Title: Deception
Series: Golden Collar: Book Two
Author: Grace R. Duncan
Genre: Historical Fiction / BDSM / MMMM
ISBN: 978-1-62798-325-9
Length: Novel
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥2.5 Hearts
Reviewer: Thommie
Blurb: A Spin-off of Choices
Cyrus and Nadir first met as hungry orphans on Behekam’s streets at twelve years old. They became friends, then partners in the thievery that enabled them to survive, and as they passed their days together, they fell in love. When they are both taken as pleasure slaves in the opulent palace of the Malik of Neyem, love becomes more complicated.
Rumors of an attempt on Malik Bathasar’s life put Cyrus and Nadir’s relationship to the test—they must pose convincingly as intimate slaves to the young Malik as part of a plan to lure the assassin into the open. Teman—Malik Bathasar’s real personal pleasure slave and true lover—was once trained by Cyrus for the same duties, and the attraction and care Cyrus developed for him then still remains. The Malik of Neyem proves an easy man to love and Nadir’s feelings for him grow while they’re pretending to love each other.
Cyrus and Nadir care deeply for each other but they’ve forgotten the first rule of love: communicate in honesty. Their love remains strong enough to weather the changes—if they have the courage not only to face the coming dangers, but also to put aside deception and find their truth.
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=4384
Review: I’m afraid I’ve been anticipating this book a bit too much a got somewhat disappointed from the delivery.
Deception is a spin-off of Choices; the leading characters are the duo we met on the first book, Cyrus and Nadir. We get to flash back with either one of them, as the story is written from both character’s point of view, at the point when they met each other, bits and pieces of events that led them to their imprisoning and life as sex slaves.
We get to revisit Mukesh through their memories and his brutal treatment, we get to see how the fell in love and how they made it stick even though they had no control of their bodies and over who they had sex with, and most importantly we got to see their bond survive everything until Bathasar and Teman came along to swipe them with their fairytale.
Because Teman became a legend among the sex slaves, he became the only one to have managed one master, one steady master for the rest of his life, and that is coveted by all slaves who find their bodies in a different bed every night, most of all Nadir.
Confession time: I really disliked the way this story went. I had such trouble dealing with this book because never once in a million years did I saw Bathasar getting another slave around beside Teman. Not once did I get the feeling that Teman would be all right with another one in their bed, let alone two. Yes, they have played with Nadir and Cyrus on the first book some times, but that was it, they played, they had fun, and everybody went to their corner of the world, Bathasar with Teman happily ever after.
In this book, Bathasar has an assassin hot on his heels so Teman comes up with the idea to employ Nadir and Cyrus. As former thieves, their abilities to defend are ingrained and no matter how many years of slavery they’ve gone, their instincts won’t fail them. The royal couple makes this decision based on the idea that the assassin will be fooled thinking that the Malik doesn’t have a good enough protection and thus they’ll be able to capture him. In order to make them believe that the new two slaves are not protection though, they have to make people believe that Bathasar is quite taken with them the same way he is with Teman, thus all four of them share one bed and are constantly showing of their lust.
Now if you read the first book Bathasar is adamant that Teman wears clothes at all times when not in their room. He is very possessive and dislikes the dinner showing of the slaves terribly. He dislikes the public display and he didn’t use to show Teman, or play with him when obligated to attend dinner. Enter new Bathasar; everything you knew about him drops it in the dumpster because a new version is reborn. One I frankly couldn’t care the least bit about. Pretending to be debauched and sex driven? Nah, he was all the way there in this book. He takes quite a liking on Nadir too (he’s the submissive of the two of them) and even has his fun with Cyrus. Teman is always there but damn it if he’s not just wallpaper. Weird thing is, our Gipsy is not as jealous as we got to think on the first book, and he has no problem sharing Bathasar. He doesn’t mind the growing feelings between Bathasar and Nadir either, and of course, it is common knowledge now that he still harbors feeling for Cyrus as well… If not for Cyrus, who surprised the heck out of me with his steadiness and always being possessive of Nadir and not wanting to share, this would have been a very boring orgy-themed book with completely non-interesting characters. I got so thrown with this spin-off I can’t begin to tell you how betrayed I felt. My favorite characters are gone.
Moving on with the plot there were huge holes there that didn’t make sense at all for me. We have the slaves trying to teach Bathasar how to be quick on his feet, not walk like a Malik but more like a thief, be silent and parry throwing knives. They kept going out of the palace at night to do this. Meanwhile, the assassin has been keeping an eye on the Malik, trying to see the patterns of his behavior, the goings in and out. Yet he never once took advantage of their outings even as he saw for himself that the malik did this often and with no guards around. He instead waited for the entire book, and trust me it was frustrating not only for the characters that wait, but for me as well, and attacked his mark when he was guarded… As for the lessons and training Bathasar endured, it never became necessary in this book making me wonder what the point was for all that.
Another thing that had me wondering was the fact that in the end, the only one confronting the assassin was one, just one, of the three slaves that were protecting Bathasar… I had this huge question slamming my brain over and over, “Where on Earth were the other two all that time it took the first to fight and finally kill the assassin.” That was a bad planned plot for me.
And finally the romance of the story. The book spend a good two-thirds of it with similar to each other sex scenes that of course revolved around edging and denial, and feelings. Both Nadir and Cyrus spend the best part of the book wonder what the heck is going one – I along with them – Cyrus wondering if Nadir is falling for Bathasar, Nadir wondering if Cyrus is falling for Teman, Bathasar actually falling for Nadir and trying to make him reciprocating and Teman a bit aloof and in his own merry world. The sex scenes were too much. As much as I like denial and edging, they are among my favorite kinks after all, the amount of them here and the similarity between them just about made me hit my head on my desk. It was over and over the same thing that made the entire read a big frustration for me. The emotional play between all four parties was at best confusing, even more so in the end. The way they all parted and found happiness practically begged for you to question the point of all the confusion and frustration we had to endure throughout the read.
Bottom end, I was highly disappointed with this book and expected much, much more for it than I actually got.