A review by xiaxia
Concubine by Jill Knowles
2.0
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the biggest pretentious bitch of them all? Apparently I am. This book has opened my eyes to a new facet of my being.
I started this book because all my favorite goodreads reviewers had rated it with a 5*. Yeah…. Five stars… sighs. I almost dropped the book at page 3, 20, 50 and 99 and took me two full days to read the rest 50 pages.
What was this book about: two nations are at war. One wins, one loses the war. A young prince from the loser side, who is also a warrior, a captain of a fighting company is sacrificed as a blood offering to a warlord on the winner’s side to be his concubine a.k.a sex slave. Hot, am I right?
It was hot, it had plenty smexy smutty scenes (enough to keep me interested anyway), sprinkled with a touch of BDSM here and there. I liked Kael, the prince, and I liked Tarren the warlord. It was a nice change to see a Master trying to win his slave’s submission with kindness.
I liked the lore that introduced the demon worlds and half demon people.
But alas…. the writing... Man, the writing.
The first three pages had so much infodump that I got bored to death. I got so many clichés, especially during Kael’s stream of consciousness that I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes. The plot was so ridiculous at times and so superficial that I wondered if the book had been written over the span of a weekend.
And the cherry on top: the orgy.
There was an orgy - I love orgies - but in this one the mother of the King participated, and the apples of her eyes, her two boys (the king and our own warlord) participated as well. Each played with their own slaves, thank God, and they didn’t mix together, but it felt so weird to read about the mother, naked, being pleasured by a female slave in the close vicinity of the sons. Yeah, I get it, free spirits and all that jazz, but...
I really, really wanted to give this book five stars. But I can’t give more than 1.5.
I started this book because all my favorite goodreads reviewers had rated it with a 5*. Yeah…. Five stars… sighs. I almost dropped the book at page 3, 20, 50 and 99 and took me two full days to read the rest 50 pages.
What was this book about: two nations are at war. One wins, one loses the war. A young prince from the loser side, who is also a warrior, a captain of a fighting company is sacrificed as a blood offering to a warlord on the winner’s side to be his concubine a.k.a sex slave. Hot, am I right?
It was hot, it had plenty smexy smutty scenes (enough to keep me interested anyway), sprinkled with a touch of BDSM here and there. I liked Kael, the prince, and I liked Tarren the warlord. It was a nice change to see a Master trying to win his slave’s submission with kindness.
I liked the lore that introduced the demon worlds and half demon people.
But alas…. the writing... Man, the writing.
The first three pages had so much infodump that I got bored to death. I got so many clichés, especially during Kael’s stream of consciousness that I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes. The plot was so ridiculous at times and so superficial that I wondered if the book had been written over the span of a weekend.
And the cherry on top: the orgy.
There was an orgy - I love orgies - but in this one the mother of the King participated, and the apples of her eyes, her two boys (the king and our own warlord) participated as well. Each played with their own slaves, thank God, and they didn’t mix together, but it felt so weird to read about the mother, naked, being pleasured by a female slave in the close vicinity of the sons. Yeah, I get it, free spirits and all that jazz, but...
I really, really wanted to give this book five stars. But I can’t give more than 1.5.