OMFG dinosaurs! I love it! ( )

Oh, wow, this was dreadful. From the discussion on the Vaginal Fantasies webcast, it sounded hilarious, but in reality it's just boring. I quit two chapters in, when I literally fell asleep mid-paragraph. Oh well. Only 1/2 an hour wasted... ( )

Crap. ( )

OMFG dinosaurs! I love it! ( )

Okay, so I gave the book another shot, and I'm glad I did. This is probably one of a handful of books where that admirable effort actually made a difference. Despite myself, this book grew on me.Readers of Nina Bangs' (and what an unfortunate choice of pseudonyms) other works will recognize her style in Eternal Pleasure, fast and flippant with no excess scenes or dialogue, but unlike Bangs' other novels, the Gods of Night are meant to be darker and troubled. After all, these are men imbued with the souls of primitive, destructive beasts, creatures of nightmare, savage machines that don't belong in the world of men. The author certainly manages to capture that tension. When we first meet our hero Ty (I bet you can't guess his other form-- the heroine does too), he bears a striking resemblance to our good friend The Caveman. (I'm paraphrasing, but "Me kill now," is a pretty close approximation to his first lines.) I had grave doubts here that were not immediately alleviated by Bangs' continually flip tone. Buffy was never my favorite TV character. I wanted to stop here, but I took the chance. I continued, and I was rewarded. Some chapters in, we're introduced to another element of the story. We learn more about Ty, who is apparently more layered than he first seems. Now this feels more like a romance and less like a Nature special. It also helps that Bangs' world is peopled with lots of other interesting creatures and secondary characters for books to come, especially the oh, so mysterious and reputedly soulless leader Fin (Bangs, you tease). Action: Good. There's enough fighting and fisticuffs to satisfy the bloodthirsty reader, but there is no horror-inspiring description of obscene violence, blood or gore. This is CBS violence, Moonlight rather than Supernatural. In this respect, Eternal Pleasure stays well within paranormal romance. Romance: There are several, requisite near encounters before the final culmination full of tension. The actual bedroom scene is not as clean as a historical, but not as steamy and raw as a Larissa Ione, and taking a page from Romeo's book, the hero makes a rather unlikely declaration. Fortunately, we can move on to the real action immediately afterwards.The ending was anti-climactic in failing to reveal an important event that had been alluded to for most of the book. It would also be nice to see a change of scenery now and again. However, outside of that, I would recommend Eternal Pleasure as a good action paranormal with a couple in-lust (I'm hard pressed to believe the heroine's melodramatic vow of eternal love at the end-- perhaps if the book was longer) and some good twists, and also because dinosaurs are just cool. Yeah, I said it. ( )