The Prop Master: Cindy Stripped Bare

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Slave Girl of Akkadis Reviewed

Cover of Slave Girl of Akkadis. Available at Amazon.com here.
I've got a new review up, this one for "Slave Girl of Akkadis," another entry in the erotic romance genre. It's a science fiction story with a strong, well developed plot that is set in a believable universe. But being the persnickety fellow that I am, I did find some faults with it. What were they? Read the review and find out.


There is not a single scene of a bound and gagged women being fucked in the entire book! The outrage! Image source: Sex and Submission.

Review: The Last Slavegirl

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Siren7 In Second Life Gor - An Erotic Romance That Is NOT The Next Fifty Shades of Grey

I'm doing a major rewrite of an earlier novel, "Siren7," taking full advantage of Second Life as a way of developing the relationship between Larry and Kim. I'm going to do some marketing of the story in advance this time, using Second Life videos. This is just a one-minute video, but it took a LOT of work to finish. Siren7 might get made into a movie, eventually, who knows? I'm doing the rewrite and the videos simultaneously, let's see what happens.

The one think I can assure you of, this will NOT be the next Fifty Shades of Grey. It's an erotic romance like Fifty Shades of Grey, sure. But this is much more of thriller than Fifty Shades of Grey was, though in this particular promo, I work more on the romance aspect. Plus, the sex is more explicit, with much more emphasis on the bondage and submission aspects than in Fifty Shades of Grey, which, while it certainly features submission and dominance, wasn't fully developed in terms of bondage, though there WAS plenty of bondage.

Siren7 also plays with the willing slave girl fantasy a lot more than Fifty Shades of Grey ever did, and well ... more intelligently. Kim, the protagonist, enjoys bondage and submission, and so does her lover Larry and so does the evil publisher who blackmails her into doing a lot things she ordinarily would have enjoyed doing, in a consensual relationship.

I'm very pleased with the way this video came out. Maybe all those Second Life videos I've worked on already were not wasted.

Enjoy!

Music for the video is from Portishead, it's "It Could Be Sweet," a wonderful romantic ballad, you can check out the whole ballad here, I STRONGLY recommend it, and Portishead generally.

Sims that were visited in Second Life were:

Valetta Town
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lapis%20Lazuli/191/137/29

Port of Ar
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Adult%20Hub%20GOR/112/161/46

Blacksilk
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Blacksilk/36/29/56

Valkyrie Forest Bay
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Valkyrie%20Forest%20Bay/192/111/27

Sylvan Grove (60 Linden Rentals)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sylvan%20Grove/250/94/151

Any or all of the sims listed here could change or disappear at any moment, I have no control over that. But do check them out, they're all interesting and excellent places to visit. The one sim you can't visit is the one I used for some of the bedroom scenes, it's a skybox rental that goes for 60 Lindens a week (about $1.25 a week US currency) but the link to Sylvan Grove goes to the rental office where you can rent a skybox just like it. Also, I'm pretty sure the Valkyrie Forest Bay sim has changed since I filmed there.

A Review of Anjanette by Candace Smith

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His Slave, His Princess: Collared By The Billionaire Prince Review

The cover of His Slave, His Princess. I wanted you to see it in all it's diamond-encrusted glory. You can buy the book here, at Amazon.com, at least until they start banning the books that made the kindle a success. And believe me, they and other online publishers are working on it.
Ever since the success of Fifty Shades of Grey I've read many comments to the effect that there are many erotic romances that are better than Fifty Shades of Grey. I figured it was mostly bullshit and sour grapes. But after reading “His Slave, His Princess: Collared by the Billionaire Prince” by Tanya Korval, I have had to change my mind.

Writers who deal with bondagelicious sexual fantasies in their stories have a tough line to follow. The fantasies work on a variety of levels, and staying on a level that will entertain and turn on readers is not an easy task.

“His Slave, His Princess” is a book that does a pretty good job of handling the divide, though Korbel sets the story up in slippery lands indeed. Despite the title, the story is set in modern Earth, however, in her modern Earth is the fictional land of Asteria. (Those who have read my review of “The Punishing of Jendri” will recall that it is set in the fictional land of Asperia. I thought I had fucked up, too, but I checked. Interesting coincidence, considering that pseudonyms and concealed identities are common among erotic romance writers. If the next book I review is set in the fictional land of Asleria, I'm gonna call shenanigans!)

