Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

4 ½ stars. It’s so different. It’s brutality that you can’t stop watching - like a train wreck. It’s also happy ending romance.

STORY BRIEF:
This is a double romance, so by definition there is a happy ending for both couples at the end. It’s graphic, erotic, with extreme violence. What is amazing is the character creation. Two alien males from the planet Jota come to earth. Kane makes illegal drugs using fluid from human brains, killing them in the process. He comes to earth to get a large supply of fluid so he can buy a starship and crew. The Jotan government isn’t sure if Kane is alive, but just in case, they send one soldier Tagen to earth to search for Kane.

The summer heat on earth causes both Jotan males to be in extreme pain requiring sex multiple times per day to stop the pain. Kane quickly finds a young prostitute Raven to take care of his needs. He takes her with him as he hunts and kills humans. Tagen goes to Daria’s home asking for food and water. When Daria learns of his mission to find Kane, she helps him. Daria is self conscious and reluctant to have sex. Tagen respects that and won’t ask her for sex. Therefore he suffers tortuous pain.

THE CHARACTERS:
Kane is the bad guy’s bad guy. He is a sadist who becomes attached to Raven. He forces her to get multiple piercings in her private areas and elsewhere, including rings around her waist to hold a gold chain. What is shocking is the way he treats Raven. He treats her like a pet dog. He snaps his fingers and she must come to him. He gently slugs her and later smiles fondly at seeing the yellow bruises. He really likes her and wants to keep her around, and he also likes to see her in pain. But then he gives her drugs to help with the pain. She of course is in shock - horrified at seeing him rip open people’s skulls with his hands, getting their fluids into his vials. She humbly does whatever he asks in order to stay alive. At one point he gave her a drug for pain which had an accidental aphrodisiac effect. She was mad for sex and began biting him all over his body, wherever her mouth could reach. He was amused with this. He found it charming. She then fell asleep with her face kissing his foot. He sat there with his chin on his hand, watching her in amusement as she slept.

Mary Frances Carter came from a loving middle class family. She ran away from home to live on the streets and changed her name to Raven. She dyed her long hair eggplant purple with a long white stripe on each side of her face. She enjoys the street lifestyle, including prostituting herself for drugs. Her mother asked her “Why Mary Frances why?� Raven occasionally thinks about this - and has no answer. My opinion is that Raven needs to belong heart and soul to someone. She craves being owned by Kane. She likes being his devoted slave. She likes feeling pain from him. She acts like an eager puppy, quickly coming to him when he snaps his fingers. Raven is fierce in her loyalty to Kane. She is smart and cautious which helps him.

Someone threw acid on one side of Daria’s face six years earlier. She received a monetary settlement which allowed her to live in seclusion in a remote area without having a job. She rarely leaves home and appears to have OCD, cleaning and re-cleaning everything in her home. She is clever, intuitive, and the brains behind the search for Kane. Her leads come from watching TV news and website surfing about area murders.

There are very few females on Jota. Therefore females are the ones who initiate sex. Tagen is grateful that Daria is giving him food and shelter. He knows she is reluctant about sex. His culture taught him never to ask for sex. So he exhibits the ultimate restraint even though he is in terrible pain. He is also the good, honest, loyal soldier, determined to do his best to catch the bad guy.

REVIEWER’S OPINION:
THE ENDING:
I loved the ending. It was unexpected and well done. I was surprised that I liked the happy ending for the bad couple as well as the good couple. The following spoiler answers the question “How could you possible like a happy ending for a bad couple who murder people?� Please don’t read the spoiler until after you’ve read the book. It’s better to be surprised. I’ve frequently looked at the last page of a book early on and didn’t regret it. But in this case I wish I had not looked. So, I urge others don’t read the spoiler below and don’t look at the last page early.

(view spoiler)[ Kane and Raven escape from the Jotan authorities at the end. I was happy for them. My thinking was there are always going to be bad guys out there, drugs, thieving, slavery trade, etc. The Jotan government is always going to be hunting bad guys. Most bad guys I wouldn’t like, but I’d just as soon have Kane and Raven being among them out there doing mischief, being on the run from the authorities, and being in love and together. And I know the Jotan government will be hunting them again. This did not feel like a cliffhanger. It felt good. (hide spoiler)]

BRUTALITY AND SEX:
There is a lot of sex, explicit and erotic, more than 36 scenes. They include self pleasuring, rear door activity, sex in public, group sex, male-male, female-female, humiliation, and a lot of injury and pain. This is different from BDSM which usually has temporary sessions of playtime and scenes. Here it is constant and brutal. No safe words. Readers who don’t like seeing physical and verbal abuse should probably avoid this. I view this like a train wreck. It’s so horrible that you can’t stop watching it. I’m putting in the following example to give you a hint as to how you might react.

4328: Kane and Raven enter a biker bar, full of mean guys with guns and knives. Kane has Raven topless as they enter. One of the bikers sees Raven’s wide, terrified eyes. He is bothered because Raven didn’t look scared OF him, she looked scared FOR him. A short time later, Kane is sitting in a booth looking at a map. He grunted. “It’s too f***ing hot. Get under the table.� Raven slid out and onto her knees and crawled under the table without argument and serviced him orally in front of the bikers who were roaring with laughter and hooting. When she finished, Kane motioned for her to do the same to the bikers. The bikers slapped and did other hurtful things to her as she serviced them.

Kane brings along a second female Sue-Eye for more sexual services and to help hunt humans. He treats Sue-Eye worse than he treats Raven.

OVERALL OPINION:
I feel like I’ve never read anything like this, and that’s why I gave it a high rating.

One thing I did not like was that it took way too long for Tagen to have sex with Daria. He is being tortured for many days. She keeps asking if there is anything she could do. Yes there is, just have sex with him, but he never tells her that. I wanted to yell at him to tell her. That frustrated me. Some delay was ok, but this carried on for too long. It was repetitive. If the author would have cut some of those conversations and delays, and let them get together a little sooner, the book would have been better.

This is a long book which was fine. There were a handful of editing errors: there should be they, was should be were, this should be his. It wasn’t bad, but I did notice them.

Mlle.X wrote a great review that I totally agree with. See her review for more thoughts, for example how readers will root for a psychopathic killer and his Stockholm Syndrome romance.

AUTHOR’S OTHER BOOKS:
Amazon and Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ list other books by this author, but the lists were not identical when I looked, so you might want to check both. One book not yet published but coming is The Scholomance.

DATA:
Kindle count story length: 10,891 (909 KB). Swearing language: strong, including religious swear words. Sexual language: strong/erotic. Number of sex scenes: more than 36. Setting: current day mostly northwestern U.S. plus outer space and the planet Jota. Copyright: 2006. Genre: erotic sci-fi romance.