Desolation Road
When you read a Christine Feehan book, you know what you’re getting. No matter the series, no matter the hero, no matter the heroine, you know the formula, and it’s either one you loathe or one you can’t live without. But the added wrinkle here – a D/s relationship with full-on kitten play – is something that drags Desolation Road below the line of recommendation.
One can check off the Classic Feehan Tropes as one goes along. Aleksei ‘Absinthe’ Solokov (check for an unusual nickname) is a big burly dude who’s a part of gang made up of his former childhood friends (check) who were all horrifically abused physically, sexually and emotionally (check) by their kidnappers as part of a sex ring/spy training school, and it is described in intense detail on the page (check) and causes them to have horrible flashbacks that only their lovers can help soothe (check). Since fleeing their abusers, the Torpedo Ink gang have left the military (check) and then formed an MC where they do less than legal things to make money (Absinthe is somehow a ‘jack of all trades’ lawyer while also participating in said MC. Yeah… just don’t ask questions). Absinthe is a more sensitive soul because he’s been sneaking away to the local library for peace and quiet lately. Which is where he meets his redheaded heroine – who is also a big reason for his sudden devotion to libraries.
Miss Scarlet Foley is said librarian, and has a peanut-butter-brained internal monologue filled with Oh My Gods (check) and thinks Absinthe is super handsome and thus involves herself in his life without thinking too hard about it. While we are told that Miss Foley is obsessed with books and a master of multiple languages (hint: she rarely speaks any of them in the book, and Absinthe mainly speaks Russian around her), that she has one of the best and brightest brains that Absinthe has ever come across, and she doesn’t remember the title of Sleeping Beauty or the name of the princess who appears in it with full regularity, something that would probably get her drummed out of the librarian’s union (not that she hesitates to resign when Absinthe tells her to.) When we later learn she has training in the sword-based arts thanks to a past involving (checkmark!) an equally physically and sexually abusive suckhole of a childhood, the reader is meanwhile left amazed she’s smart enough to even swing a cane.
Even though the Torpedo Ink gang have a variety of psychic abilities maintained through their group bond, Absinthe is the least fortunate, in that he’s a human sponge for the group’s past pain (check, and hello Carpathians). Absinthe has chosen not to control Scarlet with his voice – another skill he has – but he’ll have the gang’s hacker run a background check on her – oh, and he stole the fork she ate with during their first date so they can run her prints, because he’s paranoid as is every other member of Torpedo Ink. The book makes it clear that all of the members are fucked up, and instead of having them fix themselves they wallow in their unhealthy obsessive bonds and allow them to fester. They fuck together, they get drunk together, and they play games together. This is incredibly creepy, but perhaps would be less so if it were a ménage romance or something.
Every Feehan paranormal adds a new layer of crispy WTF-ery to the uh-okay parfait. In the Carpathian series, you have Intense!Soulmate!Bonds. In Torpedo Ink, the kink is, well, kink. Miss Foley becomes Absinthe’s submissive. To Feehan’s credit, they do engage in some forms of negotiation, he practices aftercare, and some people will say ‘fuck reality, give me that juicy porn’, but the sex isn’t that sexy unless you like Feehan’s usual ‘your-little-pussy-is-mine’ style blandishments. Scarlet needs a guy to top her to get off, and that would be fine, if Feehan had handled things in a manner that suggested she actually knows what acts of dominance and submission entail.
Absinthe is a mediocre Dom at first. He takes care of Scarlet’s limits, and there’s the traditional shaving-of-the-pudenda-to-equal-ownership-exchange (this happens on their wedding day so uh. Yikes.) But he also keeps a woman shivering and wet alone in a bathtub for hours to prove she will submit to him. And once she does, in comes the kitten play.
Let me brace our more vanilla readers for what ‘kitten play’ means, since it’s you might not have heard of it before. Scarlet gets off on pretending she’s a cat in the bedroom and Absinthe indulges her. That requires a tail buttplug being tucked up Scarlet’s Hershey highway, licking up dishes of milk, sucking milk off of Absinthian’s dick and drinking his “cream”, keeping her in a cage, putting nipple clamps on her, walking her on a leash and so much purring and clawing of carpets. While something like this can be sexy in practice, on the page it is gooftacular. It knows the words of the Dom and the sub but not the music; it’s all written so hootily, and anyone who isn’t into this very specific sort of petplay kink (which is NOT hinted about on the book’s back cover blurb) is likely to be bored or embarrassed. By the time Scarlet has to literally fellate Absinthe back to reality, I was ready to tap out.