Asleria, er, Asperia, er ASTERIA, is small kingdom in central Europe somewhere around France. Asteria is a different sort of European country … all the women in the country are enslaved when they reach 21. They are allowed to pick the man they are enslaved by, but if they can't find a man they like they get enslaved pretty quick, as any woman over the age of 21 without a slave collar on her neck can be claimed by any man just by grabbing her and saying, “You are mine.”

Lucy Snow is a UN translator who has a chance meeting with the crown prince of Asteria at a UN-related party that goes from “hello” to passionate kisses and groping in seconds. The animal magnetism was so intense that it wiped out hard drives for a three block radius of them. Shortly thereafter, Prince Jagor requests that Lucy be assigned as his translator. Although Lucy has been translating French at the UN, she is also prolific in Asterian, as she has a geeky feel for language and was intrigued by Asterian even though it's a very little-used language outside Asteria due to Asteria's extreme insularity.

The US state department is thrilled with the chance to get Lucy installed as Jagor's translator, because Asteria has rich deposits of palladium and they'd like to be a favored customer of Asteria's. Lucy's encouraged to take the job, and a few hours after she accepts, she steps into the Prince's limo, and scant minutes after she steps into the limo, the Prince has her panties off. He's just that dominating, and she's just that submissive.

Jagor and Lucy are soon engaged in a passionate romance, which they must conceal from the public as he is the Prince and People Will Talk. Oh, there are many hindrances to Jagor and Lucy's romance, including plotters intent on overthrowing the Asterian monarchy, a nobelwoman whom everyone had pegged to be the Jagor's princess/slave, and Lucy's misgiving about being a real life slave. The plotting is really well done here. Lots of thrills, action and intrigue mixed in with the romance.

The characterization was strong, but did have a few weaknesses which weren't enough to be a problem for me, just noticeable. At each erotic interlude, Lucy is not sure she can do the kinky and erotic things Jagor wants her to do, at the same time, she is overwhelmed with lustful desire to do it, and does it, much to her pleasure. After the fifth erotic interlude, it feels kinda formulaic. And Prince Jagor is a little too much The Hunky Guy. He's handsome, he's caring (even after he's gotten a collar around Lucy's neck) and he's smart and brave and of course, rich as hell. His character is very much female Sex Fantasy Fuel, even down to having a character flaw that he eventually overcomes (with Lucy's help of course).

That said, one thing I really liked about the book was that Lucy was neither a formulaic damsel in distress nor a formulaic Action Girl. When things get tough and dangerous, Lucy gets going. Furthermore, her bravery isn't manifested unrealistically in an ability to outfight guys twice her size who are trained and experienced fighters, or in developing a sudden ability as a dead shot with a gun, but in ways more suited to her abilities, which nevertheless demand great courage. Lucy is a very well-realized character.

Now let's get back to that tough line that His Slave, His Princess must follow with regard to sexual bondage themes. When you write an erotic romance, you want people to enjoy the sexual elements of your story. Now there are several ways to present these elements in any erotic romance:

1) You can tell a straight-up story of two people engaging in a consensual bondage. That's the route Fifty Shades takes, and I'd call it the safe route, and I'm not saying that disparagingly, you can definitely tell a great story that way. But there's no danger people won't enjoy the sexual scenes, if they are at all well written, since they are clearly consensual.
2) You can have real nonconsensual bondage/slavery as a story element but set it in a distant milieu (in time, like ancient Roman slavegirls, or set on another planet or another world, or a straight up fantasy setting) so that you can have nonconsensual bondage but with an element that reinforces the fictional nature of the sexual bondage. Since the nonconsensual bondage is set in a framework that is clearly fictional, it is sufficiently a product of fantasy that the nonconsensual elements are not so much a problem.
3) You can set it in modern times and have it be nonconsensual bondage. I don't know of a lot of erotic romances that do that, because nonconsensual bondage is not the stuff of romance and is threatening and unhappy-making when set in our current world. For example, imagine writing an erotic romance about Nazi sex slaves circa 1943. Think anyone at that time would have found it romantic – well, anytime, but particularly that time? Of course not, Nazi Germany in those days was straight-up horror. (I know, very few Americans knew of Nazi concentration camps in 1943, but pretend everyone did know all about them.) In a similar faction, a sexual bondage erotic romance set in a South American prison for political prisoners might work for uninformed Americans, but it might not work so well for readers in the South American country the story is set in.

