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genuflectx · 2 years

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Terato Book Review: The Last Hour of Gann

This book was recommended to me with warnings that it had rape scenes, but I thought I’d give it a try. But boy... The Last Hour of Gann was... a really mixed bag. The first half has vague spoilers, such as descriptions of sex and if there was a happy end or not. Under the cut you’ll find a longer review with detailed spoilers. Here we go!

HUGE TW for this review.

The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith. Amber and her sister Nicci join a space colony ship after their rent is raised and their only choice was prostitution, homelessness, or become a “womb” for a colony on a new planet. Predictably, the ship crashes, killing 95% of the people. Amber, Nicci, and a handful of survivors crawl out onto a new, uncharted world. Across 421k words Amber must balance survival with social dynamics, and then Meoraq, a lizardman “alien,” appears to help them survive. He begins leading them to a temple where it’s said if the doors of the temple open one will see the true face of Sheul- his god. But Amber’s people believe this temple isn’t a temple at all, but a long lost communications tower or starport built by Meoraq’s long dead starfairing ancestors. Well, everyone believes that except for Amber, who stays by Meoraq’s side instead while her people split off to get themselves killed in the alien wilderness.

Because this book was immensely long, the pros and cons list is a bit longer than my other ones. There is just a lot more to cover from a 421k novel than a 30k novella! ouo

( Also note a lot of the cons are pretty horrific, but I don’t go into lots of details in order to cut back on spoilers. For spoilers and specifics, read under the cut. )

Pros

- Good balance between description, action, and dialogue. Not overly fluffy, but still has good imagery. Never found myself confused with how things looked.

- Detailed world building, despite a simple main plot. However, the world building is frequently closer to traditional fantasy than sci-fi.

- Has a good handful of action scenes for those who like that sort of thing.

- The human and alien have sex multiple times, but it sometimes felt cut-and-dry rather than erotic. Meoraq had interesting, but not super wild, genitals.

- Varied conflicts, such as character vs. society, character vs. nature, and character vs. supernatural (God). Kept it fresh during it’s immensely long read-time.

- It’s length and varied forms of conflict as they travel across alien lands felt like a true adventure.

- Had a happy end. Relatively...

- Bad guys get what’s coming to them with irony.

Cons

- It’s 421,957 (421k) words long. Sci-fi and fantasy novels are, on average, between 50k-150k. The Last Hour of Gann GREATLY exceeds this, and it suffers for it.

- Rape. Lots and lots of religiously approved, and non-religiously approved, rape. The rape scenes were longer and more detailed than the actual romantic sex between the main characters.

- Repetitive scenes. Characters will argue, then make up, then argue, then make up, over and over.

- The author takes every chance she can to remind us that the main character is fat, hates herself for being fat, and everyone else hates her for being fat.

- All women are sexist caricature stereotypes. They’re either called “bitchy” and seen as hysterical or do nothing but cry and half-faint into mens’ arms. Meoraq’s culture is built on all women being submissive “milk-veined” sex slaves.

- All men are sexist caricature stereotypes. They’re all written as thinking of nothing but sex and rape, and all of them are violent yet disapprove of violence from women.

- There are major character deaths in this book, but who and how is a spoiler I save for under the cut.

- The ending is very short in comparison to the uncut length of it’s long, repetitive body.

- Though the world building is detailed, it’s barely recognizable as sci-fi. Meoraq’s species are just Argonians from Skyrim. There is nothing sci-fi like about them, their society, or the planet, save for their ruins which are few and far between. I actually started to wonder if this book was secretly a case of Smith Filing Off the Serial Number of some Skyrim/Elder Scrolls fanfic. ---(Considering the author had the steel balls to write Five Nights at Freddy’s fanfiction on AO3/FFN under the same pseudonym she writes professional work under... well, FOTSN would not be a stretch...)

★ ★ ★ FINAL RATINGS:

Monstrousness: 4/10 Eroticism: 6/10 Story: 8/10 Characters: 5/10

MY FINAL SCORE: 4/10 (Enjoyable at times but Fucked Up)

MY FIANCE’S FINAL SCORE: 2/10 (”The presence of the burger doesn’t make the roaches more appetizing”)

SPOILERS BELOW, WATCH OUT

The Last Hour of Gann (TLHOG) is such a long book that my thoughts will barely do it justice, it’s so long it’s 2-3 books rolled into 1. But I will make an attempt to be concise and fair while also making my opinions clear.

