Running Wild ranks as the weirdest erotic romance I have ever read. I can only describe it as Swan Lake meets The Dread Pirate Roberts meets Romeo and Juliet meets Aladdin meets an I’ve-eaten-a-funky-mushroom dream sequence. It also reads a little bit like a high school health class, with ovulation and impregnation scattered all over the place. This is one book you’ve got to read slowly, because if you’re like me and start skimming once things get boring, you’re going to get really confused and have to start reading all over again to understand just what is going on.

Tahir of the House Kulwanti of the Land of the Sun has an unfortunate existence: The prince of a matriarchal society, he is only useful in his role as the Impregnator, going around and making alliances with other Houses by acting as a stud. He longs for a chance to rule his kingdom, but alas, this is left to his ditzy sister Queen Kalila, who has run away for the umpteenth time. He receives a dooming prophecy: if he can’t find his sister, the evil shitani will take over the lands. And the only way he’ll be able to get Kalila is with the help of a woman with the skin of darkest honey. He begins his quest by selling himself to the evil magician, Badr the Bad, in return for help to find his sister.

Princess Shahrazad, daughter of the Sultan of the Land of the Moon, and a woman with the skin of darkest honey, is about to marry the Raj ir Adham. Halfway through the marriage ceremony, Shahrazad starts hearing a masculine voice whispering to her and feels him touching her. This is definitely not good, because the dictates of her male-dominated society say that if a man besides her husband touches her, she’ll be executed. Suddenly, Badr the Bad swoops in on a Pegasus and offers Shahrazad a ride. Too tempted, she jumps onto the Pegasus and is suddenly turned into the horse itself, whereupon Prince Tahir rescues her by jumping on her back and riding her off into the distance. Luckily, the curse soon allows Shahrazad to turn back into a human at night, and the pair realize that they have a common goal: to get rid of Badr the Bad and the shitani once and for all. This is rendered a little more difficult by the fact that they can barely communicate, given that she’s not allowed to talk to men, and he’s used to a world where women dominate.

Confused yet? There’s more.

Meanwhile, the shitani, those slimy, green-skinned, orange-eyed demons, are lurking in the background, thirsty for some new blood. What are they most attracted to? The scent of ovulating women. Badr the Bad is tired of controlling the shitani, and has an agenda of his own; he is actually Badra, a woman, chosen 500 years ago to replace the 5th Badr the Bad, à la The Dread Pirate Roberts. Badra has wasted enough of her life controlling these monsters, and won’t stop till she finds a replacement.

Interestingly enough, this is an erotic romance that would be better classified as a sci-fi/fantasy. The world is a fantastic one, with mysterious sorcerers controlling vast lands. This is definitely not our world, and they have the rituals and societal beliefs to prove it. There are multiple subplots going on at once, with little eroticism or romantic development. When there is eroticism, it comes in the form of Badr the Bad changing forms and having almost-sex with everyone, or the shitani pointing their little green cocks at ovulating women. Luckily for them, it seems all the women are simultaneously ovulating at the same time. Not the most sexy thing to read. Please note: the sensuality rating is for the cold terminology only, not for how steamy the scenes are. Tahir’s submissive lifestyle coupled with Shahrazad’s utter lack of male experience should have made for an interesting, if not angst-ridden read. Instead, their first time together happens not only at the very end, but is more generic than the scene about Tahir’s unwelcome and distasteful job as Impregnator. You’d think all the increasing tension would have a greater emotional impact on the couple, but nope.

Weird plot points aside, this is a tiring book. There are plenty of awkward declarations, a lot of telling and not showing, and some severe holes in character and relationship development. One of my favorite lines is when Tahir and Shahrazad are discussing how dangerous the shitani really are. Tahir isn’t sure that they constitute a real threat, commenting that “the demons are only the size of large cats.” She insists, “but we’ve seen them in action. They’re very fierce cats!” Yes, such riveting dialogue does exist, and no, this was totally not a humorous scene.

The shitani speak as a collective group and reminded me of the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp, slinking around and saying things like “She is waiting for our seed — our royal seed!” As you can imagine, this wasn’t a very helpful image and resulted in some more unintentional snickering. There’s also a bit of a problem when the main characters are less interesting than the villain (who comes off as a woman going through a belated midlife crisis), and the villain ends up bossing everyone around and stealing the show. Everything is a little too deus ex machina for my taste, and the ending is cringe-worthy.

Kudos to the author for such a complicated fantasy world. As a previous reviewer writes, it seems that Ms. Betts has the entire world mapped out perfectly in her mind, but it does not translate well onto paper. Perhaps a higher page count would also lend the story more coherence. All I can say is that I ended up making dozens of movie references while reading this book, and that is definitely not a good sign.