The Friday Society is set in London in the year 1900 and stars three different girls: Cora, Michiko, and Nellie.

Cora used to sell flowers on the streets but now has a comfortable and endlessly interesting life as Lord White’s lab assistant. Unfortunately, it looks like Lord White might be planning on replacing her.

Michiko ran away from home when she was 11 and spent a few years as a retired geisha’s servant before running away yet again and becoming a samurai trainee. Frustrated at her teacher’s unwillingness to give her her own sword, she agreed to go to London with a man named Callum and work as his assistant. Callum was nice enough, at first, but it soon became clear that he was using Michiko’s skills to trick rich Londoners into paying him enormous fees for his self-defense courses.

Nellie used to work at a burlesque house and is now a magician’s assistant. She’s strong, flexible, and never forgets anything. She’s also incredibly beautiful and hates the attention this attracts, even as she is aware that her looks help draw a crowd and add to the Great Raheem’s act.

The three girls’ paths cross when they meet at a ball and discover a severed head. They gradually realize that this murdered man may be connected to other recent deaths, so they decide to team up and find the killer.

I picked this up a while back on the basis of its cover and vague memories of reading a couple positive reviews of it. I was expecting it to be fluffy and action-packed fun. Unfortunately, it turned out to be utterly terrible.

First, the good. Let’s see… It was a really quick read, despite its many problems. The cute young police officer that Nellie fell for was really nice. Michiko had the potential to be one of the most interesting girls in the book. The action scenes near the end were okay. And there was parkour!

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Now for the bad.

I generally interpret steampunk books to be alternate history. If a book says it’s set in London in 1900, I want it to feel at least vaguely like it’s actually set in that time and place. However, history was one of my worst subjects in school, and I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of historical romances that are really only historical-ish. My standards for historical details aren’t very high, and yet this book had me checking the Oxford English Dictionary by page 18, when Cora used the word “skeevy.” On page 17, Cora had been thinking about how a particular opium den “freaked her out.” Had this book been set in the 1960s or 1970s, this would have been more appropriate, but the language didn’t work at all for something supposedly set in 1900. I had the sneaking suspicion that the author’s “research” for this book was limited to a handful of Wikipedia pages and some Buffy the Vampire Slayer binge-watching for dialogue inspiration.

Then there was the enormous and useless mess that was the investigation. Crime scene preservation was nonexistent. It was not uncommon for the girls to cart bodies away from crime scenes. They took one dead girl home to her family before reporting her murder to the police. Later on, they went to the extra effort of carrying a dead boy to the police rather than going with the much easier option of contacting the police and having them come to the scene of the crime. The only explanation I could come up with for this was that readers were supposed to believe the police would have just ignored the murder and let the body rot in the streets.

The girls did so little actual investigating that, when they finally met up with the villain, the person had to do a stereotypical villain monologue just so they’d know the whole story. They’d have missed out on almost everything important, otherwise. The one crime that I solved ages before them (seriously, the villain practically confessed to one of the girls), they didn’t manage to figure out until the solution had been spelled out for them and then basically underlined.

I wanted the girls to be more awesome than they turned out to be. They were all hugely dependent on their masters, and only one out of those three masters was worth squat (although I was taken aback at how casually he killed a man - okay, so the guy had been poisoned and was dying, but he just snapped that man’s neck like it was nothing). Two out of three of the girls had love interests who turned their brains to mush. All Cora’s love interest had going for him was that he was handsome, and their kissing scene came out of nowhere. Nellie supposedly hated the way guys reacted to her beauty, and yet she instantly fell for the young cop, apparently because he was the first young man to ever notice her looks and yet not grope her.

Kress didn’t make as good use of the girls’ skills as she could have. Cora had one invention of her own that came into play near the end of the book. Nellie’s flexibility and burglary skills turned out to be useful, but her memory was a throwaway detail at the beginning that never came up again. In fact, since Cora remembered something near the end of the book better than Nellie did, I have a feeling the author forgot that Nellie was supposed to have more abilities under her belt than being able to pick locks and break in and out of buildings. Michiko only had one skill, swordsmanship, although she was learning a bit of parkour on the side. She was at least a good fighter, and more focused than the other two girls.

Although I probably liked her the best out of the three, I have to talk about Michiko. The girl was a giant stereotype. From the age of 11 to 14, she lived with a retired geisha who taught her how to play the shamisen and perform a few geisha dances. She said she’d been with Callum for about a year, and all the girls were about 16 or 17 years old, so I’m guessing that her samurai training lasted from about age 14 to 15 or 16. I’m a little surprised that Kress didn’t somehow cram a bit of ninja training in there.

At any rate, the geisha training was brushed aside like it had never happened, even though Michiko had technically spent more years on that than on her samurai training. Despite having started her samurai training pretty late (a little googling seems to indicate that most started their training between the ages of 5 and 7), she supposedly became so good that the only possible reason she wasn’t given her own sword was because she was a girl. I...find that a little difficult to believe, although I’ll grant that she was probably much better than Callum could ever hope to be.

