Earth's Requiem (Earth Reclaimed, #1)

by Ann Gimpel

[inlibrisveritas]

Earth’s Requiem seemed the promising listen when I first sampled it and sent my request off. I really wanted another unique fantasy to listen. Unfortunately while the world building is quite interesting and the story held a lot of promise, there were a lot of moments where it seemed to stall out in favor of sex.

Now, you guys know I’m not a prude…I’ve read some weird stuff and I read erotica on occasion, so the fact that there is sex isn’t the issue. When I requested this book no where did I find a tag or hint that this was going to on the same level as erotica, I just wanted a cool urban fantasy to listen to, but about 20% in I was already tired about hearing of ‘crashing orgasms’. The story itself holds a lot of promise, and I really enjoyed that portion of the world building. It’s a world where humans are struggling to survive thanks to the constant clashing of two other races, the Lumarians and the Dark Ones, and Aislinn wants to bring them both down but she’ll have some help from some Irish gods as well. It’s an odd mix, but that part worked really well. Even the magic system is rather cool, with different classes and types of magic ranging from healing to hunter (animal familiar). The moments where Aislinn was handling the problems the Lumarians were really cool, but every other being in this book seems to revolve around sex. The Dark Gods are hyper sexualized beings who need that closeness and heat to sustain themselves, and thus basically mind control humans into having sex until they die (fun, right?). Even the larger creatures like the dragon and Minotaur are sexualized…I set aside days where I read weird monster erotica and on those days I’m using in the mood to laugh my butt off and can handle being grossed out, so imagine my surprise at hearing about a Minotaur’s private bits while eating lunch.

Then there are the characters themselves. Aislinn held promise as a heroine, but she stalls out around the same time the plot started to focus less on the fight to survive and more on the fight to sate lust. She has a temper, is fiercely independent, and sort of just rushes headlong into things. She starts out being okay with magic, but by the middle of the book the Chosen One syndrome kicks in and she’s suddenly pretty good at everything. Finn was pretty interesting to being with as well and serves as a sort of magic mentor for Aislinn, but in between exercising his Alpha gland and his penis I can’t be quite sure how much Aislinn actually learned.

The narration is probably the best thing about this one. McLuaghlin probably won’t hit my top narrator list but she does bring some uniqueness to each character and does some pretty decent accents when needed.

I wanted to like this one, I really did, but I think the fact that I went into this expecting a normal urban fantasy novel and ended up getting a fantasy erotica novel really brought it down.