Tag Archives: erotica

Review of Melanie Walker’s Bliss (The Custos)

I grabbed a copy of Bliss (The Custos #1), by Melanie Walker from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
London Chase has set her mind to a new start as far from Texas as she can get but lands in Vegas under the protection of a sexy but deadly Vampire, Cacius Troy. Her Father and a brother she has never met are looking for London dead or alive and are willing to stop at nothing to bring her back to Texas. Her blood holds the key to unleashing Bliss on a nation not prepared for its affects. Now she must choose between the growing passions and love for her Vampire savior, or the Father she always wanted to please.

In the fight for London, Cacius falls deeply in love with the spoiled rich girl and one night of passion ignites a fight to the death to save her from their clutches. He has never gone into a battle with so much at risk knowing her life is on the line Cacius will fight dirty and cause hell itself to tremble if anything or anyone gets in his way.

Passion will unfold as danger thickens and forces Cacius and London to face their biggest fears and trust one another to the death, or un-death as it may be.

The streets of Vegas are no stranger to sin, but when a drug intended to change the life of rape victims lands in the hands of the Vampires. All bets are off.

Review: **Spoiler Alert**
This book had potential. There was a point in the beginning when I thought I might really like it. But that time passed, and I was never able to reclaim it. I’ll grant that Cash was both manly and open about his feelings. It’s a heady mix. I found him an appealing leading man.

London was also a strong female lead. I liked that about her. But while I appreciate that she had a mind to give Cash a piece of, she was practically psychotic about it. She flipped from docile to furious with almost no provocation, often then childishly acting out on impulse. For example, taking unknown drugs provided by a known enemy, who was already making sexual overtures and suggesting the drug would make her ‘want to party’ and then, not surprisingly, turning into a panting, nymphomaniac, porno princess; all simply because Cash had said not to, in what she perceived to be too authoritative a tone. That’s pretty much approaching ‘too stupid to live’ territory. What did she expect to happen? Plus, the whole begging every man present to fuck her was just about too tacky for words. Though Cash’s response to it all was pretty good, that’s about when I really gave up trying to like this book, but I hung in there and finished it.

I did like the side characters—Preacher, Leucious, Bastion. I think I even liked where the plot was going. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like it ever really got there. It got completely sidetracked by London and Cash’s deluge of self-affirmations. I lost count of how many times they told themselves (and each other) they loved the other, or how sure they NOW were that he or she was THE ONE, or how perfect the other was, or how sexy, or how dirty (in the good way), etc. It was ENDLESS, as was the sex. I like a good erotic scene as much as the next reader, but the sex definitely got in the way of the story here. What’s more, by the end, London was orgasming, literally, on command. It started to feel mechanical—push the button, cue the orgasm. Not sexy anymore.

By the final climactic scene, I’d pretty much forgotten what they were fighting for, and the easy win didn’t reestablish it in my mind. The Custos just pretty much walked in and walked out again. That easy. It was a real lost opportunity.

Lastly, editing: OMG, I have to talk about editing. But I also have to admit to a certain amount of confusion. You see, I downloaded my copy of this book way back in April (2013). The Amazon description currently reads, “This version was edited professionally and updated to Kindle on 7/27/13. Any errors remaining in the book are mine alone.”

So, though my version predates the re-edit, it SHOULD have been updated by Amazon. However, the book I’ve just read is possibly the worst edited, self-published book I’ve ever seen. It was full of typos, homophones, incorrect or missing punctuation, inconsistent tense, and just randomness. For example, every time the word ‘next’ was used, it was capitalized. No idea why. Worst of all, though, was the skull-razing constant use of ‘I seen’ instead of ‘I saw.’ I mean, even the most basic automatic grammar check should have caught that. So, I’m left wondering if the problem was that my copy was never updated for some reason or, heaven forbid, it was the ‘corrected’ version. I just don’t know. I suspect the former. It would make a whole heck of a lot more sense. But I have no way of verifying it beyond checking for pending updates, which my account says there aren’t any.

So, though I know others seem to really like this story, and I’ll admit that there were some funny bits, the heavy-handed attempt at emotional manipulation and excessive sex-talk (by which I mean characters who talk about what they’re doing as much as actually doing it), and the virtually abandoned plot left me struggling to make it to the last page.