Even though she managed to learn all these things between the age of 11 and maybe 17, she somehow had barely learned any English after a year with Callum. For much of the book her vocabulary consisted of maybe a dozen words, including “apologies” and “death.” This unfortunately meant that she was excluded from most of Cora and Nellie’s conversations. This particularly bugged me during a sudden drunken sleepover that happened right after the first body was discovered (well, sort of the first). The sleepover was stupid to begin with, but I had to grit my teeth every time the text made a point of telling readers that the girls were trying to include Michiko in their activities but, well, they just couldn’t because she couldn’t understand anything. Later on, Cora mentally described Michiko as “all silence and mystery” (162), conveniently forgetting that Michiko didn’t have the language skills necessary to talk about herself.

I mentioned earlier that the author’s research was probably limited to a few Wikipedia pages. Most of those Wikipedia pages probably dealt with Japanese honorifics and samurai, judging by a few very odd little sections in the book. I can’t really judge the accuracy of the samurai stuff, although the repeated mention of samurai masks seemed a bit odd to me. Honorifics came up during one awkwardly long moment, when an elderly samurai in London lectured Michiko on her privately rebellious habit of calling Callum “Callum-kun” rather than “Callum-san.”

I seem to be in the minority - lots of people thought this book was at least decent. Personally, I can’t imagine recommending this to anyone. It wasn’t interesting enough to make up for its many faults.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I read a Dear Author review of this book a few months ago and thought, meh, that's not for me. Rationally, intellectually, this book has nothing that interests me at all. A story about a violent, liquor-distilling gang where the men unwind from work (protecting the gang's territory like a pack of violent alpha dogs) by cage fighting of all things? Not my cuppa. And while the men are doing that, the scantily clad women are working in the gang's nightclub, either serving men as cocktail waitresses or debasing themselves for men's entertainment as strippers? No, thanks, really not interested. -And some of those women wear tattooed collars as a symbol of their belonging to a man? Ugh, I'm feeling a little sick. -And the protagonist is a submissive pain-slut? Gross: I'm down with bondage, but sadomasochism is not my bag. -And all of this happens in a dystopian future? Hell to the No! I hate, hate, hate dystopias. This world is fucked up and scary enough that I really don't enjoy 'escaping' into an even more dark and twisted alternate reality.

And yet...

OMG: I could not put this sh*t down. I should not have liked anything about this story, and yet it was utterly transporting and so, so readable. I'm a terrible, unapologetic skimmer, especially with erotica where plot continuity isn't really the point--<*waggles eyebrows lasciviously*>--but I happily read, no, savored Every.Single.Word.

There are a lot of things about this book that get my feminist hackles up. At first glance, the gender roles in this dystopian society appear extremely rigid and patriarchal: the men are leaders, fighters, enforcers, protectors, dominants, while the women serve, soothe, and submit. When Noelle is brought to the O'Kane gang's compound for the first time, the leader, Dallas, says she can stay but "if she's not willing to tend bar, clean house, or suck dick by the end of the week, she's gone." (p.13) I might have thrown the book at the wall right then, if Dallas's girlfriend, Lex, hadn't responded with an eloquent "Fuck you."

Another thing that annoyed me: the women aren't in charge of their own orgasms. They spend a lot of time begging to get off, while the men come when and how they please, which seems fundamentally unfair. That said, in real life, too many men aren't especially concerned with satisfying their partners at all, while the men of Sector Four give their women multiple orgasms, even though they (the ladies) have to beg a little. Since this is all in fantasy anyway, maybe that's not such a bad deal.

Even against this patriarchal, women-as-the-weaker-sex backdrop, Beyond Shame has a strong and overt -- though somewhat contradictory -- theme of feminine empowerment. As Lex goes on to explain to Noelle after the "tend bar, clean house, suck dick" thing: "You don't have to lay a finger on anyone, not if you don't want to. Get a job, work at the club, whatever. The sex is a bonus, not an obligation." (p.14) Nothing happens in this story that isn't consensual, and totally, clear-mindedly so, where consent can't be tinged by alcohol or drug impairment or even emotional upheaval. Not all of the women are sexually submissive (though most seem to be, and Noelle definitely is), and even where they are, they choose their partners and ask for what they want (though sometimes in the context of begging for orgasm).

Though sex is a huge part of what gives women value in Sector Four, intelligence is more important. As Lex puts it (in her typically profane way): "Everyone has a couple of holes a guy can stick his dick in. The important stuff is all above the neck... [Use] your brain, baby girl." (p. 20). A closer reading of the story provides ample examples of women's value above and apart from sex: one of the other women is a mechanical genius, better at fixing the gang's cars, motorcycles, and electrical equipment than any man in the compound, and Noelle turns out to be a skilled computer hacker, though she considers her expertise paltry compared to that of others she knew in the more technologically advanced city of Eden (from whence she comes). Indeed, her biggest asset to Dallas and the gang turns out not to be her ability to tend bar, clean house, or suck dick, but the wealth of information she knows about the powerful men who control Eden.