I knew I’d like the writing style immediately; Smith’s style has good descriptors but doesn’t make it overwhelming or fluffy. She can make a month skip in one paragraph or draw out a week across 10,000 words if she wants, and it works. However, for some scenes I felt she didn’t know how to wield this power. There’s little reason we need 30k-50k words of the same survivalist story laid out before us and then later another 30k of it, or 20k words of explicit torture and rape. BUT that’s only giving her the benefit of the doubt that she didn’t mean to make unimportant scenes, torture scenes, and rape scenes so long. However, I have a hard time giving her the benefit of the doubt after finishing the book. Some scenes did make it clear she did this purposefully, at least with the torture and rape. Having your MC call her rapist a slut and dirty girl while being raped will certainly give that impression (what the hell smith).

The plot itself was alright, but only really reaches it’s best point near the very end, when they open the doors to the temple. Unfortunately, most of the book is spent having the characters toil across the wildlands hunting, arguing, and trying to secretly murder each other. While it can feel like an adventure and I do enjoy survivalist stories (and games), having this be the bulk of a sci-fi book where the wilderness isn’t even really that sci-fi doesn’t do the story any favors. If you replaced the part about them crashing on an alien planet with “welcome to the land of xyz, a land of magic” you’d see no major difference. The planet is, by all accounts, Earth with a different coat of fantastical paint. Giant armadillos and scaled antelopes, with regular ol’ tundra grass and green trees. Big deal. It’s just Skyrim with different animals.

Speaking of Skyrim, I have no proof that Smith filed off the serial number of a Skyrim AU or fanfic, however... Argonians use a wrist band in marriage ceremonies and so does Meoraq’s species. Argonains are super religious from birth, and so are Meoraq’s species. The world itself is a tundra with mountains. There’s a Fallout/Skyrim AU where Skyrim is a result of nuclear war from Fallout. In TLHOG, Gann is a planet previously ravaged by war, bioweapons, irradiation, and possibly nukes. Now, Gann is a grey, rainy wasteland of tundra-like wildlands, full of raiders and ruins, stuck in the medieval ages. I can’t find any proof that Smith even likes the Elder Scrolls, but by God is that all one Hell of a coincidence for somebody writing fanfiction for FNAF. (Yes, she really did decide it was a good idea to put her FNAF fanfiction under her professional pen name. 1200k word of it. Yes, 1200k. And it’s marked as having rape in it, too. Go figure.)

Okay enough tin hatting

While I liked the plot of a planet ravaged by bioweapons, and their modern day society being built on a fake religion designed to keep their sickness in check... since the book was 85% nothing actually about that, let’s move on to other things. The bad parts. Explicit rape, torture, plots to murder, misogamy and misandry alike, hatred of fat people, hatred of sex workers, drug usage with the purpose of losing weight fast, etc... let me look at the notes that I took.

- Early in the book Amber is told she’s obese and that will make her have pregnancy complications. So she goes to her deceased mother’s drug dealer, buys 40 needles of drugs, and takes those 40 needles to lose weight fast. She loses 60 pounds and is still called fat, so idk what the hell that scene was for. All it did was remind us how much she hates herself and how much the world hates her. Maybe that was the point...? Or is the author projecting her hatred of herself?

- Direct quote: “Outside of the canopies, the rain quickly plastered her official Manifest Destiny flightsuit to her body, and since it was white, it exposed not only each and every unsightly bulge of fat, but also the pebbly bumps of her nipples and the hem of her panties and God alone knew what else." ??? why

- I realize by the end the juxtaposition between Amber “being strong” and Nicci “being a crybaby” might be because the author is showing us two different reactions to childhood trauma. One that she perceives as holier-than-thou than the other, which would explain why Nicci’s character felt like a exaggerated caricature more than Amber’s, and why some of Nicci’s actions came out of the blue. The author wants us to look down on Nicci’s natural, unavoidable human reaction to childhood trauma (learned helplessness), acts like it’s Nicci’s fault for not healing herself, and then turns Nicci into some raging manipulative asshole who then brutally kills herself with a fishhook just to spite Amber. Then, after so much of the book was about Amber desperately wanting to find her baby sister, and how much she loves her sister, Amber’s reaction to Nicci’s death is hardly touched on.

- While Nicci is crying and panicking after the ship crash, Amber grabs her by her shirt and shakes her, yelling in her face and thinking to herself that Nicci is “like she was all of six years old again” because Nicci dared to say “I’m scared” after the ship crashed. Granted this was early in the book and Amber knows she’s being an ass, but still. Amber thinks of her sister’s natural reaction to the situation as immature. It’s telling of the author, given the context of the rest of the book. - The 1st black man that shows up says he wants to fuck Amber (in nicer words) during the first conversation, literally right after the crash, and the author blames it on “shock doing weird things.” He then explodes in a painful fiery death one day later. I’d say “to be fair, everybody else thinks of only sex and then dies too” but the fact that the 1st black man was also the 1st to ask to fuck her and then the 1st to explicitly die is telling.

