Black Umbrella Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-1005496364
Sci-fi Romance, 2021
My fingers rested on Adahn’s strong shoulders, and I felt the screws under my right hand, but I didn’t have time to dwell on the feeling because the cyborg was far too determined.
Screws? I’m all for a hot screw with a hotter dude, but screws on the hot guy? Hmm, is this some kind of new, hot trend that took the romance genre by storm? I suppose this one has potential. Just think, a hero with a power drill jutting from his crotch, for example.
Actually, the cyborg thing aside, Her Mountain Cyborg is actually something akin to a Harlequin Presents, minus the butt-slamming cruelty that typifies that line. Adahn the half-human, half-machine is more of that “Ooh, brooding! Scowling! I’m supposed to be sexy!” type that comes with a big house.
Our heroine, Evangeline Wright, is supposed to be every fat, unhappy romance reader that wants an outlet to feel petty about hot, skinny women. Hence, our heroine, who is of course broke because financially stable women are unworthy of the love of any romance hero, answers an ad for a cleaner only to find the house swamped by hot, skinny women of all species. Despite being constantly ogled by men and praised for her fat, er, sexy birthing hips later, our heroine channels the insecurities of fat women secretly yearning to wake up one day to be worshiped by all the hot guys that they have ever lusted for in the galaxy—she is at first insecure but ah, you know what, she is smart, you all.
Beautiful women are stupid, but our sexy curvy heroine is smart, and this is why all the freaking bitches that called me fat and put out to all the hot guys I lusted after but they won’t even look at me because they think I am FAT and UGLY EFF ALL OF YOU I HOPE YOU ALL BURN AND DIE DIE DIE she gets the job. The other skinny and hot bitches accuse her of cheating because, surely, fat and ugly curvy, secretly sexy, and super intelligent women like me Evangeline surely, like, can’t be totes smart or something, but the men that are now discovering the joys of smart sexy curvy realness are now all begone skinny bitches, this is now a HAES love story and no skinny bitches allowed. Skinny hot men with abs are okay, though. Fat and ugly men are still not allowed, of course, because at the end of the day, fat and ugly are only okay if they come with XX chromosomes in every cell in that 500 lb body.
The rest of the story is basically Evangeline demonstrating that she totally connects with brooding screw-covered Adahn and how she’s actually amazing and all from Adahn’s point of view. From her point of view, the story is basically a constant stream of disingenuous prattle. Oh my god, did they say she is beautiful? Ugly, fat her… beautiful? Really? Can they please say that to her again? Oh, it must be true… she really is beautiful, and loved. Aw, and they are all standing up to clap for her. Thank you so much for the Oscar for Best Curvaceous, Awesome-mest, Most Supreme Woman Perfection Ever and All You Skinny Hag Bitches Can Die Now for Getting Everything I Have Ever Wanted in Real Life, I can’t believe… in the end… I really am the most awesome woman in the world, beloved by all the hot hunks ever. I Evangeline has won, at last. And then I close this thing and see Chris Pratt with his wife and I jump off a window ledge.
The plot is pretty predictable. Shocker, the only other guy that may pose as a competition for Adahn is a bad guy. He exists solely to elevate Adahn as a woobie worthy of love, because no matter how disagreeable he may be at times, the other guy is a deranged villain. The unintentional implication here is that fat plain Janes have to settle between a crackpot bad guy and an emo cliché—catfishing hot guys on Instagram may be a better way to escape from real life if this were indeed the case.
Anyway, there isn’t anything here that is out of the ordinary aside from the cyborg gimmick, as it’s a recognizable familiar story at its very core—brooding boo-boo, a heroine that is supposed to be modeled after the stereotypical romance reader, and a big house. I’d argue that the authors play their hands too obviously though, with the pandering to what they think is the innermost desire of the stereotypical romance reader coming off tad too transparent and hence so easy to mock.
The prose is clean, nothing is particularly objectionable, hence Her Mountain Cyborg being a meh kind of a three-oogie read. It will likely fare better with readers that do buy the fantasy this one is selling. Me, I’d been there and had gotten over most of my hang-ups about not being the center of the universe, so I’m a little harder to please. Plus, I’d love to read a romance with a hero that has more to hold on to and love one of these days. All these rather hypocritical “beautiful at any size… but only if you are a woman” elements in a romance story are getting rather old.
