Really Unusual Bad Boys by MaryJanice Davidson

Grade: C+

Reading a MaryJanice Davidson book is kind of like chewing on a strawberry-flavored Bubble Yum bubblegum. It tastes awesome and you can amuse yourself for a half an hour with it blowing enormous bubbles, but then it loses flavor, and you’re stuck with this big glob of rubber-like, tasteless thing in your mouth and you can’t decide whether you should wrap it up in a piece of notebook paper and throw it away or just swallow it. The dialogue is funny, the sex is hot, but like Bud Lite, it tastes great, but less filling, which is not a good thing, because an hour later (if you’re a face-stuffer like me), you’ll be looking for something else to eat. I had a good time reading this anthology about three brothers looking for mates and though the men were nothing more than talking, walking Ken Dolls with everlasting erections, it was the women that really made me want to tear my hair out and stab myself repeatedly in the eye. The first one is an obnoxious, loud-mouthed bitch, the second one is that creepy Kate Beckinsale character from Pearl Harbor, and the third one… I can’t remember anything about her, except that she was black. Whoo-hoo.

When I was in high school, I hung out with a bunch of losers who wore a lot of black, talked about suicide all the time (though none of them ever really went for it, assholes), listened to a lot of goth/industrial music, and cut themselves on the arm or the legs when they got bored. I mean, those guys were a bunch of really depressing retards who were a drag to be around, and after a while, I had enough of their bullshit and ditched them for a happier, albeit more melodramatic crowd: the theater people. None of that has anything to do with the first story except the heroine, Lois Commoner (har-har) kills herself in the beginning of the book. She really, really does. Why, you ask? Lois was a police detective who was recently assigned to permanent desk duty because she horribly injured herself on the job and one night, while feeling depressed because she is all alone in the world and her knee—her fucking knee—hurts, so she swallows one too many pills and wakes up in paradise. Couldn’t she have shot herself in the face instead with her standard-issue nine millimeter Glock? Anyway, she wakes up in this Eden-like place where a big ass puma is only inches away from her face, and before she can scream, he transforms himself into a tall, gorgeous, blond man with an enormous penis, and proclaims her as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his entire life. Luuucky.

I’m a recovering Catholic and don’t really know what to believe about the whole heaven-and-hell thing, but this woman was a pathetic piece of shit who threw herself a pity party and decided she couldn’t hack it anymore, so she kills herself, and she’s rewarded for it? In this alternate reality where she wakes up, she is adored by all and they make her their princess?! Double U Tee Eff, mate! Hell, if I knew for sure I was going to wake up in Paradise where I can eat as much food as I want without gaining an ounce and have lots of sex with a gorgeous blond dude with an enormous penis, I would have killed myself a long time ago! That’s BULLSHIT, dude! But you know, I’m going to try and not let my personal issues interfere with my review of this book, and not talk about it anymore. It stops NOW.

Anyway, this is a standard MaryJanice Davidson story where the dialogue and the bantering come in rapid-fire deliveries and the sex is always hard, fast, and fun, but there’s really nothing else to it. All we really learn of Lois is that she wakes up in this beautiful utopian place with a man who is willing to give her heaven and heart, but for ninety percent of the book, she whines about nothing but going home. Why would she want to go home? Her career is over, she has no family or friends, and definitely no sex life. Hell, she killed herself to get away from it. As for Damon, the crown-prince who wants Lois to be his mate, we know nothing about him except he’s got nice blond hair, hard abs, and a big dick. There’s some talk of a Bridefight, where all the eligible men in the kingdom have a royal rumble and the winner gets to marry a special woman (who happens to be Lois), and for a while I thought there would be some tension involving Damon and his brothers (and dad) fighting over Lois, but no dice. Damon wins with virtually no effort on his part and he gets to marry Lois. The end. Oh, and for some reason, Lois’ mom, who died in car accident when Lois was younger, shows up because as it turned out, she wasn’t dead, she just slipped into the same universe that Lois is occupying. Oh, Lord, I think my nose is bleeding. Excuse me.

The second story is about Damon’s younger brother Maltese (like the falcon!) pining for a woman of his own because Damon seems happy with his marriage to Lois and he wants marital bliss for himself. One day, while he’s masturbating in the bathtub (or something), thinking of the perfect woman, whattaya know, a woman lands right into his tub. Annie is a soldier who’s all “yay, women’s rights!” and “booo, I don’t want to be a mom and a wife on a farm, I want to be a soldier!” and “yay, I’m fighting for my country!” and she says this shit over and over like she was one of those dolls that talk if you pull her string in the back. She’s like GI Joe Barbie, except without the grit and the toughness. Like I said, she reminded me a little bit of that Kate Beckinsale character in Pearl Harbor, that awful piece of shit. She had no real thoughts, no real feelings, no substance. Unlike Lois, however, she was yanked out of her world just when she thought she finally had a purpose, only to become a playmate to some bored prince.