- A lot of buildup of Meoraq thinking about how horny Amber makes him just for their 1st sex scene to be unromantic and couldn’t be any longer than 1,000 words long. Oh, also Meoraq pretty much kept debating the morals of raping Amber pretty early in, too. Fun (sarcastic).

- The fact that violent rape is a main plot point at all. The bioweapon causes violent rape by hyping up the sex and violence part of men’s brains- not women though...? This plot point could have been used for a horror aspect, but it really wasn’t. It felt more like one big fetish.

- Amber gets caught by raiders, and is raped a lot. In one scene, the main raider is casually fingering her in front of a suckling baby, while he recounts the tale of raping an older man then being raped by a different older man multiple times. Then, the raider listening also recounts how he fucks his own mother. This is all one scene. Why? Why is this in the book? We didn’t need all of that detail to tell us that their society is fucked up. We already know about the bioweapon rape thing by this point. This was wholly unnecessary and absolutely a fetish thing.

- Meoraq comes to save her, but is taken by the sickness. So instead he just starts painfully raping her when he finally finds her, this time two babies are present (one half-dead) and a grieving mother. Amber starts reciting the lords prayer to snap him out of it. I can’t make this shit up. - In the last 25% of the book, Meoraq puts maggots in Amber to clean her infected, puss-filled wounds. Then he fingers her while she’s crying about the gross maggots and she cums, all while Nicci is tied up in the same room. Did I mention the maggots

[Shudder] Okay, moving on.

I keep trying to think about this book in a more literary sense; i.e. what were the morals, what was the author trying to say with this book. Sometimes smutty books are just smutty books. That’s their whole thing, they don’t need a moral or theme. But this is a 421k word epic, so it must be saying something.

If I thought about it nicely, I would say the moral is suffering is suffering. There is no joy in suffering. The villains and antagonists- they all grew up suffering, or they all experienced suffering. Amber’s rapist was himself abused and raped, and the justice system failed him. He suffered, then beget suffering onto Amber. There was nothing glorifying in his exile, nothing good came from him building a city. Nicci suffered, and the author wrote her as if we shouldn’t feel bad for her because she was coddled and couldn’t care for herself. But when Nicci chooses Scott’s side over Amber’s, and we later find her to be being used as a sex slave (and had a forced abortion), Amber doesn’t feel any joy and neither did I. When Scott never learns, even after everything, there’s no lesson in him being taken as a slave, raped, then exploding in fire at the end. Amber says she’s strong, over and over, even while crying, but her late mother’s voice still rings in her ears constantly, and is always a ghost in her mind made evident by Amber calling herself “little girl” just like her mother did. Suck it up, little girl. And she does- but doesn’t really, all she does is... endure suffering as emotionlessly as possible. But there is no lesson or moral in that. It’s just suffering. The author writes like we should look down on Nicci’s reaction to trauma and look up to Amber, but the only difference between the two of them is that Amber is still alive, yet she still suffers.

Now she gets to be a woman slave for Meoraq’s house, like all the other girls. One that gets a nice room, baths, and cakes, but a sub-servant class of people is still a sub-servant class of people. She has no rights and her only value to their society is as a baby maker. Yippee. Epic win. >_>

If I thought about it not nicely I would say at least 75% of the torture, pain, and rape was just a fetish that Smith tried to spin into something that could be taken seriously. When your rape scenes are more numerous and longer than your love scenes that conclusion is unavoidable. Maybe don’t make your MC call her rapist a dirty girl as if it’s supposed to be erotic. I’d also say the author hates both women and men, and sees the worst in everybody. She wants us to believe all women do are cry and ask for handouts, and Amber is “~not like other girls~” by pulling herself up by the bootstraps and talking back. I’d say she thinks all men are sex-driven and thinking about rape at all times, because the humans in this book don’t even have the sickness and all they do is tell the women they’re only good for fucking, and that they won’t have a choice in it. I’d say the author wants us to look down on Nicci, so she made Nicci as unrealistic and exaggerated as possible, turning an abused little girl into a zealot who literally does nothing but steal and beg for handouts while pretending to cry, to make Amber look big and strong and moral by comparison.

I’d say her “lessons” are exhausting and paint a horrifically pessimistic outlook on people, but in an uncritical, conservative way. The kind of way you’d get from your religious grandmother or a 3rd grader who is regurgitating her parents. You can’t have Amber call her sister a whore and look down on her mother for being a prostitute and then have Meoraq’s society have a systematic culture of sex slaves that Amber hardly grumbles at. Sure “selling flesh” is bad, but nary a tear is shed for the women of “normal” society who keep their heads down and are offered out to guests like bowls of chips, huh Amber. No coin is passed between men for their women in “normal” alien society, but a sex slave being fed cakes is still a damn sex slave, Amber.

Would I recommend this book?

