Review: Wonderful creativity in first half, but repeated rapes made it depressing.  Incomplete ending.  You need to read the sequels.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 25, 2012
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF GRIFFINS by R. Lee Smith.STORY BRIEF:At the age of 6, Taryn discovers an abandoned egg in a forest in Washington State.  Instinctively she knows she must keep it a secret.  She hides the egg in her bedroom and keeps it warm in blankets for 15 years.  She is now 24, living in an apartment, and the egg cracks open.  A baby griffin comes out (a head and wings like an eagle, a rear end like a lion).  She consults with a magical woman Romany who tells her to kill the baby because it cannot live a good life in the human world.  Taryn has no doubt that she must take the baby to wherever the baby needs.  She tells her family she is going to work for the Life Corps in Africa and they can send mail to her through Romany.  With a couple of survival books and some camping gear Taryn follows Romany to another plane of existence, Arcadia.Taryn nearly starves to death and barely survives in this new place, but she doesn't care.  Everything she does is for the protection and health of her baby griffin whom she names Aisling.  Taryn meets a group of centaurs (part horse, part human), a minotaur (part bull, part human), and an evil wizard.Many years ago humans went to Arcadia and enslaved the centaurs, treating them with evil and raping the women.  The centaurs eventually reversed things, and enslaved the humans.  For revenge the centaurs did the same things to the humans, including rape.  Therefore centaurs hate humans.  They want Taryn to leave.  She won't.GENRE:There is no romance in this book.  It is erotic fantasy fiction with horror due to rape.REVIEWER'S OPINION:I started out charmed with this story.  I was pleased.  I was surprised.  I liked the creativity of things happening.  This was different, not just a copy of other fantasy stories.  But the last half wasn't as good.  There are many unpleasant rape scenes, either in dreams or in person.  One of them is a female human slave being raped by centaurs, an unsettling bestiality feeling.  Every sex scene is a rape of sorts except for maybe two.  Toward the end I was depressed.  Why?  Aside from the rapes, the heroine was helpless and not smart enough, which caused her own suffering in the environment as well as other ways.The wizard outsmarted Taryn and hurt her.  She was helpless, wimpy, and unable to fight his will.  Most stories need a bad guy, and he was it.  I don't want to criticize just because the heroine does something stupid.  We all do stupid things at times.  But here it was no fun.  The first time she meets him, he insists she eat several bad tasting biscuits.  She should have followed her intuition and not eaten them.  He wasn't eating any.  But she ate them and they did bad things to her.Another negative was the unfinished ending.  There are at least four books in the series.  This book introduces characters and sets things up.  It's possible that the wizard will continue being the bad guy until the final book.  I would have preferred something to provide a temporary happy feeling at the end of this book, like the Harry Potter books.  Each of those ended with a win over something.  Not enough happened here to feel good.  It's necessary to read sequels to find out what will happen to Taryn, her griffin, and others.  The griffin is about two months old by the end of this book.  He needs three years to become an adult.  I'm curious and would like to know what will happen, but I don't feel like reading three or more books to do it.  I need a little more "feel good" to my stories.One thing about Taryn, she adamantly refuses charity.  She's starving and may not survive.  When someone offers tools, food, or help, she refuses unless she can pay for it.  Initially I found that admirable.  But later I found it foolish.DATA:Kindle count story length: 8,635 (651 KB).  Swearing language: moderate to strong, including religious swear words.  Sexual language: mild.  Sexual content: violent due to repeated rapes.  Number of sex scenes: about 12.  Setting: current day Washington state, Oregon, and the fantasy world of Arcadia.  Copyright: 2006.  Genre: erotic horror fantasy fiction.