Review: Hot and unusual
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 21, 2012
As with all short story collections, some stories were stronger than others, but the collection gets an overall rating of 3.5 stars.I loved the first story, Kilt and Scarred, by Laurann Dohner. It was definitely my favourite in the collection. A young woman becomes somewhat reclusive after she's attacked and left with facial scars. She takes comfort in watching the comings-and-goings of a neighbour she names Kilt (because he wears a kilt). She jokingly suspects he may be a vampire, but that's confirmed one night when she saves him from a strange man who breaks into his house, with holy water and wooden stakes.It's a pretty standard paranormal romance plot, but for some reason, I really like it, despite the stereotypical Scottish hero. (I generally tend to hate fiction set in Ireland or the UK, because they're so irritatingly stereotypical, and I know people of all those nationalities, and I've been to all those countries, and they just don't fascinate me a whole lot in fiction). It's a little unrealistic (yes, I know he's a vampire, but there are realistic vampires!) but it kinda knows that, and it doesn't take itself too seriously, and ends up being a fun, hot story.Tinderbox by Regina Carlysle is another paranormal story, this time involving shapeshifters. It's a menage story, about two jaguars who work as private investigators, and are assigned a case to rescue a rare jaguar female, who has been kidnapped. Female jaguars are often killed in their first shift, which is why they've become rare, and menage relationships with two males and a female have become more common. I actually tend to like menage in stories, so I really liked this one.Austerion by Katalina Leon could be a sci-fi historical romance, I guess. It didn't do much for me. It's set in ancient Greece, and involves a romance between a virgin sacrifice and a Minotaur, who is actually a being from another planet, who can't take human form until a blood sacrifice is given, so he has been inhabiting the world as a giant bull.  The idea for the story was pretty good, and I didn't wince as I read it, praying for the awful writing to be over. It was actually pretty well-written, just not very memorable.Decadent Dance by Aubrey Ross is a sci-fi, in which a young choreographer is transported to an alien ship after she buys a strange dress in an antique shop. She's brought there as a "Decadent Dancer" (read: prostitute) for the ship's commander, but they end up falling for each other. He's blue, with strange natural markings which sound like tribal tattoos, and two penises. Yup. Two. The sex scenes are unusual (obviously, he has two penises, like!) but hot.Sahara Heat by Diana Hunter is a contemporary BDSM novel, involving a writer and an archaeologist. There's only one sex scene, and while it was hot, and well-written, it felt a little unrealistic to me. The writer meets the archaeologist thinking he might have an interesting story for her. He won't give her the file on his find until after their date. They dance around each other, she's very much in control and not playing his game, they go for dinner, and before the starter is ordered, they've agreed to go back to his hotel room for some kinky sex. It felt a little rushed, a little convenient and a little unrealistic, but overall, the story was hot. I loved that the female character wasn't a complete pushover, and was completely in control of her life outside of the bedroom, despite being submissive behind closed doors.Fatman and Robyn by Jaid Black is about an Italian-American "chubby chick" and a Superbowl winning quarterback who likes his women heavier than he thinks is normal. There is one sex scene, more or less right at the very end of the story, and the rest is character-building, which I enjoyed, but for inclusion in an erotic collection, I thought it needed more sex, or at least more passion. Aside from the fact that Robyn is overweight, it was a very `meh' and typical erotic romance.All in all, I enjoyed the collection, and it's made me rethink Ellora's Cave as a source of books.