nearly cheats on his comatose wife with another woman, because you know that's what good guys do. Or was it more of her realism? If we go with the "realism" argument, then we have to at the same time admit that the rest of the plot is patently unrealistic. I mean, come on, psychic powers for FBI agents which allow them to heal themselves and read the minds of killers, is unrealistic. As such, we are left with two conclusions, either Steve is a horrible person, or J.E. Taylor has no idea how to write or what reality is. My bet is that it is a combination of the two.
The worst aspect of this "novel" is its blatant misogyny. Women exist solely as objects of rape and have absolutely no agency. They are perpetually victims and lack the ability to help themselves. First there is Jennifer, the comatose wife who is routinely raped by Kyle. Then there is the effectively pointless woman that Kyle meets in a bar and kills. Sara, the police officer that Steve nearly cheats with, also lacks any form of agency. She is a toy for Steve to play with, and then is captured and raped by Kyle before Steve, who was crucified at the time, saves her by psychically putting his hand in front of her throat. Literally every woman in this book who has any significance is brutally raped by Kyle. This doesn't make the book "edgy" or "dark" it just makes it a sick commentary on the role of women in society. They have no role other than to be objects of the sexual aggression of men, and a fully incapable of defending themselves. The women in this book are not human, but rather are objects. They cannot act of their own accord, and are constantly in peril. This book reads like the script to a bad grindhouse film, except for the fact that it lacks any of the merits which one can find in any other work of fiction which I have ever encountered.
The fact that this book was even published is an insult to writers everywhere, and is an insult to trees, insofar as they were cut down for this book to be printed. It is not even worth the paper that it was printed on, and the world is a worse place for it having been written. J.E. Taylor needs to find a new hobby, or at least find a way in which she can express herself "artistically" which doesn't involve rampant misogyny. Even though I am not a woman, I am offended on the behalf of all women that I have ever met. This work does more to implicitly propagate the notion that women are not equal with men, than anything which I have ever read. The females in this book are treated like women in warzones. They are objects of rape and conquest, and nothing else. Only one woman, Jessica, in the entire book "defends" herself, and even then all she does is threaten to bite off Kyle's penis if he puts it in her mouth. At which time he inserts the vibrating handle of a riding crop into her vaginal canal in order to force her to orgasm. The last part of the book, in which this scene takes place, is closer to the script of a violent pornographic film, than it is to a work of "literature". I hesitate to even use the word literature here because I feel that doing so insults every piece of prose fiction ever written, but at the same time the work intends itself to be a work of "literature" and as such I have to use the word as a comparative in order to fully address the nature and self conceptualization of the work. The last few chapters just involve Kyle raping women while Steve watches and then Ty Arris/Chris Ryan coming in, fighting Kyle and dying and becoming some sort of angel. Also, the fact that Sara kills Kyle is not an act of a woman defending herself, given that Ty/Chris had already blinded Kyle by forcing his eyeballs to explode within their sockets. Sara is merely a plot device which allows Taylor to be able to claim that the work isn't misogynistic because look here's some woman that doesn't have a big role, is brutally raped, and is saved by the psychic powers of her male protector, even though there is a psychic woman in the room, is able to kill Kyle. YAY! J.E. Taylor empowers women through violence! Oh wait, no she doesn't, she degrades them and makes them objects of violence. Also, the last couple of chapters become not just disgusting, but also completely absurd, when one realizes that almost every character is fully nude, and doesn't seem to notice or care. No this is not a brilliant philosophical commentary on the nature of clothing, nor is it a "realistic" portrayal of how people would act, insofar as nothing in this book is even remotely "realistic". It's far more realistic to have people scrambling for clothing than it is to have people psychically attacking someone. Moreover, the women who are raped seem to have no ill effects from the experience and carry on is if they had just been slapped, rather than raped. They have "white hot anger", but lack any true sense of violation. That is not "realistic", but rather a disgustingly false portrayal of the emotional state of rape victims.
The middle sections of the book are pointless. Basically Steve meets Eric, Jessica's psychic son and the stepson of Ty Arris. They room together at Quantico, and then Eric is shot, but not before he transfers his psychic powers to Steve. Why is he shot? Your guess is as good as mine, but from what I can tell it was to give Ty a reason to be involved in the plot and to get rid of a character. He, much like everyone else in this "novel", is never actually developed as a character and is merely there to give background information for later scenes in the book and to allow those who have not read Taylor's other "adults only" books to get a basic understanding of later characters like Ty and Jessica. And by basic understanding, I mean know random unconnected pieces of information about them which only serve to confuse readers who haven't suffered through End Game. I will be honest, this is the only J.E. Taylor book which I have read, and I cannot imagine how violently pornographic her "adults only" books are if this one was supposed to be mainstream. Not only are there descriptions of rape throughout, but the author goes so far as to have Kyle make the women orgasm, in order to fully take away everything from them and make them complete objects. The fact that Kyle can make the women orgasm is absolutely disgusting. The orgasm derives from pleasure and enjoyment, not suffering. Kyle's ability to make women orgasm through rape implicitly argues that yes rape can be enjoyed, and as such is not nearly as psychologically a destructive experience as it really is. These parts of the novel have nothing to do with "realistic" portrayals, but are just another example of Taylor's rampant misogyny. This book does not reveal the state of rape victims and make one empathetic towards them, but rather makes them throwaway objects that one does not actually care about.
Rather than reading this book I recommend that anyone even considering opening the book instead put it down, and do something worthwhile. You could watch paint dry, or grass grow. Maybe you could read a worthwhile piece of literature. If you have some desire to understand the psychological state of rape victims, don't bother with this work, instead read anything else which deals with the subject. Maybe you could get involved at a rape crisis center and positively contribute to society instead of wasting your time with this piece of trash. Go to a library and grab a book, any book, and it will be better written and more meaningful than this thing. The only reason that I gave it a 1 star review is because I cannot rate it any lower while at the same time rating it. This book should not be considered a novel or a piece of literature, but rather a semi-comprehensible misogynistic rant. I urge you to avoid reading this at all costs, because you cannot get your time back. You will never get back the precious minutes and hours spent reading this piece of trash. I cannot stress enough that this is not worth taking 20 minutes to even skim through. I guarantee there is a more important thing which you can do with your life instead of reading this and suffering through it. Spend time with family or friends, or read a different book. Seriously, grab a book a random, go to a book store, spin in a circle, point to a shelf, and grab a book. It will be better than this, and it will probably be far less misogynistic.
I sincerely hope that J.E. Taylor reads this review and decides to change her writing style, and actually put together comprehensible prose which is not misogynistic. According to her author bio this is herlife's dream. Well if writing misogynistic rants about rape is your dream, then she needs a new one. If writing is her dream, then she should write on another topic and take some classes at a local community college about how to properly write and how to edit for grammar. Also, she should get a new editor because whoever edited this thing deserves to be fired. The errors in grammar and lexicon should have been spotted by the person that she presumably paid to edit this thing. Instead they were left in the final edition, and just added to its terrible nature. Please, for the love of all that is decent in the world, J.E. Taylor needs to stop writing these things, and produce something which doesn't blatantly insult women and all decency there is. Stop making women objects of rape, and stop having them be objects which are able to achieve pleasure from the experience of rape. Taylor needs to grant the women of her works some agency, and let them be human beings, rather than objects and plot devices. Also, she needs to make her characters believable and sympathetic. I hope that you follow my suggestions and if you are a potential reader that you do something else, and if you are J.E. Taylor that you stop writing these pieces of trash, and do something else worthwhile, either by writing books which are good, or by giving up writing and finding a new hobby.
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