A review by gmv
Silk & Steel by Ariana Nash

adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Overall score: 1.5/5 stars
Entertainment: 5/5 stars

The writing was great.
The contents were awful.
Entertainment value is at 5 stars for all the wrong reasons.

Warning. My review is warped. Proceed with caution.

I highly enjoy Cornell Collins as the narrator—extremely high. He is my favorite narrator. I would listen to anything he says, even if the plot was utter nonsense. I have to emphasize this because he is the only reason why I continued reading the book. 

It has everything I dislike. The biggest would be rape, instant love, breeding kink, one-dimensional characters, regression of character development, miscommunication, inconsistent personalities, and repetition of information we already know. I would be more forgiving if there was an actual plot or world-building, but the book is heavily character-focused, and it’s tough not to nitpick when that’s all we have.

I try to avoid the first-person view because the character often repeats the same thoughts in different situations. It’s mentally exhausting. I get it. Let’s move on. My brain wasn’t being stimulated enough, and it was getting harder to care for the characters and the little story it had. It was rape, then angst, then more rape, then dubious straight sex, then more angst, then more rape, and talking about babies, and then more rape. I wanted to read m/m to avoid the breeding kink and the straight sex, but this book reminded me, “Oh, you want the gays to have some fun? Not on my watch.”

It was marketed as a male and male romance, but all I got was vaginas in my face. I didn’t sign up for that. There was so much that I felt like I was the cuck the entire time for a straight couple. Lysander killed my favorite character. The Queen was a boss ass bitch that helped the kingdom get their shit together. And he had to go and ruin it. If the author didn’t want me to see these two having happy gay sex nor let me have my Queen doing bitchy Queen things.

Then so be it. 

This led me to the entertainment I created, which made the entire thing like a high school play. I am not going to be an unwilling participant in this party.

The boys are so dramatic—to the point that it is ludicrously asinine. Cornell did a fantastic job of making the characters come alive with the flare of the melodrama, and I wanted nothing more for Eroan and Lysander to go through more pain and suffering. They only wanted to be clever with the “plot” demanded, and then they reverted back to being dumb dumbs. I pictured the actors on stage holding their script, making a face before acting it out, all fully clothed. When the scene changes, I see giant beefy bronze dragons pulling the art pieces off the stage and bringing in new props. This immensely helped with all the penis-inside-vagina sex scenes.

Then, my view changed again when the humans hit the scene.

It changed from a play to a reality TV that humans watch. And it all went downhill from there. I was constantly laughing. I imagined cameras everywhere as the dragons and elves were at each other throats. The humans are way further in advanced technology that I can NOT unsee humans from the mainland watching the drama unfold. No wonder the dragons are dying out, and there are so few elves. The humans felt sorry for them and didn’t want to overtake the island. That’s my head cannon, and I am sticking to it.

To sum it up in the words of Eroan and Lysander:

I didn’t care....
   ....I didn’t feel.
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