I thought this was very original but the way it handled rape and sexual assault was just not for me.

January 25, 2022

***please message the author for trigger warnings BEFORE reading****

Original, dark, hellish, discovery, forgiveness, steamy, bizarre, hope, hurt, pain, betrayal.

I don't even know where to begin. This was the weirdest roller coaster of a book I've ever read.
It wasn't a bad book, but it also wasn't good. The writing was good and bad simultaneously, yet I was definitely intrigued (I read the whole book in one day). At first, I was enjoying them being stranded and not knowing why they were in hell. But once they found civilization it wasn't as good.
I hated the love triangle. Throughout the book, I was more team Christopher, I felt like Jo had more chemistry with him than with Adam. Then, in the end, I was more team Adam, for obvious reasons and mostly because I had no other choice, but he still felt meh. Both of them were walking red flags and I just didn't like either of them by the end of the book.
None of the characters were good. I didn't like any of them: Jo was annoying, Christopher for obvious reasons, and Adam was just meh. Also, they were barely described, I honestly don't know what any of them look like, except that they have very large breasts and bulges.
I was actually shook with the plot twist, which is saying a lot because I usually predict most plot twists.
Aside from the fact that I didn't like the civilization part of the book, I did find the world interesting and unique. I'm still confused about a lot of it though.
In the beginning, there is a consent/warning that there will be dark themes in this book, which I was fine with. However, I didn't find that overall this book was that dark. Only the ending was truly dark.
The smut wasn't that great. Some scenes were good, but mostly it was meh.
Moreover, I really didn't enjoy the ending. I'm genuinely confused at how easily she forgives the guy who RAPES her and I hate the "it was all a dream" trope.

Copy provided to me via NetGalley for an honest review.

DNF @ 65% This started out really good. I was definitely intrigued at the opening and drawn in by the two main characters and their strange situation. I liked their dynamic and was eager to see where this was leading. There were a few bumps but nothing that detracted from the story. Things got rockier as they arrived in the city and I felt there were a lot of things that needed to be assumed by the reader that weren't really fleshed out, and I didn’t feel the character relationships as much as I wanted to. The overall pacing was a little off with some parts feeling rushed. A good effort and an interesting and unique premise. The writing is strong and definitely decent quality, so an extra star for that and I’d try this author again for that reason.

The first book in the Lethe Chronicles is a new and interesting take on what Hell, or the different version of it, can be like. Especially when the people go there with no memories. The plot was interesting and the story was paced just fast enough to be engaging and thrilling without feeling rushed. At certain points you can really feel the desperation of the characters as they travel through uncertainty with only fragmented bits and pieces of memory. Now, somethings that took me out of the experience of reading the book was the dialogue at certain parts where the word "baby" was too much, Jo as a character being a frustrating rendition of the not-like-other-girls trope, and the sex scenes became repetitive which didn't make me really look forward to them. In the end, though, the sex seemed, to me, secondary to the plot. Overall the world building was very interesting with many levels and I have hope for Jo's character development in the next books.

Hands down The strangest book I have ever read.

The beginning is interesting & pulls you in because you have absolutely no idea what is going on. You are kind of left up to your own imagination & it makes you want to continue reading. However I quickly lost that desire because the author didn’t give a good trigger warning AT ALL in regards to how much rape there would be.

I couldn’t finish this novel because of it.

Unfortunately I just couldn't power through and finish this book. I tried, I really did but it just wasn't my cup of tea and that's a shame because the actual world it's based in was interesting, I would've like to explore the "how" and "why" of it all a bit more and the inner workings of it all.

I appreciate there is a "consent form" at the very beginning and slight a warning that the book is dark with non consent but I feel like this could be expanded on without creating any spoilers for the readers. As others have said, maybe individual warnings on the actual chapter page introductions would let people skip that part but still be able to enjoy the rest. What is dark to one person may not be dark for another so it leaves it open to misinterpretation. Also the raging misogyny just kept pulling me out of the story. It's hell, everyone is there to be punished but women become sex slaves and men get to rape as an when they please, women are beneath them etc.

I can see how some people would enjoy this book but it's just not for me.

*I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review*

I have to start asking every reader to really pay attention to the TW, cause someone wrote that hole section for a reason.

With that being said, this baby was surprising for me, the world construction is incredible, nothing I've ever heard or read, the way the society is constructed and divided, the values, the people, the way they express themselves, the way they react are just a mirage of the current reality but the way it is written makes it more digestible and comprehensible.

