A deep space catastrophe strands Sub-captain Micah Starion in a strange land where he is stripped of all rank and used as a plaything by his brutal captors. Micah, now known only by a number, is gradually transformed. Gay male erotica
If there's such a thing as classic m/m slaveporn, this is it. 12 years (!) after publication it is finally available on kindle.
So how could I be anything but disappointed? I've read this plot a hundred times, but harder, wider, thicker, sharper, nastier, and with added piss play.
Also; half a story. Ends with the equivalent of, "You think that was bad, wait till the next book."
Sad panda.
Bright point: the only story I've ever read set in space, and featuring an enslaved Terran marine, which also manages to shoehorn in cross-dressing kink and a lengthy session of being trained to walk in high heels. O_O
This is exactly my type of story. It is MM Slavefic and it goes to a place of pretty heavy pain and some pretty deep humiliation but it's not quite as out there as I expected. I loved how the story evolved but there were times when I still didn't understand why Chento/Micah made the decisions he did. I mean I knew he would make that decision - but I really still didn't understand why he did it. That was the only downside - and there was space to have this it just, sorta, didn't.
Still - it kept me in its grip and I read it straight through. By the end I felt a little like I'd come through a tunnel in a mountain that was all dark and scary inside and then, expecting at least a meadow or a valley I got another tunnel because apparently there is more to come. I really liked Attlad who behaved as I would expect him to behave given who he is. Of course the pain parts and forced parts were hot for me - but I found myself out of the aroused business and into the story way more - not perfect but absolutely perfect for the time and place in which I read it. I love MM Slavefic particularly in SciFi settings so this one is tops for me!
Sci-fi meets slavery in this great story. Micah is captured by the Kudites, an advanced civilization choosing to live as a series of clans, and made into a pleasure slave for one of the clan chiefs. Micah's loss of identity and becoming Chento which means 500 totally objectifies the man as he goes through the ritualistic hazing. The sexual abuse and humiliation that Chento must go through to become Attlad's personal body slave is monstrous and pretty hot. The writing is a little rough in places but the story moves along well. I like Chento and his devotion to his new people. Definitely a hardcore book worth reading.
Some physically and emotionally taxing training of a sex slave. More emphasis on humiliation than pain, but there is certainly enough of that. Micah endures a lot as he goes from a respected warrior to a grunt to be broken and trained for service. This is the first part of a series and it's sort of a tune-in-next-week ending O_o
You know, for erotica, it's surprisingly unerotic.
It must be the mindset. That's what it is, I think. It doesn't capture the mindset well. Or at all, even, maybe.
This could have been great. This could have been the great mindfuck of the century, much like What Worse Place Can I Beg in Your Love?. Instead, it's just...placid.
The crossdressing thing...and then the mentioning of the macho pride thing again...that was stupid.
The BDSM label still doesn't make sense to me because of the extreme pervading sense of unreliable narrator through the entire thing. I dunno. Maybe the MC's not unbalanced, after all, but it amuses him to maintain the fiction and fuck with the heads of the readers. Or maybe the author just couldn't quite grasp how to give it that chilling edge that What Worse Place Can I Beg in Your Love? has.
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.
Rating: 5/10
PROS: - Really well-formed sci-fi setting. The world of the story is rounded and complete; very little of it feels familiar or Earth-like at all. - Good examination of the psychological transformation a sexual submissive goes through when discovering his/her natural tendencies. - Interesting method of communication. The main character, Micah-slash-Chento, doesn't speak the language of his Master's race, so he communicates with the Kudites through a series of gestures that seem similar to sign language and/or the act of drawing symbols on someone else's skin.
CONS: - A number of scenes that I found horrifying, terrible, gruesome, awful. Etcetera. (I could go on, but you probably get the point.) I lost count of the number of times the principle character gets raped--and most of those instances are gang rape. In fact, I perceived the majority of the sex in this book to be rape. I don't find that hot AT ALL. - I found the Kudites' tactics for "breaking" Micah and turning him into the ideal sex slave for their leader to be barbaric. Attlad, Micah's Master, calls Micah his "love slave" at least a couple of times, but the story was way too severe for me to believe for one minute that it was about "love." Micah cherishes his submissive role, sure, and his Master as an extension of that, but I can't make myself think of their connection as love.
