Title: Man On (Black Jack Gentlemen #1)
Author: Liz Crowe
Publisher: Tri Destiny Publishing
Length: 131 pages
Genre: m/m Contemporary Erotica
Heat: 3 – Sexy & Mild
Sex Frequency: 4 – Very Often
Keywords/Tags: As the tags are very spoilerish, I don’t want to put them here but if you really want to see them, check them out at the bottom of this post but beware! They contain spoilers!
Rating: Not Feelin’ It
Reviewed by Nikyta
*****This review contains major spoilers to the contents of this book*****
BLURB
Bad boy of European football, Nicolas Garza is about to hit American shores with a vengeance. Signed by the Detroit Black Jack Gentlemen as lynch pin for their expansion club, Nicco only half believes he’s making the right move. But with a past full of ghosts and rotten behavior chasing him from his homeland, he has no real choice.
Parker Rollings is a college soccer superstar, but his parents’ plans for their only son do not include professional athletics. When the Black Jacks approach him to finalize their roster, Parker leaps at the chance to keep playing, leaving behind medical school, stability and his first and only college sweetheart.
Nicco and Parker face off as bitter rivals for a coveted starting spot at midfield and are forced to channel their negative energy into something positive for the sake of the group—and themselves.
All eyes are on the fledgling team in its debut season. It’s crucial that the Black Jacks prove all the doubters wrong. They must make a good showing in the league and with new fans. But player drama, club dynamics, and misplaced priorities may tear it apart before it even begins.
REVIEW
The first thing I want to say is if you’re coming into this book thinking it would be a real sports story, you won’t get what you expect in this one because it follows Nicco through his journey to finding love in Parker but doesn’t contain many scenes regarding the actual sport.
I liked Parker because he was so innocent, naive and vulnerable. He comes from money but he’s not an obnoxious spoiled brat. He’s very sweet, dedicated to soccer and just wants a simple life where he can be himself. I adored the fact that he blushed so much at the littlest provocative comment. I found it so cute. Nicco is a different story. I won’t lie, I didn’t like him at all. He’s arrogant, stubborn and doesn’t give a crap about anyone else but himself. He does what he wants to and won’t care if someone objects to it. His reaction to Parker is instantaneous and intense. The lust he feels for Parker consumes him to the point he can’t stop thinking about Parker. However, Nicco is a sex addict and he’ll take that lust out on anyone.
The biggest issue I had with this story is that the blurb is very misleading. Coming into this book, I was expecting some intense sexual tension of enemies with a lot of sports related scenes, showing the rivalry between Nicco and Parker, the aggression and face offs for the same spot and ultimately the soccer season that they play together in. Unfortunately, that is not what this book is about and you don’t actually see any of those scenes but are told about them in just a few short paragraphs throughout the story.
To be honest, I didn’t like a majority of it because it is so focused on showing Nicco’s sex addiction (which is not mentioned in the blurb and considering it is SUCH a huge part of the book, I have to wonder why). I struggled to get through at least the first half of the story because Nicco would do anything that had two legs, even indulging in threesomes and orgies with women and men. I will say that while Nicco does have a lot of sex, thankfully most of it (especially with the women) were either glossed over or fade to black. Even with that, however, the constant talking about his conquests and how many he did last night, the orgies he partook in, the soft flesh of so and so grew extremely aggravating and annoying. I kept asking myself, “Why is this in here? Shouldn’t we be focusing on more of Parker and Nicco?”
A lot of the book revolves around that aspect of Nicco and I can’t say that it endeared me to him. It made my opinion that he was selfish and couldn’t understand the concept of monogamy nor be able to uphold it even more intense. It also made me think that even if he did get into a relationship with Parker, that he wouldn’t be able to keep it in his pants long enough to not break Parker’s heart. Regardless, the physical showing of Nicco’s clubbing and conquests took away from the actual Parker/Nicco story, IMO. By the end of the story, we are told and somewhat see the love and supposed devotion (as I said, it’s hard for me to believe Nicco won’t cheat eventually) but we didn’t see the lead up to this love and devotion. Out of the whole story, Parker and Nicco only spend maybe a third of it actually together that we see. The rest is either told to us (such as the time they spend on the field, their teamwork together and this long vacation they took) or of Nicco and Parker getting some action from other individuals.
