Forbidden Lust Press, $2.99
Fantasy Erotica, 2013
Wade’s sister is missing. Oh no! Fortunately, our hero is a hunter who is good at tracking and stuff, so he manages to track his sister to a marauder camp and sets her free. Alas, while his sister manages to free herself, our hero gets knocked out and comes to in the hands of his captor, who insists that Wade would do the things the captor has planned for his sister. This man, Aiden, begins by beating Wade before letting him be raped by the other men, He also has a habit of pimping Wade out as a prize in violent games among other men. Naturally, Wade falls for him and they live happily ever after.
Now, don’t look at me. Pillaged is marketed as an erotic work, which is good as the premise of this story would not work as a romance, In fact, it doesn’t work too well as some kind of erotic fiction with romance, because it is too short. Let me explain – I like the fact that the author doesn’t shy away from nasty stuff that will happen to a slave, but in order for the last few pages of this one to work, I need to see a convincing transition from fear and hate to desire and maybe even love. I don’t care whether this love is healthy or not, I just want to feel that it is possible, believable. For that to happen, there has to be something that will push Wade’s emotions from one extreme to another. Something extreme for the extreme to happen, in other words.
And yet, there is nothing here that feels remotely close to being that extreme. The sex scenes are actually on the tame side despite the nature of these acts, and things become more unbelievable when the author starts making flimsy excuses to justify Aiden as the one. Oh, some men raped Wade’s sister – bad men, bad! – but Aiden isn’t one of those men, so Aiden is… good for Wade? Come on, the author can do better than that. Come up with something that doesn’t insult me. For example, it is very possible that Wade will fall in lust or love with Aiden no matter how evil that man is – maybe Wade is a bit messed up inside too, or maybe he just likes being bum rushed by fifty men a night, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. This is one story where conventional morality has no place in it, so the author trying to bend this story to make Aiden “good” sabotages the story considerably.
The sex isn’t that amazing, to be honest, because they are never explicit to a degree that works. The premise needs something outrageous – think AN Roquelaure’s Beauty series – and that outrageous factor is sorely missing here. No matter how many rapes and gang bangs that are present here, I’m bored, and that’s a sign that something is really off here.