The characters development is a hole other topic to be talked about, it's true that some of the things that happened to the main characters and the way they reacted it's not like most of us would, but that doesn't mean the approach is incorrect, in reality it's just a way to let us understand why they did it and why they forgave it but most important, it is letting us understand the next things that will happen where we find the real message of the book, on the end, it is a good dark romance and I really enjoyed it.

Wow. I took my time thinking about this one because it really steps outside of the norms in today's culture and wove in so many different layers that it might even be worth rereading just to see what I overlooked the first time around. It was very moving and very intense. I got lost in the story completely, wondering just where the author was going with it all! I think this is a book for people who want the thrill of discovery and of being surprised. It's so hard to be surprised by anything anymore. But this book managed it.

Honestly this was a very interesting but I was completely unprepared for the direction it took in the end and should've paid attention to the content warnings.

Source (NetGalley)
Format: E-book

This story was frustrating in both a good and bad way.....

Adam and Christopher as assholes wearing red flags for capes. I mean if anything I was team Christopher from the beginning and understand his hesitation.....until the big reveal of how he hurt Jo...he just felt like the jealous older brother who was forced to mature and be responsible while the younger got to have the fun and enjoy life. So I cheered him on in pursuing Jo, until I couldn't. Adam he was just the big asshole meathead playboy I never cheered on until realizing she was the one he would change for.

I love the world building, but I hated the way the whole world of hell was way more about punishing the women than the men. It seemed like Jo was still getting the ass end of the deal because of loving guys. I swear I yelled at her that she should have been a lesbian and saved herself the trouble of these two.

I do like the overall feel of the book and what was trying to be done with the redemption and forgiveness idea even if it still falls short, appreciated the author warnings (even expected way worse), visual details were enjoyed, and the over all story is a c+. I do want to read more and see where their relationship goes, so Book 2 is on the tbr.

This is a bit of a strange book, as I don't believe it should be marketed as erotica. It deals with sexual content and sexual violence (you are made to question as to whether a rapist is redeemable), but I don't think the content is what typical readers of erotica or even romance would seek out. It is certainly a unique book, though there are repetitive moments within it that would deter readers with a shorter attention span. While it isn't for me, I could see people looking for an exceptionally unique world or wanting to contemplate morality in a "bad actions does not make a bad person" sense.

I was not drawn in by the characters or relationships in this at all, which was the greatest downfall for me. The world is exceptionally unique, but I wasn't really prepared for how long I would have to read about naked folks running through a desert. Jo, Christopher and Adam are all exceptionally dry characters. The sexual attraction seems to spurred on only by the fact that they're initially naked and Chris has a stereotypically male urge to protect Jo once they reach the metropolis.

I feel like a lot could have been done with this premise, but a strange rape hell was not where I personally wanted to see it go. Perhaps someone else will find this more fulfilling!

Ehhh 1.75 stars

DNF @ something percent I don't even know. I started to skim after 50%

This book is so, so boring and so disappointing. I was expecting some kind of erotic dark fantasy romance, but I trudged on through the dullness `and never really got to that place before I started to skim, yawn, and give up. Aside from the odd boner, there are no sexy bits in this book until at least the 40% mark, and when it happens, it doesn't. I don't even know when the proper sexy bits start happening because I was skimming by that point, but when I eventually reached a proper sexy bit, it was really meh. You should really have your sexy bit game on point if you're going to market your novel like this.

I went into this a little iffy. I'm not usually into non-consent/dark erotic, and I was going a bit out of my comfort zone, but the cover was pretty and I was feeling adventurous, so I gave it a shot.

We spend the first fifth of the book with Christopher and Jo walking across the sand naked. She keeps on thinking that she wants to touch/do him, and he keeps scowling and being a jerk and getting multiple boners. Then they finally reach civilization, and it's a sausage fest. The chicks all have to go to chick school to learn how to be submissive, and then they're eventually graded like cattle and assigned a number which will determine whether they get raped by loads of poor dudes or one rich dude.

I noped out around this point and started really loosely skimming to see if I was ever going to reach a proper sexy bit, which I hoped would redeem this snore-fest to some degree... alas. The plot/characters/setting/everything are not remotely interesting enough to carry this shit without some decent rubbings of bits against other bits. I got another title by this author to review, but Flames of Lethe was so shite that I don't even want to give it a chance.

