Tiamat, $0.99
Fantasy, 2016

The TBR Challenge this month is “Friends”, and I don’t know. I’m still in the middle of a reading slump, so it’s not probably not ideal for me to review a story in this state. Still, I don’t like to miss a month, and I’m going to interpret the theme to mean “something I don’t mind my friends reading”.

So, Tiamat’s Royal Blood. It’s set in a fantasy kingdom, and it has a spoiled, self-absorbed, bratty, but annoyingly competent prince Daronghi Dancennou (yes, I am copying and pasting that name, because I’m not going to try to remember how to spell the whole thing) trying to seduce the new lieutenant Rudra Ruatta only to have Ruatta turning the tables on him and doing that borderline rape thing that has our prince pouting and hating himself for liking it. This story exists in that gray zone where erotica and fantasy fiction seem to be one and the same, but given that this is a prologue to what seems like a fantasy series with actual plots and all, this one is likely to fall under the spicy fantasy fiction category.

At any rate, it’s short, but it has enough naughty, spicy scenes to sizzle things up. The characters have some semblance of personality – some, that is, as the short length of this thing means that there isn’t room for any character to really shine – but really, folks should be reading this thing for the naughty stuff and melodramatic “Love! Hate!” posturing. A part of me feels that there is a missed opportunity here for not using alliterative phrases such as “Daronghi’s dong” or “Ruatta’s rutty rump” but that’s just me, I guess.

Oh, but if you’re really into the romance, I strongly recommend not reading the epilogue or the excerpts of future entries in this series. I did and I now have the same “Sigh, I wish I could un-see all of that…” kind of regret as I did when I kept reading future installments long after Swordspoint had ended.