Reviews for Jewel of Atlantis

The average rating for Jewel of Atlantis based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-18 00:00:00 Serena Sweet Actual Rating 3.5 stars. Much better than the first book. It is a relief really after the previous let down. Now we can see for sure that this series have potential. However, I must confess that I am honestly not sure if my rating is more due to the actual book, or that I just tend to be predisposed to like Gena Shouter�s work. I admit I might not be completely objective. Atlantis #1: Heart of the Dragon - 2.5 stars. Atlantis #4: The Vampire�s Bride - 4 stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-07-03 00:00:00 Amy Naramore SPOILERS NOT HIDDEN IN THIS REVIEW WHY VAMPIRES SUCK AS ROMANTIC LEADS BY CARMEN 1.) They're cold. And dead. This is not sexy. 2.) I don't want to hurt my lover, and I don't want to be hurt by my lover. Pain during sex is not appealing (to me). 3.) Someone kissing your neck = yum. Someone nibbling/biting your neck = yum. Getting hickeys = yum. Someone taking their razor-sharp teeth and plunging them into your carotid artery = yuck. Your blood gushing out into someone's mouth = yuck. The taste of blood = yuck. The temperature of blood = yuck. How blood feels in your stomach = nauseating. Even people who enjoy the taste of blood can only handle a lick or two. It's not ingested easily or well. 4.) Also, opening your veins to someone's wet, filthy, bacteria-infested mouth is a great way to spread disease. Both the "donor" and the "recipient" are just asking for sickness. Bloodborne pathogens, people. BLOODBORNE PATHOGENS!!! I understand the concept. Scrunching = arousal. Or, if you're not a Buffy fan, it goes: unsheathing your fangs = getting an erection. Just listen to this: She felt his teeth elongating, readying for insertion. Uh-huh. I'm sure. *rolls eyes. Then, Showalter tries to tell us that Jewel isn't afraid or disgusted by Gray wanting to drink her blood. Instead, it makes her feel special and cherished. She'd never been bitten before, but she wanted to share a deeper part of herself with Gray, wanted to be the first and only woman he drank from. Perhaps it would link them, far stronger than they were already linked. See? Vampire feeding = sex. Also, this is a way of Showalter giving her womanizing hero a form of virginity that only the heroine is allowed to "deflower." In the last book, she made the hero into someone who'd never "allowed" a lover to give him a blowjob, so that he could get his first one from the heroine - and here she's doing the same with blood-drinking. Except not really, because Gray feeds on a demon, attacking him, draining him dry, and killing him. Are we supposed to believe he's now had "sex" or "blood-sex" or "feeding-sex" or whatever with the demon he killed? Or somehow blood-feeding is only sexual if he does it with a woman? Or only a human woman? Or only if it's a woman he's interested or what? I'm really confused here. Why on earth am I talking about a vampire 'hero' if this is allegedly about a human government agent falling in love with the magical Jewel of Atlantis? Well. Remember in my previous review when I said that Showalter's Atlantis is populated by nymphs, vampires, weredragons, and Formorians? How do you think you can write a romantic hero who is supposed to be tough and able to protect the heroine if he's a wimpy human? That's right. Have him fight off some vampires, demons and Formorians, but make sure he's wounded and bitten by them. Then, voila - a human/vampire/demon/Formorian mix that allows the hero to stay "hot" but instantly become a badass who flies, drinks blood, can see in the dark, and whose eyes glow red when angry. I thought this was a cop-out and too easy. Also, this book is ridiculous. Now, I understand that this is a romance novel, and I've said it before: I expect romance novels to be silly and sexist. I grade them on an extreme curve (and as a consequence they never get more than 3 stars from me). But even on my lenient scale this book was ridiculous. Jewel (Gray, the hero, names her) is a slave. She can predict the future and she's unable to lie - which makes her priceless. Anyone who owns her has an amazing advantage over their enemies. She's gorgeous. Gorgeous. She's a virgin. WTF? I can't believe this. As a slave, and a really really good-looking one at that, even if I believed she'd never been in love or had consensual sex, it's impossible to believe none of her former owners (and she's had a lot) took a sexual interest in her. Showalter doesn't even TRY to explain this. She mentions that people only see her as an object, a slave, an "it" and not as a person - but she's a gorgeous 20-something woman with no rights and no means of self-defense. Showalter could have at least put in the my-powers-will-disappear-if-I-have-sex trope (and I HATE this trope, but at least it's an excuse), but there's nothing. THEN, if that wasn't hard enough to believe, we're also supposed to believe that she's not only a virgin, but a virgin whose never masturbated in her life. Again, no explanation is given, but it practically made me scream in anger when I had to read the "she discovers her clitoris for the first time" scene. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I'm willing to believe in a hidden alternate dimension of Atlantis populated with the bastard offspring of a dead god, but I'm not willing to believe that Jewel is a 20-something virgin who doesn't even realize that touching herself "down there" feels good. ESPECIALLY since she's spied on Gray and his mind since she was a child up to the present, which included watching him have sex with A LOT of women, women who she specifically told Gray that she'd "imagined herself in the place of," but yet never touched herself? Yeah, right. Another completely ridiculous part of the plot is all the mind-reading. I don't like mind-reading in stories, but this is even worse because it's all over the place. When Gray goes into Atlantis, Jewel can easily read his mind. Later, she can only read it some of the time. Then, she can travel INTO his mind and they can interact there, as if it's a room or something. THEN, he develops mind-reading powers for a while. It's a huge merry-go-round of who-can-read-whose-mind that was dizzying, made absolutely no sense, followed no logic, and appeared and disappeared at the whim of the author. Then there's some kind of weird "Jewel is insecure" subplot where she gets really worried because every time that Gray has sex with her he fucks her hard and fast, and when she watched him have sex with all those women in the past (this still creeps me out, ugh, so creeped out) he really took his time and savored them and "made love" to them. This makes her doubt that she's really in love with him, but when she finally asks him about it, he's just like "Oh, you silly innocent woman! Don't you know that this means I want you more than anyone I've ever wanted. You just drive me so insane it's impossible to take my time with you!" And she's like: "Oh, that's a relief. Carry on, then." o.O So weird. Lastly, and this is a major spoiler so if you care, skip this paragraph: At the end, Jewel turns out to be a direct descendent of the gods and a mixture of every single type of blood (human/weredragon/vampire/centaur/minotaur/etc. etc. etc.). Major cop-out. Super-special snowflake to the max!!!! SO. Now that I've thoroughly eviscerated this book, why is it getting 2 stars and not one? Because Gena Showalter is a good author. Her writing is not bad or hard to read, she makes likeable characters, she always makes me laugh a bit (nothing as funny as her first two novels, though), she presents a creative creature-filled world, and the sex is both good and consensual. Trust me, there are a LOT of worse romance novels than this one. Tl;dr: Fluffy, beyond ridiculous, good consensual sex, nonsensical plot even for a romance novel. Very Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu, even beyond usual romance parameters. Not recommended. 2 real stars, 3 romance stars. I own this in Spanish. P.S. Also, Jewel fights and kills four demons after a 1-hour session of self-defense lessons with Gray. o.O And basically the self-defense lesson was an excuse for him to grope her. P.P.S. Gray is one of the most stubborn, egotistical, irrational male leads I've ever read in my entire life. He often purposefully ignores Jewel and her advice even though he KNOWS she's psychic because he has to be the "big man." It's beyond stupid. P.P.P.S. There's a whole scene in which Gray takes Jewel to a bar and teaches her to dirty dance. I KNOW THAT MOVIE IS POPULAR, BUT COME ON. It was strange.