Review: The human spirit triumphs over adversity
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 22, 2013
For me this is definitely a five star review but I say that with a caveat emptor warning attached as I'm reviewing it for Spanking Romances and not for Tara Finnegan.It's not really a spanking romance, but Ms Vitsky transports us into an incredible alternative world that happens to include spankings and ageplay. It's a cruel harsh world, I want to say post apocalypse but that's my assumption rather than anything the author has said.The premise? A world where F/f and M/m are not only the norm, but the law. All couples MUST be same sex and there is one Dominant and one sub, generally in what I would call "made matches" or in other words, arranged marriages, arranged as befitting social status, family connections etc.Children are not born of a union, but rather bred from "breeders", those who broke the law and were paying for their crimes by having their body used as reproduction machines. Boys were adopted out to M/m, girls to F/f couples. Even whether you would be the Dom or the sub was decided by your family.Unwittingly, Clissine breaks the law, she falls for a male friend she has known since childhood and she will pay for going against the laws of nature and of Bastia.Clissine agrees to run away from her very right wing, and influential Dis (Disiplinarian, as in the Female HOH) and Nur (Nurturer, the sub parent). Bastia is an unforgiving world, brutal and harsh in the enactment of it's laws.  Clissine is fortunate, both as a daughter of an influential citizen and also as a result of capturing the heart of another Nur, who can help save her. Rather than thrown to prison, or put to breeding, she is given a second chance, she gets a new family but to be re-educated, she is treated as a baby again and must relearn all the laws of Bastia, hence the age play. The age play is not so much sexual as it is part of a mind game, retraining Clissine to obey. And part of that age play is regular spankings from her Dis.What is quite lovely to watch is the strength of the human spirit, how Clissine learns to play one parent against the other, and how while she manipulates her mind is never fully taken over.  Things come to a crisis in Bastia and Clissine gets a chance to choose. For me, she made the wrong choice but that's just a personal opinion. Even in spite of my disappointment in her choice, I could see a victory at the end, she chooses her path but while doing so, she totally takes ownership and makes a new life for herself.If you're looking for out and out spanking romance with a traditional HEA, you're not going to get it; but if you're looking for a book with an amazing story where the human spirit triumphs over adversity that also happens to contain F/f, spankings and ageplay then this has to be top of your list. (c) Spanking Romance Reviews