Personally, that is not something I’m fond of. I like to SEE the development between characters but this book didn’t have any of that until the very end and I found that disappointing. I wanted to like this book but it started off really bad for me because I don’t appreciate seeing to this extent how much of a whore a character is. I want to see the connection between the main characters not between ONE main character and other people. We aren’t shown the connection between Nicco and Parker until very far into the book and at that point, many months have already past between them, none of them where we see them together and this happens more than once where weeks or months pass without us seeing any of what I believe were crucial moments to these characters relationship. More than anything, I really wished we had seen them play together on the field, during practice, at a game, anything to show that not all these boys have is lust because the emotions of love they share, I didn’t see and couldn’t FEEL.
In the end, I will freely admit this isn’t the type of story I like. I prefer to have stories that focus on the emotions that characters share and seeing them NOT on the physical releases of the flesh. Readers that enjoy books that have layers of sex and decadence will enjoy this but if you’re looking for a story about sports and love, this won’t exactly fit the bill. I will say that while I didn’t enjoy the story as a whole, there were pieces that I adored but those happened at the very end and by then, not enough was focused on that to lift my overall opinion. Still, I encourage readers to make up your own mind about this one because I know others will enjoy it much more than I did.
One last thing I want to say is that this book seems to be somewhat of a spin-off of another m/f series by this author. I say this because a few times it was hinted that we should already know a side character’s background and having looked up the author after reading this book, I can say that some of the secondary characters have books of their own in other works by this author.
Title: The Beginning of Knowledge
Author: Anne Brooke
Publisher: Wilde City
Length: 12k words
Genre: m/m Contemporary Erotica
Heat: 4 – Spicy & Smutty
Sex Frequency: 4 – Very Often
Keywords/Tags: Short Story, Charlie Harding Presents, Wilde City Press Erotica Week, Dark, Kink (Pain, Humiliation), Public Sex, Self Discovery
Rating: Really Liked It
BLURB
When University administrator Alan Castleton meets temporary worker and talented pianist Luke Milton, he doesn’t expect to become obsessed with the handsome young blond. But soon he is heavily involved in a passionate and angry affair, and exploring the dark shadows of his own personality in a way he’s never encountered before.
The more Alan tries to break free from his obsession, the deeper it entangles him. The dangerous split between his reason and his sexual desires threatens his peace of mind and, when the crisis point comes, he must decide once and for all the kind of life he should lead.
REVIEW
Now this is the type of erotica that I like to read! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a romp or what have you but Anne has written a darkly erotic story that is much more a story about self-discovery than a rough frame for porn without any reason. And Anne is so good at writing these types of stories. Here we have a man (Alan) who is at a point in his life of stagnancy. His relationships always fail and he’s grown to believe it’s solely because of him and his reaction is to abstain from any kind of relationship for a while and go about his life concentrating on his job. What he doesn’t expect is Luke, the new temp in his office that pushes all his buttons — the ones he learns that he’s not sure he ever wanted pushed. Luke makes him feel powerful, but only at the end of his degradation and abuse against him, and that feeling of power over Luke is at the same time addictive and dangerous.
What we have with this story is almost a character study of a man who feels powerless finding power over someone else. He learns throughout the story just how dangerous he is, but that is both because he is in denial of who he really is and that he hasn’t really dealt with his feelings and his past. I think that more than anything this is a smart story, because Anne forces you to confront your own feelings about Alan and Luke. Many will finish this story seeing the sex and pain as the focus, of one man being dragged into a world of Dominance that he doesn’t understand and finding that he revels in it. That it, and the story, is dark and sinfully sexy. I came away with something different from this story, and perhaps that’s what defines this story more than anything, your own perception of it. I found it as a story of a man, Alan, who doesn’t understand himself. He ends up in a darkly addictive spiral out of control because he never faced his issues head on. He always tries to run from them, and so they hold on to him all the stronger.
