Karen Does J.W. McKenna’s Darkest Hour…”The Worst Book I’ve Read In Ten Years”
Warning, this review is littered with lots of spoilers.
I have what some might describe as an irrational hatred towards J.W. McKenna’s book, Darkest Hour, and have had for a few years now.
This book is part of the reason why I started blogging in the first place. I hated it so much, I needed an outlet to rant about it, and in those days, criticism of an author’s book on a group list (especially within the e-pub lists) were tantamount to flaming.
Anyway, I realised when I was doing my Pet Peeves list the other day, that I’ve never actually sat down and tried to review this book. Well today, I’m going to attempt to correct that particular imbalance.
Here’s the official blurb for the book from Amazon:
Ellie Martinson awakes to a nightmare of terror: She is naked, chained to the floor in a dungeon, subjected to continuous torment by her silent captor. As the days and weeks pass by, it becomes clear to Ellie that she is being trained to be a sex slave! She tries to resist, but finds herself being drawn into the lifestyle.
When she is finally sold to a new master, she is conditioned to obey and allows herself to be used and degraded without question. But hope appears in the form of her new master’s son, an ex-Marine who is visiting his father. She begins to reawaken her old self and finds he’s responding to her as well. But he’s reluctant to defy his father. Can love flower under such impossible circumstances?
So basically, the book starts with our heroine, Ellie, telling her current boyfriend that she wants out of their relationship, because he’s too laid back, and boring. The boyfriend, Frank, is obviously not happy, and lashes back at her, telling her that the relationship hasn’t been a picnic for him either, due to her dominating nature, and her ball-busting ways.
God, I wish I’d stopped reading at this point, because the clues that this book was going to push all my mega hot buttons, (and not in a good way) were there.
Check out the many references to Ellie’s ball-busting tendencies:
Outwardly, he was dismayed at the turn of events, but inside, he had to admit he was a little relieved. He knew that if they had gotten married, she’d have had his balls in a jar on on a shelf—even more so than she did now, he thought ruefully.
“Hard-charging” was the polite word for Ellie. He could think of another one.
Truth be told, he liked Ellie—and the sex was great. As long as he let her have her way, they were good together. That’s probably why they had stayed together for so long. She could be a tough broad, though.
She dreaded the upcoming conversation with her mother. Letting a doctor slip through her fingers like that! She could hear her mother’s voice now: “Men don’t like all those hard edges, Ellie—how many times have I told you that! You need to be softer, more feminine, to win the heart of a man.”
Yep, she was a ball-buster alright, even her mother thought so.
Basically, Ellie was looking for a strong man, because apparently she was a strong woman. I say apparently, because there seemed to be no clear evidence of that strength at the beginning of the book. I certainly didn’t buy the charge, that she was a testosterone-laden, hard-ass. Unless you count letting a client feel her up, in exchange for him signing a lucrative contract:
It was a small account—her commission would be less than three thousand. But there could be tens of thousands later. Hang in there, Ellie!
When he’d dropped his hand to her breast, she’d wanted to punch him. Instead, she’d grabbed his hand and held it to her and said: “If you sign, I’ll let you feel it.”…Using a man’s sexual nature against him was a technique Ellie wasn’t ashamed to use to win the sale.
Ellie had sat and let Harp reach out and stroke her left breast. She hadn’t stopped him when he unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and slipped his hand inside.
When he had felt her up to his satisfaction, Harp had signed.
Incidentally, she also gave him a blow job, when it looked as if the deal was in jeopardy. Yeah, a real ball-buster, that one.
Ellie’s ideal man was her very-married boss, who was a take-no-prisoners type. He was strong and controlling, and didn’t take shit from anybody. Evidenced by the way he spoke to Ellie:
“You blow this Ellie, and I’ll have your tits in a wringer,”
Yep, a man after my own heart.
Anyway, one night a stranger walks into Ellie’s apartment whilst she’s sleeping, drugs her, and kidnaps her.
The man takes her away in order to begin her training as a sex slave.
When Ellie wakes up, she finds herself bound, and naked in a dungeon. She has no idea how long she’s been out for, but she’s afraid, and she has no idea what is happening. Eventually, a mysterious woman appears, with water for her. Ellie realises that her nightmare has just begun, when she is made to beg for water and food.
During her first few days in the dungeon, Ellie had to use a bucket to pee and crap in. She was kept in the dark, damp dungeon, and basically treated like an animal. And they say romance is dead?
The bucket was slowly filling with her wastes—since she had been given solid food, she couldn’t help but have to squat over the bucket to expel her bowels. The odor was overpowering. She was used to it by now, but she imagined it wasn’t pleasant for her keepers to come in and smell it while feeding her.
She was also made to shave her hair off. Both sets. All in the name of submission.
Basically, Ellie’s captors were breaking her down, and what better way to do that, than by by ridding her of her humanity?
If she defied her captors in anyway, she was severely punished for her insurbordination, as this next scene demonstrates: (This excerpt is from a scene where Ellie had just refused to take her captor’s cock in her mouth)
This is it, she thought. This is where he rapes me. Instead, it was worse. She heard a whistling sound, and a bolt of tremendous pain seared her tender ass. She screamed through her open mouth, still held wide by the device. He gave her a few seconds to appreciate the pain, then he struck again. She screamed, afraid that she would die here under the whip in the next few minutes. When he struck her the third time, she passed out.
She awoke a few minutes later, but nothing had changed. As soon as her eyes opened, he struck her again, forcing another guttural cry from her abused body. She passed out again. When she returned to consciousness, he hit her again. Apparently, he was waiting until she was awake for every blow.
She knew she couldn’t take much more of this. She begged and cried through the device, which wasn’t allowing her to form coherent words.
Time after time he struck her. She lost count, but she had to guess it was eight or ten.
This scene made me so mad, that had this been an actual book, I’d have thrown it against the wall. As it was, my laptop only just survived. (more…)
Posted by Karen Scott · 
