Customer Reviews

The Academy

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I was in the bargain for a romantica centered on BDSM. I picked up The Academy because I thought it would be interesting to read a BDSM novel with a futuristic setting. Daria Evans visits the planet Utan to negotiate a billion-dollar contract for her superiors. If she succeeds, she will get a big promotion (vice president) and her fiancé will finally set a wedding date. But things don't run as smoothly in Utan as she had thought. The beings who inhabit the planet feel that Daria thinks she is superior. They also don't like that she is judgmental about their sexually uninhibited ways. So in order to get the deal for her company, she has to become part of The Academy, where she learns to shatter her innermost sexual inhibitions and experiences feelings she had never felt before in the arms of her disguised master.

I like that Daria is not able to adjust to life in Utan and she feels that humans have superior intelligence and have more sexual boundaries than the Utanians. That sort of thing happens often in this world when an American visits a country they think is beneath them. I also think that her transition from a sexually repressed woman with abandonment issues to an uninhibited, wanton sexpot is quite realistic -- at least more realistic than most erotic books. However, the story development is a little too slow for my taste. Also, some of the erotic scenes are not very... well, erotic. The sex scenes were quite mechanical, especially the ones centered on Analet (a blue-skinned sex kitten from a neighboring planet called Carus) and Benwar. I could not picture blue-skinned, silver-haired people in my mind as I read the scenes. That is one of the main reasons I don't read futuristic stuff often. All in all, The Academy has an interesting premise with a realistic sexual transition. Unfortunately, the most important aspect of this sort of book -- the erotica -- failed to impress me.