His Slave His Princess takes the fictional milieu route, even though it is set in modern times. The land of Asteria does not exist, we all know that, putting it firmly in a fantasy milieu. If Korval had set the story in a modern country that practices female slavery, or something close to it, like Taliban-era Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, it would rouse all sorts of unpleasant associations from the real world and make the sexual bondage much harder to accept as purely pleasurable.

But the fact that it's set in fictional Asteria makes the semi-nonconsensual bondage easier to accept. And semi-consensual is the right word. It's clear that in Asteria nonconsensual bondage exists – every woman is subject to collaring once she turns 21. But since the women get to pick who collars them prior to coming of age it's more like a peculiar form of dating. (Though it's hard to see how all the women find their true loves, or even a guy who APPROXIMATES a true love, prior to reaching 21.)

What's more, if the relationship goes sour after the woman is collared, she is not divorced but sold at a slave auction, which would result in some nonconsensual bondage. In fact, there are a couple of characters who are in nonconsensual bondage in the story. One is a palace slave that winds up as Lucy's personal maid. The other is a public relations specialist. In both cases the slavery does not seem too onerous, but there ARE differences between being a slave and an employee.

The maid, for example, can be sexually used by any of the palace officers. She does not do the picking, if they want her, they can take her. She is in fact seeing a young palace staffer, and sneaks out of the palace regularly to do so, to her great risk. I don't remember specifically what the punishment might have been, but it was enough to make her sneak out of the palace at night in a laundry cart and risk being smothered.

However, none of the nonconsensual sex was shown, in fact, all of it was Lucy and Jagor steaming up the chains, as the story is told strictly from Lucy's POV. And there are several slaves who were shown who were clearly deeply in love with their masters, or in some cases, master/husbands. So there's that.

The PR specialist seemed no different from a PR specialist on Earth who is dedicated to her job. So as far as the story FEELS, it's very much a consensual BDSM story, even though there is a certain amount of putative nonconsensual slavery present in the story. The nonconsensual stuff just gives an edge to the kink, much as the fact that the sex slavery in John Norman's Gor novels was nonconsensual, but was almost competely offset by the fact that all the slavegirls just LURVED whatever was done to them.

Of course, all works of fiction are fiction, and you can make that defense for enjoying bondage imagery in any fictional work, consensual or not. But I personally find the nonconsensual stuff only a turn on when it's part of a story line that leads to a consensual relationship of some kind. Like the pirate and kidnapped wench that is the basis of so many romance novels, except you know, with more and better kinky sex. Or the Gorean master and his slavegirl he bought at auction just to use, but they develop feelings for one another.

I think most people who read erotic romances are like me in this respect.

Now as to this book being better than Fifty Shades, it's better written. It moves along smoothly and has an engaging plot. You never feel the story lag, as happened quite few times in the first book of the Fifty Shades trilogy. Ana and Lucy are both well-developed and engaging characters whom you enjoy reading about. However Prince Jagor has it WAY over Christian Grey, who's been damaged by childhood mistreatment. Jagor may be too much the Hunky Guy, but his lust for Lucy is simple and straightforward, he wants her as his slavegirl/wife because that's the way he was raised to respond to women, and that's who he is. His direct, natural lust for Lucy is just a lot cleaner and more fun to read about.

His Slave, His Princess is by far the best erotic romance I have read. It isn't the hottest one, however. That honor goes to The Punishment of Jendri, which, while it was not as well written as His Slave, His Princess, was in a fantasy milieu I like better, and had a much stronger feel for the dominance/submission dynamic than His Slave, His Princess. I think this may be a gender thing to a certain extent: I think most female readers would find His Slave His Princess sexier than The Punishment of Jendri, and I think most male readers would fine The Punishment of Jendri the sexier read, and not just because Jendri is pure-D pussy-lickin' lesbianism (though to be fair, that would be an issue too). His Slave His Princess, for all its kinky explicit sex, is very much in the tradition of romance novels, while The Punishment of Jendri is more like porn for guys.