Book Review of Eternal Samurai, by B.D. Heywood

I picked up B.D. Heywood’s erotic, M/M novel Eternal Samurai from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Tatsu Kurosaki Cobb, the last of an ancient samurai house, will not stop until he takes the head of the vampire that butchered his family. But his vow of revenge means he gives up on any hope for that once-and-forever love. Then he crosses swords with Saito Arisada, second-in-command of Seattle’s vampires and the most beautiful creature Tatsu has ever seen. The sexual chemistry between them is pure, hard, and undeniable. Unable to accept Arisada might be the killer, Tatsu begins a dangerous game. A game driven by the all-consuming thirst for blood that will force them to the extremes of love and hate.

Fukushū, vengeance. It is all that has sustained Saito Arisada for eight-hundred years. Sōhei monk turned vampire, he has searched for the returned soul of his lover who betrayed him and the Temple of Mii-dera. Arisada believes in only one thing—taking the head of the traitor. Yet, when Arisada sees that soul shining from Tatsu’s emerald eyes, his hatred shatters. He wants Tatsu in his arms and in his bed and in his heart. But Arisada’s samurai code of honor demands nothing less than Tatsu’s death. How can Arisada kill his unmei no hito—his soulmate?

From a bloody battlefield of feudal Japan to a world where humans and vampires fight for survival, Arisada and Tatsu must choose. At stake is not only love but honor.

Review:
I really quite enjoyed that, but I suspect it will have a rather small core audience. Because what it reminds me of more than anything else is a Yaoi manga. This despite it being a literary novel instead of a graphic novel. It just feels like yaoi in that strange, nebulous way of mental association.

You see, just as most fans of PNR or Urban Fantasy or even regular American M/M romance novels can often sketch out the basic shape of the plot most common to their genre of choice, this one follows yaoi’s established format in fairly recognisable ways. But you see, I like Yaoi, so I wasn’t at all put off by the similarities.

The association was undoubtably helped along by Heywood’s liberal use of Japanese terminology. No doubt my closet manga addiction and the two years I spent studying the Japanese language (which doesn’t get you very far, BTW) helped me out here. I suspect some readers would have appreciated that help, because though I knew enough to be able to pronounce the words and recognise all of the ritualised terminology (seppeku, kinbaku, kaishakunin, etc), some of the curses and a couple of the normal words (like daisuki), it felt like there were an awful lot more than was necessary. It tended to clutter the narrative at times, even when quickly followed by an English translation (which most, but not all were). If all those extra words had felt completely foreign, instead of just kind of foreign, they might have really grated on me.

Some of the English language did grate on me, if I’m honest, mostly during the extremely long sex scenes. You see these aren’t hearts and flowers, gentle, clean exploits. It’s often rough, dirty and … well, I probably can’t say realistic. It’s obviously not, but I thought the fact that things smelled, chafed, hurt, bled, and so on lent a real(ish) feel to it all. And while I appreciated this aspect of the story, some of the terminology used to create that same impression left me wanting–phrases like, piss slit or the liberal use of spunk–once or twice, fine, but over and over…not so much.

What I liked most in this story, and one more thing that reminded me of Yaoi, was Saito’s long standing, unquestioning, whole-hearted love for his unmei no hito (soulmate), regardless of the body it resides in. He pined for him for 800 years for gods sake. That’s what I call dedication and I found it to be one of the only sweet things about the story. Almost everything else had an edge of some sort.

On a side note, while probably not purposeful on the author’s part, because of the red hair and scarred cheek I couldn’t help visualising Saito Arisada as Rurouni Kenshin. I found this a little distracting.

All-in-all however, while not without faults and inconsistencies, I enjoyed the read and would be up for trying another of Heywood’s works.

Book Review of Sleeves, by Chanse Lowell

Sleeves, by Chanse Lowell came from the Amazon free list. (At the time of posting it was still free.)

A friend of mine said to me recently that he was beginning to think that bulging biceps are to women what lush breasts are to men. Hmm, maybe. But for me it’s a well-muscled back. Keeping that in mind, you can probably imagine that this cover appealed to me. I hardly even read the description if I’m honest, just grabbed the pretty picture and went with it.

