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juushikaTitle: Flesh Cartel
Author: Rachel Haimowitz, Heidi Belleau
Published: 2012-2014
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 1340 (75+75+76+75+75+93+68+68+68+94+70+101+74+68+75+58+58+56+56)
Total Page Count: 552,000
Text Number: 2051-2069
Read Because: searched for erotic horror at the library and, you know, yeah, this counts!, borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: Two brothers, one strong guy and one pretty boy, are kidnapped by the titular flesh cartel to be sold into sexual slavery. I unironically love that people are just publishing and my library is just licensing stuff that back-in-my-day would have been serial publications on LiveJournal. Short version: if you think you'd like this, it's pretty good; more psychologically astute, especially in the middle sections, than I was expecting, with uneven but incredibly consumable pacing that flags in the long resolution.
Long version, cut for content more than spoilers: I'm captivated by the serial publication, which gives a dark, long work a popcorny consumablity; I burned through these in just a few days. But breaking the text into specific, linear arcs has its downsides, like an opening so brutal and repetitive that it becomes farcical and a resolution that manages to be drawn out while also having a comically short timescale; and in no way did I pick this up for anyone's happy ever after, yanno? Hate to say it, but this would have been better scaled back; alternately, I need it more nitty-gritty; these guys should be functionally incontinent or dealing with anal fissures out the ... well, out the ass; I understand turning a blind eye to scat, but at what cost? The psychological ramifications are surprisingly thoughtful and dare I say even realistic, given the tropes at play, which particularly shines in Nikolai arc and the transition from Nikolai to Allen; so the repeated underestimation of the ramifications of physical abuse are weird and undermine the effect. But for all that a lot of my thoughts are structural or nitpicky, I frankly found this delightful, book-hangover obsessive reading material, and would pick up more in this vein.
Author: Rachel Haimowitz, Heidi Belleau
Published: 2012-2014
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 1340 (75+75+76+75+75+93+68+68+68+94+70+101+74+68+75+58+58+56+56)
Total Page Count: 552,000
Text Number: 2051-2069
Read Because: searched for erotic horror at the library and, you know, yeah, this counts!, borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: Two brothers, one strong guy and one pretty boy, are kidnapped by the titular flesh cartel to be sold into sexual slavery. I unironically love that people are just publishing and my library is just licensing stuff that back-in-my-day would have been serial publications on LiveJournal. Short version: if you think you'd like this, it's pretty good; more psychologically astute, especially in the middle sections, than I was expecting, with uneven but incredibly consumable pacing that flags in the long resolution.
Long version, cut for content more than spoilers: I'm captivated by the serial publication, which gives a dark, long work a popcorny consumablity; I burned through these in just a few days. But breaking the text into specific, linear arcs has its downsides, like an opening so brutal and repetitive that it becomes farcical and a resolution that manages to be drawn out while also having a comically short timescale; and in no way did I pick this up for anyone's happy ever after, yanno? Hate to say it, but this would have been better scaled back; alternately, I need it more nitty-gritty; these guys should be functionally incontinent or dealing with anal fissures out the ... well, out the ass; I understand turning a blind eye to scat, but at what cost? The psychological ramifications are surprisingly thoughtful and dare I say even realistic, given the tropes at play, which particularly shines in Nikolai arc and the transition from Nikolai to Allen; so the repeated underestimation of the ramifications of physical abuse are weird and undermine the effect. But for all that a lot of my thoughts are structural or nitpicky, I frankly found this delightful, book-hangover obsessive reading material, and would pick up more in this vein.
