LynneC’s review of Hermes Online by Rose Anderson
Erotic Romance novella published by Siren Apr 11
The author sent me this book, and I was pleased to review it. Siren is a big company, but usually passes under the wire, except when it publishes one of its outrageous sexxoring ménages. But this is a sweet erotic, heterosexual, about two people falling in love. Or being in love already and not knowing it. Or something like that.
Vivienne is a town planner, and she is trying to save an old house from demolition by re-purposing it. At night, on her home computer, she dreams erotic dreams and eventually writes a story, publishing it online. She is contacted by someone and they build their connection through email, then messenger, then video. Eventually they agree to meet. There she finds the man who has been contacting her—but that’s the end of the story, and I don’t want to spoil it.
The story is in the first person, so we only get Vivienne’s point of view. I found this story a bit claustrophobic, and I wasn’t always in sympathy with Vivienne, so I would have preferred a third-person narration. There were also Mary Sue elements, although this isn’t completely a Mary Sue story. But the writing, the compliments she gets, and then the communication made me somewhat uncomfortable, as if the author was deeply embedded into her story.
Also, Vivienne is completely TSTL. Let’s see, she publishes a story on a public site, initiates communication with one of the commenters, and then continues into mutual masturbation and long descriptions of her body. She tells the truth, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that he is doing the same. He could be a she, he could be a teen having fun, he could be a crazed stalker. And she reveals her body to him first, naked, online, without showing her face. This isn’t trust, it’s rank stupidity. That’s why I had to give the book the grade I have done. That and a few other reasons, but that is the main reason. Internet security is the last thing on Vivienne’s mind, but it should have been the first. Exchanging sexy talk, okay, if you first randomise your IP address so whoever it is can’t trace you through it. Video chat? Messenger? Hell, no. And then at the end of the story, she goes to meet him in a hotel room. If he’d turned up with an axe and chopped her into little pieces, I might have enjoyed the story more. Or if she’d taken a gun or told a friend where she’d be. Anything, really.
I’ve recently written a story that involves stranger sex, and my editor was insistent I show that my heroine wasn’t stupid. She went to a reputable agency, told someone where she’d be and made sure she got there first, as well as taking some weapons with her. And she knew she was still taking a risk. Why didn’t Rose Anderson’s editors make sure she put those safeguards into place? I’m not talking about setting a good example, I’m talking TSTL here.
The “You’ve got mail” chirp of AOL – does AOL still do that? I had no idea the company was still going! Gets irritating after a while. There are a number of repetitions that could have been edited out or restated. The heroine’s long, straight red hair, for example, and the hero’s large hands (his large strangler’s hands?). It goes past reminders and continuity and enters repetition, where the reader is saying, “Yes, I know about his hands.”
I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what Hermes had to do with the story. True, he is the messenger of the gods, but he doesn’t appear in the story, unless I missed that part. And there are other messengers who would have done. I kept expecting him to pop up and he never did. I get the sneaky feeling he is literally the thing most editors despise – the deus ex machina.
The sex is sweet and vanilla. For most of the story, it amounts to mutual masturbation. Lots and lots of it. And then some more. It progresses the story, in a way, because each time they reveal a little more about each other, but that could have been done faster. There are just accounts of her going to work, dealing with the old house, coming back to her lonely apartment, eating and then going online. And yes, you do get the details.
There is no villain, nobody who opposes what they want to do, and although there is a narrative about the old house, it doesn’t really figure in the main story, and it doesn’t link in. Remember the gun. As Jennifer Cruisie said, “If you produce a gun in chapter one, you’d better have used it by chapter six.” It seems like it doesn’t belong.
The language is odd. At times it is very old-fashioned, as if it is a historical romance. And some really strange sentences. Like, “My tenuous emotional state couldn’t bear lingering over” to which I say, “huh?” She embodies emotions and body parts a little too often and there is too much use of the passive verb and narrative, “telling” instead of “showing.”
The twist at the end isn’t really a twist. It’s easy to work out what’s going on, and I think the story might have worked better had the author been frank from the start and told the story from the viewpoint of both characters, their conflicts and anxieties working to build the tension.
I do think that if Rose Anderson had a thorough edit and incorporated all the elements of the story a little better, she might have a good story here. As it is, she’s a work in progress, and while some of the aspects of her work interest me, others make me turn off. A long mutual masturbation session between a man in jeans and a woman in sweats isn’t really my cup of tea. But it might be yours. However, her heroine deserves to die for the errors she makes in security.
Grade: D
Summary:
Imagine if you will a story begun in the halls of Mount Olympus long before this modern tale was conceived. It was a time when the god Hermes flew on his winged sandals and carried messages from the gods to the mortals below. And between that time and this, couriers became postmen and handwritten letters became bytes. It is said the gods still speak to those who listen… Left bruised and brokenhearted after a cruel breakup, Vivienne Bennet finds herself mired in a world of self-doubt. To her surprise, she receives an email that challenges her to rediscover the sensual woman she once was. Together Vivienne and the enigmatic man known only as S embark upon the world of anonymous Internet communication where suggestive emails lead to erotic chat, where cybersex leads to Skype, and C2C sends both into the arms of a love they’d believed lost forever.
Read an excerpt.