It has it’s merits. The survivalist parts are fun, and I enjoy Amber and Meoraq bickering and eventually becoming more sweet on each other. But the other atrocities described in detail aren’t written as if they’re atrocities. It’s just a big fetish, and it doesn’t mean anything. 421k words of an author who hates men and women and thinks if you can’t “suck it up, buttercup” after being traumatized then you’re a manipulative attention-seeker for asking for help. The characters are, overall, unpleasant. Nobody learns anything. Everyone sticks to their guns from toe to tip; even after being beaten raped and abused characters still stubbornly stick to the same opinions they had at the start. Antagonists learn nothing and die badly.

I have a hard time telling anyone to read this beast, but I’d be lying if I didn’t enjoy parts of it. My fiancé didn’t read it but when I talked about it, they quoted a science meme at me that might be a good way to look at whether you’d consider this tacky book: ”The presence of the burger doesn’t make the roaches more appetizing.” I.e. This book may be entertaining sometimes, but it’s entertainment value doesn’t make the shitty parts of the book any less shitty.

#the last hour of gann #R. lee Smith #book review #terato #exophilia #monster boyfriend #review #tw rape #rape #non-con #dub-con #tw suicide #tw death #suicide #death #fatphobia #tw drugs #drugs

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lutawolf · 1 year

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#the last hour of gann #coconuts mafia goodread #luta live journal

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bn-brightflower · 2 years

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Working on my A Spider's Mate reviews so I can begin my descent into what I've been told will be my next hyperfixation

#a spiders mate #tiffany roberts #the last hour of gann #r lee smith #monster/human #monster fuckers #meta #book reccs

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icedmetaltea · 1 year

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Book suggestions for you!

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

(one of my all time favorites, if you like dark humor and a main character dragged kicking and screaming into caring about other people(at least a little bit) you'll love it too!)

The Murderbot Series

(the first book is All Systems Red. Personally my favorite book so far is Artificial Condition (book 2) but seriously they're all bangers. Somewhat short too, if you need something to ease you back into reading full length books)

Tales from the Gas Station

(just read them. Seriously you will not regret it. Jack Townsend is a freaking gift for writing that series and I will scream about that series till the sun goes down)

For stuff that's got some spice😉

Anything by Kathryn Anne Kingsley. My personal favorite of hers is the Julian Strande story, but they're all super good.

Anything by R. Lee Smith. The Last Hour of Gann and Land of the Beautiful Dead, as well as Cottonwood are superb. Just a warning though, these stories are massive- I'm talking 500+ pages. Not that they ever feel like it- these suckers really pull you in.

Anyways! Those are some recs from off the top of my head! If you need more I got plenty, just ask. Also I'd like to say that your writing also makes my list of favorites:) Thanks for sharing your writing with us.

Thank u so much for all the recs!!

#Answer tag #Metaltea Talks #dragonkwest #Also that comment at the end rwjgireigerigwr my hEART #Stop being so nice ur gonna kill meee #book recs #*gives kwest a box filled with unspeakable horrors that are in fact very nice and kind*

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rmhashauthor · 1 year

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The Last Hour of Gann - the book that ruined me

If you have not read this BEHEMOTH of a novel, I strongly suggest you do. If you want something that will enthrall you, scare you, amuse you, ruin your life and obliterate your soul, I CANNOT in good conscience let you go another week without this beast of a story.

Summary (from Goodreads): "It was her last chance:

Amber Bierce had nothing left except her sister and two tickets on Earth’s first colony-ship. She entered her Sleeper with a five-year contract and the promise of a better life, but awakened in wreckage on an unknown world. For the survivors, there is no rescue, no way home and no hope until they are found by Meoraq—a holy warrior more deadly than any hungering beast on this hostile new world…but whose eyes show a different sort of hunger when he looks at her.

It was his last year of freedom:

Uyane Meoraq is a Sword of Sheul, God’s own instrument of judgment, victor of hundreds of trials, with a conqueror’s rights over all men. Or at least he was until his father’s death. Now, without divine intervention, he will be forced to assume stewardship over House Uyane and lose the life he has always known. At the legendary temple of Xi’Matezh, Meoraq hopes to find the deliverance he seeks, but the humans he encounters on his pilgrimage may prove too great a test even for him…especially the one called Amber, behind whose monstrous appearance burns a woman’s heart unlike any he has ever known."

Guys. Guys. This book ripped me apart. Amber is simultaneously the best and worst sci-fi heroine, her sister is pathetic and terrible, Meoraq is probably the least sexy but the most BADASS MMC EVER and the rest of the cast is every stripe of humanity you can imagine. There's a guy whom I wished from page one would shut up shut up JUST SHUT UP ALREADY and fall in a hole forever. R Lee Smith's characterization is on point and consistent throughout the book.

