Touched by Venom: Book One of the Dragon Temple Saga. Janine Cross.

Cross, Janine. Touched by Venom: Book One of the Dragon Temple Saga. Roc, 2005.

First of all, this is a dystopian world. Our protagonist is in a very low class, and she's a woman in a world where women are treated poorly. We start out following her as she deals with a boy her own age, and we get to see how he's allowed to abuse her (and even her mother, to some extent) because, after all, he's male and they're mere females. Good times.

Second, as our protagonist moves from situation to situation and place to place, things rarely seem to improve all that much, and that's rough. Cross does a great job of paining the desperate picture of someone who has no home, no real positive long-term bonds. (I'm simplifying a bit, but the bonds she does have are complicated, and definitely not anything you could call positive without serious qualifications.)Third, please note that our protag looks kind of sexed up on the book's cover, because that's not accidental. It's also not accidental that she looks sexed up in proximity to a dragon, or that the dragon's tongue--excuse me, his "...thick, sure...corded, searching muscle"--is sticking out. The short version is that dragon venom does wild things to people, particularly when received through dragon-on-human cunnilingus. Who knew?!

Honestly, though, while I'm sure that sounds pretty wacky... it's introduced well, and it's a relief to the reader (or it was to this reader) that the protagonist finally gets to experience something enjoyable, though the relief is tainted by the feeling that the dragon venom is perhaps a little too much like a drug--the kind that addicts, and the kind that leads to loss of control over your life. Still... imagining myself in her place, I thought, hell, why not? Her life up to that point really has been that difficult, and her future looks that dark and hopeless. Gimme that dragon-tongue venom cunnilingus.

Anyway, the protag needs venom to ward off her mother's haunt, which remains obsessed with the goal she died pursuing: Rescue the daughter her husband had traded away to another tribe as "kiyu," a sex slave "locked permanently in kiyu stables, a disdained plaything for dozens of men, none of whom belonged to her clan, Death came when the stinking mass of mating pustules in her womb turned gangrenous. Death came sooner if she was successful at suicide..." (33). The haunt is determined to take over the protagonist and force her to go rescue her older sister. 

I love how Cross gets into detail about so many aspects of her world: "Cafar Re. Literally, Bastion of Tears. Understand, that was the name of our Clutch bull, in the Emperor's tongue: Tears. Every bull dragon throughout Malacar was named after a bodily secretion, was called something base and vulgar and contemptible. Such a name camouflaged the divine beasts so that the One Snake, the First Father, the progenitor and spirit of all kwano everywhere, would overlook our sacred, scarce bulls." She doesn't overload you with detail in bursts, but just slips it in where it fits, until you have an incredibly involved sense of the culture, religion, economics, class system, and so on.

Last and technically, yes, least, I appreciate Cross's use of semicolons. A lot of writers these days avoid them entirely--possibly because they never learned how to use them, I guess, or because they think semicolons are pretentious (which seems odd to me, but people do come up with odd ideas). Cross uses them exactly how they're meant to be used, and she uses them frequently. I whole-heartedly approve.