Do not recommend.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

First I will say before I get into the actual review, that the authors need to not give a trigger warning I both understand but also I feel like it needs one nevertheless. So if you are triggered by things like women being treated like sex slaves, rape, or anything to that effect, I wouldn't recommend this book. It just isn't for you unless it is something specific you are looking for.

What I hated.
There are really only 1 or 2 things I hated about this book. First, there were no explanations really. But I can look past it as this book REALLY drew you in, and you kinda only know as much as the characters know. I didn't easily figure out what was going on, were they in a type of HELL, sure. Secondly, I hated we only had a point of view from 1 of the 3 main characters. The entire time we knew how Jo thought and her struggles and what she wanted. But I would have loved to know what Chris and Adam's were, The memories they had known and remembered since they had known more than she did.

What I loved.
I loved the way the author's words flowed together and how descriptive her world-building was. She didn't leave out details and at the same time, she didn't overload you with them. She didn't give flowery descriptions it was amazing. It drew me in, Other than sleep and real-life things I didn't put it down and had to finish this book. I wanted to know what was going to happen and how they were going to overcome their next huddle. Now did this get me in my feels? No. But at the same time, I would recommend this.

About the book.
At the beginning of the book, Chris and Jo wake up naked, with no memories in the middle of a dessert. No one in sight, and somewhere that is not their planet. Every day they "burn" and at night they travel trying to find someone or someplace safe from the sun. This is the part of the book I immediately wanted to know Chris's POV because Jo wanted so badly to get close to him and in a way, I wanted to know why if she was the only woman would he push her away or at times seem to hate her if they had no memories of whatever past life they had together. Yet he protected her, They eventually find a city, underground where they no longer have to worry about facing another day in the sun where they would fall asleep and be in agony until the night. But this world was unlike something they expected to find. Jo and Chris get separated and since women were few they had become the property of the men. Separating into separate tiers based on how their performance in their training was. Only for Jo to meet Chris towards the end of it and him to beg her to be a Tier 5, the worse of the tiers so he could try to save her. Until Adam appears. Someone else she recognizes in her past life but with no memories, all she knows is her feelings towards him. And he demands she be put in Tier 1 and whisks her off. Only for more training and in a place where she absolutely did not fit in, based on her personality. And from there the book just goes on as these 3 characters struggle to fit in and be selfish and try to figure out their relationships with each other.

I don't want to keep going to spoil the journey for someone else but like I want to remind you, there are many triggers in this book that if it's something you can't read, this book wouldn't be for you. But it's your choice to make... This book just took me on a journey and I absolutely loved that journey. My heart broke for Jo as she struggled and I rooted for her as she tried to save someone that she felt so strongly for. And how she dealt with her own traumas made me admire her. Will I be reading the second book? Yes! I will.

I received a free digital copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I was impressed by the worldbuilding in this novel. I was intrigued from the first page and kept reading until I realized I had practically devoured this book in one sitting. Not necessarily because I was head over heels in love with it — it was more so because I was dying to know how it ends because I had already invested so much time into it. I'm a big fan of love triangles, so I enjoyed that aspect. This book honestly was not what I was expecting based on the description. I've heard books that were far darker and dealt with more complex themes: I thought that the description of the book was overhyping the content a bit. I was preparing myself for non-consent to be a much bigger part of this book (and was prepared to stop reading if it got to be too much), but if you've read this book then you know that's not necessarily the case.

Overall, this is not what I was expecting it to be based on the description, but I still enjoyed it. I can honestly say I was not expecting the ending. Thank you for allowing me to read this title!!

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: nada
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

This book popped on up on my NG wearing the baddest of bad takes like a papier mache crown. I’ll share the bad take in a moment but before I do a gentle reminder: please don’t go for the author. In general, yelling at each other on social media accomplishes very little, beyond a sense of grievance on both sides, and I’ve chosen to talk about this in my reader space because, well, that’s what reader spaces are for.

Prepare yourself for spoilers, discussions of trigger warning, and lots of discussion of rape.

Anyway, here’s what the author has to say about their work:

"Flames of Lethe is a dark fantasy romance containing non-consent. […] You will not receive chapter warnings. If you need trigger warnings, I'm sorry, but my books are not for you. This book is not safe."

And I suppose on the back of this the author might be entitled to a “hah, made you read it” because they did, in fact, make me read it—but I read it because it was on ‘read now’ on NetGalley, which means I got the book for zero money and zero effort, and can now talk openly about it (and its contents) so other readers can make meaningful decisions about whether they want to pay actual money for it. Although given how unnecessarily shitty this introduction is, maybe that should be a flat no on principle.