You usually know what you’re getting these days when you pick up a Christine Feehan book, but the whole kink thing is a fresh dimension. Too bad it doesn’t help the book. Desolation Road works best as a scratching post.
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Book Details
| Reviewer: | Lisa Fernandes |
|---|---|
| Review Date: | August 18, 2020 |
| Publication Date: | 07/2020 |
| Grade: | D |
| Sensuality | Burning |
| Book Type: | Paranormal Romance |
| Review Tags: | Motorcycle Club Romance |
I would never in my life have associated kittens with nipple clamps or walking on a leash.
Thank you, Lisa and AAR. I am enlightened.
Co-signing your entire comment.
Hah, the leash part ALMOST makes sense (some people do walk their cats on leashes). I don’t get why Feehan added nipple clamps and body oils that change temperature when placed on the human skin to the mix, but she did. I feel like she binged a lot of Anne Rice erotica before she started this series.
I had a good giggle reading this review in bed this morning – until I got to the bit about ‘kitten play’!
Oh well, you learn something new every day.
I can’t for the life of me think how nipple clamps got included as cat-related behaviour though……………….. Surely nobody is stupid enough to try and put them on their cats?
And what about other aspects of cat life, like using a litterbox? Maybe there’s one inside the heroine’s cage?
I had my husband read this review and he laughed so hard he is still wiping his eyes. Well done, Lisa. Well done.
Was it the Hershey Highway line? I’m still proud of that one.
She’s got the buttplug so she doesn’t need one?!
I JUST SCREECHED OUT LOUD.
She actually does claw at things/walk on all fours/perch upon tuffets. Amazingly, he does not buy her a ball to chase or a laser pointer, nor is the idea of a litter box discussed. To my relief.
I think it’s just supposed to be a part of the naughty bondagy picture. Like I said, Feehan knows the words but not the music of D/s.
I should have added/mentioned that he literally has bought her a tuffet upon which she perches. Like a cat. And he promises to bring said tuffet to the group’s sex club, where she will perch as a sort of safe place where no one can touch her. Like a cat.
Honestly, cats are far cooler than this.
She should at least be scratching more people than she does during the course of the book.
Kitten play, huh? I’ll add that to the long list of things I’m happy for other consensual adults to do but squicks me personally out. To be fair, I also feel this way about eating green peppers….
It’s a ykinmkato thing for me too, but still not the most out-there sexual practice I’ve heard of nor experienced nor witnessed. But whew, Feehan does NOT warn you it’s going to happen, and the way she writes it is so painfully silly.
So…like “pony play” only with kittens?
Great review, but I’ll be skipping this book…this series…most likely this author…going forward.
Yep, it’s like pony play (pony play is even referenced during the course of this book, and one of the Triggering Incidents for Absinthe involved a pony play training session gone wrong which led to an old friend being murdered). People also like to pretend to be dogs in this subform of D/s play. Definitely not my kink.
And here I was thinking “Trump pardons Susan B. Anthony” would be the most inexplicable sentence I would read today—and then “a pony play training session gone wrong which led to an old friend being murdered” shows up and smashes all my expectations.
It’s just That Kinda Book!
There’s a humor piece by Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker where he has Susan B. Anthony asking Trump not to pardon her because she doesn’t want to wind up on the same Wikipedia page as Roger Stone.
As all cat owners (or, should I say, humans that cats agree to tolerate and live with) know, they do exactly as they want when and how they want. A submissive feline does not compute!
Exactly, if the cat had been the Dom that would have made a lot more sense! Lol.
Hah! As I said in the review – she knows the words, not the music.
Exactly this! I read this review with a six-month-old kitten purring in my lap (she is now trying to “help” me type this comment), thinking “This is a kink for people who have never actually met a cat.” My cats are super sweet, but they still have one GOAL IN LIAqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq [damnit she hit caps lock and “q” and then turned on musicq – last “q” courtesy of the other cat] one goal in life and that is murdering everything in sight.
Hah! Well, to be fair to Scarlet, she does get to kill a guy.
Thanks for the review, Lisa.
