Review: Eyes like a Rapist.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2012
Oh boy.  I downloaded this little gem and read it out of boredom this last weekend.  I was kind of surprised by the content, it wasn't what I was expecting, especially based on the story description and what it left out (sex in shifted form infers both partners are shifted, and that rape is not involved, at least to me).Raise your hand if you find bestiality, coercive relationships, pseudo-incest (not technically incest but still psychologically traumatizing) and rape, sexy?  If that's you, you're gonna love this story.  Well actually, you might not, because it's really not all that well thought out or written.As a child growing up, Rachael knows her family is different.  They are Amon-Kai, a race of beings of which little is known or told to the reader.  We only know that they have pale green eyes and can see really well in the dark.  Also the males have special abilities and grow to a very large size, and as well, turn into murderous beasts every full moon; that is unless they find their perfect mate, and bond her to him (and while I'm at it, what is with all of this bonding forever crap?  She writes about it in every story, where the woman must be "bonded" to the male, permanently.  As tempting as it is to go into a rant about the myth of monogamy (as in one partner and one partner only, for life) and how sick I am of seeing this stupid-ass trope, I'll refrain. ) Then they are saved from their curse.  Rachael's older foster brother, Richard, is also Amon-Kai.  And conveniently, his perfect mate also happens to be his sister.  However, the children's mother is disgusted by the thought of her daughter being forced into a nasty, coercive relationship in which her daughter will have no agency and her son will be allowed to sneak into his sister's room at night and molest her, after she comes of age.  After a fight with her husband, she kidnaps her daughter and they move to a land far away.  Sort of.  Years later, Rachael has moved on with her life and gave up looking for Richard years prior.  Guess she didn't have the all consuming desire for him that he had for her...yet another bad sign.  However, it isn't long before Richard shows up, having finally found her, since he never stopped looking to begin with.As adults, Rachael is engaged to another man who is portrayed in classic Evangeline fashion as weak, smarmy, somewhat effeminate, and up to no good.  No doubt Elise's "fiancé" , referenced in her last book, Revealed and who will surely play a part  in her upcoming book Persued, will be shown in the same unflattering light.  It would be a problem bigger than Anderson could ever handle or write about should the fiancé be an okay dude.  She simply doesn't know how to bring a couple together without coercion or a bad situation that forces them together, or making "the other man" or "the other woman" bad people so that the good ones will want to get together.  Like a man who turns into a murderous monster every full moon, and MUST have bonding sex with the woman he knows belongs to him (who cares what she thinks about that) to calm him down.  Not cool.  I would love for her to prove me wrong.  The only reason I bother reading any stories of hers are that I've always seen a spark of something special with her writing.  But I digress; further along in the story, there is a scene in which Richard in his beast form, rapes Rachael, who sacrifices herself in order to prevent him from eating her friend who is unconscious.  This scene was sickening and completely unsexy.  I nearly stopped reading there.  This is the second book of Anderson's that I've read, in which a woman who technically consents but is repulsed by the actual act happening the entire time and tries to leave the hero after because of it.  If that's not rape, then it's something else that's just about as nasty. Just because her body reacted to it, does not make it any less rape.  It really troubles me that Anderson uses that in her stories to justify the male's actions (for example, her men often say things like "you may say otherwise but your body doesn't lie" in dubious consent/rape scenes.  It kind of scares me a little that her writing seems to infer that a woman becoming wet during rape, means that she actually wants it.) After this happens, Rachael attempts to cut Richard off and marry her fiance, only to have him show up on her wedding day and seduce her.  Slowly she gives into the needs of her body and realizes within the last two pages that THIS IS WHAT SHE REALLY WANTS.  Right?That the hero would want to force this situation on the heroine, struck me as rather unloving and very very selfish.  It made me dislike him as a person.  If he really cared and wanted her to be happy, he'd leave  her alone.  Or at least quit dressing up their relationship in romantic BS language when this story is about as romantic and sexy as watching a girl get raped by a dog.  But, then again, YMMV.