Book Review: "Bikinis Forever" by Michael Dalton
Although "Bikinis Forever" by Michael Dalton does not come into the category of books this site was set up to review, it is very closely related to a large number of books which are, and the manner in which it deals with that relationship is interesting.
"Bikinis forever" is the sixth, and the final non-supernatural,"Unconventional Romance" in the "Bikini Days" series. The Amazon series page can be found at:
Bikini Days (6 book series) Kindle Edition
"Unconventional Romance" is code for "Haremlit" e.g. the romantic elements involve a man with multiple partners, which seems to be a popular meme among some, mostly but not exclusively male, authors and readers at the moment.
Michael Dalton has written a large number of fantasy books, most but not all of which also fall into this category.
The books in this series are:
1) Bikini Days: An Unconventional Romance
2) Bikini Nights (Bikini Days Book 2)
3) Bikini Dawn
5) Bikini Magic
and this book,
By comparison with an awful lot of books in the "Haremlit" genre the development of the relationships involved in this series is a "slow burn" and credible, with the female characters being more than just objects of male fantasy. The hero forms or adds to relationships with great care about the effect what he does will have on all the people he loves rather than, as a character in one of the books says, collecting women the way some boys collect star wars figures.
Apart from being set in the fictional Californian city of Santo Domingo (where quite a few of Michael Dalton's fantasy novels are set) the first three books are very much a non-supernatural story with characters whose romantic lives may not be mundane in terms of the things they get up to but who are themselves mundane in the sense that they are mortal human beings with no magical powers.
However, there are a fair numbers of "Easter Egg" cameos for characters from his other books even in the first three books in the series. This is very much something which Michael Dalton often does.
But from the fourth book, "Bikini Sunset" onwards, while the book appears to be about normal mortal human beings, the involvement of characters who readers of Michael Dalton's other books know to be supernatural goes dramatically beyond the "Easter Egg" or cameo level. Several of them are major characters in books 4-6.
It is actually quite fascinating how the author manages to write about a family most of whom are ordinary mortals without any of the mortals (or readers who have not read his other books) being aware that the hero is the lawyer for the most powerful sorcerer who has ever lived, his girlfriend is literally an angel, her mother is a former archangel, her sister is the Angel of Death and half-a-dozen of their friends are "shifters" who can shift between human and animal forms.
I shall try to avoid too many spoilers, but to give you an idea, in this book the hero is engaged in what appears to be a perfectly normal Zoom or Microsoft Teams call, and when the final person to join is named, many readers of Dalton's others books will instantly realise that he is either
a) a powerful evil sorcerer who cast many of the spells and illusions which caused problems for the heroes in one of Dalton's other trilogies and is the primary antagonist of a third series, or
b) an unfortunate victim who said evil sorcerer is going to remove in the very near future so he can use magic to steal the victim's identity.
Dalton admits in the author's notes that the way these books operate on two levels depending on whether the reader is familiar with his other books has caused a difference of view among his fanbase. Some readers wanted him to keep the "Bikini Days" series completely non-magical and continue to ignore all the supernatural elements.
Other fans know from the "Dark City Girls" trilogy that Ethan, the hero of these books will eventually find out that one of the people he most loves and several of his friends are supernatural beings. The story of how he finds out is described as, quote, "a story for another night, guys, and a long one."
Apparently more than a few of Dalton's fans echoed the reaction of the Elf/Fairy/Goblin princess Sydney who on hearing this said "Boo! I want to know."
Dalton's solution has been two write two concluding stories: this one, "Bikinis Forever, finishes the non-supernatural story arcs and those who want the story to stay non-supernatural should stop after this one.
For Sydney and the "Boo! I want to know" crowd, the answer will be given in a forthcoming novel, "Bikini Revelations."
That book will be a bridge between the "Bikini Days" series and the rest of the "Daltonverse" including the "Demon Hunter," "Shifter Girls," and "Dark City Girls" series, and possibly also "Coastal Curves."
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