Wow. This was dark . . . extraordinarily dark . . . but also utterly fascinating. I have a hard time classifying Soldier On as erotica, since so much Wow. This was dark . . . extraordinarily dark . . . but also utterly fascinating. I have a hard time classifying Soldier On as erotica, since so much of the story involves non-consensual sexual abuse, and yet I cannot deny that aspects of it are erotic.
N.J. Lysk walks a very fine line here, but keeps the story from being cruelly exploitative by focusing on Seeran's experience, and making his struggle the focus. As much as part of me wanted the story to turn, I realize that would have been a complete and utter betrayal of the situation.
The story opens with a young solider accepting defeat which, in this world, means submitting to the enemy's sexual needs. There are so many conflicting emotions in the scene, and so many little details so casually dropped into the narrative, you need to read it multiple times to properly appreciate it. It is not until the dungeon scene that follows, however, that we really begin to understand the world in which we find ourselves.
What is that world, and why is it so fascinating? Well, it is a world in which young men can be changed by the taking of a man's seed, allowing them to be naturally impregnated. The biology of it all intrigues me, as does the social aspect - for, once changed, they are forced by society to take on feminine roles, wearing dresses and becoming wives. There is so much to the world I would love to know more about, so many details my imagination is hungry to understand, but what is here . . . well, it excites me in a way mpreg stories usually do not.
Seeran's story is dark and full of pain, yet marked by fleeting moments of reluctant pleasure. This is not your typical erotic fantasy, neither wish-fulfillment nor cautionary tale. It is a sexually explicit drama about the defeat and the changing of one young man, with a brief exploration of what that means for his future. I look forward to seeing what Lysk does next with The Will of Heaven.
Euphoria is one of those books that I found to be a challenge. There is no question that Jayne Lockwood is a wonderful writer with an equally wonderfuEuphoria is one of those books that I found to be a challenge. There is no question that Jayne Lockwood is a wonderful writer with an equally wonderful imagination, but I struggled with the structure of the story, and found it hard to connect with many of the characters. I picked this up and put it back down so many times, I feared I would never finish it, but despite the challenges I still felt compelled to see how it all played out.
On the plus side, I loved the non-binary aliens and thought they were exceptionally well done. Vardam came across as genuinely non-binary, neither masculine nor feminine, with their attraction to Kurt feeling neither homosexual nor heterosexual. The "slender opalescent tentacles" helped make them feel very alien and, combined with their gender, made for a fascinating aspect of the story - almost as much as the shocking male pregnancy that results from it all.
On the negative side, while I found Vardam fascinating, I cannot really say I found them likable. Maybe it's their alien nature, in which case maybe it makes sense that I had trouble connecting. Kurt, on the other hand, had no excuses - I disliked him from the start, and only found him more challenging as the story went on. I know the suicide attempts were supposed to bring the reader closer, to force a connection, but I just found myself becoming angry with him.
Back on the plus side, the science fiction aspects were fascinating. Lockwood offers up alien colonization, time travel, mutated diseases, the threat of extinction, and the promise of an alien cure-all in Vardanium. I reminded of the social drama of Alien Nation and the Utopian promise of the original V miniseries, complete with the comic innocence of dialogue, but without the horrors lurking in the shadows. I already mentioned the tentacles, which I loved, but the cocoon travel - as opposed to spaceships - was an interesting quirk as well. Asteroids and supernovas make for some exciting scenes as well.
I am glad I persevered, despite the character issues, because Euphoria was a truly original work of science fiction that does non-binary right.
My Wife Is an Alien by Eva Roche-Poésy is not at all the book I was expecting. The cover blurb sounded playful and fun, but the story is actually muchMy Wife Is an Alien by Eva Roche-Poésy is not at all the book I was expecting. The cover blurb sounded playful and fun, but the story is actually much darker than that, opening on a melancholy note, and wandering into dubious consent territory by the end. In terms of narrative, it is a bit disjointed and unfocused, leaping between scenes and exploring POVs that do not really fit, assuming it is a story being told to a reporter - and, if it is not, then the scenes with the crazy, bubbly reporter really have no purpose.
