Hello, it's Heather posting today. Again, it's quite a short review today as I've been very busy. Many thanks to Dreaming Big Publications for sending this to me in exchange for an honest review.
Information
Author: Piers Anthony and Kenneth Kelly
Published: July 2017
Publisher: Dreaming Big Publications
Length: 142 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Brief Description (from Amazon)
Virtue Inverted is the first novel of a hard-hitting sword and sorcery trilogy by Piers Anthony and Ken Kelly. Benny Clout is a poor mountain boy who has found true love in Virtue the vampire. However, Virtue is not an ordinary vampire; she's actually a very nice girl. Her bites contain extraordinary power, but will that power be enough to combat the evil that awaits them?
This is about a chap named Benny who works in a pub for his
friend Jack, where he pines hopelessly for his co-worker Nadia. Everything
changes when two menacing strangers entice him into joining them on an
adventure.
Benny irked me throughout the book, from his exasperation
that Nadia would like a guy that was less attractive than he (because, of
course, liking a guy for his personality would be crazy… right?!), to his lack
of emotions when his brother randomly left. His shallow and vain attitude made
him really difficult to like, in fact I found myself pegging for a giant or
vampire to kill him at times. His feelings for Virtue developed remarkably
quickly to love, and though I’m glad that he did not take advantage of her, I
still thought she appeared more terrified of him than in love.
However, I did
like the paternal styled relationship between Jack and Benny, their friendship
was very sweet and protective. I couldn’t spot any notable spelling or grammar mistakes and
the presentation of the novel is good, including a map at the start to help
track Benny’s adventures. The plot progresses snappily, and there is a good
amount of dialogue and description to keep the story moving.
There’s a vast number of women that have descriptions made
up mostly of their voluptuous factors. The women rarely engaged in fighting or
anything really aside from occasional bar-work, and frequently were introduced
naked for some bizarre reason, which made them seem like sexual objects.
Furthermore, there’s frequent joking references to sexual abuse, groping and
rape – none of which are amusing at all, I wasn't keen of how lightly these
issues were treated. There’s also some insinuations that being a less macho man
is somehow inferior, which I also disliked.
It’s probably very obvious that this book was not at all to
my taste, but that’s not to say that it’s not written well; the description in the prologue being especially lovely. Let me know your
thoughts on it below.
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