Because essentially what the “if you need trigger warnings” rhetoric is saying is: if you’ve experienced some sort of trauma in your life that has affected your response to stimuli in unpredictable ways, you don’t deserve to read my book. That’s what it comes down to. People who dismiss the validity of trigger warnings are essentially dividing readers into two categories—those who have experienced trauma and those who have not—and treating the former as second-class citizens who inherently have less right to experience fiction than others. I hope I don’t need to explain why that is fucked all the way up.

Books should be equally accessible to those who have experienced trauma, and those who have had the privilege not to. Trigger warnings become especially vital in a subgenre like dark romance, to which I would broadly say Flames of Lethe belongs, because (and what’s especially ironic here is that the book literally explores this in some detail) responses to trauma are complex and personal. I know quite a few people who have, in fact, experienced various forms of trauma (sexual and otherwise) who derive a lot from this subgenre: it helps with processing and with catharsis. Sometimes it just turns them on, and that’s fine too. And the thing is, if we’re not laughing at its extremity, we tend to look a bit askance at dark romance, it’s the politically incorrect space, the batshit space, the guilty pleasure space. But it’s also worth noting that it’s also the ONLY space to explore the hinterlands of human sexuality and desire within the emotional safety of the framework offered by the genre at large.

It is precisely BECAUSE of this, that excluding people who have experienced trauma from their potential readers is so ludicrously self-sabotaging on the part of this author. And I do kind of find myself wondering how much thought they’ve given to who or what trigger warnings might be for, instead of regurgitating what is essentially alt right rhetoric about fragile snowflakes making unreasonable demands (instead of, say, people who’ve gone through some shit asking for the bare minimum of consideration).

To look at this from both sides, for a moment, I think one of the problems with rise of what I tend to think of as content guidance for books (which, in general, don’t get me wrong, I think is a good thing—and let’s be clear it’s existed for other media for literally years) is that it does conflate “content you might find distressing or uncomfortable” with “content some people could literally be triggered by”. And, in all honesty, that can be frustrating: I’ve seen readers “trigger warn”, for example, for queerness in my books. Of course, it’s perfectly reasonable for people to alert others as to the contents of books, but queer people existing isn’t a “trigger”. It’s information.

But “triggering” in the actual, rather than the “I am just challenged by this content” sense, is a genuine psychological phenomenon that can develop in response to trauma. It can involve a bunch of potential physical and emotional reactions, up and including, re-living a traumatic event—which, um, really sucks? And I genuinely don’t understand what an author could see as so overwhelmingly valuable about their work that they would put ‘reading their book’ above a reader’s well-being. Nobody’s perception of their own staggering genius is worth that.

On top of which, this isn’t as the author suggests about needing or wanting books to be “safe”. It’s about information. Because, when it comes to managing triggers, triggers are specific, and information helps. Telling a reader that if they need ANY trigger warnings at all, they shouldn’t access a book is both infantilising and condescending. Readers are adults, they can decide this shit for themselves—up to and including, individual readers engaging with material that they could potentially find triggering because they know what they’re getting into and they may find it worth it. For whatever reason.

So, here are the trigger warnings for this book. Trigger warnings for misogyny, objectification of women, some violence, including sexualised violence, one graphic, on-page anal rape scene, and a situation where a rape survivor falls in love with their rapist. There. Was that so difficult?

I think for most romance readers, it’s the final element here that might prove the kicker although the second-to-last isn’t great, especially because it’s as (if not more) detailed than most of the consensual sex that takes place, and has a psychological intensity to it (since we know the characters involved, and it’s not just an act of purely senseless violence) that is profoundly devastating.

All of which said, if you are going to read a book with those elements, if you feel okay to do so, and are willing to take them on their own terms ( “heroine falls in love with rapist” could well be a flat out deal breaker for some), and are intrigued by how an author might make any of this work even remotely … then you could do a lot worse than Flames of Lethe. It, honestly, makes me wish the author had taken a different approach to trigger warnings because otherwise I would tentatively recommend this. Again, only for people who are able and willing to accept the premise.

