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rainwatersparkBlue Steel Chain by Alex Beecroft
(Content warning: This book contains a physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive relationship.)
I picked up this book because I'd heard it had an asexual protagonist, but ultimately this isn't a book about asexuality, per se, as it is a book about abusive relationships and their effects on people. It possibly works well as a cautionary story about how asexual people can particularly be abused in relationships, though I'm not sure if most readers would necessarily pick up that angle (given that I had to think about it before I came to that conclusion).
It's not what I would call an asexual romance, I have to say (which disappointed me because that was what I was hoping to see in this book). While it doesn't end with Aidan being "cured," Aidan and James more or less end up with a normal sexual relationship at the end, except that Aidan needs advance notice and doesn't like spontaneous sex, that's all.
I think the book did a fairly good job with portraying how an abusive relationship affects the survivor for a while afterward, but something that bugged me was the fact that James and Aidan had to separate for a few months (?) after James rescued Aidan, despite their mutual attraction. It's a delicate issue for sure, the question of the fragile emotional state of an abuse survivor who's just emerged from an abusive relationship and may have "imprinted" on the first person who is actually kind to them—but, on the flip side, isn't there something ethically troubling about ignoring the survivor's agency, considering the abusive relationship had stripped him of his agency for years to begin with?
What I'm saying is, if Aidan expressed an interest in pursuing a relationship with James, maybe at most a friend might be like "Whoa dude, here are some things you should think about first, like you've just come out of an abusive relationship, maybe you should take a break and get some therapy for a while before thinking about another relationship. Think about that before you start a new relationship," instead of what was actually said to Aidan, which was something along the lines of "What you need to do is work and get your life back on track for a year and then you can have a relationship with this guy." Which sounded awfully a lot like a directive that Aidan might've been primed to obey after 8 years of abuse.
And speaking of therapy, I'm not sure why Aidan was only getting therapy at the end of the book, long after he started working and started a relationship with James. It seems to me that if there was any reason to immediately deny Aidan's desire for a relationship with James, it would be "get some therapy first, dude." (Although I'm not an expert in how British healthcare works...)
The last thing I'll say about this book, I guess, is that James should've been my favorite kind of character (kind dorky nerd type), and yet I was left feeling lukewarm about him. Also, I really wasn't sure whether his relationship with Dave was supposed to be emotionally abusive or whether it was just unhealthy but James was too much of a doormat to leave. Dave was portrayed as nothing except a total asshole so it was hard to see why James was so reluctant to break things off, even if they had been together for 10 years—maybe more description about how he used to be would've helped in that regard.
(Maybe I missed what James's age was supposed to be, but I kept getting the impression that he was a lot older than Aidan—though maybe Aidan was just written as seeming very young when he's actually 24? I'm not sure.)
So yeah, overall, I thought the book was okay. It's better as a depiction of the effects of an abusive relationship than as an asexual romance, though I'm still bothered by other characters' treatment of Aidan for the reasons mentioned above.
(Content warning: This book contains a physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive relationship.)
I picked up this book because I'd heard it had an asexual protagonist, but ultimately this isn't a book about asexuality, per se, as it is a book about abusive relationships and their effects on people. It possibly works well as a cautionary story about how asexual people can particularly be abused in relationships, though I'm not sure if most readers would necessarily pick up that angle (given that I had to think about it before I came to that conclusion).
It's not what I would call an asexual romance, I have to say (which disappointed me because that was what I was hoping to see in this book). While it doesn't end with Aidan being "cured," Aidan and James more or less end up with a normal sexual relationship at the end, except that Aidan needs advance notice and doesn't like spontaneous sex, that's all.
I think the book did a fairly good job with portraying how an abusive relationship affects the survivor for a while afterward, but something that bugged me was the fact that James and Aidan had to separate for a few months (?) after James rescued Aidan, despite their mutual attraction. It's a delicate issue for sure, the question of the fragile emotional state of an abuse survivor who's just emerged from an abusive relationship and may have "imprinted" on the first person who is actually kind to them—but, on the flip side, isn't there something ethically troubling about ignoring the survivor's agency, considering the abusive relationship had stripped him of his agency for years to begin with?
What I'm saying is, if Aidan expressed an interest in pursuing a relationship with James, maybe at most a friend might be like "Whoa dude, here are some things you should think about first, like you've just come out of an abusive relationship, maybe you should take a break and get some therapy for a while before thinking about another relationship. Think about that before you start a new relationship," instead of what was actually said to Aidan, which was something along the lines of "What you need to do is work and get your life back on track for a year and then you can have a relationship with this guy." Which sounded awfully a lot like a directive that Aidan might've been primed to obey after 8 years of abuse.
And speaking of therapy, I'm not sure why Aidan was only getting therapy at the end of the book, long after he started working and started a relationship with James. It seems to me that if there was any reason to immediately deny Aidan's desire for a relationship with James, it would be "get some therapy first, dude." (Although I'm not an expert in how British healthcare works...)
The last thing I'll say about this book, I guess, is that James should've been my favorite kind of character (kind dorky nerd type), and yet I was left feeling lukewarm about him. Also, I really wasn't sure whether his relationship with Dave was supposed to be emotionally abusive or whether it was just unhealthy but James was too much of a doormat to leave. Dave was portrayed as nothing except a total asshole so it was hard to see why James was so reluctant to break things off, even if they had been together for 10 years—maybe more description about how he used to be would've helped in that regard.
(Maybe I missed what James's age was supposed to be, but I kept getting the impression that he was a lot older than Aidan—though maybe Aidan was just written as seeming very young when he's actually 24? I'm not sure.)
So yeah, overall, I thought the book was okay. It's better as a depiction of the effects of an abusive relationship than as an asexual romance, though I'm still bothered by other characters' treatment of Aidan for the reasons mentioned above.
