Discussion for original M/M works, both professionally published and free online.
O/s by Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow
O/s by Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow
On Author's website
On goodreads
Blurb:
Jax has the perfect job on the perfect world, looking after subs while their owners are away. But Brysen’s no ordinary sub and his owner Layne is a threat to the safety of every sub on the planet. Dealing with the heartbreak of a failed relationship, Jax is slow to realize Brysen’s adoration for his stern owner passes all reason, and breaks every rule. By the time he does, there may be time to save Brysen, but in the process, Jax stands to lose everything from his job to his chance at love. Will the protective instincts that guide his actions hold steady or will the darkness Layne wakes within him prove stronger?
Content notes: BDSM, non-con elements, (non-major) character death, and scenes of violence.




I read this earlier this week. I was surprised that I had missed a Jane Davitt D/s book!
The book itself was... okay? It's "sci fi" only for the reason that I think in published works, it's harder to get away with hand-wavey AUs. So instead of "an AU where there is an institutional Owner/sub system," this is "random sci-fi planet where there is an institutional Owner/sub system."
A lot of the goodreads reviews were talking about how violent the book was, but I have to admit that I was a bit relieved when it didn't end up being that bad. A lot of the extreme violence and extreme non-con happened off-screen or in the past, so that characters talked about it but as a reader it never felt very visceral or real.
The actual subject matter itself is totally my jam -- Bryson is being abused by his Owner (and this is supposed to be a consensual relationship, but Bryson doesn't realize how abusive it's become), and Jax kind of swoops in to save the day. The swooping happened earlier than I had anticipated, and overall I didn't end up really clicking with any of the characters.
One of the things that struck me is that Bryson's personally changes so drastically throughout the book. Yes, there are circumstances for it, but I would have liked to see the changes being a bit more gradual.
I would say that I enjoyed the broad strokes of this story, but the details were a bit missing. Probably this could have been a bit longer, expanding the world they lived in and explaining the systems in place a bit better. And giving the characters more room to grow.
As an aside, there was a chemist character named Yusuf, and I had to stop and wonder if I was reading Inception fanfic. I think it was just supposed to be a minor reference maaaybe? Because I couldn't see the rest of the inception cast in there at all.
I was expecting the book to be much shorter when I looked it up on GR, but it's actually 300 pages long. There's plenty of space to have character development, I wonder why they didn't do it. They could've added a couple of chapters if they needed to expand the story.
Now that I think about it, I've noticed that trend in other joint written books. Maybe the authors's styles didn't mesh well? Or maybe they rushed through it to make a deadline? Who knows.
Woah, is it really 300 pages? I got through it so fast, it definitely didn't feel like that!
Maybe the problem was that a lot of the writing was wasted on things that were kind of unnecessary -- the Yusuf character I mentioned only came up once and never again, and there was another buddy Jax had who seemed to exist only as a plot device. The cop who was helping them probably could have taken care of both of those roles.
And I definitely agree that sometimes joint-written books have issues. The previous book by these two that I read, about two subs + one dom, started well and then kind of derailed.
I feel like it's hard to keep track of where you're going when you're writing with someone else. One may be going in a direction while the other has something different in mind, and it's not always easy to communicate.