eXcessica, $5.99
Contemporary Erotica, 2008

My only reaction when I finally reach the 696th page – 696! – of Varian Krylov’s kidnap/rape erotica is to think, “My god! That was long!” The book Crime and Punishment makes an appearance in this story and after a while, I feel as if the author is mocking me with the mention of that book.

Simply put, this is the story of Devan Astor, a college student, whose ordeals begin when she is abducted by a pervert and subsequently finds herself in all kinds of sexual situations that do not necessarily require her cooperation. There is a happy ending here, mind you, but given how… unorthodox, to say the least, the story is, it is definitely best to approach this one as a work of erotic fiction rather than erotic romance.

I personally would not have any problem with this story if it is long, but Abduction is too long and too repetitive for me. The sexual situations tend to take place following a similar pattern and it doesn’t help that the author uses the same words or phrases most of the time. The erotic scenes as a result have a repetitive quality to them. And my god, there are so many of such scenes here. I also have to slough my way through switches from third person to first person narration and back again. I personally would have preferred if the author has varied the pattern and tempo of those erotic scenes instead of resorting to such gimmicky technique. Give me quality instead of quantity, and seriously, I can’t help thinking that this story would have been massively improved if we cut down the story length by half.

I don’t find Devan’s psychology convincing either. I’ve lost count of how many times she’s tied up and raped in this story but she seems to behave more like a bored adult film actress working her way through the script rather than a genuine terrified woman here.

I am hoping to get a well-written rape fantasy with a healthy dose of Stockholm Syndrome thrown in, but alas, what I get instead is an interminable story with many sex scenes that feel repetitive and boring after a while. By the time I reach the last page, I’m more relieved than anything else that, at long last, my ordeal is finally over and I can go read something else. How much time did I spend reading this thing? It feels like at least two hundred years.