But it is worth finding out on your own. The writing here is superb. I felt as if I knew Alan intimately only a few pages into his first person narrative because for all that he’s blind to what is going on he’s starkly transparent. So I commend Anne for writing a story that is indeed knowledgable, that is informative but at the same time seductively sexy. I think you should read this one just to see what you take from it.
Title: The Erotic Adventures of the Masked Raider – Part One
Author: Ewan Creed
Publisher: Wilde City
Length: 31k words
Genre: m/m Comedy, Paranormal Erotica
Heat: 5 – Off the Charts!
Sex Frequency: 5 – Over and Over
Keywords/Tags: Charlie Harding Presents, Wilde City Press Erotica Week, Superheroes, Humor, Villains, m/m/m scenes, m/m/m+, a bit of BDSM, Kink, Voyeurism, Public Sex, Dirty/Raunch, Multiple Partners
Rating: Pretty Good
BLURB
The Masked Raider is strong, earnest, virile, and determined to combat corruption and wrong-doing in the peaceful community of Harpersville. The lycra-clad crusader has been fighting crime and foiling diabolical plans for years. However, the underworld forces in the area, led by nefarious mastermind Tumescent Edison, have had enough of his do-gooding.
Determined to undermine the strapping superhero, the villain’s plot to obtain a sample of the Masked Raider’s semen to clone the super stud, program the replicants for evil, and have the superhero do battle with himself. Edison and his henchmen, Lumberjacker and Snake Charmer, will use every ploy and fetish at their disposal to get the super juice.
Will they succeed in seducing a load out of the unsuspecting crime fighter? Has the Masked Raider finally met his match? Read the first erection-packed installment of the kinky new series The Erotic Adventures of the Masked Raider and find out.
REVIEW
I have been really excited to read this novella ever since I saw it last month at Wilde City Press. I mean, erotica, not just a short story but an actual novella. That’s great itself, because it means we’re going to get at least an ongoing plot. Then… superheroes! Superhero sex!
Ewan Creed visited The Armchair Reader on Monday and had a really interesting comment about this book. He said, “that whole genre is oftentimes so homoerotic – the sexually charged cockfighting that always seems to be going on with superheroes and their enemies and the closeness superheroes often have with their sidekicks and the secret identities and bondage and domination and all the other kinky stuff is all but inherent in the genre.. That’s what made me want to read the book. The cover drew me to first look at it, because it really delivered this message. Plus, knowing it was erotica helped. I knew that it was going to be somewhat absurd, having a bit of fun and poking the whole comic idea a bit. That sounded really appealing.
And I ended up really enjoying it. The sex in the story is really heavy. There’s hardly a scene where they aren’t having sex of some kind, though the sexless scenes are mostly early in the book. I admit that so much sex for so long was at times taxing, but I actually felt like Ewan delivered the message he talked about while making the book really funny and really sexy. So I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The story is based on the idea that the perfect superhero is totally constricted. He must be perfect and meet everyone’s expectations. In a way, the public owns him. So having his own identity is hard for him. The superhero in this story is The Masked Raider, or “Raider”. He gets his power through sex and in living that constricted life the only way he’s found to expand his power (or “recharge his batteries” heh) is through denying himself orgasm. And because of that, he’s developed an inhuman power of restraint. The public putting Raider on a pedestal for so long has him believing it himself. He is better than everyone else.
That makes the villains in this story more human and more likable. We get to know them quite well and their diabolical plans, while they might have a more selfish endgame, are all about knocking Raider off that pedestal and showing him that sex is good and that he wants it just as much as everyone else. And if they can get his sperm and make him a bottom who begs for it, then it’s all the better. And to do this, Tumescent Edison has the greatest idea! He’ll have his other villain friend, Snake Charmer, who is the sexiest and most charming villain ever, to seduce Raider’s boyfriend to find out all about how to get to Raider.
I’m really looking forward to the sequel to this story. I liked that the story was kindof fun but still was really hot. And I’m actually really interested in seeing where the plot will go. I definitely recommend this one. If you’ve read and liked other longer erotica books, like The Perils of Praline by Marshall Thornton, for example, then you might like this. The subject is entirely different, but the over the top sexual humor and longer erotica format makes them similar in ways, and the best way for me to describe to you if you might like this book. I definitely did 🙂