Overall comments: This is BDSM at its most brutal: the slave has almost no freedom and is punished for things that aren't his fault and/or he has no way of knowing are wrong. I understand that it's a seminal work of erotic fiction, but the feeling I have upon finishing this is similar to that I had when I finished the first volume of Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series: it's a sexy book in that it has a lot of sex in it, but I didn't find it at all romantic...or enjoyable. I certainly believe that the book has merit, but if this had been the first m/m book I ever read, I doubt that I would ever have read another. At the very least, I think many non-practitioners of BDSM and/or beginners to the genre are likely to find this volume too severe to start with.
This book is pretty good. I love the straight up D/s nature of it. I wish there was more affection from the D, though. And the sex and submission are on the very edge of what I can read, really pushing the boundaries.
I had a few problems with this and its not what you think. I had problems with the inconsistencies with technologies. Where was search and rescue? It just didn't work for me when he made his choice I, like Royal just don't understand.
It’s a good read if you are in the mood for a hardcore BDSM fairytale with a twist of sci-fi. There is an interesting/funny bit at the end reminding us that all kink is relative.
Very interesting story considering that it was published long ago. Many writers copied this idea with more or less success. But this one has the pure taste of the old guard. I loved it!
This is considered a classic - or is it clever product placement? - so I had very high expectations about it. I think it's too close to erotica for my tastes. I like to see characters connect, even, or maybe more so, in a slave/master relationship, but I didn't get it. I felt more connection between Micah and Simon, one of his master's servant, than between Micah and Attlad.
I also think that there wasn't enough depth in the main characters. There was a very fascinating theme: the problem of the incommunicability due to the different languages was solved with a sort of sign language, therefore the sacrifice one of the slaves Micah meets makes for his master becomes very poetical and it moved me. As I said before, I saw the bond between master and slave represented better around the main couple.
The end was a bit rushed and the choice of alliance Micah makes at the end is not given enough space, I think it was a very defining moment in his life, it was the moment Micah could really own his submission, but it fell flat.
Or probably I am reading it all wrong, because Attlad is supposed to own and claim Micah as a property and nothing more can come out of it, except for the way he uses him and I am a hopelessly romantic reader who wants to see something more.
I try not to remember the blurbs or have a certain expectation of a book because generally, it will throw me off. Because I will keep anticipating something to happen. For some unknown reason, I kept thinking this book was going to be heavy in the body modification. It was not. There is piercing and branding. There is quite a bit of corporal punishment.
What does it say about me that I forgot about the several instances of rape and the gang banging? There was also a little of sissification. The humiliation in this story is high which is how I like to read about it.
Ms. Stone creates a confusing world. There is a lot of frustration in this book from Pb500's point of view. The alien culture is not explained well. We are learning just as Pb is learning. I have several guesses as to how this culture works. I'm hoping the second book will provide more world building and understanding into the alien culture. I've been told it's just one long torture fest. Since it is m/m, I'm all for it. This book is recommended for sci-fi erotic lovers who are into humiliation and degradation.
3.5 stars. Enjoyable M/m sci-fi slave-fic story that is heavy on humiliation and has the dreaded "but wait there's more ending." Still, I really enjoyed the world-building.
I bought this book more than 5 years ago, back when I was still looking for smut-based m/m titles. I kept it this whole time despite knowing it's not something I really like to read anymore, but honestly I could have gotten rid of it without reading it and not been bothered. It's a very thin book so it doesn't take long to read, but it doesn't feel like a real story. You get almost no backstory to any of the characters, particularly the protagonist. You're just thrown into the story and immediately into Micah's captivity. While parts of it are brutal, the whole story feels more like a chapter-by-chapter outline of what's going to happen, and then the author forgot to write the actual prose afterwords. It lacks so much in detail, in setting, description, character, and frankly even plot. It made Micah as a character painful and boring to follow around, and I didn't understand his motivations at all for returning to an environment he seemed to hate, because we don't really get any insight into what goes on in his mind. Even the smut scenes were kind of skimmed over and felt awkward and rushed because of it.
This was a good read, but not the best. I understand that this was published a long time ago so for the year it would be scandalous. However now it feels rushed, a bit boring and predictable. Even by the end I never even understood what the aliens looked like. The sex is rushed at best, and the punishments repetitive. For the time I can see how this would be amazing but nowadays.... it's a decent enough read to pass the time.