This is a BRUTAL story from beginning to end, even for someone like me who LOVES reading gnarly survival stories. Not gonna lie, there are several instances of sexual violence - I don't like it, I don't condone it and I won't write about it in any of my work, but in this case it was used to really drive home the brutality of life on Meoraq's world. There are animal attacks and vicious fighting and horrific injuries, but again this is not a happy story. This is a very messy, dangerous world and it takes a lot of grit and no tolerance for squeamishness to survive.

As unpleasant as Amber can be at times, I sincerely liked her as a character. She's unpleasant because she was brought up under pretty bleak circumstances and her life on Earth just didn't get better. And it got even worse once she signed her contract in more ways than just ending up on a planet where almost everything is trying to kill her. The thing about Amber that I really respected was her instant realization of just how fucked she and everyone else is and her first instinct is to start looking for water, food and shelter. She takes initiative while everyone else is sitting around waiting for help.

I appreciated how R Lee Smith took me inside Amber's head and showed me her memories to either confirm or contrast with how angry she is at the way her life has turned out. Her sister is basically the sad polar opposite - none of Amber's grit has rubbed off on her, and as awful as the story ended for her, she kind of deserved it for the choices she made (or refused to make). In the end I just felt sorry for Nicci for having such weak character.

Meoraq is NOT a sexy guy. I love sci-fi romances mainly because I want to see what weird, freaky things people are into (myself included, lol) and I want to see how the author turned something that SHOULD be bizarre into something that makes me think "...you know what? Maybe I COULD..." Not Meoraq. The only thing I found even moderately attractive about him was his incredible knowledge of and experience with living as he had for as long as he had. And he was funny sometimes. But he could be SUCH an ASS. And yet by the end of the book I had developed an IMMENSE respect for the guy - if I'd been in Amber's shoes, I would PRAY that I'd run into someone as competent and self-assured at Meoraq, otherwise I'd be dead within a week.

I am not a religious person. I tend to keep my distance from organized religion because I have seen the damage religious fanaticism can do. That being said, Meoraq's STRICT adherence to his beliefs make a weird kind of sense once you get to the part of the book that explains WHY the faith he follows has essentially taken over the world. I kind of admire the guy for his extensive knowledge of his faith and its teachings, which is to say he understands it more than I think some IRL groups understand their religion's intent. I sincerely appreciate R Lee Smith's deep dive into what life was like for Meoraq as a boy, how his experiences developed him, and how his relationship with his god evolves through the story. The guy has some truly incredible faith and his religious experiences gave me some perspective as to why some people continue to stick with their faith in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary.

Here's the thing, though - from day one of their meeting I wanted Amber and Meoraq together RIGHT NOW. They both have this "fuck around and find out" vibe that WORKS. From the very beginning there is a sizzle in the air as they work out how to communicate, and while I was annoyed with the other survivors for inferring that the two be bangin', I knew EXACTLY where they were coming from because it was JUST SO DAMNED OBVIOUS. There were many times I had to put this book down and yell at it because, and I quote, "oh my GOD would you two just GET IT OVER WITH??" And when they do, it's not pretty but by the time that happened I understood that it wouldn't be because of the world they now occupy. Again, this is not a happy story. There IS some happiness, though, and it's made all the more precious for being so rare.

I will say that this is a LONG book, and it deals with some HEAVY ideas. Many of which I don't agree with, but I don't regret reading this monster and I sincerely appreciate R Lee Smith's willingness to really push the boundaries of what the average sci-fi romance reader is used to or may find in good taste for the genre. This is a HARD book to get through (~ 1,000 pages long) for many reasons, the subject matter alone will be part of the reason I think most people will either avoid it or put it down. It's really dark and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't ready for some of the nastier scenes (CW for sexual assault on men and women, animal violence, human-on-human violence, alien-on-alien violence, just a lot of violence in general, catastrophic events, and my personal non-favorite: BUGS) but if you're looking for something that will sink its claws into your mind and make you question everything about people, religion and humanity, then The Last Hour of Gann is my #1 pick for "you'll hate it but you'll love every second of it".

I saw another reader on Goodreads describe this as an "odyssey" and I 100% agree - this thing takes a week to read and it feels like a lifetime. Another called it "Epic Science Fiction" and I CANNOT agree more. It's epic, it's monstrous, it's graphic, it's downright horrible at times, but MY GOD I love this book for everything about it from the length to the characters (even the ones I hated) to the intense survival to the hilariously frustrating romance between two of the most stubborn, thickheaded people I have ever had the pleasure of being annoyed with. I stayed up late reading this damned thing TWICE and I'm going to do it again.