It’s interesting to note that a lot of reviewers on Amazon are squicked out by this Feehan title. There are a lot of comments to the tune of This is supposed to be romance, but Feehan keeps upping the ante with kinkier scenes. If she were self-published, I have no doubt Amazon would classify her work as “erotica.” Incidentally, quite a few self-published romance authors have complained on the eroticauthors Reddit forum that their books are being thrown into the erotica category (which cuts off certain advertising opportunities) just for having sex scenes, and I can almost guarantee their stuff doesn’t hit Feehan’s level of kink. There’s definitely a double standard when it comes to what traditionally published and self-published writers can get away with.
“But he also keeps a woman shivering and wet alone in a bathtub for hours to prove she will submit to him.” Definitely not sexy, and quite possibly hazardous.
Just as a side musing, can anybody imagine what would have happened if Harlequin Dare authors were allowed to take things this far?
I agree, Feehan is getting a lot of leeway because she’s a big name. As I said in my comment I let my loan lapse without reading it because it just seemed super generic! I’m pretty shocked this is a big publishers book and not a kindle unlimited offering.
@Nan: I don’t think the Dare line would address “kitten play,” but I must admit I was surprised at the intensity of the bdsm play in Caitlin Crews’s most recent Dare trilogy: TAKE ME, TEACH ME, TEMPT ME—particularly TEMPT ME which includes one very long “scene” that comprises at least 1/3 of the book (and includes nipple clamps, among other things). I think Dare is finally finding its footing as, basically, “hot, but not too far out there.” Another thing I found interesting about TEMPT ME was its acknowledgment that for young women in their early-to-mid-twenties today, 50 SHADES OF GREY has been a fact of their cultural landscape, if not their sex lives, since their teens. I also loved that the Dom hero of TEMPT ME threw some shade at 50 SHADES!
“I think Dare is finally finding its footing as, basically, ‘hot, but not too far out there.'” It sounds like it. Unfortunately, I think they are going to discontinue the line, if their Submittable page is any indication.
Yep, they announced it’s going this past winter.
So, Harlequin discontinued the really good (and hot) Blaze line only to replace it with the Dare line which struggled for several years trying to determine exactly what it was going to be only to discontinue the line just when it appears that (some of their authors at least) were finding the right template for their books? I’m guessing that the first couple of years of Dare books were so wobbly the line didn’t acquire the loyal “I’ll read anything this line publishes” audience that something like Harlequin Presents has. Please don’t tell me HP is for the chop…there’s only so much misery 2020 can hand me.
“Please don’t tell me HP is for the chop…”
I don’t think you have to worry. I just checked http://harlequin.submittable.com, and they are still accepting submissions for the Harlequin Presents line. Plus the fact they release 8 new titles per month and have a long history with a winning formula makes me pretty confident about their future. (I’ve never read one myself, but from what I’ve heard, they’re not going anywhere.) My one concern is if they got the ax because somebody thought the line is too controversial for the 21st century with all its over-the-top dashing, possessive foreigners and all. But they’d really be shooting themselves in the foot if that were the case.
Plus, Harlequin Inspired Historicals are taking submissions again after a hiatus. I know a lot of readers missed the clean, wholesome HR line. (Not me!) So they know what’s tried and true.
Do you remember where you saw the official announcement? I didn’t read anything on So You Think You Can Write or Harlequin Blog. I just noticed their Submittable page doesn’t have the Dare category anymore.
Also, Harlequin was all pumped up for two limited edition Inspired lines: Cold Case and Mountain Rescue. Those submission categories are gone too (after a very short time), but I haven’t heard any news if they scrapped the project entirely or if they will be releasing some of those titles next year. They seemed like odd categories to begin with. I mean, Mountain Rescue and Cold Case sound like really awesome limited edition lines, but making them both Inspirationals? Dude, they missed on a big opportunity for some steamy mountain rescues. You know, with the forced proximity aspect and all, body-to-body warming and the whole bit. I’m not sure who on their staff thought Inspirational was a great direction for these two lines.
https://www.harlequin.com/shop/brand/harlequin-dare.html Looks like I stand corrected; they seem to be publishing new books through September at least.
I think 50 Shades had an impact in the same way Sex And The City did on young women and people in general. I think SATC’s was greater across the board but they both expanded the rules on what was acceptable to do and what was acceptable to talk about.
