A Reader Request: Grown-ups Only
(thoughts on ill-fitting equipment)
Dear Readers,
Your friendly Booksellers received this reader request quite a while ago, and it was lost in the shuffle. It’s hugely beyond our knowledge or skill, so we have edited, redacted, and illustrated this enormous question, and we send it out into the wide world.
What say you? Whose books would you recommend? Specific titles or series?
Or is our lovely Reader to be stuck forever, overwhelmed, dealing with this outsized problem: books that feature ill-fitting gear and overlarge equipment?
This one is for grown-ups: continue at your own risk.
”I love all things high fantasy. Low fantasy too. All of it. Narnia. The Wheel of Time. My uncle was a huge Lord of the Rings fan and he wrote his own fantasy book, complete with a map. I was obsessed with fairytales as a kid: the gory kind. I had almost all of the multicolored Lang fairy books. As an adult, I became obsessed with A Song of Ice and Fire. It brought me back, and reignited my love for all things eldritch, fantasy, paranormal, and magic.
”Now that audiobooks are so easy to get, I’ve been reading fantasy pretty much constantly. In 2008 I read the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jaqueline Carey and discovered that there is actually a sex-positive fantasy romance genre! I want more!
”I cannot find more. Not even close.”
Bookseller’s note: at this point that tiktok song started playing and we couldn’t get it out of our heads.
”I read some books by Jeffe Kennedy: romance novels with smut and fairies. A little fun? IDK. I wanted more smutty fairies so I read Amelia Hutchins. I had to stop because my brain was rotting.
”They were TERRIBLE. All I know is the fairy dicks were sooo big. How on earth would they fit? This was the crux of all female problems. She was kickin' ass and fittin' dicks and the dick-fitting was the worrymaker.
”Is there any good smut? Fun smut? I tried the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by some lady named J.R. Ward. Ms. Ward's marbles are not just lost; they are non-existent. There were even more dicks in this book and the ladies were extremely worried about how they could possibly fit. Are they so bad they’re good? No. They’re just bad.
”Needless to say, I started out reading beautifully written fantasy as a child and I have devolved into vampires with names like Vishous, Rhage, and Rath. (SERIOUSLY!!)
”The men in these books are 7 feet tall; they are completely hairless; they have gigantic non-fitting dicks and also: they are vampires. So bad. Soooo bad. One of the books is about a homosexual vampire couple. One! Out of 22 books! I bet they both have colossal dicks. But do the men worry about how the dicks will fit? IDK. I only got as far as Book 4.
”Bookseller, I’m a heterosexual human woman. I have had dicks. More than one (not at the same time, but I’m not judging.) A dick is a dick. It has its uses. It always fits. But the ability to find and attend to the little person in the boat is much more important.
”I like a peen. I'm happy with my husband, who has a peen.
”BUT. If I had to choose between my husband losing his peen or my husband losing his ability to find my clitoris... GOODBYE PEEN!! It’s been nice knowing you.
”After Book 4, with the big bald bloodsucking dicks, I was ashamed of wasting my own time.
”I re-read the Wheel of Time and then the entire Kushiel’s Legacy series. And just like last time, Kushiel's Legacy made me pine for something better.
”Now we come to the reason I subjected you to this really long story. I found another good series. They are by RF Breene. It contains completely shameless smut. Also, as seems to be a rule with these kinds of books, there is concern: how will the big dick fit??
”WHY?????
”I think I figured it out. It’s unavoidable. It's a literary convention. If you write heterosexual smut, you must include the big scary non-fittable dick. Fine. I’ll cut the author some slack since this is required by the publishing gods. The dicks must be large; fit must be a concern. It’s required, like having page numbers. Okeydoke.
”Now that we’ve gotten the ill-fitting dick out of the way, I really like the books. It’s not really the smut, but how hilariously sex-positive the whole thing is. It’s Beauty and the Beast...except the curse was put on the castle by a demon king who sent incubus and succubus demons to drive everyone crazy with too much sex. The supporting characters are hilarious: the lady’s maid is all about kink and whips and chains. The gay butler might be the best character in the whole book. The whole castle is a cesspool of debauchery and the staff is TIRED.
”I find myself skipping over the smut for the dialogue! The heroine goes hunting and swears like a sailor; her brother stays home and cooks for the family; the beast is a sexual dominant who also has a gift for singing to flowers and making them grow. He is the only person in the entire castle who has remained celibate during the 16 years of the curse.
”Of course, he’s a dragon prince, with a slightly larger than average penis (for a dragon, which equals HUGE). So we’re back: there it is, the non-fitting dick.
”I won’t apologize for liking what I like. At 45 years old, it seems to be fairytale, fantasy, adult, sex-positive smut...with or without dicks, of whatever size. Do you have any suggestions for me? I have only two books left in this series, and then….
”I just can’t go back to the bald vampires. I can reread Kushiel’s Legacy but there must be more!”
Readers, she wants more, more, more! What do you recommend?