Title: Choices
Series: N/A
Author: Grace R. Duncan
Genre: MM & More / Historical Fiction / BDSM
Length: Extended Novel
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (March 4th, 2013)
Reviewer: Thommie
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥3~3.5 Hearts
Blurb: Born and raised a gypsy in the late eleventh century, Teman values freedom over everything. He and his best friend, Jasim, are thieves for hire—until one night they’re caught and their precious freedom is revoked. Given the choice between the dungeons or palace pleasure slavery, they become slaves, but Teman vows to escape someday.
Bathasar doesn’t want the throne. He supports his brother instead, which suits their sadistic father, Mukesh. When Teman, the handsome slave Bathasar has secretly been watching, saves his life, Bathasar requests a slave for the first time. Before long, Bathasar and Teman fall in love. But all is not well. One day Mukesh brutalizes Teman before the court, angering the empress of a neighboring nation. To appease her, he then offers her Jasim as a gift, and Teman decides to stay with Bathasar for now—despite the abuse he may suffer.
The peace doesn’t last. Mukesh plans to invade Jasim’s new country, and Bathasar must find a way to stop the destruction. But if he succeeds, he’ll ascend to the throne and have the power to grant Teman his liberty. Then Teman will surely leave him. What other choice could a gypsy make?
A Timeless Dreams title: While reaction to same-sex relationships throughout time and across cultures has not always been positive, these stories celebrate M/M love in a manner that may address, minimize, or ignore historical stigma.
Product Link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3611
Review: It is always your choice. You choose between an iron collar and a gold one, or between a gold one and a unique labeled one, or between a unique labeled one or none at all. It’s always your choice.
Teman had no difficulty choosing the gold collar that would make him a pleasure slave. Yes, his body no longer belonged to him or his life, but that choice held the best possibility for an escape. if only his brain would stop thinking about sex long enough to form a plan.
Then there came Bathasar and when he offered the choice for Teman to be only his slave, his love, his man, the choice was even easier than the first time for Teman. So he traded his plain gold collar, for a better one that held his masters name. A tag that clearly labeled his as Bathasar’s property. And while they were so much more than that, his gypsy soul always craved freedom. But, freedom soon became just a dream when his best friend Jasim was gifted to an Empress and Teman was left alone with only his love to contain him.
But when time came that his one and only love could offer him a life with no collar at all the choice was not so easy anymore. The freedom Teman so much longed for came at a price; choose it and lose your love, chose your love and forget freedom forever.
This was quite a lovely book, one that in my opinion had the potential of being exceptional. This is the tale of a slave that his spirit fed in freedom. The tale of a crown prince that had no love for his crown. The story of a cruel and malicious malik (equal to king), who had no compassion for human life. The malik, Bathasar’s father had a strong sadistic side that cost him the hatred of many people, his own and foreign. Teman’s ability to endure and Bathasar’s infatuation with the slave only fed the malik’s cruelty more, and it caused him to lose control in front of a court dinner when many foreign royalties were present. This in turn caused many treaties downfall. The malik’s insanity though goes further when he tries to assassinate the Empress of Tiantang and assault her country, something Bathasar eagerly tries to prevent. They have one chance to get rid of the cruel ruler and that involves Teman and his ability to endure whatever the malik has in store for him in order to provide distraction. A choice hard to make that might cause him his life.
While this book was very entertaining it had strong weaknesses in the plot both in how the characters reacted and responded, and the incredibly fast way they fell “in love”. In such circumstances as monarchy to be able to display such weakness in front of the court as the Malik did is simply not realistic, even more so to have a guest challenge your authority in your own palace, or get in a position that would draw that such response.
As for the pair’s fast escalating emotions and those of the Empress with Jasim, let just say that I’m not fond in declarations of love the first night a pair gets together. This passage is precisely what I mean:
Bathasar didn’t care that Teman had been a thief, didn’t care that he was now a slave, didn’t care about any of that. He liked Teman’s personality, liked Teman’s humor, liked all of that.
However Bathasar simply never had the chance to get to know Teman and fall in love for Teman himself. While Bathasar might have gathered information and was fascinated with the slave, strong emotions such as love are too much for me to swallow when they came the very first night of their “lovemaking”. I simply wish there was given some time to the pair to bond, it would have made the read much more believable and intense.
Furthermore the balance between the intimate scenes and the story itself was very poor. The sex scenes were numerous and managed to draw focus from the story at the point where you felt the story was only 100 pages in a near 400 pages novel. While steamy-hot is perhaps a huge understatement for the scenes and the intensity they had, it still became tiresome and made you wish they were less. They also gave me a bad taste when it came to Teman’s character. The book starts with a very strong, mysterious Teman, one who was always the level-headed and the one to keep things in control while Jasim was the fly with the wind guy. That person however is lost in the haze of lust and love, making one slight appearance and then lost again. I often felt that it was such a shame for that wonderful personality to be deduced in a mindless pleasure thing.
And as for the action itself, too many lost opportunities in my opinion to create a tension like no other. The fear the malik could cause was a bit lost and sometimes it made no sense as in why he would act the way he did.
So at this point you might very well wonder why give 3.5 hearts at all to this story. As I said, while not exceptional, I enjoyed the read. It was too long, yes but still it did keep me in its hooks and I got completely lost in the story. The fact that the intimate scenes revolve around orgasm denial and frustration are a plus cause I’m just a sucker for mind games and this book is all about that. Kinky, hot, sensual and mind-blowing the erotic scenes were extremely powerful in too many ways. In addition the story is located in eleventh century Arabia, one of my favorite areas, in a time when the harems were in full bloom and indeed human life was nothing more than the ruler’s property.
What can I say, I was fascinated by this story and if you are even remotely interested in all the above I recommend take the dive. Aladdin and Jazmin have nothing on Teman and Bathasar. 😉