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Far and away, the most criticism I’ve read when it comes to Fifty Shades of Grey is from those who live the BDSM lifestyle. I can agree with a lot of the concerns I’ve read. The major issue that seems to be the flash point is in relation to Christian’s character.

In the novel, an unspoken connection that imply’s Christian’s Dominance stems from early childhood trauma. It gives the reader the impression that this lifestyle is the result of an underlying imperfection – be that abuse, assault, or neglect. That someone cannot simply be a Dominant without any issues or baggage that brought them to that point. While I’m in agreement for the most part, I would be whole-heartedly on this bandwagon if there were other Dominants discussed in the book in further detail that also had fucked up backgrounds. Maybe they are introduced in the subsequent novels (I’m currently just a few chapters in book two) that have not entered the ‘scene’ that aren’t from a broken background. If you were a vanilla individual reading this, you may get the impression that Dominance is a ‘bad’ thing, and to be ashamed of your imperfection. Even a few Doms may question their desires based on Christian’s character.

Keep going…I want more…

I recently wrote Fifty Shades of Ruby – A Fifty Shades of Grey Review – An Introduction discussing my difficulty on settling on a single opinion about EL James’s novel Fifty Shades of Grey. Taking it from three different perspectives, my opinion on the novel from an erotica writer’s point of view is quite black and white. It really can be summed up on eight simple words:

This is certainly not a well written book.

I knew that right from the start. Within ten minutes of reading the book, I had seen the phrase “ghost of a smile on his lips” three separate times. Ms James seems to have a list of twelve of so adjectives that she pulls from for the entire novel. Every third paragraph seems to be discussing the color of Christian’s eyes. Her chapters seemed to follow a formula of sorts with her sentence style, especially when it came to dialogue – almost cookie-cutter. If I had handed this in as a short story to my senior year English teacher, Miss Farley would have had a field day with her red pen.

I do have to admit, there were times where my mind was more involved in self-critiquing her writing style than getting involved in the story itself, and that upset me. I certainly hope Ms James never steps foot into any self-pub writers forums or she’d see herself completely crucified for her ‘lack’ of writing skills. In an interview on the Today Show in the states, she gets asked straight out what she feels about her writing, and she says that she is aware that they are poorly written.

But does any of that really matter?

Keep going…I want more…

I’m a bit late on this scene, as my personal reading time has been slowly evaporating in the last few months. When two of my employers had asked me if I had read the Fifty Shades trio by EL James, and if I could create pieces on the subject, I seized the opportunity to read one of the most discussed books of the year.

I had read numerous reviews of it, mostly from those who are involved in the BDSM lifestyle. I had also witnessed my personal Facebook timeline fill up with vanilla friends who declared it one of the best books they had ever read in their lives, and how every red-blooded woman needed to read it. The writer’s forums that I frequented had numerous posts on it as well, ripping apart EL James as an example of people with zero writing ability somehow scamming the world into spending their hard earned money on their ‘puke on a page’, (as someone so eloquently described it).

I am involved in the BDSM lifestyle. I remember the days of being a vanilla reader of paperback smut and falling completely head first into a book. I also write BDSM erotica for a living, so in a way, Fifty Shades of Grey is my competition. Before I even started reading the book, the internal debate began. Under what ‘hat’ do I judge this book? Can I go into this objectively despite the fact that I had already read so much on it? Will I be able to combine all those parts of me into one and formulate a single opinion? Keep going…I want more…