In terms of the premise, I don’t think I actually have a moral position on it myself. I mean, I wouldn’t write it, and I wouldn’t naturally seek it out to read it, and I think it goes without saying that in a real-world context it would be beyond problematic. But if we go back to the 80s and 90s, we’ve probably all read a tonne of romances where the hero is a de-facto rapist and the heroine falls in love with him: if anything this is a step above such books because, unlike them, it doesn’t minimise the horror of rape and part of what makes it work (or at least work for me, you might feel it’s unworkable by default) is that the heroine makes it super clear that these are choices she is making FOR HER. They’re not supposed to be a broader commentary on dealing with sexual abuse in the real world.

And, actually, arguably one of perhaps the most important things we can learn as individuals and as a society about survivors of sexual abuse is that they should get to make their own choices about how they respond to what’s happened to them. Not, I hasten, in the sense of getting romantically involved with their abusers. But, y’know, Flames of Lethe is a pretty allegorical book: and ultimately it’s asking important and complicated questions about rape, and a rape culture, that it’s kind of only possible to ask in a fictional context, and the fictional context its explicitly created for asking them. So I guess what I’m saying here is, while I wouldn’t for a moment deny the inherent problems of creating a romantic situation in which a rape survivor falls in love with their rapist I also found ways to take the book on its own terms. Because I felt (in spite of everything that ticks me off about the way Flames of Lethe presents itself) it kind of deserved it.

This will be spoilers all the way down.

So, anyway, Flames of Lethe opens with a naked woman and a naked man waking up together with no memory in desert of glowing sand beneath a red moon. The man, Christopher, is hot (and often hard) but seems to have an instinctive dislike of the woman, Jo. As they travel the desert (ps, every time the moon sets and the sun rises, they burn in horrific agony, only to wake restored the next), Christopher proves himself efficient and competent, and sort of softens (emotionally, definitely not physically) towards Jo—although he does seem unnaturally preoccupied with the possibility he could hurt her. She, meanwhile, is horny and I honestly can’t fell if I woke up with no memory in a glowing desert beneath a red moon, and burned in agony all day, I’d be horny towards the nearest mean hot man or if sex would be the last thing on my mind. Anyway, Jo, you do you.

Eventually Christopher and Jo come to The City of the Misogynists (not its actual name) where the men outnumber the women and therefore the women are treated as property blah blah blah. Essentially the women are organised into Tiers, with Tier 1 being the highest class of women who belong to a single rich man, and Tier 5 being crap women who are owned by the city and get treated like Fantine in Les Miserables. Maybe I’m wrong, but if women were in such short supply, I kind of figure at that point they’d all be Tier 1? BUT ANYWAY. While Jo is being trained (not very successfully) to be a docile sextoy, Christopher is making a name for himself in the city: he comes up with a plan that will allow him to be with Jo (by this time, after all the burning and horniness, they’ve formed a connection) except before he can put said plan into action, Jo spots a DIFFERENT hot guy, this one called Adam, about whom she has a bunch of love memories that he seems to share. He is a Womanz Trainer in The City of the Misogynists so he immediately secures Jo to undergo Tier 1 Womanz Training, because he feels it will be safest for her to belong to a single man, even though this means he himself will not be able to be with her (because he is not powerful enough in the city to be allowed a Tier 1 woman of his own). As I’m writing this, I’m starting to realise what absurdly complicated world-building this is for something that is also arrant nonsense.

What follows is a bunch of political shenanigans in The City of the Misogynists, with both Adam and Christopher trying to get with Jo, while saving her from being sold off as a sextoy to either an individual man or men en masse. Nobody still has any memories, although Adam has more than most (including memories of loving Jo), Jo knows she loves Adam (for some reason—he has an enormous wang and calls her baby, these are his only discernible personality traits) but has complicated feels for Christopher. Eventually Adam and Christopher and Jo, by accidentally turning herself into a Sextoy Themed Mockingjay, manage to slightly overturn the political structures of The City of the Misogynists and this allows Adam and Christopher to buy Jo together. A situation that they don’t seem mad happy about, given they keep glaring and chest-beating at each other, although it does culminate with a threesome in a coat closet (Adam in the front, Christopher in the back, in case you’re curious) at a party.

Anyway, it eventually all falls apart, the various crimes Christopher committed undertook to save Jo from publicly mandated gang rape being revealed, and he’s sentenced to be … um. Turned into leather? Because everyone is wearing humans. Because nobody needs to eat, drink or breathe in The City of the Misogynists (and their bodies can be restored by a little light burning) and there are no animals so the only access to raw materials they have is other humans. Jo leaves Adam to pull off what is actually quite an epic rescue mission—part of which actually involves cutting Christopher’s head off (because he’s been chained up and she doesn’t have the keys to his chains) and running around with it.