Description from Goodreads:
Kel isn’t at all the animal locked in a cage that he appears to be. Secrets keep him there, hidden from those who hunt him. But what does a man do when he needs physical contact to survive, but can’t stand the burning pain that comes with another’s touch? He’s found a way to get a small fraction of his needs met at the nightclub, Sleeves. What happens when he lets in an unknown woman with a healing hand? Casey can see past the vulgar mouth to the affection-starved man hiding inside. When she does, all hell breaks loose, and the past finds him. Will he be able to avoid the agency, or will they add Casey to their twisted experiments? She entered the cage with him, and now it seems there’s no way out.

Review:
A previous review referred to this book as a ‘Hot Mess.’ And while Hot Mess isn’t a phrase that I’ve ever found myself tempted to use, I find it describes this book aptly. It’s not that it’s necessarily a bad book, it’s not, it’s just all over the place and full of holes the reader has to overlook to enjoy the story. They are overlookable, but it would be a little ridiculous to pretend they aren’t there.

To start with and probably most importantly, it’s never said but I’m gonna have to assume that Casey has some sort of preternatural power of super-empathy, because nothing in the book makes any sense otherwise. If she doesn’t then she just fell in love with a man who, in their single 30 minute interaction, forced her to jack him off in front of a crowd while calling her a slut, bitch, whore, cunt, and probably more I’ve forgotten. She in turn told him he was a beautiful, sweet man. (WTF!?) So unless she can magically see through his shit, to his kernel of true-self she is either really, really stupid or masochistic.

What’s more, her main strength seems to be in her ability to accept any verbal abuse thrown at her with aplomb and willingly offer up, “anything you need, baby.” Now, I get that this is supposed to show how much she loves Kel and maybe how brave she is. But what it mostly says to me is that she must be one of those women who is so desperate for a man that she will do, become and take anything without complaint. It makes me wonder if she really has any sense of self herself. And while we kind of find out what warped Kel (and I say kind of because it’s not a complete explanation) we don’t really find out what whacked Casey out. Which suggests that we’re not supposed to see her behaviour as inappropriate. (WTF!?) We do get a little of her sob story, but I couldn’t see how it would result in her willingness to accept Kel’s shit (and it is shit) so openly.

I did really like her ability to banter though. She didn’t have Kel’s foul language, but she had no problem slinging a one-shot back at him on occasion. This verbal sparring between the two of them was by far the best part of the book. And it’s good.

Kel in turn swung wildly from angst, clingy teenager to angry, dangerous alpha man with a tenuous grasp on sanity and back again, over and over. Now I’ll give you that when he was in his charming, boyish charm phase he was about as cute as they come. In these moments I really loved him. I even kinda liked his weird clingy, needy side. It was creepy as hell, but still kinda cute. Unfortunately his angry instability was truly scary and his inability to go two sentences without calling Casey some foul name often curled my toes…and not in a good way.

The thing is though, even though his language was deplorable and Casey didn’t deserve to be called all the names she did, it generally just boiled down to a whole heck of a lot of dirty talk. Because the actual sex was pretty clean. It never actually crossed into abusive, as his verbal description would suggest. Plus, even as he was playing Mr. Dominance he never failed to worship Casey and be honest about how much he needed/wanted her, which made it quite obvious that all of the mastery he held in their sexual relation was given to him by her. I found this dynamic damned sexy.

This book is in desperate need of a little world building. It’s set in 2023, so I accept that there should have been some social evolution and scientific advancements. But the reader isn’t ever told what these might be. Everyone did seem to accept the whole ‘a secret organisation experimented on me and is currently hunting me’ with awe-inspiring ease. Not a single person raised an eyebrow at the fact that Kel had some strange sensory issue going on and apparently displayed regular feats of strength on stage, not to mention some truly horrific social skills.

I also have to wonder if another thing that isn’t said, but must be true, is that people are…I don’t know, educated in their sleep or something. I mean Kel was apparently kept in a cage with a filthy, blood stained mattress and little else. So if his basic hygiene wasn’t worth taking into consideration I can’t imagine his education was either. But somehow he was a genius–able to create mysterious genetic cures and micro technologies. How did he learn these skills?

I think the best way to describe this book is what happily ever after would look like if two damaged nymphomaniacs found each-other. The actual sic-fi aspect of the story is a…well, a Hot Mess. It’s never explained what the secret organisation was actually trying to accomplish with Kel, for example, or what the mysterious ‘serum’ does to a person, or how the cure reverses it, or why Kel needs touch, or what will happen if he goes without it, or why it hurts, or why he treats women so badly. But the sex is a lot of fun, and for all their many faults, Kel and Casey are too.