Fiends with Benefits by Johnny Peregrine

TITLE: Fiends with Benefits
AUTHOR: Johnny Peregrine
PUBLISHER: Phaze Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 35k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $5.00

Ben Watts is having a rough time. First he gets bitten and turned into a werewolf. Then his local pack gets called into Columbus by the vampire Master of the City – who turns out to be a Mistress, instead. When his pack leader gives him to Valda, Ben has no choice but to find a new life for himself. But it’s hard being a redneck werewolf in the big city. And especially hard when your Mistress feeds off you regularly, sends mixed signals galore, and expects you to protect her with your life.

I’m beginning to wonder how Phaze handles its editing. This is the second story I’ve purchased since starting this blog, and it’s the second story to make me cringe with all the mistakes in it. The author is in love with run-on sentences, with phrases being strung together with commas instead of semi-colons, or sometimes with nothing at all. It’s very difficult to tell sometimes when it’s internal observation rather than external – especially since the story is in 1^st person. His spelling can sometimes be unfortunate, as well; for example, cummerbund becomes “cumber bun.” Beyond obvious author errors, however, are the glaring editing issues. There is more than one paragraph where a sentence is repeated in different places, and one of them is clearly meant to be removed, while sentences like this – I even played with her fangs with my tongues which she found amusing and pulled back with a smile – just mean that nobody was paying that close attention to detail.

Struggling with all that makes it next to impossible to sit and actually enjoy the story. I did have another issue early on, in that it wasn’t the story I was expecting. The excerpt as given on the website is the first half of the first chapter, when Valda wakes Ben up and clearly has something for him to do. However, then the author jumps back in time to before Ben got turned into a werewolf and proceeds from there. We don’t hit the present again until ¾’s of the way through the story, and honestly, that wasn’t the story I wanted to read. I didn’t really care about how they hooked up together. I was more interested in what Valda clearly had in store for him. While I’m certain this affected my overall assessment of the novella, it doesn’t account for any of the technical issues that make it so hard to read. If anything, it just compounds an already existing problem.

Is there anything good about the story? Yes, a couple things. It’s refreshing to see vampires act like vampires, feeding off multiple people and not worrying about who they kill. Ben was mildly entertaining as well. I liked his kickass attitude, even when it got him into trouble. The secondary characters were relatively distinct, too. You don’t always get that, especially in novellas. But in the end, it’s just not enough. Maybe if someone had taken the time to really go through this and correct it, it would stand a fighting chance. Right now, it’s down for the count.

Readability	2/10 – Riddled with editing mistakes, run-on sentences, and spelling errors, this was a nightmare to try and muddle through
Hero	5/10 – In spite of the weak prose, I kept wanting to like Ben.
Heroine	5/10 – Nice to see a vampire being a vampire, but there’s not enough of her in this to get a well-rounded picture
Entertainment value	3/10 – All the technical issues made it impossible to read this story for pure enjoyment.
World building	6/10 – It’s a valiant effort, but ultimately, unbelievable. Details don’t always a world make.
TOTAL:	21/50