Disclaimer: I am strongly opposed to censorship in general. The world is a rough, difficult, dirty and dangerous place and it's just a fact that awful things happen and awful people exist. I don't condone rape or murder, but the unpleasant truth is that it happens on a daily basis. If that makes me a cynical old bat, then I guess I'm a cynical old bat. Anyway, the point here is if you pick up this book, do practice some self-censorship. You're the one who gets to decide if you like it enough to finish it. I don't know your story therefore I have no authority to determine what you can handle. But I do implore you to give this book a good old-fashioned try because I think it'll open some eyes and maybe give some perspective on the real world we live in. I got a lot out of this story and I think it's a damned shame that it's not more well-known. I believe that as sentient beings we have an obligation to push ourselves with respect to what we know and what we can learn, especially if we have to be made really uncomfortable to do so. I agree with a lot of the things people said about this book on Goodreads but I also disagree with much, but those are just my opinions. There's a reason I own two copies of this book, one physical and one digital, and if that's not a recommendation I don't know what is.

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licuadora-nasir · 2 years

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“But then, life is in the journey. If you cannot have an easy journey, have an interesting story.”

Today I've decided to come and talk about The Last Hour of Gann, an incredible book written by R. Lee Smith author of Beautiful Dead and The Lords of Arcadia saga.

When her good-for-nothing mother dies, Amber decides to take her sister and join a colonization project jumping on the first Earth’s first colony-ship. Turns out the ship ends up crashing on an unknown planet in which lives Meoraq, the male lead.

But... Meoraq is a lizardman. Yeah, a lizardman with scales, snout and everything, "The Sword of Sheul" is a status in the lizardmen's high society. After the death of his father, this holy warrior will start his pilgrimage which will lead him to the human survivors.

And well, shit happens, buuuut I'm not gonna walk into details, instead, I'm gonna tell you what you should expect.

The character development and building are by far some of the best I've ever had the pleasure to read.

Meoraq swung around and raked his eyes over the whole of them. “Who dares order me to silence?” “I do,” said Amber. “Shut up.”

Amber is a hot-tempered woman with an indomitable spirit and a pottymouth that pushes her way through a misogynist society and tries to do the better thing in her own way.

Also, she's fat. Why am I pinpointing this? Cause I haven't seen many erotic/romance books which has a fat protagonist and also, because she's a clear reflection of what society, in general, think about strong women.

Amber is not precisely a charming one. She's impulsive, intelligent, brave, and the most coherent character in the whole book; the problem is that she's not the prettiest one in the coop, neither pleasant nor stupid and definitely not willing to keep up with the bullshit of the jerks that surround her. A competent woman who has to fight for the recognition she deserves.

“It is a wife’s duty and pleasure to lessen her husband’s burdens.”

“Says who, lizardman?”

“Prophet Lashraq, as written in Sheul’s true Word.”

“You mean a man wrote it.”

She's a survivor, cause even though she has no friends or people who support her, just a greedy, petty sister who's totally useless, she will be as stubborn as her sharp tongue allows her to drive the human survivors towards the best path.

Even though she's hated, despised and abused by that group of humans, she will never stop trying to make herself heard. And before such fierce conviction, you'll end up rooting for her and feeling as yours every failure she experiences.

Life kicks her ass constantly, but what I deeply love about her is that she tries. She tries so, so hard that you can't help but wish her success.

“Jesus Christ, really? How did you ever survive living with me as long as you did without having sex every other hour?”

“With God’s aid alone,” he said seriously. “It was a terrible time.”

Meoraq is a lizardman. Yes, I don't care, he's awesome, brave and mainly and you will love him. He starts this pilgrimage of his to find himself and find the woman Sheul (the lizardmen's god) is going to give him.

His society is patriarchal and narrow-minded, the only place for women is in submission to religion and men and Amber will be an inflexive point in which Meoraq will have to question his own beliefs and traditions.

Due to his holy warrior occupation, he's deeply influenced by religion, and the way the writer intertwines love, religion, change and betrayal of the old ways is just exquisite.

“You can make a story mean anything Meoraq. But that's the thing with you religious people, isn't it? God is this glorious intangibility, so no proof becomes proof just by how you spin it.”

The beautiful parallels between these two characters are that while Amber is fighting a battle against the world, Meoraq is fighting a battle against himself. He's constantly defying his beliefs, his traditions and everything he once thought to be true. And that's a very difficult thing to deal with when faith in God is in between.

“It's one slice of shit-cake after another with me, isn't it? Why did you marry me?" "God gave you to me." "Did you keep the receipt?"

The romance is a slow burn. I could talk to you about the smut, the fact that Meoraq likes it rough or that Amber sucks dicks amazingly, but this is not really the point. There's NSFW stuff, but this book is not erotica.