I think this story had the most potential, but we don’t really get to know either of the leads, and they don’t have a lot of “alone time” together, either. What we do get more of is loud-mouthed, obnoxious Lois who pops up in weird, inopportune times, so we can have more of her “wisdom”. We also get a secondary love story involving Lois’ mom and Damon’s dad, the king. Gross. I don’t know how Annie and Maltese fall in love when they don’t even get five minutes to talk and get to know each other, but they do find the time to get horizontal, where Annie tells Maltese she loves him and he tells her he loves her. I don’t understand it at all because they DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER!

An interesting subplot pops up involving these desert nomads who are perceived as enemies of the SandLand people because they don’t speak the same language, but luckily, Annie is an expert of languages and offers to learn the nomads’ language. Unfortunately, this subplot goes nowhere (Nomads who? What nomads? Do you see any nomads here? I see no nomads!) and I got the feeling that it was just a half-assed effort of the author to give Annie some kind of purpose, but it fails miserably.

Because I was so dismayed and disappointed with the other two, I didn’t want to read the last story, but I thought, “hey, it’s only 66 pages and like most of MaryJanice Davidson’s books, it will be mostly dialogue, so it won’t take too long to get through.” Boy, was I wrong. It took me 2 hours to finish because I kept finding other shit to do. This last story is about the youngest of the brothers, Shakira—err, Shakar. He likes to hunt stuff and goes on little hunting trips, but one day, he wakes up and realizes that he’s not in the SandLand anymore. He encounters a black chick named Rica, who lives in weird post-apocalyptic world (or so I thought) where most people died of a plague and within ten minutes of knowing her, they’re already having sex. There’s no need for Shakar to explain to Rica where he comes from or what he truly is because Rica’s mother was a native of the SandLands who told Rica all about that other world (how convenient!). Fast forward two months (character development? What’s that?) and Rica is pregnant with Shakar’s baby and Shakar is missing his home.

Luckily, Rica’s dad was a super inventor genius who had created a machine that would take them back to the SandLands (there’s that convenience thing again), and they go back to the SandLands only for Rica to find out that Shakar is not yet her mate because she still has to fight all these women for him in a tournament called the Groomfight. Shakar doesn’t think Rica can fight all the cat-women and live and it would be bad for the baby, so he proposes that they go back to Rica’s homeworld, but Rica wants to stay and fight for her man. I don’t know why she would want to fight for him, though. They don’t even know each other. Seriously, there isn’t a scene where these two just talk and shoot the shit, like find out what their individual hobbies are or if Rica would ever let Shakar stick it up her butt. Hell, I don’t know… something! ANYTHING!

If you’re worried that Rica gets hurt in the Groomfight, I will tell you right now that you should save your worries for when our President gets our country blown up, and don’t give any more thought to dear ole Rica. There’s that convenience thing, remember? Also, remember how her mom was from the SandLands? Yeah, it all works out.

Did I mention that Rica is black?

This anthology is an okay way to pass a couple of hours, I guess, and you’ll be fine if you’re not expecting Joseph Conrad or Thackeray. This book is basically the literary equivalent of bubblegum or cotton candy: fun to eat, but sooner or later, you’ll look for something more substantial. I know I’ve mentioned that the dialogue in this book is really fun, but after a while, the slang and the Whedonesque style of it does get a little exhausting, and I suspect that this book will not age well because of it. Also, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away by the storylines or the characterizations, but I wish this book had given me something—anything other than “witty” dialogue and hot sex.

And Lois… fucking Lois… she just kept popping up. I think she was in this book more than anyone else, sticking her nose in everyone else’s business, when she was the dumb broad who killed herself in the beginning because she couldn’t hack it! Don’t worry, though, Lois gets a comeuppance of sorts. There she is, lecturing Annie about accepting her fate and embracing her new world, basically telling her to get over mourning her old life, when Annie just snaps and tells her off. It’s the only moment in the book that made me laugh and laugh and laugh, but it was not enough to make up for the FOURTEEN GODDAMN U.S. DOLLARS I SPENT ON THIS BOOK. Fuck, I’m gonna have to sell blood again or something so I can eat this week. Maybe I’ll sign up for that sleep deprivation study. It pays four grand. Four grand with which to buy Ramen noodles, chocolate, and romance novels… and all I have to do for it is allow a bunch of creepy dudes in white coats to stick electrodes on my head and watch me sleep in a glass-enclosed bedroom. Hmmm…

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