Yes—50 SHADES being the Gen Z/Millennial SATC is good comparison. I’m very much a Boomer and I remember things like Nancy Friday’s MY SECRET GARDEN, Anais Nin’s THE DELTA OF VENUS, and Anne Rice’s earliest “Sleeping Beauty” erotica (which she originally published under a pseudonym) being eye-openers for my generation. Of course, we didn’t have the internet to spread the knowledge far and wide—just shoving a book into a friend’s hands and saying, “Girl, you gotta read this!” Such an innocent time. Incidentally, my two youngest daughters (22 year-old twins) love SATC and have binge-watched it during quarantine—they view the show as a time capsule, I suppose.
And don’t forget Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, which was another eye-opening book about women and sex. I was definitely a lot less innocent after I read it than I’d been before.
Yes indeed. In was in my mid-teens and it seems the timeline was MY SECRET GARDEN (1972), FEAR OF FLYING (1973), and SWEET SAVAGE LOVE (1974). The floodgates were open…and we would never be the same again!
For me, it would be:
Ann Head’s Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones
Judy Blume’s Forever
Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love
Judith Krantz’ Scruples
Judy Blume’s Forever was passed around secretly by the girls in the upper grades at my school as well as Flowers In The Attic back when I was in about 6th grade I think. I was considered “too young” to read them back then. I think I finally read Forever many years later just to see what the fuss was but I never had any interest in V.C. Andrews.
I don’t think that was as widely read but cultural critics were–and are–obsessed with it. I didn’t read it until just a few years ago.
It’s not just Amazon – or rather the book side of Amazon – I was listening to an m/m romance recently and was surprised to see it listed as “erotica” at Audible, which it most definitely wasn’t. Audible’s categorisations are all over the place and it’s not even consistent. Similar books by the same author – even books in the SAME SERIES can end up in different categories.
Right. Technically we’re allowed to classify our own work on KDP, which can lead to wonky categorization. More specifically, it’s not uncommon for an author to label something as a “Western” because there is less competition in the category, even if “Contemporary Romance” would make more sense. It’s often a case of, “Well, the guy wears cowboy boots in one scene and it takes place in Montana, so I’ll call it a Western to shrink the competition pool.”
But then KDP/Amazon’s algorithms come in and can make further screwy changes, such as romances being classified as erotica.
I always learn so much about the Indy publisher aspect of the market when I read your posts. It explains a lot.
You’re welcome.
As an added note, I forgot to mention that authors on KDP are allowed to choose two categories per publication (choosing at least one is mandatory for classification purposes), which can also lead to confusion. Many of those categories can be further broken down into subdivisions such as erotica > humorous or romance > Regency. Plus, Amazon sometimes automatically adds designations based on length algorithms that authors can’t access independently such as “Two-Hour Read” or “45-Minute Science Fiction.” Hope this helps clarify some things!
There are so many horrified reviews on Goodreads but it’s still maintaining a 4.1 as of a few seconds ago. It’s not a big deal to me because I read mainline erotica and have Life Experience but people coming to this book from anywhere else in her oeuvre are going to be shocked.
I can think of several Dare authors who’d do a better job with this material. Feehan used to write such good historicals but I think at this point – with her being so many books into the Carpathian universe – she’s running out of ways to excite her reader base.
Yes to all of this. I do think romance writers should be clear if their work goes way beyond typical romance conventions as a courtesy to readers. Granted, the traditionally published generally have no say over blurbs, but at least the publisher should give a heads-up. They ought to know there probably isn’t much crossover between your average Barbara Cartland/Regency fan and kinky kitty play readers. Not saying you can’t like both, but be prepared to alienate a lot of readers if you aren’t upfront about it.
I’m honestly amazed that her editors let her get away with animal tail buttplugs in a main line romance novel. On one way, how liberating. In another, there are going to be so many people who, even if they were trained on 50 Shade of Grey or whatever, will not be into this unless they kink to a certain kind of D/s.
I agree with everything you just wrote, Lisa. (And your review was fun!)
I’m also starting to wonder if Feehan actually wants to be an erotica writer but her publishing house has her slapped into the “romance” category. It’s definitely not unheard of for authors’ genres to be limited by what publishers think their branding should look like.
