Review: it was alright
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 14, 2013
I grabbed Mislead from my local library. It is sci-fi erotica (erotic spcae-opera?) with the added bonus of vampires. Yep, vampires. I have to admit vampires in space was a new one for me. The only other examples I can think of are a couple B rated flicks from the 90s and theSunset (Pact Arcanum)series, which is in a whole different genre.Interesting choice of characters aside, this was essentially a hundred pages of two vampires having copious amounts of sex. It eventually felt a little bit like they had a list of sexual positions that had to be laboriously worked through and checked off before the thin plot could progress. The lack of substantial plot isn't really a complaint though. I can't claim to read erotica for the plot anyway. There was enough to give the story some structure and that's enough for me. But really the sex, sex, and more sex with not much in-between got a little repetitive. (I know, I know it's fair to ask what I'm doing reading erotica in the first place if I'm inclined to such opinions.)I really liked Derek. He was so willing to put his emotions out there that it was endearing. I vacillated between really liking and hating Sable though. When she was her strong, self assured self I adored her. But then as soon as she found herself in Derek's embrace she morphed into this weepy, damaged thing. Oddly enough I really liked Derek's assistant for some reason. He was barely in the book, but I felt like his dialogue had a really strong voice for some reason. I found myself looking forward to his brief appearances.Ms. Day's writing is clean and easy to read. There were also a few really funny passages, usually resulting from someone's frustration. I have to admit to not being comfortable her choice of language during the frequent sex scenes however. I generally find that from a readers perspective [the only one I know] there are two ways to write said scenes (ok there are probably more, but for the purposes of this example two will suffice). Descriptions can be kept light and either biologically accurate or somewhat obscured or they can be hard and emphatic. It's completely a matter of personal taste which one someone prefers, but I don't like when sex scenes are described using the harder, cruder language, even when the activities described are otherwise exactly the same. Not for any real prudish reason, I just find them jarring and it pulls me from the narrative. It feels so much more like cheap porn than classy erotic art then (even if the distinction is only in my mind). This is one such novel. Despite that, I read it in an afternoon and enjoyed it well enough.