very purple...

[ratcreature]

So I'm nearly finished with The Valley of Horses and the sex scenes make me want to spork my eyes. I think fanfic (of both the slash and het kind) has spoiled me with its availability (and normalcy) of at least decent sex scenes. That is, if the story is okay, the sex scenes may not be my thing, or may be gratuitous IMO, but they usually won't make me wish for a spork, so when that happens in original fiction I'm caught unprepared, though the heavy angst probably should have been a warning sign.

After a nearly ridiculous amount of overblown angst and melodrama where both Alya and Jondalar misinterpret the other and think "Oh woe! S/He thinks I'm repulsive!" or "Oh woe! I'm never going to find a mate!" etc. etc. for many, many pages, they finally have sex and it's very-- "purple" really doesn't really encompass it. I would quote, but the sex scene that I couldn't continue reading without posting to my LJ about it has been going on for pages already and is not over yet, and a short quote really wouldn't do it justice.

The book's sex scenes are certainly nowhere near the worst I've read, but still quite bad.

Comments

[catmoran.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot! I read the first few books back when they came out, and now I'm getting flashbacks.

Come to think of it, I think it's those books that turned me off to het smut.

Thank goodness for gay porn!!

[ratcreature]

Sorry about your flashbacks, but I just had to share the pain. I mean, there's only so much I could take before I needed some support...

But not all het smut is full of throbbing passages, moist depths, proud manhoods and the like. At least not in good het fanfic. But yeah, fanfic has definitely raised my porn standard.