The Marketplace

Listened to audio narrated well by Elizabeth Jasicki. The quirk in narration was that it was all done with English accents even though story was set in the US. While I thought that odd, I still loved the narration.

Heavy BDSM, This book tells several peoples stories as four different applicants as they are first considered to be trained as slaves, their training and their possible sales. Claudia is too perfect and her mistress brings her for retraining. Brian is the full of himself model leather boy, wanting to be a Marketplace slave. Robert is a big man that has been sissified and needs to be deprogrammed and properly trained. Sharon is beautiful and wants to be a pleasure slave, full of herself and her abilities who stole information show more to get access to the House. Not only do each of them have different backgrounds, stories and reasons for being there but the two trainers and Chris the majordomo have interesting background as well, even if the author only hints and teases with it. If you like HEAVY BDSM, with excellent storytelling this book is fabulous. show less

I've had the Marketplace series for years, and have read them several times, howver, I've never reviewed them until now. I've met the author on a few occassions, and had the honor of sitting in on readings from her. She is a very stunning and surprising woman, and one hell of a creative author.
In the first of her set, Antoniou introduces us to the world of the Marketplace thru the eyes of 4 would-be slaves, being trained by who comes to be the central character in the series, Chris Parker. Chris, an enigma in himself, trains and spots potential slave material for the Marketplace, based on his own lifestyle, he wants to be owned, but is a teacher and trainer of his own perfectionism by choices of others.
The 4 candidates in the tale come show more from different backgrounds, and find themselves thrown together in a training program run by Alexandra and Grendel's house, supervised by Chris. The owners of the house, with Chris, find thier flaws and strengths, cultivatting them to make them into prime material to go on the block.
Wonderfully written, with background on all, Antoniou's style captivates the reader, and pulls them in for all the pain, humiliation, desire, and erotica that can be packed in a book and keeps it all at a perfect pace. show less

The author fails in bringing her characters past the first dimension, and in doing so also fails to engineer the change in character of the 4 protagonists, the driving theme of the book. As a novel, this book fails utterly. And in attempting to be a novel, it fails utterly at being porn. It's not impossible; Story of O and Kushiel's Dart both manage to do both. How anyone can appreciate this drivel is beyond me.

I was really quite pleasantly surprised by this story of the training of four would-be slaves. It was on the order of Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty books, but focused more on the characters of the slaves than on the sex (as compared to the Rice books--there's still plenty of sex & kink). Anyway, a surprisingly complete read.

Mixed

Outside of being condescending and arrogant in regards to the rest of the BDSM and leather community, I found the first installment of this series to be rough, fun, and in some places, relatable.

Did not finish at 20% into the novel. The story failed to grip me. I find myself not interested in any of the characters, let alone what happens to them next. The training seems formalistic and its purpose escapes me.

DNF

I just couldn't get into this story. The characters are all a pain in the ass. I wanted to see them all go to hell. I went about halfway through before I called it quits. There are just too many other books out there that I'm dying to read to waste more time on this. I even stopped and read my "must read" books and then tried to come back. Still couldn't get into the story.