2012 Slut Awards - Pen-rye-n's Picks

2012 was a weird year, wasn't it? A lot happened. We watched a ship capsize and the Giants won the Super Bowl. We lost Whitney and Etta and Michael and Phyllis and Sherman and Andy and Nora and Donna and Dick and Davy and Ray (Oh God, will I ever recover from that one?) and Neil and a whole slew of other celebrities that broke our hearts when we heard the news. Hurricane Sandy rocked the northeastern coast and we were enraged when Trayvon Martin was shot. We mourned for people in Aurora, Colorado and Newton, CT and cheered when Sandusky was convicted. We wondered if the zombies were rising and we saw a dude jump from space and the Mayans were wrong. We proved we don't go back once we go black. We met Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss and fanfiction got a movie deal and vampires saved my grandma.It was a busy year, full of heartache and happiness, joy and sorrow, and we spent it doing things. And reading. We read a lot.

So now, as we take down the streamers and sweep up the glitter and get ready to pack 2012 away, I'm rounding up all my faves from this year for one last go around.

Government Sanctioned Rape.

Ugh. The "R" word.

It's tricky business writing about rights and government control. And it can go well or it can go wrong. Like, really, really, wrong. Like, "What the hell were you thinking?!" wrong.

But, when done right, it can be an interesting premise, yeah?

So. The end of the world has come and gone. Maybe it ended with a bang. Maybe with a whimper. Or perhaps a sneeze. In fact, a sneeze is usually a good way to go, if we're going with government control of your reproduction rights, a virus seems to be the favored way to wipe out humanity. Maybe it's a virus that kills of newborns. Maybe it's one that only affects females. Whatever the virus does, it's usually present and for society to continue, the government has to step in and lay down the law.

THE LAW OF YOUR UTERUS.

And here, here is where things get tricky.

I fell in love with a Cajun.

Poison Princess by Kresley Cole
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.






Right now, Nina and I are reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, something we've talked about doing since before we even started Paper Boyfriends. In fact, The Night Circus was going to be our first collaborated review, most likely on our personal blogs and Goodreads and then Paper Boyfriends was born and now we're finally getting around to the book that sparked it all. In an effort to not get too far ahead of Nina while we read, I stopped myself halfway through and decided to start reading another book on my to-read list while I waited for her to catch up. (I'm a ridiculously fast reader who survives on little sleep. We joke that Nina is the old woman in this relationship, who goes to bed at 9pm and is up with the chickens, while I'm the frat boy, up all night partying and still awake the next morning. I digress.)

ENTER: POISON PRINCESS.

Have I ever talked about my deep and burning love for Post-Apocalyptic novels? Because it's there and it's A Thing. I love watching the world fall apart. I love when things get a little Lord of the Flies and when unlikely couples, people who would have never looked twice at each other before, end up together. I like seeing communities form and bands of people coming together to fight or to live or just to have human companionship. I love learning to navigate broken worlds and establishing new normals and I love watching characters rise up to become survivors.

I love guys like Jackson Deveaux. 

Roads made of blood and lands of dust.

Blood Red Road by Moira Young
Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars.





I am a total dystopian, post-apocalyptic, apocalyptic, everything going to shit, junkie. I don't know what it is about this genre that I'm so crazy about, but it's there and it's a thing and I'm damn near obsessed with it.

Blood Red Road is getting a ton of crazy good reviews and, from what I understand, it's already been picked up by Ridley Scott to be made into a movie. And you know what? I completely understand why. 

My soul for a dragon.

Defiance by C.J. Redwine
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.



Wait. Stop right there. Stop giving me the side eye for my 4 stars. Let me explain.

There are dragons.

Okay. They're kinda like dragons. Like, practically dragons, but they don't fly so they're basically dragon mutants or something but they have scales and wicked tails and they breathe fire. DRAGONS, OKAY. NOT-DRAGONS. KINDA-DRAGONS. DRAGONS ARE AWESOME.

There was some crazy stuff going on in the Defiance world. There was tyrannical leaders, and oppression and widely accepted misogynistic attitudes and highway robbers and fucking Tree People and sweet bread baking old men and secrets and spies and sword fights and crazy tech inventions and DEFIANCE (I C WUT U DID THAR) and it was a lot of awesomeness topped with a lukewarm romance. If you ignore the romance aspect of it (and good Lord, that was hard, especially towards the end,) it was glorious.