Ellora’s Cave, $5.99, ISBN 978-1419911675
Fantasy Erotica, 2007
I may seem down on Ellora’s Cave in my last few reviews of the entries in the Torrid Tarot series, but one thing I miss about that publisher is its pushing out cheesy fantasy and sci-fi stories reminiscent of pulp comics in the 1950s and 1960s. Sure, snobs can argue that those things weren’t high art, but to agree with them is to state that high art is never meant to be entertaining. Elyssa Lynne’s Demon’s Portal is pure cheese with popcorn on the side. Nothing holds up under scrutiny, but it’s all fun nonetheless.
She wanted to be home with a good erotic book and her handsome romantic Greek god in his clever disguise of a dildo.
Sharla is introverted, thinks that she’s never sexy enough to attract some guy, and yet, she doesn’t seem to be lacking for company of friends. Yes, that kind of heroine, claiming to be an unpopular frump without actually being inconvenienced by the baggage that comes with being such a person. Still, she finally gets to give up Apollo the Dildo when she is visited by Kerrick, Keeper of the Portal, claiming that there are demons after them both, and she is the warrior woman of power that he has been searching for all this while. Naturally, he is soon keeping her portal, if you know what I mean, and lots of eye-rolling stuff ensues.
People looking for coherence and sense may not find much here, as this is a story that cheerfully has turn the traffic light red on the bad guys, so to speak, so that the main characters can have sex in order to meet the heat quota. Our heroine goes from fake mouse to yaaaas, mama, go warrior kween so quickly that I don’t know whether to laugh or sigh, and our hero exists solely to posture and poke like a more sensitive and gallant version of a Boris Vallejo barbarian came to life.
The story isn’t very long, and that’s actually a good thing, as this means the story ends before outliving its welcome. Sure, this is a silly, fluffy thing, but still, it’s easy to get into the spirit of it all and just go with the lunacy. I’ve had fun, so I’m one satisfied customer.