Which has got to be the most hilarious plot point I’ve ever read in … I was going to say in a romance … but maybe in ANY BOOK EVER. It reminds me of that movie where Daniel Radcliffe plays his own corpse. Or, I guess, from a certain perspective, Salome? Oh, or that Steve Martin film when he falls in love with a brain in a jar.

Anyway, after spending a little while hoofing it around, evading pursuit, WHILE CARRYING HER LOVER’S DECAPITATED HEAD, Jo eventually escapes The City of the Misogynists. Christopher is renewed in fire and they run through the dessert again, this time finding a mountain and a stream. Christopher declares his all-consuming love for Jo, and they celebrate by him finally putting his penis in her vagina instead of up her arse (this book is very weird, in some ways, I’ll talk about this later). Adam them shows up, all angry, because Jo ran off except then, as they’re standing in the river, having a shouting match … their memories return.

And we learn Jo worked in IT for some kind of investment company run by Adam and Christopher. Christopher had a traumatic life, as she did Jo, and she was with Adam. Then Christopher, consumed by bad feels from his traumatic life, and racked by a need to destroy Jo, or at the very least Jo and Adam, anally raped her and psychologically tortured her in a bathroom. Adam meanwhile is all like “what’s going on this bathroom” and doesn’t realise anything is wrong, like, for example, his loved one is getting raped on the other side of the door, because he’s a pretty selfish and unperceptive guy, and then bounces off to a party when Christopher forces Jo to say she’s okay. He finishes his rape and then Adam proposes and Jo, all shattered, is like I can’t. Which leads Adam to drive his car too fast in manpain and crash, Jo to stab Adam in the neck with some scissors, followed by herself.

With all their memories returned, there’s some intense scenes of WTF in the stream, with Christopher ultimately begging Jo’s forgiveness for being so fucked up and damaged he tried to destroy her, and Jo … kind of coming to terms with the fact that all they time they’ve spent in the dessert and at The City of the Misogynists, when she didn’t know what he’d done to her, has led to her falling in love with him.

At which point the scene flashes them back to the IT office, pre-rape, and—in the light of all their experiences in the dessert and in The City of the Misogynists they sort of make a disorientated commitment to being together and not raping anyone.

None of this should work. Except it kinda does. I’m not saying I agreed with Jo’s choices, but as Jo says to Adam: it’s not for other people to agree with her choices, her choices are hers to make. And I think the book itself makes some clever choices, structurally speaking, with its choice to situate the, uh, massive massive rape near at the end of the book, rather than the beginning, so we have a chance to react to the characters in ways that aren’t inescapably shaped by sexual abuse. Plus, by placing its characters in this allegorical hellscape where they only have their bare feelings for each other to navigate it by invites us to think about rape as an act that exists within a context. Rather than just being an inevitability of either gender, society, or particular people. Not that I am attempting to defend rape (and whether the book is, is a matter of interpretation, although it would not be my interpretation) but it’s significant, I think, that Christopher has multiple opportunities to take advantage of Jo throughout their time in the desert and The City of the Misogynists, and he doesn’t (even if recognises he does have the capacity to hurt her).

For me, one of the most intriguing scenes occurs near the end when Jo, Adam The Personality Void, and Christopher The Rapist have regained their memories. There comes a moment when Jo sort of has to confront Christopher with what he’s done, but she doesn’t, just then, feel she can talk to him so she asks Adam to do so on her behalf. And when I first read this, I was bit like, oh great, this woman has been raped, and now she’s being silenced, but Adam’s speech to Christopher is interesting (albeit somewhat histrionic and full of all caps which are … um … a choice in any book).

Basically he addresses the traumas of Christopher’s life (Christopher had undergone various abuses of his own) and confirms that they weren’t his fault or his choice, nor were the ways in which they made him feel weak and broken, but—he goes on—what was Christopher’s choice was perpetuating that abuse with someone else (with Jo). And, in the end, I kind of liked how this came out: the fact that the impact of abuse on men was acknowledged, but that Christopher’s abuses while they give context to his actions, don’t excuse them. Moreover, having this exchange between two cis (I assume straight?) men ended up sparing Jo—already Christopher’s victim—the emotional labour of having to explain to her abuser why it wasn’t okay to abuse her. Essentially it shifts the locus of responsibility for dealing with the “problem” of rape from a women’s issue to an issue of men needing to sort their shit out and stop raping people. Asterisk: of course men can also be the victims of rape, and women can be the perpetrators, but this book is specifically concerned with rape between men and women.