I do think Korval has missed a trick with His Slave, His Princess. I think the Asterian society she has created is fascinating, sort of a mini-Gor on Earth. I think she should set a whole series of books in Asteria, detailing the problems of a small country that has retained government by aristocracy and chattel slavery, to survive in the modern world, and the people in it to find love. There are many more stories to tell in Asteria than the story of Princess Lucy and Prince Jagor, and Korbel is capable of doing a fine job of telling them.

In the meantime, buy this book. It's worth it.


When touring Asteria, the friendly locals will talk to you happily ... if they can! Image source: Public Disgrace.com.

The Human Commodity Reviewed

Nice work on censoring out the nipples. If Smith paid someone more than twenty bucks to do this cover they got screwed, cause I doubt it took more than half an hour's work. Image source: the Interwebs.
Human Commodity by Candace Smith is a book I bought recently on Amazon. I was hooked, frankly, by the storyline. It was absolutely compelling: in the near future the world is wracked by second economic collapse even worse than the one in 2007. (A very credible storyline, as Washington has failed to control the derivatives market that brought the economy down in 2007.) All the stock markets are locked in the doldrums, up arrows are not appearing by any firm's names and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

That is, until an evil young economist figures out that legalizing prostitution could easily lead to commoditizing women, and that women sold as slaves could be the hot new market that will bring the economy back into the pink, so to speak. Meanwhile, a feminist group is working hard to stop this new commodities market, even risking their daughters to stop it.

Damn, that's good plotting. I have seen SO MANY stories where the background is a simple, unimaginative set-up for the sex -- Arab has girl captive in his tent, mysterious rich man enslaves poor girl, etc. etc. -- and HERE is an interesting scenario indeed. And with maledom/femsub bondage as well ... oh, I spent the $6.45 (kinda high for a 143 page story) figuring what the hell, it would be an interesting read, one way or another.

I was of course, hoping for an incredibly enthralling read, with the sort of sexual bondage scenes that engrave themselves in your mind with their sheer hotness and brilliance, combined with a plot that pulls you irresistably from one scene to the next, and characters who live in your mind well after you've read them.

I didn't get that. No surprise, there is not a hell of a lot of that around. The sexual bondage scenes just were not all that hot to me, and although Smith definitely followed through with the plot and the storyline, there were places where she expects us not to notice some fairly obvious flaws. One of the most egregious: the women are enslaved in the time-honored capitalist method, via contract. Adult women can contract themselves out as slaves, and parents can contract their girls out when they turn 18. (Which adds a very DIFFERENT feel to a girl's 18th birthday, with the economy in the pits, which to her credit, Smith plays up very nicely in the book's opening scene.)

But here's the place where the plotting gets weak: there's a HUGE commodity market in women, enough to get the global economy restarted, and one of the ways in which it's made acceptable is that there is a fiction that the women are working as personal assistants, maids, housecleaners, etc., for the wealthy. But unlike personal assistants, maids, housekeepers, etc., their friends and family never hear from them or see them again. They utterly vanish. That's mostly because, of course, as soon as the human commodity firm gets the contract and the woman in house, off go her clothes, on go the collars and shackles and she's hustled off to their commodity training center for some hardcore sexual bondage slave training.

But the story completely glosses over this point. I imagine that there would be MASSIVE media curiousity about commoditized women in the first place, if they vanished from human ken after being commoditized, the media scrutiny would be overwhelmingly intense. Not a word about it, which was enough to break my suspension of disbelief, and I've got a MASSIVE suspension of disbelief.

Another bit that broke my disbelief suspension and also fucked up my transmission pretty bad: so you've commoditized women as sex slaves, how is that boosting the economy? Basically most young people get commoditized as it is in one way or another when they enter the job market, they just aren't purchased wholesale, they just rent out their labor. So how is wealthy people buying women going to create new money? It's not.

But it was the sexual bondage that was the most disappointing. Granted, women were forced to strip naked, get collared and cuffed, suck cock, get whipped, be caged, all that good stuff, but there wasn't much of an erotic connection between the women and their captors/trainers. The torment was sexualized, but not eroticized. The torments were like 1984-style breaking of human beings using sexual tortures rather than purely physical and psychological torture. The women were not submissives, and not portrayed as such.

And nowhere in the novel does anyone form a close emotional relationship. The commodity traders are all heartless bastards. The trainers as well. The feminists who oppose them are portrayed as crazed (really, their children call them the OTRs, for Off Their Rockers) and shrill. The women who are sold into slavery are just standard victims, suckers who get played into signing themselves into slavery (even though they do not understand the way the slavery works). There is one group of characters who are portrayed relatively sympathetically, but there's still no character in the entire book I could regard as a sympathetic heroine.

