Slave Boy

2 stars for the setting
4 stars for the relationship
3 stars - average rating

I rarely read a book where I hate the setting, but this is one of them. I know the author needed conflict and trauma, but I found the cultural setting for the majority of this book distracting, degrading and ultimately uninteresting. I felt it almost trivialised the love of the two MCs. So whilst I hated the villain (along with the apathy of the Tiberions) as pretty much instructed by the author, the setting was too artificial and extreme - to the point that I started to ignore it.

The two MCs - I loved the Haven and Wren. They were beautiful together, both being quite different but very believable - they were clearly in love, even if one of them was in denial. It show more was lovely to watch their caring and consideration for each other, and frustrating to have it initially denied (and then sacrificed) by Haven and then by the Order of the Light. Wren was just a delight throughout the story - his strength and submission was beautifully portrayed.

Would I recommend this? Only if Sci-fi & BDSM rings a few bells for you. show less

I found the characters shallow and underdeveloped. The villain was villainous and the victims were persecuted unjustly. Very little about this book was original but it was written well and the world building was better than average. While I did enjoy the story I wasn't overly impressed. I've read better books by this author and I expected more.

:/ I feel a bit disappointed because I loved the characters and the author's writing style, but the book bordered on PWP and both the situation that made the characters begin an amorous relationship and the one that allowed them to be together and have their HEA seemed just slapped on the book with not as much tought as the rest of the story and bordered on silly

I normally don't read anything that deals with aliens on other planets, and when I started this I wasn't sure I was going to finish it. I am happy to say that I kept reading, and it turns out that I enjoyed this book very much.

In a futuristic world, Haven is a negotiator, a man with healing powers and diplomat ability who is sending on troubled foreign planets to facilitate alliance pacts. During one of these travels he finds a young boy, barely 12 years old, who is taken as a sex slave by a slave trader and who will be soon sold to a customer. Seeing in the boy the same healing powers he has, Haven buys the boy and brings him back to his home planet. The boy, named Wren, is raised to be a diplomat himself, and when he is 18 years old he is given as novice to Master Haven. Four years later, Haven is in a diplomatic mission in a foreign planet who requires that every adult man is accompanying by a sex slave. Obviously Wren offers himself to play the role, but show more nor him or Haven could image what they will have to do: public sex is saw as a tribute and Haven finds himself in front of an hard decision: fully take his novice or let someone else doing the job...

Almost all the book is spent waiting for the defloration of Wren and actually sometime I feel sorry for poor Haven who is always under temptation. Also before their compelled intimacy in a foreign country, Haven was starting to feel something more for Wren than the natural affection of a Master for his novice, and Wren was not helping on it, since he is in love with Haven since the man saved him ten years before. In Haven's planet, sexual release is not allowed and above all not with a novice, so Haven knows that, if he gives up to temptation, he will lose Wren forever.

Haven is a stoic character, actually he has not a dominant nature: he has a good heart, but all in all he is taken around by Wren almost like he has a leash around the neck and not Wren. Wren is a smart guy: in a way or another he manages to obtain what he wants, and after all I don't think he would be a good diplomat like Haven: I can't imagine him living a total chaste life!

A good sci-fiction romance, with a good weight on the romance side and a little less on the sci-fic one: also the adventurous sub plot and the villain are not so scary after all, and their elimination is quite immediate. All the book is centered on Haven and Wren, and on their budding relationship, better on their 'evolving' relationship, from Master and novice, to lovers.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1596327545/?tag=elimyrevandra-20 show less