Review: sex, romance, sci-fi, and great world building! loved it!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 22, 2013
As I told Cara in a moment of fangirling, I loved this book for how it was and wasn't like John Norman's "Chronicles of Gor." She masterfully wrote a science fiction book set in an "other than earth" setting, including non-human species. She had "Protocol" that divided males in Alpha or Beta and left women as slaves, as breeders. However she was so careful, so talented that her created world was constant, felt real throughout her story- the details that made her real were consistently woven into the story; never written as pages of monologue that took away from the story. Right away I wondered why Sival didn't want Dak to see the breeder named Omra. In the story's unfolding, I found it interesting the ways in which Protocol supported and hindered what I find to be a positive life experience. I further found it interesting how much Protocol was said to be supported by science. As Dak came to doubt Protocol and other things he had been raised with as he came to feel regard for Omra, the romance and the thrill of the adventure in equal amounts held me in the world Cara had created. My sigh of happiness carried in my house when I got to chapter 19 and got to enjoy the lovely denouement Cara had written. How precious to see Dak and Omra in their life fourteen months after the main part of the story, to see them navigating a world in which Protocol was less rigid.