And I can’t lie—for all the book is utterly bananas (DECAPITATED HEAD?!)—I thought this was a nuanced, surprisingly compassionate exploration of a tangled and complicated issue. Not that I think ‘compassion for rapists’ is the hot take the world needs right now or indeed ever, and obviously an inherent issue with unpacking the whys behind someone doing one specific and terrible thing runs the danger of erasing the victims of rape from, err, rape, but in the context of this book? In the context of thinking about toxic masculinity and rape culture in general, its affect on men as well as women? Yeah, Flames of Lethe definitely has some stuff to say here. And it might not be saying things you want to give headspace to, but that’s okay too. It doesn’t mean that the things it’s saying can’t, or shouldn’t, be said. Especially within its own carefully fictionalised context.

You also get into some seriously whacked out metaphysical stuff because when Jo, Adam The Personality Void and Christopher The Rapist get back to the real world, they return—as changed people, due to their experiences, in the moments BEFORE Christopher previously raped Jo. So it becomes less a question of Jo being in love with her rapist so much as Jo being in love with a man who could hypothetically, under a different set of circumstances, choose to rape her. Or perhaps raped in her an alternative timeline? Either way, that’s a philosophy of identity approach to rape that I genuinely don’t know how to interpret.

Rape aside, however, there’s no getting away from the fact that this book is just superlatively odd in general. It’s readable enough, for all the characters’ tendency to all caps each other in moments of emotional crisis, albeit a bit long—meaning that, as someone operating without trigger warnings, I was more in danger of being slightly bored than shocked in the way I think the book expected or wanted it me to. Although the author does say that the book was meant to push me out of comfort zone and being slightly bored is, indeed, slightly out of my comfort zone. Undertone of slight boredom notwithstanding, I will say the story is regularly enlivened by scenes, like the DECAPITATED HEAD, that are presented very seriously but—if you stop and visualise them for thirty seconds—become very very hilarious. Like, when Jo and Christopher are running across the desert, they’re naked. They’re naked and running across a desert. And we are regularly told that Christopher’s dick, when hard, lies against his stomach: so if we take it as read he’s a show-er, not a grow-er, this a well-endowed naked man running across a desert. With his junk just flapping in the wind like washing on the line. Sorry but that’s … that’s. My brain does not know what to do with that.

Plus, Flames of Lethe changes narrative mode about four times over the course four hundred pages, moving from this sort of Beckettian desert type existential experience, to a something that feels a bit like The Handmaid’s Tale Meets Mockingjay With Quite A Bit More DP, and finally back to a really thinly sketched version of the real world. And it bills itself as being erotica but the sexual content is both, err, fairly tame and thin on the ground. Also the heroine doesn’t seem to enjoy it much, even when she’s consenting to it (not least because being on fire keeps re-virginating her and Adam’s wang, as previously established, is GINORMOUS). On top of which, Flames of Lethe has just the fucking weirdest attitude to anal sex. Like, Christopher (who sees to sex as primarily an act of domination due to his own abuse) is notably into it but … like … while I can understand abuse, especially abuse at a young age, shaping and twisting your sexuality and your understanding of sex, I don’t see why it would make you specifically all into doing folk up the bum. Like what is with romance, and romance-adjacent books, being so goddamn weird about anal. It’s just sex guys. It’s fine.

Also, I have genuine questions about what was going on with the virtual hell in which Jo, Adam The Personality Void and Christopher The Rapist get trapped. Like, they progress through the hell (for example, Christopher stops being paralysed after he’s burned, when he voluntarily burns with Jo one time) by acts of self-sacrifice and self-knowledge until they finally reclaim their memories and return to the real world. But … who were all the other people in The City of the Misogynists? Is the implication that all the men are rapists, sent to be punished in some way? But Adam is just sort of selfish, why is he there? And if it is a punishment hell for rapists, why are the women who are there, there are at all? Because while, as discussed, women can be rapists but none of them seem to be? Jo is explicitly a victim and it feels kind of extra shitty for Christopher’s Rape Punishment to incidentally include the blameless woman he, y’know, raped. I know it’s meant to be all Very Very Mysterious TM but it’s a nonsensical system for anything, and its nonsensicality is extra irksome given how much time the book spends painstakingly explaining the social structure and geographical layout of The City of the Misogynists.