This book wasn't at all what I was expecting. I'm not even sure what I expected anymore. Something more sf-ish. What I got instead was more fantasy-ish.
Humans have an outpost on an alien world. They largely leave the native population be, as they only need the outpost for a refueling station. Micah is in some sort of accident, leaving him on the edge of death. The native population finds him and heals him.
Humans left to the mercy of the natives (the Kudites) are treated like slaves. Most are treated like house slaves doing menial labor, but Micah responds to their aggressive sexual taunts with arousal and they promote him to sex slave, a rarity among the humans. After he recovers his health and is trained in a sign language so that he can communicate with the aliens, he is sold to the highest bidder.
His new master Attlad is a regional commander of sorts. The company he's with are mostly soldiers, and all men. They maintain a more rustic style of living, riding horse-like creatures and living in rough hewn structures.
The aliens are humanoid, more like a different race of humans than an alien species. They are fascinated by his light skin and long blond hair.
At first Micah does everything he can to escape, but at the moment he finds himself on the verge of freedom he turns back. Realizing he found the sexual partner he always wanted. He's a natural submissive and masochist.
It is then he's asked to prove himself to return to the human base at his master's side, to help spy on the Terrans.
The second (and final?) book appears to be the second chapter in a continuing series.
I'd peg this as erotica with a strong fantasy bent to it. Not as kinky as I was expecting. Heavy D/s themes, ritualized sex slave behavior, mild bondage, corporal punishment, piercings. And as it's m/m, anal sex.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Ahh, where to begin. I loved this book. I loved it when it came out. I still love it today. PB500 and the sequel “The Citadel” have been called Cult Classics! Well, I don’t know about the cult part, but it’s very definitely a classic! If you like Sci-fi, BDSM and muscular long haired blond men who are forced through a variety of ordeals designed to bring about capitulation and submission, that’s what you’ll find in this book.
Now, it’s nowhere near as dark as the books I typically like. I’ve noticed some people commenting on how brutal the story line is – how Micah is captured and abused by aliens until he becomes a pet, plaything and sex slave for his alien master. How they imagine that might come about without some degree of brutality is beyond me. I think it may be likely that those reviewers may have forgotten the SM part of BDSM, but I don’t want to digress into a rant about that here, after all there’s room for that in future posts...
I really love the premise and setting of this story. The world building was very fascinating and I was very intrigued. However though I did understand Chento/Micah's descion's at the basic level it felt forced, convenient for the story. He would think one minute, escape, and I would be all on board, riled up and ready for the tumultuous adventure that would inevitably, but satisfactorily, lead to his capture. However when he has in fact escaped and he simply turns and heads back I couldn't help but feel disconcerted, perhaps even jipped. We all knew he would go back to Attlad but man, at least convince me of his reasoning.
I actually want to rate this a two star book, but I have a standard, and completing a book makes it an automatic three star. But I really didn't like this at all. The main character, Micah, isn't likable at all, the master isn't either, in fact, none of the characters are likable. There isn't anything sexy or arousing about Micah being raped, being a whore, or being submissive. His mentality is so strange, I actually believe he is crazy. He was crazy to begin with. It seems like it was extremely easy to change him from being this great nebula warrior to a love slave. It really only took one moment and snap he is malleable for sexing.
It was easy to read, despite everything I don't care to even mention. Simply put, after reading this, I wish I hadn't.
I guess I was wondering why someone would enjoy being tortured and beaten and made a slave, but I guess there is no real explanation for something like that. This book does not have enough logic or common sense to explain it anyway.
A man who is captured and made a slave, gets a chance to ESCAPE, but decides to go back knowing he will be punished EVEN MORE!
It's hard to be concerned about him, because he is getting what he wants?
A real question: what if the sadistic slave master suddenly started being nice to him all the time and treating him with nothing but kindness? Would he run away then?
-- I let you beat me this much, of course I love you! Do you love me back? I need to feel it in your torture! Beat me so I know you care.
I did not care for this book at all. The actual writing was descent, proper grammar and punctuation, but I did not like the story. It is set in a different world and time, a man becomes a prisoner of an alien race. He is broken and trained as a pet sex-slave. Which is very not to my tastes. The scenes are explicit and very colorful, but gay BDSM, master-slave is not something I enjoy reading about.