Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

As I said, once I agreed to be entertained by the campy aspects, the more nitpicky plot points - why does Kyra let go of her worries, her homesickness, and her old life so easily? - were answered by a mental shrug on my part, mostly because I began to not only enjoy the utterly over-the-top sexuality and society of Tryston (or as I called it, Planet Nooki’e!) but consider the story on the whole as an exploration of female fantasies of sexual subjugation. There are some women who would get mighty turned on at the idea of being attentively cared for by multiple warriors who are not permitted penetration, or at the idea of a mate who is bound on a profound level to their sexual gratification and fulfillment, even if that mate was frequently heard to ask, “Who owns you? Who is your master? Whose cock do you wish to fill your moist channel? Who is the sole possessor of the remote control?” Ok, not that last one but you get the point. Even the over-possessive masterful sexx0r talk certainly could corner many fantasies for female readers, and I have to give Black credit for creating a vehicle in Kyra for discovering that domination can be sexually liberating. Kyra has to adjust to a very male-dominated culture, not just in language and habit but in dress - her official garb as Empress and High Queen is a see-through boob scarf and skirt and just about every warrior she encounters is expected socially to admire her openly with blatantly lustful expressions and comments on her “woman’s pelt” and “fire-berry nipples.”

Of course, within that subjugation of women is a bit of female control - a camp-inflated version of the All Controlling and Healing Vagina, if you will. Once a warrior finds his Sacred Mate, his appetite for bound slaves and kefahs (enchanted sand women whose purpose is bringing men and women to their peak. Repeatedly) just about disappears and he becomes manfully fixated on making his wee woman happy, sated, and solely his. By the time Kyra accepts her new position as mate, empress, and often-humped object of Tor’s sexual desire, she realizes that she wields some influence over Tor - though not enough influence to prevent a large misunderstanding & misadventure that constitutes the climax of the story. That said, if scenes that are not bondage-related but do involve verbal domination and female subjugation are not your thing, this will not likely sexually titillate or interest you.

What dropped this book in my ratings was the villain. Candy and I have often joked and grumbled that the easiest way to create a villain is to make him pure evil: Ugly. Mean. Greasy, even. And an abuser of animals. It’s usually the scene animal abuse that serves as the first clue to a villain. In this case, it’s not animal abuse but sexual abuse and murder of children. What jarred me to badly was that the villain and the conflict arrived very late in the story - at times I was wondering if there was going to BE a conflict or if the bulk of the story was Kyra’s adjusting to life on Planet Nooki’e - and when the villainy arrived, it was sweepingly awful and left me nauseated. The insurgent leader, Ty, decimates a sector, and when Tor and his brothers arrive, he finds the leader’s name scrawled in blood, and observes in detail young boys who were sodomized and left to die from their injuries, young women raped and strangled, and older women and men left in various states of massacre. It yanked me out of the campy “anything goes” attitude with which I’d been enjoying the book, and left me angry and sick. It seemed too easy a way to create a villain, even so late in the story. Ty himself doesn’t appear at all, except through holograms and in the aftermath of his evilness, and he’s not scary enough or enough of a threat to the protagonists. And the resolution that solves the problem of his insurrection happens off-stage, leaving only his actions to resonate in the reader’s mind, and not nearly enough retribution for their pain and fallout. After page following page of nonstop horny happy sex and voyeurism and lots of humping and oral sex in the bathing chambers, to be yanked out of the goofy over-the-top sexuality into child rape and murder seemed like a quick and shabby - and overly simple and unnecessary - way to create a villain, or emphasize his evilness.

Moreover, I didn’t understand the reason for the contrast between sexually explicit exploration of female domination and the use of sex as a tool of violent domination over children. I get it - sexual domination isn’t always good or always bad but has a place within consensual activities - but no need to hit me over the head with it.

Further, because the villain makes his awful appearance 3/4 of the way through the story, the conflict presented by his insurrection seems an afterthought and not at all a required development to the protagonists’ story. His removal and the resolution of his story line do equally little to change anything or advance any depth to the relationship between the protagonists, and the experience of that particular turn to the novel’s plot left me far less pleased with the overall experience of having read it.

Yet my disappointment will not stop me from finding the sequels and reading them as well. Credit goes to Black for creating secondary characters who are multi-dimensional and interesting enough in their individual motivations and personalities that I want to find out what happens to them and to revisit Kyra and Tor as their siblings’ stories continue.