Lost in the Valley that Time Tries to Ignore by Monstrous Love

Lost in the Valley that Time Tries to Ignore by Monstrous Love

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I like when the 'you' in 'Choose your own adventure' books is female (specifically those books designed to be read by adults and likely to include 'adult situations', like this book here). Not often the case. Oh sure, many try to be vaguely unisex enough to be either but largely fail at that (most, though, just bluntly have the 'you', as in the character the reader is reading as 'you', be male). And by trying to be vaguely unisex - look at the book description here: I've had little sleep the last week so I might have missed it, but it doesn't actually say here that the 'you' is female, though if not female then the rest of the description would involve gay porn (since there's stuff about hunky men). The ovi. . . . ovi . . . whatever big long word that means something like 'implanting eggs' might imply that the 'you' is female but . . . well, that baby that exploded out from an egg from a human had been in implanted in a man (in Space Balls, which was a parody of Aliens, which I haven't seen, so I don't actually know if, but suspect, that it was a man who had an egg laid in him there as well). And, going weirdly into science and crap, it's the male sea-horse that carries the baby eggs. Or some crap like that. Maybe he just sits on them. Considering we are talking about a fragile looking floaty animal, I don't think we are talking about 'sitting on them'.

Did I mention I haven't had much sleep in the last week? What, you can tell? heh.

Okay then: This story involves a young woman who has the ability to see the future. Because of this she gets given a kind of crappy name that I can't recall at the moment but probably is or something like 'Little-Know-It-All'. Well, the reader is this young woman, and the action is from . . . the you point of view, as that young woman. Who goes out into the fantasy world to try to save her people. Who are: 1) human; 2) kind of weak ass humans.

She goes on a journey and encounters: winged men (male harpies), insect men (flies, ants, spider), snakemen, and a male dragon. Judging by this story, there are no women on this planet except that 'you' - sorry, I mean judging by the journey taken. Though 'she' knows there are women because they get mentioned. They just are never encountered for whatever reason.

There's some kind of weird paper and pencil thing you are supposed to do to read this story. Since I assumed the sexually explicit stuff would be down the 'oops, you rolled badly, or your numbers are too low/wrong', I tended (except once) to read the 'you failed and got fucked' path before journeying on. Figuring it'd be interesting to do it that way as I'd be reading both paths anyway. Granted I can't 'win' that way, but then I can't 'lose' either. Since I wasn't exactly playing 'the game' (and this does describe itself as a 'game book' or something like that).

Right, so - Sex - lots. With various male creatures, all of whom are in some way monstrous (see above, you know, the part where I mentioned winged men, insects, snakes, dragon - okay, just read these words in this side-comment).

Oh right - I gave this three stars but then upped it to 4. Well, to be more exact, I rated it 3.5, which normally means I put it on that shelf, then 'rate it' as 3 (since we don't have half stars and stuff). But I gave an extra .25 when I realized something - 1) the critters meet weren't exactly 'new' or 'original' but 2) are kind of 'unique' in either what I've read lately, or unique in that they weren't the 'common' critters normally faced (like, normally I tend to come across mostly shifters of some kind, vampires, and/or zombies (though, to be fair, zombies normally are the other kind that fall in horror genre not fantasy, though I've encountered one or two that were in the fantasy genre).

I'm about 88% confident that, if I were to read this review some time in the future, I'd squeal in horror and kill it with fire. For being.... um.... really incoherent. And every other word is probably mispelled. I probably should eat someday. I mean sleep. Though eating would be good too.

Rating: 3.67

July 6 2017



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