Peter Watts' Rifters books (hence the domain),
are however full of memorable compelling ideas,
totally un-recommendable,
because they are also unedited indulgences by the author in his own sadomasochistic fantasies of sexual violence (specifically, to women), and they are in effect sexual torture-porn.
I wouldn't describe the entire series as torture-porn just for that, personally, though I would agree that the work would be better if they were removed or at least toned way down.
Desjardins' character isn't written for the reader to get off on. But I see exactly why a reader who didn't expect to do so would rather blame the author than recognize the mirror into which he's been surprised to find himself looking. The projection is trivially obvious and the lack of insight that allows it to be aired this way in public should be embarrassing.
I don't recommend the Rifters trilogy either - in this more or less emulating its own author, these days - nor have I bothered rereading it in by now well over a decade. It was interesting, I'm glad I read it, but what was there to be found I have long since taken away, and even when Watts comes up on the topic of his later work, his earlier doesn't really even occur to me. It's something I read most of 20 years ago that held my interest for a while with some of its ideas about artificial and archaic life and some of its character drama, but - no real critique, this, I read a lot of things - otherwise just didn't make all that much of an impression.
Typically the fashion in which that manifests is that I simply do not start any conversations on the topic, because it never occurs to me to do so. I'm not here to psychoanalyze the commenter who chose otherwise this evening. But if that were me, it would be interesting to me to reflect on why I had chosen to start the conversation I did, in a context where its subject was not at all relevant beyond a trivial coincidence of authorship.
It does annoy me when the work is misunderstood in this way, because the technique in use is subtle. Watts doesn't show you what Desjardins does, so that a pervert would get off on it - indeed nearly none of the infamous torture scenes is actually very explicit at all, the gory details left mostly in implication, because Watts is interested not in what Desjardins does to his victims but why he does it. That's why he spends his time showing you how Desjardins thinks, instead. It would be interesting to me to talk about that, because I think it successfully depicts something essential about the nature of sadism, which is worth understanding if for no other reason than in self-defense.
Certainly it would offer more interest than evident in the matter of the discussion thus far. That people commonly mistake moralistic vacuity for substantive discussion I do recognize and acknowledge, but I believe I will never for the life of me grasp the appeal.
As in another example of otherwise memorable and contemporary scifi, _Accelerando_,
the BDSM slash sex & violence slash misogyny tropes are utterly unnecessary to the plot.
They're an indulgence, and they narrow the prospective audience to those unbothered by, or excited by, such things. Everyone else deserves fair warning.
It's obvious you have a strong investment in blaming everyone else for your own unsettled and, plainly, deeply disquieted emotions on this topic. I wouldn't expect to see that change now and if I'd been inclined to take it personally, I would not have engaged in the first place. I hope you eventually figure out whatever it is that's troubling you so badly around this. In the meantime, kindly repay me the courtesy of engaging no further here.
Watts has (jokingly) used that phrase himself to describe Behemoth.