No More Stars

This week I had to make a difficult choice about certain content I publish here and I am not sharing it in a post to justify my reasons for taking it down.

But like any therapy, writing is one of mine so am I sharing it here. You may or may not have noticed that I took down all of the posts reviewing the first five stories from the Claimed Among The Stars anthology I’ve been reading.

I bought the anthology for under $1 at the Kobo store because I wanted to read some alien romance and escape from reality, especially since half of my fictional crushes are aliens.

The anthology was described as a mix of alien love stories which could either be dark and steamy or nice and easy, the latter probably being just good old sweet romantic moments without too much naughtiness.

I was wrong.

The biggest turnoff for me that prevented me from continuing to review each story was how every single one of them so far had the same cliches:

1. Main female character who is independent but doesn’t seem to have much of a background and there’s sometimes no description of what she looks like. Then there’s a hot male alien who can’t seem to do anything without a mate, literally. Like in one story, one of the guys had to find a mate before a certain age or he’d die because that’s how his race’s biology is which made no sense, and another was these twin brothers were not allowed to go off-world without a mate! Okay but why?

2. The same cliche of one or both of them are on a cruise ship until it gets damaged for very little or unexplained reasons, forcing them to evacuate into an escape pod which crashes on an unknown world. Sometimes the planet isn’t even described at all but it leads to the characters meeting or becoming more intimate if they already have prior.

3. All of the sex scenes are very erotic. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I am okay with reading sex in books, but you know what I love even more when it comes to sex in any form of entertainment? When the sex is special, not too rough and racy to a point where I feel like I am just reading porn and it takes place in the right place and time so that it means something: the moment to seal the love between the two characters rather than just doing it for the hell of it. The also did a lot of mouth stuff which I’m not a fan of, nor am I a fan of the usage of the words “cock” and “pussy”.

When I started to read the sixth story, one instant turnoff for me was when the main chick’s love interest threatened to take her over his knee if she did not sit still when the lifepod was descending. She chose to see it as seductive. Even though he went straight back to sweet talk afterward, that was just a big no for me. A certain trilogy I despise also has used that tactic.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am sure the author of that particular story has written some other things that aren’t like that but reading this anthology, it started to feel more and more like a chore as time went by. I kept going after the third story because I tried to be optimistic that there would eventually be something different and I liked the fact that all of the stories had nice happy endings as well. What I did like about the first story is that the main female was also an alien so that was a nice touch, but three more stories in, it seemed like nothing had changed and I didn’t want to subject myself to reading something I was no longer enjoying. I tried to keep reading without reviewing each story and thought about just writing a summary instead, but still, nothing was getting better.

So yeah, there won’t be any more posts of from the anthology and I will not be continuing to read it. But don’t worry, I still have plenty of other books to read. What’s funny is that I am still reading 12 Dukes of Christmas and there’s at least one sex scene in each of them, and sometimes it gets steamy but the intercourse itself, is not overdone so it’s no wonder I’m still reading it even if some things in each plot are similar. But there is also more to it, maybe I just like regency romance stories more and will only want to read sci-fi romance that takes the same route so that it’s more meaningful.

👽Emily