Laurann Dohner, $5.49, ISBN 978-1-944526-36-8
Fantasy Erotica, 2016 (Reissue)
Fury was first published by Ellora’s Cave back in 2011, and from all accounts, this edition is merely a reissue, so it may not be worth buying if you already have a copy. Unless you think the author really should get your money, I suppose. I haven’t read the first edition so I’m not entirely sure how this one differs from that one. I do know, though, after reading this one that it’s like what you get when you slip some acid into Lora Leigh‘s drink and force her to write a story with your gun pressed against her temple.
Our heroine Ellie Brower works for as a nurse at a research facility and she is having a bad day. First, she discovers that they are conducting a top secret experiment thingy on a hot and sexy guy that makes her drool and want to dry hump a hair dryer. She must save him! And then, the scientist in charge would like to date her. Ugh. But she loses it when she puts her free-the-sexy plan in motion, only to stumble upon the sexy being raped by a villainous technician. and starts bashing that bastard’s head with a hard plastic case until there is blood everywhere.
She eventually manage to get Prisoner 416 free, but she has to do… something… that he considers a betrayal, and this hatred of him will come back to haunt her a while later, when she eventually becomes a double agent to take down her employer, only to discover that Prisoner 416, now called Fury, is the second in command of the gang of hot sexy overpowered BUY ALL OF OUR BOOKS BABY dudebros she comes in contact with. Fury hates her! Fury hates her so much! But he also wants her so bad! And so we go.
Okay, on the bright side, this is not some tired old mate-mate-mate stuff despite the dudebros being genetically modified using animal DNA. Don’t worry, we do sexy here, so none of the hot guys have porcine or bovine DNA.
On the down side, the plot is just some eye-rolling “Let’s just toss some half-baked things about dudebros taking down the establishment” background noise acting as filler for the two characters’ equally eye-rolling hate-fuck melodrama. Sorry to use that bad word, but that’s what the whole thing is here. There is hardly any tenderness or believable emotion, because these characters’ emotions are either “HATE!!!” or “FUCK TIME NOW!!!” with no believable transition from one to another. They are just props in a silly skin flick in which Barbie and Ken are used to enact some kind of furry porn. The sex, by the way, can really push some hot buttons, as Fury has a tendency to go all “HATE… MUST FUCK NOW!!!” and practically forces himself on Ellie. Don’t worry, he has hot abs and a twenty-inch dong, so there is no way this is rape – just forced seduction, baby, because the poor guy just can’t help it.
And there is some kind of unfortunate implication here in that our “hero” is allowed to get away with all kinds of crap because, aw, that bad technician raped him with both a baton and a pee-pee. Oh, he practically pinned Ellie to the ground and stuck it in her without her full consent? Well, he was raped, asshole, don’t you dare judge him, you horrible ableist scumlord! We should all line up here and let him rape us, because he was raped and needs our hoo-hoos both front and back to be his safe spaces.
Still, there is some kind of train wreck allure to Fury that makes it very hard for me to look away. I don’t like this story at all – I find it neither sexy nor enjoyable even in a campy way – but I have to admit, I am compelled to keep reading just to see how the whole train wreck will turn out. Also, Ellie isn’t a terrible heroine in her own; it’s just hard for her, or any woman, to stand her own when the guy goes all “HULK… RAPES!” on her.
Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to read cross-over fanfiction in which Lion-O and the Incredible Hulk somehow mated and had a butt baby, and this butt baby turns out to be a hot dude who gets frenzied up with lust to the point that he can’t help but to rape you into delirious pleasure, this one is calling your name in the most sexy-rapist way. Me, I find myself blinking in macabre fascination with every turn of the page, and perhaps any author who can do that to me may just be alright after all.
