I have the Playboy Paperbacks edition which has a scantily dressed woman with plenty of bosom showing through her ripped dress, which leaves expectations of a cheap romance novel.
Instead I found it reminded me a bit of Dune.
By which I mean that for a fair while everything was above my head - so much detail going into things I didn't understand. Felt like I had jumped in midway through a series or even midway through a book.

Took a while to get into it and then found I liked it enough to read some more of the series. ( )

Re-reading the series in anticipation of picking up the new books I didn't know existed.

Story successfully sets up the world and its other-ness, on both sides of the post-mutation genetic split in humanity. In spots, there's what I think are mistakes in Hugh's character, where he seems too unsurprised by terms it wasn't clear he should have known. But other than that, and a couple of small editing errors, I find this a book that holds up well to my memories of it, and I'm so glad I didn't purge it with so many other books years ago. 3.5 stars.
( )

In the far future a mutation develops and humankind is split into Simes and Gens. Simes "change over" at adolescence into vampire-like creatures that must suction off energy from Gens every month. Ordinarily, this causes the death of the Gen. But then "Channels" are discovered who could safely take energy from Gens and give that energy to Simes. But there are still "Sime" territories where Gens are kept like cattle, and "Gen" territories where a developing Sime would be shot on sight. Enter Hugh, a Gen that must pose as a "companion" to a Channel in order to find his kidnapped love, Aisha. Not my favorite of the Sime/Gen books--that would probably be Ambrov Keon--but definitely a good read in a series that's a favorite of mine. Both Lichtenberg and Lorrah who write books in this series are good storytellers and create characters to care about. And since this was the first book in the series to be published (even if not the first chronologically) it makes a good entry into the series. ( )

This is the book that introduced an entire new species - a divided humanity that must find a way to reunite or perish.
Sime-phobic Hugh must enter Sime territory to find his talented artist girlfriend before she can be forced to counterfeit currency plates.
In order to move freely about, he must pretend to be a Companion a personal donor to the Head of House Zeor himself.

But when they are trapped in the wilderness by outlaws - can Hugh bring himself to feed Klyd, at risk of his own life and that of his woman as well?? ( )

One of Mely’s commenters, I think, described this postapocalyptic vampire tentacle slavefic as the dilating eyedrops before the slash goggles were applied, and that’s not a bad description. Hugh Valleroy, a Gen, enters Sime territory to find the woman he loves. Aisha’s kidnapping might just be the usual Sime raid seeking Gens, but because Aisha is important to the Gen government it might also be a move to destabilize Gen Territory entirely and drive all Gens into the pens. (Never very clear why one person would be enough to cause a breakdown given that pens = certain death given that most Simes need to kill a Gen every month to survive, but okay.) Hugh makes common cause with Klyd Farris, the most special channel of all, channels being Simes who can take energy from Gens without killing them and then transfer it to other Simes so that those Simes don’t need to kill. Prose: a little purple, slashiness: very very high, satisfaction to my fourteen-year-old self: almost infinite. We should have a reading club where we all read/reread the books and then write Sime/Gen for Yuletide. (Caution: Weird stuff where apparently everyone is mixed-race modulo white until they’re not; also predatory sexuality where the dominant social mores, against which our protagonists struggle, oppose Sime/Gen mixing more than coercion. And everybody is cool with the concept of buying a wife to keep a talented Gen happy.) ( )