The bondage and dominance behavior therefore just was not sexy to me. The BOOK was not sexy to me. And that was its major failure. The sex slaves were women who had literally been tormented and terrified into accepting their slavery, there was no sense that they enjoyed it – they were sucking cock on demand out of simple fear. It just was. not. sexy.

And the thing is, I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to like this book. And the book was strong on plotting, for an erotic story. But even in Human Commodity, the plot kept breaking my disbelief suspension. The biggest, most powerful feminist organization opposing the slavers consisted of half a dozen dead broke, crazed women? REALLY? What happened to feminism? No politicians got bought to make the sex slavery legally feasible? REALLY? Since when does America work that way?

Human Commodity might have been a feminist warning of the future under controlling corporate overlords, sort of a corporate Handmaid's Tale with lots of sexy bondage and dominance thrown in. That could have been fun. Or it could have been a bit of crapulent wallowing in anti-feminism and misogyny with the bad guys doing one awful bit of sexy corporate malfeasance after another throughout the story, then briefly getting their comeuppance in the end, with the good guys (and gals) enjoying happy maledom/femsub sex forever after. That could have been fun. But having read Human Commodity, I'm still not sure exactly what the author was trying to do. After all the plot points had been played out, we're left with so much human misery as a consequence that it hardly matters that the bad guys suffer too.

I am glad I bought and read Human Commodity because if I had not, there would have been some intolerable itching of my curiosity to know if it was what I thought it might have been. I know now that it's not, so there's that. I just wish I hadn't had to spend $6.95 to find out.


Ms. Smith, a word to the wise. It's very easy to create cover art on Second Life if you play there long enough to know how things work. You know what I did to create this bit of cover art? I posed the photo, downloaded it (very easy on Second Life) opened it with a graphic arts program and cropped it to fit my blog. No art skills required.

Erotic Romance Cover, Bondage Division

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Slave Harems of Xhagia Series By Teagan Rand Reviewed

Chained, collared and wearing a boustier ... soon to be a very sticky boustier! Image source: Cover of "A Slave Girl for the Emperor" the first book in the four-part Slave Harems of Xhagia series.
I am a sucker for combining fantasy/science fiction themes and bondage themes, let's just put that right out there. Anybody who has read almost all of the Gor novels can reasonably be suspected of being that.

THAT must be why I've read all four of Teagan Rand's “Slave Harems of Xhagia” books, because I DEFINITELY never intended to read all of them. I just planned to buy that first book and move on. Well to be honest, the REAL reason, and as an erotica writer I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but it's true and I gotta keep it real … I got hooked on the plot. Between an arresting and interesting plot, an intriguing universe and a smooth writing style that makes turning the pages very, very easy, I got hooked.

Set in the not too distant future, Slave of the Emperor and its successor books deals with the adventures of Christine Berenger, one of many women who have been kidnapped by slavers of a vast interstellar empire known as the Xhagian Empire, to serve as slavegirls in the harems and bordellos of Xhagia.

OK, I hear you already … I thought the same thing myself … “Another damn story of aliens who want our Earth women … what the hell … well it IS porn … er, erotica ...”

But here is where Teagan Rand proves she is made of better stuff than your average pornifier. Tuns out the Xhagians and humans are both descendents of an ancient race called the Valk who died out about 25 million years ago, and seeded the galaxy with a variety of humanoid races for some mysterious reason that's essential to the plot – and no, this review will not contain any spoilers, this is all established early on.

So the cross-species attraction is understandable, as is the fact that Xhagian males are taller, handsomer versions of Earthmen … they're basically both subspecies of the Valk.

What's more, Valk males and Earth females find each other tremendously sexually attractive ... also for reasons that are essential to the plot.

This is what really made me sit up and take notice of Rand's books. Instead of using the science fiction background as the thinnest of tissues to hold together her story of the romance between Christine and the Xhagian slaver Dalgaz Tav, and all the hot slavegirl sex that she and the other slaves have with him and other handsome Xhagian men, Rand thought her background through in such a way that it's essential to and supports the story, making it stronger.