That said, it is a stronger story for its darker emotions, and I am still glad I gave it a read, even if it seems we will never get the promised second part.
Fred is a wonderful character, a man for whom we feel immediate sympathy. Brenda, his wife, is not as well-developed in terms of personality, but her transformation is fantastic. We get to see a professional, distracted, very feminine wife (who rarely has time for sex) grow bigger, stronger, more passionate, and more sexually dominant. She comes to overpower her husband in every way, forcing him to perform and endure sex acts he never before imagined.
Brenda's newly developed futanari nature is a bit odd, not quite what we are used to seeing in the genre, but still exciting. There is a lovely sense of anticipation and discovery as Fred slowly comes to realize how much his wife has changed, and I liked that the story never loses sight of mutual pleasure in exploring his final submission.
Sadly, the story ends on a cliffhanger, and I fear we may never see it resolved, as it has been more than 2 years since Roche-Poésy last published. Read it, review it, and spread the word, and maybe (just maybe) we can woo her back for the sequel.
Slow Heat is a gay romance, which is not normally my genre of choice, but Leta Blake intrigued me with the idea of an all-male future where there are Slow Heat is a gay romance, which is not normally my genre of choice, but Leta Blake intrigued me with the idea of an all-male future where there are three genders: alpha, omega, and beta. I find the idea of mpreg stories absolutely fascinating, and the gender issues that come with those pairings is interesting.
On that note, I was genuinely surprised by how Blake explored those genders. I expected the omegas to be effeminate and submissive, but that is not the case. Even when they are in heat, presenting themselves to be mounted, and self-lubricating in anticipation, they are still men. They were not the men I wanted them to be, but I cannot deny their allure, and appreciated the alpha-omega bond.
While this is a sexy story, full of all sorts of taboo kinks (I totally get the appeal of the mpreg genre now), what really fascinated me was the world-building. While it fell flat in a few places (for instance, it felt too contemporary for a female-less future), the way it approached gender roles and sexuality was interesting. You would expect an all-male future to be more liberated, but gender roles here are absolute. Omegas have a duty to carry babies, abortion is a capital crime, and there are rigid rules to be followed in courtship and marriage. It is, in many ways, a very backwards society, and though it Blake forces us to take a good hard look at our own.
I did like the main characters, and found the romance aspects worked beautifully, but I have to be honest - it was my fascination with the omega/mpreg kink that kept me reading. This could very well be a new genre for me. :)
At a glance, it would seem as if Swamp Beast Impregnation had almost too much going for it - monster erotica, a fantasy landscape, zombies, tentacle rAt a glance, it would seem as if Swamp Beast Impregnation had almost too much going for it - monster erotica, a fantasy landscape, zombies, tentacle rape, gender transformation, and impregnation. I actually went into it expecting to be disappointed, but aside from a few typos that an editor really should have caught, this was pure sexy, imaginative, depraved entertainment.
It wasn't clear from the cover blurb, but this is actually a classic Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy tale at its heart, complete with a sword-wielding explorer who foolishly chooses a dangerous short cut to get his treasures to market. The first half of Jackie Renquist's story is actually quite good from a fantasy genre perspective, with our hero forced to defend himself from a variety of monsters. The action is quick, but nicely detailed, and I enjoyed the history of the swamps themselves.
The second half of the story is where the erotica kicks in, and it completely delivered on the ambitious promise of the blurb. Here is tentacle erotica done right, with enough imaginative touches to make the involuntary enjoyment plausible, and enough detail to make it vivid in our eyes. The transformation is done in stages, each of them slightly different from the other, and (again) nicely detailed and impressively imaginative.
With so much detail in terms of word building and mythology, and so much detail to the narrative, Swamp Beast Impregnation is one of those stories I wished was longer, especially since we're left with such a tantalizing tease at the end....more
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