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Not sure how to rate this because I stopped at the 60% mark. I got through what seemed like several hundred pages, most of which I found compulsively readable. Heat is full of senseless violence and disturbing sex scenes. The alien protagonist takes a human prostitute as a slave. Raven submits to Kane to stay alive and even helps him kill people. Her initial reactions (fear, weeping, reluctance) felt very real. But the story devolves into a killing and sex spree, designed to titillate rather than provoke thought.

A subplot romance between an alien cop on Kane's trail and a reclusive human woman also fell short for me. Tagen does no investigating. Daria is shrill and annoying.

Both Tagen and Kane are TSTL. I thought aliens could die from going into "Heat," but Tagen can't bring himself to ask Daria for help or even explain the problem. Tagen has no way to track Kane. He's stuck in Daria's house for many wasted chapters and the storyline doesn't move forward.

Kane is a somewhat sympathetic psychopath at the beginning. He doesn't seem to understand the emotional impact of rape and murder. Life-threatening "heat" drives him to act. Later, with Raven, we see that he's aroused by her pain and humiliation. His main focus shifts from harvesting human brain matter to putting Raven through sexual torture. He can die from heat (maybe?) and he's kept her as a sex toy, but he impulsively has her adorned with dozens of genital piercings, which put her out of commission. Later, when she gets her period, he's "worried" and thinks she needs to rest from all activity, not just sex. But he makes her perform oral on at least ten different men in a bar.

The author's choices for these characters become increasingly gratuitous and degrading. I didn't see a creative reason for any of the sex or violence. Like Tegan's subplot, it doesn't move the story forward.

I wish Heat had continued as it started and been edited for excessive content. As a shorter novel with fewer repetitive scenes, I think it could have worked brilliantly. The sexual violence didn't bother me so much as the eventual meaningless of it. Perhaps the ending is full of redemptive value, but I'm not reading on.

2.5 stars.