This book it's Amber's story, Meoraq's story and Amber&Meoraq's story. They are individuals with different issues to deal with, who cross path with each other. Neither of them gives up to their own life to focus on the other's problems and I think that this is a very important thing, cause I've seen many times in romantic books how they turn the love into abandonment of their own lives.

I must say that this book is not for everyone. The TW are: non-con, graphic violence descriptions, sexual harrasment, slavery, kidnapping and psycological abuse.

Although if you're into this kind of stuff, controversial topics and dark literature, this might be your book. I can assure that The Last Hour of Gann is one of my favourite books, and I almost cried when I finished the last chapter and I saw that that's were it was finishing.

TLHG is a love story, a war anecdote and a survival's trip.

#book recommendations #book review #the last hour of gann #R. Lee Smith #beautiful dead #The Lords of Arcadia saga #my rambling #book rambling

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randomlymad · 7 months

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The Pioneer had scraped over the skin of this alien world for miles, sharpening itself like a knife; family housing and the rest of the forward compartments were gone, rubbed away, and the pointed tip of what was left had ultimately struck something unyielding in the ground and stabbed itself in.

Too many hours spent on something inaccurate, alas, I give up

#randomly mad #umabbas #sketch #fanart #illustration #drawing #r lee smith #the last hour of gann #tlhog #space ship crash #crashsite #I started inktober in fashion that exhausted me for the next month already #scifi #scifiart

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everbluems · 4 months

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No, it was not sex, but it had to be something that made him look for reasons to sit with her, to speak with her, even to fight with her if that was all there was, because even the most tedious and foul chore of curing a damned animal hide could become something to look forward to if he was with her. And it wasn’t sex, but he wished it was; it wasn’t sex, but if it had been, even that could be good, could even be glorious, just because it was with her.

— Meoraq Uyane, The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith

#book quotes #love quotes #the last hour of gann #r. lee smith #quotes

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tetrakys · 3 years

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Hey! I was browsing The Last Hour of Gann tag and I saw that you have read it. I’ve almost finished Cottonwood and I’m loving it so I’m very interested in reading LHoG. However I’ve heard that there is non-con in the book and I was just wondering if it’s done by the main love interest or a different character. I’m usually fine with non-con as long as it’s not by the main love interest and I couldn’t find an answer online anywhere. Thank you!

Hello! Unfortunately I haven't read LHoG yet, only an excerpt, but from what I remember the non-con was indeed done by the main LI. Take this with a grain of salt, but I think the point was that it was tradition for his race to act a certain way, but he also started developing remorse in that chapter I read, so the book may show his change.

If you like the author but you'd rather skip non-con completely, I suggest to check out Land of Beautiful Dead, it's about an angel/death good who basically caused the apocalypse and created zombies, and a girl who uses her courage and body to convince him to spare humanity. It's a long but interesting book.

#the last hour of gann #book rec #land of beautiful dead

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corseque · 6 years

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I’ve continued to read TLHOG and it’s such a good book, there are just these pangs of reverberating emotion like someone threw a big rock in the duck pond of my heart. The world-building is more fleshed out and compelling than the last like 25 series I watched/read, and I feel like I could spend a long time just studying how the author made the alien’s pov so clear and fascinating while introducing so many new alien terms at once.

When will my devout warrior-caste lizardman husband come back from the war? His praying under his breath for patience 24/7 when dealing with insufferable humans entertains me on a deep fundamental level

#im at the 57 percent mark of the 1200 pg lizardman romance tome #and its so good.... surprisingly spooky #i got shivers a lot #but also laughed very hard #im so intetested to see where THE HECK the plot is going #or what the author’s trying to say with all this thematic stuff #i avent cried yet like i cried like a wee babe during LotBD #but i can feel something that weighty coming #where all the themes come together to bash me in the head #its 1200 pages and im wanting to read slowly and savor it ;__;#i dont want them to get to the temple but i need to know what God has to say!!!!!!#they just did a title drop and i got the full body shivers goddddd #The Last Hour of Gann

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genuflectx · 2 years

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Terato/Exo Book List

Do you keep searching for that perfect novel? The one monster, alien, or non-human romance in a published work that captures you? But you just keep ending up on half-baked Goodreads lists curated by someone’s lonely mom who thinks changing a bodybuilder to the color purple is monstrous? Well look no further because I’ll read those books for you and rate them for an exophilia audience!

Right now the list is too short to be split into more categories, but as I add more I may include categories.