And don’t even get me started on how unbalanced Christopher—as the most vividly depicted and emotionally coherent character—makes everything feel, both in terms of romantic and erotic dynamics and in terms of a rapist being the dynamic centre of your book. Or how these heroines who end up with two shouty, possessive, over-protective men cope with how completely emotionally exhausting it seems and, frankly, not worth the trouble. I mean, okay I’ve started a little. But if I continue this review will … err … further burst the banks of GR.

So. Uh. Yes. Flames of Lethe. Has some interesting things to say, is batshit on many levels, would be well-served by trigger warnings because then people would be able to make sensible choices about whether to read it. I hope this review helps you with that sensible decision making. The end.

This wasn't bad, but it also wasn't great. And I think it could have been. Too bad that at around 20% when a civilization of a sort was found, is when they also lost a lot of my interest. Up until that point I was really into learning more about this hell they found themselves in and what happened to land them there. But then they found people and now the story turned into something else completely. Eventually adding in a third person, and I so detest love triangles.

We begin with Jo and Christopher waking up in the middle of a desert with no memories (and no clothes). The only thing each of them remembers is pretty much just their name and the other's. These two are complete opposite personalities, which causes a lot of friction between them. Unfortunately, that's the least of their problems. Every morning when the sun comes up they each burn. For the whole day. Seeking any sort of protection, they run all night. Which rips apart Jo's feet and has her struggling to keep moving. While they do not get hungry, thirty, tired, or even need to breathe, suffering both day and night is taking a massive toll. But despite how he treats her, Jo is starting to fall for her brooding companion.

Eventually they find a tunnel and other people. They're elated to finally, hopefully, be free of the burning. But this is no utopia. As the men outnumber the women ten to one, the women are all taken and trained to behave the way the males want them to be. Depending on how well they do, they are assigned a tier. The higher the number, the worse her life is doomed to be. It's really hard, but Jo tries her hardest to at least get tier 2 or 3. But then Christopher shows up. She can hardly contain her happiness that he was not only alive and well, but that he finally found her. Until he tells her his plan and she has to decide how much she trusts him.

When things are finally almost starting to look like they're going to work out for these two, another person from their life before shows up. And this is also when I lost a lot more interest in the story. I absolutely hated Adam. And I hated the way Jo was around him. She was already pretty stupid, but she became completely brainless when with him all because it "felt right." I usually love a possessive male, but the way Adam went about it was the worst. Especially when it came to Christopher.

A lot of stuff goes down in the city and how it's run, ending with Christopher and Adam both buying Jo. So, frustration galore again for me. It wasn't until more towards the end when the three of them are finally figuring out their relationship and then things went to hell that the story picked back up. Jo has decided to use the one thing she can do that others can't to save one of the men she loves. No matter how she has to do it. And it was pretty crazy. I really liked meeting one of the ancients of this city and would have loved to learn more about him, but there just wasn't enough time for that. At least this one was a good guy. Which is exceedingly rare in that city.

At the end, the three of them actually manage to get together again, but it is in no way a happy reunion. Made only worse when something happens that has all three of them sharing each other's memories entirely. I will say I was little surprised at the history between them all and each individually. But I still absolutely hated Adam. If anything, his real past life made me hate him more. Now, I'm sure that a bunch of people are like 'how you can you hate Adam but not Christopher for what he did?' And it's just because I was ambivalent about Christopher. I really didn't care about him one way or another. Though his crying like a child at the end after all of his stoic composure was greatly off putting. And like Jo said, it's her choice to forgive him or not.

The very end was definitely interesting and took place exactly at the time one would expect with something like this. Did I like it though? Not really. Did it make me super curious about why? Definitely. But will I read the next one? Probably not.

This was not well considered. Even for someone who likes dark fantasy, it was gross. I'm not sure what the logic is in continuing this series. It reads like r*pe fan fic.

I loved this book! The story was something new that I've never read of before. The world building was phenomenal and the characters were well developed! The entire time I was reading I was wondering what happened to the characters to put them in the position they started the book in. It has spice, mystery, love triangles, and apocalyptic vibes. Would definitely recommend friends to read this and will definitely be continuing the series!

This is the darkest story I've ever read and I was kept on my toes throughout this book. There was never a dull moment throughout the whole book and it all flowed great. I also really enjoyed the author's writing style and was drawn in from the begginning by the writing. My only issue is with the middle of the book, I'm not sure if I was reading too fast and missed something, but I got really confused for a bit in the middle of the book. I think the greatest thing this book has going for it though is that it's so unique.