Review: The Title Is the Suck but the Book's Not Bad
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 25, 2009
Probably if Amazon allowed half stars I would give this 3 1/2 rather than just 3 stars.  I'm not going to do a wall of words description of the plot here.  All I'm going to say is that it is about an undercover cop who tries to resolve some personal problems while working to foil a gang takeover of southern California.  It's at times violent and action driven.  At other times there's a lot of sex of various descriptions in various unpleasant locations.Told in the first person, it has a darkly humorous urban fantasy feel to it.  The main character is not a hero. He tells the reader this several times. After the first couple of sexual encounters I started skimming the sex scenes.  They were a bit dull and overwritten.  The book is published by an epress with a reputation for erotic novels so I assumed the author was encouraged to push the explicit sex even when it didn't advance the plot.The beginning is action oriented and pulled me along for the ride, but about 2/3 of the way into the book the narrative slowed down to provide some exposition.  Big mistake. While the main character was reading Dracula I started to think about things that didn't work-- like the outlaw motorcycle gang giving the main character the nickname Snake "on account of my bright green eyes."  I cannot remember ever seeing a snake with green eyes.  Guess there wasn't a lot of herpetologists among the Mongols.  There was also a reference to Gollum from LotR that felt out of character.  Apparently the author has some connection to Journalfen fandomwank communities.  Smooth as butter cream frosting indeed. It's icing, I say!Finally things start to move again, but the story never regains its first momentum.  So bits of this book are quite good, but overall it's uneven.  It gets a qualified recommendation.