Even so, there's no easy resolution of the tension between the patriarchal world of Sector Four and the relative freedom women have within it. Lex says:

You can't buy people here with money, especially women. You buy them with security, safety, all the things that have always been true in societies where men hold the power. But we hold power, too. Remember that--there are things we have, things we can offer. Things they need.

(p.19) In the end,while this is a world where women hold unprecedented sexual freedom, it is also a world where men hold the power, and women can be bought. That's not a comfortable notion for a feminist like me.

One of the themes I found most fascinating was Noelle's discovery that--though it is her instinct to submit, "to give control and authority of herself to another" (p. 51)--that she has "to get better at saying no before yes means anything" (p. 294). From the beginning of their relationship, Jasper urges her to explore her options before committing to him: "I want you to have other people, find out what you like. Get and give pleasure before you settle on me." (p. 98) It reminded me of a late night, probably drunken conversation I had with my college roommate's girlfriend many years ago, where she insisted that in true dominant/submissive relationships, the submissive holds all the real power. I always understood that to come from the ultimate power to safeword out and call halt to the proceedings, but this book is the first BDSM-themed story I've ever read that really shows how much deeper a submissive's power runs. Noelle holds absolute power of choice over her own sexuality (though not necessarily the timing of her orgasms), and in order for that choice to be fully realized, it must be an informed choice. Jasper demands Noelle take time and space to learn what she wants before he accepts her verdict that he is the one who can give her what she needs.

My biggest disappointment with the book is that, about three-quarters of the way in, a stark conflict arises that stands between Noelle and Jasper's HAE. This conflict appears insurmountable and sets the story up for lots of angst and drama... but then the story ends without any satisfactory resolution to that problem. It's not even a cliffhanger: more like the narrative propels you, the reader, toward the edge of a cliff and you see it coming and you're terrified and sick and worried... and then at the last possible moment, the story changes direction and the cliff is still there, but suddenly doesn't matter. It felt emotionally manipulative and far, far less satisfying than if the problem had actually been solved.

All in all, I really enjoyed this when I didn't think I would, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

I love, love, love the other two books in the Turner trilogy, Unveiled and Unraveled. However, while this one is as smartly crafted as everything Courtney Milan writes, it doesn't pack the same emotionally-satisfying punch. I'll explain, but first, the plot summary: Mark, the youngest of the Turner brothers, has published a Practical Guide to Chastity to great acclaim, making him England's most famous male virgin. However, when Mark is offered a political appointment, another candidate for the job hatches a plot to discredit him: he hires a courtesan, Jessica, to seduce Mark and publish an account in the papers.

Ordinarily, this sort of gender-flipping of common romance tropes would be catnip to me. A male virgin? Yes, please. A sexually-liberated heroine pursuing him, to the prospective peril of *his* reputation, not hers? Sign me up!

But there is the first problem: Jessica is *not* a sexually-liberated heroine. In fact, she is probably more imprisoned by her sexuality than the most pristinely innocent miss. After seven years of working as a courtesan, she is burned out on her profession and in the grips of a profound depression that leaves her unable to feel anything: not the warmth of the sun on her face and certainly not sexual pleasure. When men touch her, she flinches. She pursues Mark out of cold desperation, since she is out of money and knows she doesn't have it in her to be a working girl anymore.

I often struggle with romances where the conflict comes from one character's deception of the other. Unveiled involved deception, too, in that the heroine, Margaret, posed as someone other than herself in order to get close to the hero, and I'm not quite sure why this deception bothers me so much more than that. I think it's because once they came to really know and like each other, Jess could have told Mark the truth and trusted him to help her (but she didn't), whereas Margaret trusted Ash enough to reveal her disguise, even though doing so didn't solve the tangle of familial loyalties that kept them apart. Also, Margaret was motivated by a desire to help her brothers, while Jessica's masquerade is more self-interested (although I appreciate Jessica's survival instinct). Finally, even if Margaret had succeeded in her goal (to thwart Ash in his aim to steal her family's duchy), Ash had the financial wherewithal and social standing that he would've been okay; by contrast, Jessica's planned seduction aims to topple the very foundations that make Mark the man he is--his chastity, his integrity, his reputation, his sense of self.

The other thing that bothers me about Unclaimed is, frankly, Mark. He's too good. He's whatever the male equivalent of a Mary Sue is: an Eddie Haskell, perhaps. I know it's ironic that I should feel that way, since in the book Mark is always protesting when people treat him like a saint just because he wrote a book about chastity. He feels lust and pride and he has a temper, he constantly reminds people. He isn't perfect... until one remembers that, in Romancelandia, lust and pride and temper are hardly mortal flaws in a hero. In my opinion, he is TOO perfect for me to really pull for him as a character.

Even though I don't like the romance of this book nearly as well as the other two, if you like overt feminist themes with your romance, pick this book up just for the pleasure of watching Mark deliver masterful set downs to upright Victorian gentlemen who would engage in slut-shaming. "There's no such thing as a fallen woman," he says more than once; "You just have to look for the man who pushed her."