Review: Lots of Story that includes but is not all about the great, imaginative & dominant sex
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 13, 2013
Overall I enjoyed this series.  Can't speak to the historical accuracy & it wasn't of concern to me.  I got the bundle because I was looking for some exciting erotica w/dominant male/submissive female, bondage, spanking, anal, etc.  There is all that & early on some sharing & voyeurism, too.  BUT, there's also a lot of story to it.  I don't agree w/those who said there was a LOT of or too much sex.  It's just that the sex that there is, is in detail, in long scenes & not glossed over, which is what I Was Looking for.  Usually I just skip through the story parts & read the sex scenes.  However, these stories were fascinating enough to grab & hold my attention so I actually read all of it.  I liked that it had strong female as well as male characters & that those females had martial arts skills so they could handle themselves in a fight.  I know nothing about the cultural & historical aspects of that time & area, but thought the author addressed some serious & ugly issues such as the sex/slave trade of underage females & did that well.  My only complaint would be about the obnoxiously mean personality traits of Lei & Elena's relentless willful stupidity.  They both behave very childishly for supposedly smart & mature for their age females.  Lei was overly spiteful & viciously petty.  Elena was a temper tantrum throwing baby who kept putting herself in danger on purpose over & over, causing people to die, which happened so often I just got sick of it & really pissed off.  Do people really act like that?  It made it very hard for me to respect them as women.  Unfortunately, it's a literary device used far too often by many authors & in my opinion to the extreme in way too many 'romance' novels - it's become a pet peeve of mine.  (You know, the conflict that keeps the couple apart).  The male characters weren't exactly a piece of cake either.  Wyatt was a womanizing lecher who took pride in using & tossing away women like Kleenex & only wound up being monogamous because he'd lose his love, not because he wanted to be or thought it was the right thing.  Bai had no problem visiting whore houses while courting Elena.  BUT, they were both hell on wheels in bed & made for awesome sex scenes.  Just because I might not want to personally date them didn't mean I didn't love the incredibly hot dominant male sex scenes.  What turns me on in fantasy doesn't have to match reality!  It IS fantasy after all!  Bai's little french pet names added to his heat, too.  There's just something sexy about guys who add french or spanish naturally to their dirty love talk.  There is a lot of gruesome violence, too.  So, if casual strong violence as a way of life bothers you, you'd probably want to skip this, it's not for the faint of heart. (For example, a guy gets his eyes burnt out by a hot poker - the violence is just as graphic as the sex.)  I would NOT label this erotica.  It's a story.  A pretty darn good story.  An action/adventure story w/historical flavor.  A long story over generations, that happens to include some really, really great graphic sex.  Dirty Sex.  If you're looking for just all hot sex, you might not want to wade through all the story to get to it,  but I was glad I did & still felt it was worth it.  The sex scenes in there were well written, varied & smoking!  Sometimes a lot of good story with great sex is better than a little story w/mediocre sex.  Depends on what you're in the mood for.  I would be interested in checking out some of her other works.  Perhaps Ace's Wild or Moscow Affair.  Thanks Taylor Lee for a good read!