Tag Archives: polyamorous

Book Review: Kingdom of Endless Slumber, by Paige A. Cook

I picked up a copy of Paige A. Cook‘s Kingdom of Endless Slumber as an Amazon freebie.

Isadora has been possessed by demons for as long as she can remember. While the rest of the world sees her as a misguided, bipolar trainwreck to be medicated into silence, death has other plans for her.

Plunged into a new world where beings have horns, scales, and tails–Iz must learn to control her new dark powers. As the first Necromancer to live in Bellesberry for 100 years, she has her work cut out for her. She’s lived her entire life on auto-pilot being unable to take the reigns back from the demonic entities who lived inside of her. By some miracle, in this new realm, she is free of them. Free to be herself. Too bad she doesn’t know who that is yet. Much to her luck, she lands square in the camp of an adventurers’ party! Looking past the blue-skin and horns, they are incredibly alluring with human-enough features.

The rag-tag group of friends welcomes Iz to join the group. Their company includes an atheist cleric, two orc “sorcerers,” and a whirlwind of chaotic attraction that Iz has never experienced before, especially in this quantity. Will Iz find herself swept up in discovering a new place she feels like she belongs or will her past demons catch up to her all too quickly?

“Fuck. I’ve been Isekai’d.”

Look, it’s finals week. I am super stressed. I purposefully chose a book that looked like it would be utterly and deliriously ridiculous (in a good way) for the sheer diversion it could provide. And, at first, this book delivered. I was enjoying the light fem-dom nature of it. I liked the heroine. I was intrigued by the possible harem participants. The anime-style guild adventure (complete with magic buffs and declarative magic) was working. At first.

I was annoyed at the anachronism, true. Every time references to corn chips, cheerleader outfits, bikinis, and such showed up in a non-earth world with no obvious contact between the realms, I was pulled out of the narrative. But it was fine. I wanted a silly distraction. That was the point.

Then, the author seemed to just give up. There came a point when things stopped making sense. I thought I was missing chapters or something; the plot started jumping so abruptly. I still don’t know why the group went to the Stone King, for example, or if they succeeded with whatever the plan had been. Or when that plan was made.

This started out as a safe 3-star read. It ended at about 1.5.

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Book Review: The Power of Three, by Kate Pearce

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Last winter, I laid out a huge winter-vibes reading challenge for myself. Then, I basically fucked off and forgot about it. So, instead of doing a new one this year, I have gone back and started trying to work on last year’s. Hey, it’s my own blog. I’m accountable to no one but myself. I can do that. LOL.

I picked up Kate Pearce‘s The Power of Three as an Amazon freebie in December of 2021. So, look at me, going back to work on an old reading challenge by reading an even older book. (Yeah, I’m easily amused.)

Trios System 229990

Soreya Lang has never met a male telepath before, let alone one who is willing to die for her on an interplanetary mission gone wrong. Risking everything, she acts on her instant telepathic and physical connection with Esca and encounters a level of psychic power she never knew existed.

Esca can’t believe he’s finally met the female who will complete his sexual and telepathic triad. He promises himself that if they survive, he’ll take her back home, introduce her to his enigmatic First Male, Ash and pray that biology will do the rest.

But nothing is ever that simple, and Soreya, Esca and Ash will have to find their own way through the ties of family and traditions to experience the full telepathic wonder of the power of three…

I wanted to like this; I really did. It had an interesting premise, which could develop into an interesting world and characters that were likable enough. But it is just SO clumsily done that I couldn’t particularly enjoy it. There isn’t enough nuance; the plot isn’t developed enough (and it ends precipitously at an awkward point). The writing was pedestrian but functional, except for some clunky dialogue and any time the author had to discuss anything military. Then, it was shockingly amateurish. There were also some inconsistencies, and it needed another editing pass (which would also likely have caught some of the inconsistencies.) Mostly, the story it was trying to tell needed (and deserved) a defter hand.

Oh, and see how I said ‘fuck’ about. Yeah, I wish authors would just do that. This book did the annoying thing of using Frek instead of fuck and then littered it everywhere. Just curse, for god’s sake. It’s a polyamorous erotic novel. Anyone choosing to read such a thing should be able to handle a few dozen fucks in dialogue. (I hate when authors do this so much. So much.)

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Book Review: Tentacles and Teeth, by Rowan Merrick

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I picked up a freebie copy of Rowan Merrick’s Tentacles and Teeth on Amazon.

Katarina was only looking for one night.

An evening of no-strings fun with someone who knew what they were doing and wasn’t afraid of getting a little wild. One look at the gorgeous bartender with the midnight skin and waving tentacles, and she knew she needed to feel all those…appendages wrapped around her before the night was out. Lucky for her, the bartender was a woman who went after what she wanted, and oh, did she want.

More wasn’t on the table.

But when Katarina wakes up the next morning not only still desperate to touch her, but also talk to her, she’s forced to reevaluate. Maybe a relationship wouldn’t be so bad?

Especially a naked werewolf before coffee.

Running into her maybe-more-than-a-one-night-stand’s roommate in the hall was yet another thing she wasn’t prepared for. It might have helped if she wasn’t still reeling from the night before. Or if he hadn’t been completely nude. Or so…sexy. She wasn’t in the market for one relationship, much less two. But they were both so tempting…

Can she finish her plate? Or did she bite off more than she can chew?

This was porn with—
No, it’s not porn with plot. It’s just porn. I went in expecting porn with plot, but there’s no real plot to speak of. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining; just want us all to be clear on what we’re dealing with. Porn. Tentacle and monster porn.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I appreciated the confident, business-savvy, successful, size 16 heroine. I’ve read far too few porny books with a lesbian in the poly group. That was a pleasant surprise. The writing is quite body and sex-positive, as well as careful about consent…for the most part. I honestly think Fenn’s behavior once he entered the mix undermined a lot of work the book did in this department. (Plus, it didn’t really match his character outside of sexy times.) But they did discuss consent, so it’s more a quibble than a criticism. Similarly, Fenn and Sid were respectful of Katarina throughout the book, only for Merrick to reduce her to the status of toy as soon as the trio interacted with even the first supernatural. Which, again, undermined a lot of the work Merrick had already put into establishing equality in the relationship.

Regardless, it’s spicey fun, and I don’t regret reading it. Plus, I love the cover.