Rogue by Debra Dunbar

Rogue by Debra Dunbar




This is the second Dunbar story I'll be pausing (maybe permanently pausing). Not in a row, there was a short story in between.

What's the problem this time? Well, the story is verging on ‘creepy but hot’ territory, but it’s more the weird and inconsistent personality given for the lead character (this being a solo POV effort (at least up to this point in the book). That POV being a female werewolf named Sabrina (and called by Karl, the werebear, as Brina) who is second in command in the same werewolf pack Brent is the alpha of and that Aria hangs out with.

Sabrina is described in a way I’ve seen a werewolf described before – in the Mercy Thompson series. But maybe I’m being unfair to the werewolf in both series. Both are kind of prissy, the kind who prefers applying make-up immediately after shifting back into human, and gets nauseated at the sight of raw food. Keep that in mind, by the way, nauseated reactions.

Let’s move past that – it isn’t a reason that I dislike the werewolf, after all, so let’s move on.

Sabrina, like Brent before her (as in like how Brent was described in the prior story and book in this series, with Northern Lights being that prior book), Sabrina hasn’t exactly had much luck with finding a mate. In her case there’s a problem of dominance. She’s just too dominant to find a mate – the submissive are too submissive, as in she doesn’t want a submissive mate, and the dominants don’t want anything to do with her because she’s higher up the pecking order – and there’s a distance issue for non-pack wolves. (This isn’t the only part where I felt I was in a BDSM book, referring her to all this talk about dominants and submissives).

So she’s horny when she spots a hot guy walk out of the woods. But she’s confused. Because it’s a bear (well, he currently is in human form). Bears have been invited before to the annual BBQ but this is the first time someone actually took them up on it. This is both the prologue and Karl is the bear.

Naturally, Sabrina proceed to spend all night humping Karl the bear.

Then 11 months pass and it’s the start of the actual book (as in past prologue part). Apparently a rogue bear has been killing humans and Sabrina has been tasked to deal with it. A bear will assist her (there’s a back and forth about how bears would normally handle it, but no bears available . . . so Sabrina will handle the issue . . . and will be assisted by a bear . . . a kind of wtf moment early in the book).

Sabrina and Karl then go hunt the rogue.

Sounds interesting, right? Some might find it more interesting, some, like me, might find it less interesting that the entire hunt finds Sabrina alternating with disgust and drooling over Karl, while Karl, in turn, walks everywhere naked with a very large erection. Constantly.

But let’s turn to that disgust as it is one of the reasons I have to pause this book.

Karl, being a thoughtful bear ‘courting’ a wolf, drops a fish out of his mouth (while he is a bear) in front of Sabrina. Sabrina is a wolf at the time. Sabrina acts like that kid in ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ in reacting with disgust, but tentatively takes a few bites to appease the bear (or in the case of the film, the human kid bites the fish the dragon gave them). Do you recall the part where I mentioned that Sabrina is a wolf? Yeah, well, apparently this wolf just hates raw fish and raw food. How . . . confusing. Biting a few bites physically nauseated Sabrina.

Before and after this Sabrina had some observations about Karl that are worded in the same way as Karl presenting her with the fish. Thinking to herself certain thoughts about Karl. Like how there’s these gold flecks in his eyes which show how there’s this darkness behind him. How . . . this that and the other. Just stuff conveyed with disgust and waves of nausea. These thoughts presented in paragraphs and in almost every case the paragraphs would suddenly switch track and close with something like ‘these thoughts oddly turn me on; I’m becoming aroused by his darkness and roughness’.

There’s a way to convey the idea I believe the author is going for, but the author chose an odd way to go about it. She presented a bunch of negatives then suddenly remembered, oops, Sabrina is supposed to be becoming horny about all this, let’s tack on a sentence to show she’s getting aroused. But without modifying any of the prior word choices or sentences. Leaving the reader with the impression that Sabrina is both nauseated and aroused, and possibly aroused by things that disgust her.

I didn’t actually stop there – after the 20th such description, I mean. No, I actually stopped much later when Sabrina is trying to impress upon a human law enforcer that ‘bad stuff is happening’ while the law enforcer is just all like ‘nooo humans good, shifters bad, and there’s no law against selling bullets’. Basically, what I’m saying is that the story is filled with waves of disgusted arousal, sexualized creatures (Karl literally mentions that he’d do Sabrina in her wolf form), and the non-disgusting parts are . . . both frustrating and boring me. What exactly am I supposed to read? I don’t like Karl, I don’t like Sabrina (and everything is from Sabrina’s point of view), and the story-line, while not ‘crap’, is ‘super boring’.

So I’m, unfortunately, pausing yet another Dunbar story. Possibly forever paused.

Rating: --

August 14 2017




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