reviewed by
Lola Sparks
In an alternate Victorian world, humans and demons coexist, but they rarely cross paths. Demons in this world have crazy sexual needs, and if you're a royal demon, then you have even more sexual issues.
The quarter-human Xishi and full-demon Corum were raised together from infancy, but when an apparent sexual attraction blooms between them, Xishi is removed from the household and taken to an orphanage. There, Xishi is schooled to be a pillow girl--a prostitute. She learns her craft well and is eventually gifted to a prince--the man she once knew as a child.
Born of a duplicitous act, Prince Corum is now called the Prince of Ice. He's twenty and uninterested in the royal females his folks have tried to hook him up with. Being the nice folks they are, they offer to buy him a pillow girl to ease his considerable needs.
The attraction which was evident between Corum and Xishi as infants remains intact. But now, both are older and can act on their urges. And act they do. The demons in Holly's world have bizarre rules: the males can only ejaculate one week out of four. The sperm builds up over those three weeks, and when he finally lets loose, it seems enough to swamp the Titanic. Women seem to have no role in this demon world other than to be the Titanic.
This book is tagged as "paranormal romance," but to that I object. This book is "paranormal erotica" if anything; from page one, the reader is plunged into graphic sexual fantasies--not what this reader expected. And unlike, say, Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books, the sex in Holly's world seems to by why the world exists. If you remove the sexual aspect of this world, there is no world. While there is a plot beyond the sex--political maneuverings--it is easily lost under a torrent of swollen body parts seeking their ease.
And that, for this reader, is boring. People should be more than their genitals.