They read like this: Book name, author name: Brief synopsis and sometimes a comment on it’s content, themes, or my enjoyment. {Whether or not the love interest is monstrous/alien/etc, whether it ends happy, if there was romance/sex, sometimes include if there’s major death} (a rating of my personal enjoyment out from 1 to 10)

★★★Everything is in alphabetical order. LOOK OUT FOR SPOILERS★★★

✦ A Soul to Keep (Duskwalker Brides Book 1) by Opal Reyne: “Bad omen” Reia is offered up to the human-eating Orpheus, who only wants a human companion. Reia must decide whether to risk running away or learn to like him and stay. Multiple long and detailed sex scenes and pred-prey kink. Has romance but it’s sort of 2nd to the smut. Not great but not terrible writing. Has rape victim blaming in it though, and sadly some non-consensual touching a the beginning. {Skull-head monster/human, happy ending} (7/10)

✦ Be Kind My Neighbor by Yugo Limbo: Wegg, a drifting musician, comes to the town of Baths and meets the friendly neighborhood handyman, Mr. Neighbor. They grow closer as a string of mysterious murders continue to rise in number. This one is a comic. Cults, horror, goopy gay trans love, kinky sex scenes, gorgeous psychedelic art! Mr. Neighbor is a living cloth-man with some fun things underneath (wink) and Wegg is an egg-person. I’m ALWAYS a big fan of Yugo’s work! {They’re both human shaped but Mr. Neighbor is monstrous in his own right, romance and sex, happy ending} (10/10)

✦ The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith: Amber, her sister Nicci, and a group of about 40 humans are stranded on an unknown alien planet. With the help of a medieval alien lizardman named Meoraq they travel to a temple that the humans hope is an ancient transmissions tower or skyport. It’s 421k words long, full to the brim with rape, fatphobia, misogyny, misandry, emotional abuse, second hand embarrassment... first read some reviews if you want to consider this. {Humanoid alien lizard man, romance and sex, mostly a happy ending. But way too long and rape scenes seemed fetishy} (4/10)

✦ The Mabon Feast (Wheel of the Year #1) by C. M. Nascosta: A witch ousted by her community takes a tenant into her Victorian house in order to make ends meet and not feel lonely. Turns out the only tenant she can get is a mysterious and sickly drider. She almost never sees him. Over the course of a few months things change between them and an aphrodisiac-like scent permeates the house. Things come to a head and get spicy. Very well written but sometimes overwhelmingly flowery! {Non-human spider centaur- i.e. a drider- love interest, fun but somewhat extreme sexual acts, happy ending} (8/10)

✦ Noumena Series (Axiom’s End/Truth of the Divine/Book 3 TBA) by Lindsay Ellis: A first-contact story with serious themes of xenophobia (alien and human) and severe mental illness. Cybernetic insectoid raptor-shaped alien/human romance. No human/alien smut in books 1-2, book 3 yet to be seen but the author has implied they might have sex in it. I suggest reading trigger warnings for this series. {Very non-human love interest, very sad story especially book 2. Found the plot, themes, and writing to be engaging with a few small writing-style annoyances.} (9/10)

✦ The Shape of Water (tie-in book) by Daniel Kraus: A re-telling of the film The Shape of Water. It runs through different characters’ perspectives, including the fishman. It has vague descriptions of human/monster sex, which is still more than the film gave. Ends like the movie. {Human-shaped but monstrous fishman, ends bittersweet but they don’t die, romantic. Found the writing to be somewhat droll at times.} (6/10)

✦ The Scorpion's Mate (Iriduan Test Subjects #1) by Susan Trombley: A human gets abducted for alien government experiments and learns she’s meant to be a mutant scorpion alien’s broodmare. Very generic romance novel writing, not very romantic, but sex scenes hot with fun kinks like pheromones. Has an odd kink of eating food secreted out of a dick hole though. {Very non-human, vanilla sex but non-vanilla kinks, happy ending. Generic writing.} (6/10)

✦ Strange Love (Galactic Love #1) by Ann Aguirre: An alien accidentally abducts a human and her dog and she decides to go through challenges with him to prove they’re compatible mates. The alien is a non-humanoid insect-lizard thing with weird funky alien junk. Sex scenes are great, but I found the story and characterizations to be extremly lacking. {Very non-human love interest, interesting GNC sex scenes, bitter sweet ending. But the writing wasn’t too great. You get the sense that she was bored writing it.} (4/10)

✦{NOT WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR}

✖ The Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card: Consists of Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. Ender’s Game is the shortest, simplest, and imo best written. The first is a sci-fi classic worth reading, but is about a child with no romance. However, it’s sequels feature a multidimensional-controlling A.I. in it that eventually falls in love with a human, becomes human, and marries him. But romance is not a part of this series, these relationships are just sorta stated matter-o-fact. It’s not what you’re looking for and Card is a bit of a nasty person. The series also has weird focus on trying to paint colonialism and religious indoctrination into Christianity in a good light, and oddly has incestuous themes. (Insectoid aliens, “pig” aliens, multidimensional A.I./human.} (Ender’s Game: 8/10)

#terato #exophilia #monster boyfriend #monster girlfriend #books #novels #terato book list #book list #book review

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