“Desolation Road” definitely sounds like an erotica on the basis of a character making a sexual journey/sexual discoveries about herself as a main focus. If it has an HEA or HFN, which I assume it does given its romance classification, it could possibly be an erotic romance- but I’m not seeing much of the romance aspect based on your review.
Thank you!
Usually Feehan’s better at the romantic components in her stories, usually.
It is HEA, since they are stuck in Soulmateton, and thus must be with one another or TRAGIC ANGST.
And to think I let my library loan of this book run out after reading a few pages because it seemed generic and boring, lol. Can’t say I’m sorry about that after reading this review.
I’m constantly amazed at all the very specific “play” there is in books (and apparently in the world now). I’m reading one now where “praise” is a thing. It’s pretty benign and I’d be more in favor of it except the hero keeps telling the heroine “good girl” in the bedroom. There’s no Daddy talk or anything like that (thank heavens as that’s a deal breaker for me), but I just wish he’d say “You’re an amazing woman” or ‘you’re so great” or something else besides “good girl” over and over.
Thank you Lisa for reading this, your review and suffering through it so we don’t have to!
Thanks to this book I’m really going to have to hesitate before referring to myself as a “cat person” again. Yikes.
“I’m constantly amazed at all the very specific “play” there is in books (and apparently in the world now).”
Are you referring to romance books or erotica? Because if you’ve been reading erotica, I have some insight into this. Vanilla erotica as in man meets woman, they have a coffee, flirt, and end up at one of the lead’s apartment to do the deed sells very poorly overall if the comments over at Reddit are any indication (plus my own limited research). Erotica authors who want to take their stories beyond a mere hobby have to target niches or kinks in order to sell significant numbers. Some of this might be spilling over into romance reading as well.
I remember an interesting conversation between Joe Rogan and Bill Maher about how they couldn’t get over how extreme pornography has gotten. They fondly remembered the days when it was naughty enough to just watch two people having sex instead of having to up the ante with kink, spitting, slapping, choking, and pseudo-incest among other acts pornography consumers generally didn’t expect in the 1970s-1980s. (Sure, the outlying stuff always existed, but Maher made a good point that the internet allows people with very specific fetishes to find each other and form a community- perhaps too easily, he mused.)
“I’m reading one now where ‘praise’ is a thing. It’s pretty benign and I’d be more in favor of it except the hero keeps telling the heroine “good girl” in the bedroom…I just wish he’d say “You’re an amazing woman” or ‘you’re so great” or something else besides “good girl” over and over.” That’s good to know. I think erotica authors can get in a rut sometimes too just based on what’s selling. It’s kind of like Duke stories in romance begat more Duke stories, and romance writers keep writing them because that’s what’s selling instead of trying something new. I might have to throw some more “You’re so great” and “You’re amazing” lines in my work. :)
And just for the record, “Daddy” talk is a nope for me too.
You know I didn’t even know what I was reading was technically classified as so I checked. It’s Sci fi alien romance. Yup I’ve gone down the rabbit hole during this pandemic. But technically it’s not erotica and it’s got a pretty involved story and some world building as well.
I have no problems with praise kink or whatever it’s called. I’m all for more praise in general, in life, and the hero saying nice things to the heroine is always very welcome in any romance I read- and vice versa. It’s just the parental sounding nature of the “good girl” praise over and over raised my hackles a bit.
It might just be me, but I don’t think so as the author had to post on her Facebook page there was absolutely no “Daddy” stuff involved to concerned potential readers. I don’t like to pooh pooh other people’s likes but anything vaguely parental is a hard no for me.
I do think romance has become far more explicit over the years. This is not a complaint, just an observation and I think the lines between what is “too hot’ for romance have been almost completely erased.
Hah! Like I said – the petplay element kind of runs the reader over like a Mack Truck in the first fourth of the book. It’s not hinted at on the back cover (just “secrets,” which envelops everything from her plan to SPOILERS – kill the guy who abused her and her childhood trauma and his psychic bond with the others as well as his OWN childhood trauma – but the kitten kink takes up a LOT of page space here)
Oh yeah, praise kink is definitely a thing!
Hah! Just tell them you’re a Nastassja Kinski fan!
Well I have found my line in the sand. I’ve read Joanna Wylde MC books that cover child abuse, revenge murder plots etc but that kitty stuff is just a hard nope.
Yep. Not my kink at all either!