This is a good thing because although the Slave Harems of Xhagia series is FULL of submissive slavegirly goodness, and includes some bondage, its central fetish is, well ... bukkake. Bukkake is not a fetish I enjoy, nor is it ever likely to become one, I mean .... YECH! But it seems that the sperm of Xhagians has some property that renders Earth slaves orgasmicallly ecstatic for prolonged periods, and it only takes contact with the skin to make this orgasmy goodness manifest itself. And the Xhagian men produce lots and lots of sperm, much more than Earth men. They also have a very short refractive period and like to have sex a LOT.

Think of them as the the male equivalent of the big-breasted bimbos who want to have sex with everyone as soon as possible who show up in male porn. And the sperm of Xhagian men is so powerful and effective on human female psyches that its effects are ninety percent of what it takes to transform the captive Earth women into lust-bedazzled sex sluts, reduced to panting wanton slavegirls without much need for lashing or punitive treatment of any kind. It's all about the sperm, baby!

What's more, the Xhagian men find the Earth women VERY attractive, more attractive in fact than Xhagian females, who are only interested in sex when they are fertile and ready to conceive children. And instead of being jealous, the Xhagian women are pleased that the Earth women are keeping their men from being all sexually wound up when the Xhagian women are not interested in sex, which is basically, most of the time.

And of course, the Slave Harems of Xhagia books are essentially romances. Dalgaz Tav, the male lead, is that rarest of all creatures, a slaver with a heart of gold. He might be charged with picking out the prettiest Earth women kidnapped by Xhagian slavers for the Emperor's harem and transforming them into total hose beasts for use by the Emperor, but he CARES about those women, by gum. He and Christine soon develop strong feelings for one another, but can a romance between the top slaver in the Xhagian Empire and a lowly human slavegirl really work out? I'll never tell … read the books if you want to find out!

Keeping the Emperor's and others' harems and bordellos full is why the Xhagian slavers constantly raid Earth for women to stock their harems and bordellos, but it's germane to the plot in more than one way, for there is a mysterious relationship between Earth humans and Xhagians that plays out over the course of the four books in the series that is essential to the plot.

This is what really impresses me about Rand's writing. There are a lot of erotica writers who can write a convincing sex scene, but most miss out on the tremendous potential of science fiction and fantasy to make erotic stories more powerful and believable. She worked out the way the genetics and customs of the Xhagians and humans affect her characters and her story and makes it work FOR the story, sometimes in surprising ways. This is a hallmark of good science fiction and fantasy writing, when the writer does not use their fantastic or futuristic plot elements merely as props for the story but works out how they would affect their world.

Larry Niven is a great example of this. He predicted flash mobs before they happened, because he envisioned a society that had instant communications and instant transportation because they had teleporters, and he wondered how that would affect how ordinary people behaved. He decided they'd use them to form crowds out of nowhere just for fun and parties. And of course, flash mobs are people who use cell phones out of nowhere, they just use more mundane transportation.

Niven's thinking-through of his futuristic ideas even on aspects that aren't central to the plot is what characterizes really great science fiction, it adds a very nice density and richness to your story.

And Rand's thinking through of the different sexuality and genetics and culture of the Xhagians add nicely to her series. I wish she had thought the Xhagians through in other respects, they're basically technically advanced ancient Romans in outer space in other respects, which does make the story seem a little thin at times.

There's just one element where Rand falls down in terms of world-building, and its' a pet peeve of mine, so I'm going to have to bring it up though I doubt it will matter much to most readers. Rand's Xhagian Empire features a heredity emperor presiding over a court full of nobles who scheme to become Emperor themselves, generally without success.

Now, see … interstellar empires and heredity aristocracies just don't go well together. If you are going to have an interstellar empire ruled by an hereditary aristocracy set in the distant future, you need to explain why a civilization so technically advanced is being run by a type of government that is clearly archaic even to a bunch of planetbound types like us contemporary Earthlings.

I mean, believing that the best man to govern is automatically going to be the firstborn son of the current ruler implies a certain ignorance of genetics, y.know?

I'm not saying you can't HAVE aristocracies running interstellar empires, I'm saying gimme some handwaving, baby. You know, something along the lines of “although the Xhagians were well aware of the problems posed by succession in an hereditary aristocracy, all other forms of government had proven unworkable due to the Xhagian males' fierce competitiveness, which quickly transformed any government based on merit, popularity or other objective standard into a festering hellhole ruled by paranoid warlords. Aristocracies were stupid, but they weren't as stupid as chaotic hellholes full of rival warlords. It was a matter of government by lesser evil.”

