Review: INTERESTING, BUT MORE THAN A LITTLE CREEPY
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 18, 2014
I very seldom give out a two-star rating. More often than not, if I can't give out at least  a three or a four star rating, I couldn't finish the book and just drop it. But in this case, I was hooked long enough to finish this very short piece - not a novel and maybe not a novella. "Toaster" is not a romance, more of a fantasy. But a very particular type of fantasy. It's the type of male fantasy you'll find on most porn sites.The fantasy is a very specific one - a male, usually a wimpy nerd , is given the power through a spell, or drugs or magic, to control the minds of women. With this power, the nerd is able to make women fall in love or lust with him and do anything that he wants. This is obviously a rape fantasy because you can get the same effect by drugging women in a bar and taking them somewhere and having sex while they are helpless to resist."Toaster" doesn't fulfill its promise by showing this nerdy guy mentally raping helpless women he uses his powers to enslave sexually. Because, this is what it is.Now, the author - a woman evidently - takes a different approach by showing the victims of this mental slavemaster and how they respond to his mental assault. There's an interesting section involving a Tarot reading that leads a friend of one of the victims close to the truth of what is happening to her friend. And then the story stops - as the main target of the slavemaster is fighting an internal battle over whether she should yield to her artificially aroused lust, or try to remain faithful to her husband.I gave a two-star rating because quite honestly I didn't really like the way the story was written.  Intellectually, I tthink it could make a decent story, I just didn't think it was that good.This is apparently one part of a seven-part paranormal romance set of interlocking stories, and the others might be better. But this is the only one I had to go by.