Customer Reviews

Royal Bondage: Ellora's Cave

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There's certainly a lot of sex in the "Royal Bondage" anthology by three Ellora's Cave authors. You may want to take note of this moment where I say, "Maybe there was just a bit too much sex in this book." Whew...glad I got that out of the way! When I start to feel like I'm reading bits of plot between sex scenes--well, that says it all, doesn't it?

Llewellyn's Song by Samantha Winston was the longest at 96 pages and my favorite of the three. A tale of historical fantasy, elves and looming danger, my beef with Winston is where the story stops. They are about to go to war and the story ends! Argh.

Arctic Dragon was Delilah Devlin's contemporary contribution about a lost dragon and an Ice princess. This one was only 77 pages and felt incomplete to me.

Marianne LaCroix finishes out the anthology with Scorpion King-an 87-page futuristic story. After ruining their planet, humans have used science to adapt their bodies to living in places other than the planet's surface. This story is about an underwater Queen and her foretold Scorpion King who will arrive at a time of great trial and help her save her people.

All three were obviously hot (see my earlier 'too much sex' comment) but none made me wish the tales were longer. Nuff said?

Wow. Usually in these anthologies there is at least one stand-out story for me. Unfortunately, the best was Devlin's "Artic Dragon." That was good but not great (3 stars). The other two were less than 3 stars. The first story "Llewyn's Song" had so much special language (fantasy words similar to Lord of the Rings a little) that it might have been better as a novel especially since they left the ending open-ended. Honestly, if I'm reading a short story I really don't want to learn another "language" so to speak, otherwise, I'd read a novel. The other story was OK in between a 2 1/2 to 3 stars. I would not recommend this book.