Was that so hard?

In addition to all this, there are hints that Christine is not the simple kidnapped slave girl she seems to be. She has memories of her childhood on Earth, but she has no memory of how she came to be captured in the raid of the Xhagian slavers, or of the days leading up to those events, though there are disturbing dreams that may point to an answer. And there's a religious cult that is gaining power that thinks the way the human slave girls are being treated by the Xhagians is all wrong … they think they should be treated considerably worse!

Rand, in short, really knows how to stir a plot and keep it going, and can write a pretty good slavegirly submissive sex scene. To be fair, for about half of book three and almost all of book four I kind of skimmed the sex scenes, because1) I'm not into bukkake and 2) there's little or no bondage and 3) not all that much slavegirliness stuff to interest me and 4) the plot had cut in big time and that was what I was really interested in.

Frankly, the Xhagian sperm has the effect of making all the slavegirls so happy and eager to have sex with Xhagian men that you kind of get the impression they'd be paying the Xhagian men to have sex with them if they had any money. This eliminates some of the dramatic tension you have in bondage and BDSM, which was especially a problem in the first and second books when the plot had not fully cut in, and so the books were kind of dull until the plot really got rolling in the last half of the second book. (The set up for the world, the society, Christine's situation, etc., keeps you going easily enough through the first book).

I guess what I am saying is, I would have liked to have seen Christine and the other harem slaves struggling more with their new status as slavegirls, despite the effect of Xhagian sperm on their psyches. Hell, have them seriously puzzled and disturbed by what is happening to them. (Christine does have issued with her enslavement, as do the other harem slaves, but not enough to make the harem girls' experience seem all that slavish … it's more like they are a bunch of happy consensual bukkake fetishists who occasionally have a brief doubt about what they are doing. Not exactly the stuff of sex slavery.)

That said, Slave Harems of Xhagia is still a fine series of erotic books. The four books in the series cost just $2.50 each in their Kindle editions, and they run to about 2000-2300 Kindle pages each, which of course are not the same as paperback pages. I'm not sure if it was a long novella or a short novel I read, but I definitely didn't feel shorted, because it was a fun ride and it took a while.

I would say that if you like bukkake as a fetish, buy this book NOW. You could not spend your entertainment dollar more wisely.

If you like generally sexy science fiction, also a very good use of your two bucks fifty, because these books are that. On a stick.

If you like sexy slavegirl themes with a strong element of romance, but aren't into the whole heavy bondage thing, these books are also likely to be winners for you. (The slavegirl themes are undoubtedly what kept me reading because …)

If you like bondage, the books are more problematical, there just isn't that much of it. True, the slavegirls are often thoroughly bound and gagged when they are transported from one location to another, and a couple of passages make it clear that the slavegirls are taught to serve while in restraints, but they don't do a hell of a lot of serving while in restraints or being restrained while not serving. I'd still risk the $2.50 on the first book. The sexy slavegirliness might work for you, too.

If you like bondage with a strong element of drama, with the slave girl fighting it all the way, including fighting her own feelings … these books might not be your cuppa.

All that said, I may not be the best guide for this books' intended audience, as they are definitely romances and I'm a guy. But they're definitely sexy enough to be in the zone of erotica a guy would enjoy reading. I've given you my honest reactions to the books to the best of my ability, which is about all I can do. Read the books and decide for yourself!

And for Teagan Rand, I've got just one bit of advice, perhaps self-serving but I think absolutely accurate: Bukkake just is NOT that popular a fetish. If you want to sell more books, try working a more popular fetish. May I suggest bondage? Fifty Shades of Grey sold seventy million copies, and your books could be the books all those women turn to when they look around for more Fifty Shades of Grey sort of fun reading. You are definitely a good enough writer to grab that brass ring. But you will not succeed by flogging a fetish that has most of your readers going "Eeeew!" and wanting to take a shower.


This is kinda what I imagine a Xhagian bukkake (i.e, bukkan) session is like ... same amount of white stuff, just one penis and one Xhagian man, no women with milk bottles, and the girl looks ecstatic instead of pained. And she's naked. Other than that ... identical! Image source: Public Disgrace.com.