Warning: this post is not safe for work, for minors, or for the snark averse.
Savage Lust is one of those books that makes you think, “I could never write like that”. Never, that is, unless I had access to memory-erasing technology that could strip my brain of any knowledge I gained of the English language after age 8.
Here’s the plot: Topaz Fiero, R.N., inherits, from her mother’s lover, John, a sprawling Texas ranch occupied by John’s three sons, Chad, Sam and Johnny, who are very unhappy about the situation. “Fiero”, youngest brother Johnny informs us, “means savage. I looked it up on the internet on my mobile!” Oldest brother Chad is having none of this intercultural enlightenment, referring to Topaz as “some slut our father fucked.” Eventually they all want to have sex with each other. Topaz may or may not be their half sister, but nobody really cares about a little thing like incest in this book.
The writing made my brain hurt. Sentences like “Tires screeched as Chad pulled up before the steps and after getting out of the vehicle, he slammed the door hard.” made me wonder if the text had gone through Google translator a few dozen times before making it onto my Kindle. Then there was the repetitiveness. I swear that girl was a yeast infection waiting to happen with all the times “her panties grew damp.” Every once in a while (ok, constantly) the characters seem to think they are in a different novel. Topaz, for example, says things like “bloody well” and the brothers use expressions like “ye gads!”.
As she travels to Texas, Topaz wonders, “How will they receive me?”. Oh, no, Nurse Fiero. the question is: in how many ways will you receive them?
Topaz arrives at the ranch, and is treated coldly by all except Corky, “a robust black lady with a shining round face and a very friendly smile” who refers to our newly arrived slut as “Mizz” and the brothers as “Master”.
In short order, Chad and Topaz have a tender moment in the middle of a raging thunderstorm as she strokes “Lucifer”, his black stallion. They kiss, but he suddenly leaves, because the plot requires it. What’s a virgin nurse to do in a stable in a rainstorm but yank her pants down and masturbate on a bale of hay? Chad returns, having spied on her, and threatens her with rape, but stops when he puts his finger inside her and feels “her most prized possession, her virginity”. Chad seeks his own release, described lyrically by the author as “grabbing his cock and pulling the skin back and forth.”
Sam, after having an epiphany (“We don’t have to treat her so crappy”) takes Topaz to a swimmin’ hole. This allows him his turn to spy on and nearly rape Mizz Topaz followed by a quick pull o’ the taffy while submerged. Our heroine apologizes for failing to pull his taffy for him, explaining that she’s saving herself for a foursome with three rancher brothers “a man who wants to commit to me for life.”
Soon, it’s Johnny’s turn. And these brothers must have had special gynecological training, because he, too, stops himself when “I felt your hymen”.
For her part, our virgin is confused: three makeout grope sessions in three days with three different men, which one does she love?
But the action takes an unexpected turn when Chad, furious at the thought that this whore will host their annual Christmas party (he’s a bit of a traditionalist, our Chad), storms out of the house and attempts to take out all his frustration on the giant decorated tree in the mansion’s front yard. With an axe. “Without thinking, Topaz ran as fast as she could and threw herself at him just as the axe came crashing down”. And then she dies, a bloody heap at the foot of the Christmas tree.
Just kidding!
Miraculously, both Topaz and the tree are pretty much unscathed. But a shaken Chad retreats to the barn where his father appears in ghostly form, to conveniently answer all his questions about Topaz. Just as in Hamlet, he calls his son a “jackass” and “dumb as a bag of rocks”. Giving credence to my theory that peeping-tomism is genetic in the Douglas family, he lets Chad know he saw him almost take Topaz’s virginity. Topaz is special, he warns his son, unlike his old girlfriend, who “always reminded him of a blow up doll.” Gee dad, you always had a way with words.
Convinced either by her constantly slick cunt or their dead father, Chad, Johnny and Sam have pretty much accepted Topaz by the night of the Christmas party. Unfortunately, right when the Bible reading is about to start, Topaz is attacked by Chad’s blow up doll, I mean ex girlfriend: “Topaz’s nursing experience told her right away that she’d been injected with something.” The blow up doll tries to convince the brothers Topaz abandoned them, but they begin to doubt her story when they find an empty syringe in Topaz’s bathroom trash. I guess blow up dolls aren’t that smart after all!
Topaz, meanwhile, is at the mercy of the blow up doll’s lackeys. Despite one of the men telling the other to “put that hungry cock of yours back in your pants” — because thugs always refer to each other’s cocks as “hungry” — Topaz has occasion to wonder “Is this to be my fate? To be raped by a foul, stinking, rustling cowboy turned kidnapper?” No, Topaz. don’t you know what book you’re starring in? Your fate is to be raped by three nice smelling cowboys. Breaking the pattern, the kidnapper masturbates without sticking his finger inside her and feeling her hymen.
Eventually, Topaz is rescued. She and Johnny declare their love for each other, with the following unexpected and not entirely welcome addendum from Topaz: “I love your brothers, too”. Oh, snap!
Eventually, Chad proposes, but Topaz tells him she wants to marry his brothers in a handfasting ceremony (this pagan ritual was suggested by Mammy, I mean Corky). Using her patented sexy move on his penis (“she moved the skin back and forth”) she convinces first Chad, then the others to go along with it. I mean, this woman survived an axing and a hypodermic needle. Who thought for a minute she couldn’t convince three traditional Texas cowboys to share her? She simply explains that their menage is not “out of sexual lust, orgies and all that. This would be a union of love. Completely different.”
Rather than worrying about three pairs of dirty socks to pick up every day, and three mouths full of bad breath to greet her every morning, our intrepid Topaz is excited to “bear children for all three of you! And just wait, I want lots and lots of kids!”.
As they get ready for the big night, Chad remember that his dead father can see his every move and hear his every thought. He informs Johnny, who acknowledges it gives him “the damn creeps”. Sam counsels, “We’ll just have to put it out of our mind. If he does sit and watch us, all I can say is that he’ll get his jollies out of it.” Dear dad, as well as both dead moms (!!!!), show up to add a new layer of prurient incest. Dad tells the boys, “It’s fantastic. … I’ll be here watching you.” It is at this moment that the mystery of Topaz’s conception is revealed: her mother Juanita was raped. Phew. Not all of them are related to each other, then.
Finally, the big deflowering night arrives. The author has a hard time balancing the purple with the pron, and shifts from descriptions like this: “Her virginal folds, the pink canal, slightly opened, still tight because it had never been invaded by what it needed” … to this: “he continued to finger fuck her”. The next night, having exactly 24 hours of lovemaking experience, Topaz enjoys triple penetration without batting an eye.
And they all lived happily ever after.
The author’s website has a photo of a large breasted, blond, scantily clad model, but as I read the text itself, the following authorial image kept springing to mind:
This book gave me a lot of enjoyment. It really did.
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#1 by Ann Somerville on February 12, 2010 - 8:19 pm
“This book gave me a lot of enjoyment. It really did.”
Dunno about the book but this review is a thing of beauty
#2 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on February 12, 2010 - 8:23 pm
Okay that was where I really lost my shits. -wipes away a tear- Ohhhh lawd, as Mammy would say, you’ve gone and done it this time Miss Jessica.
#3 by Carolyn Crane on February 12, 2010 - 10:06 pm
OMG. Oh, oh, I totally needed to read this after the day I had. This is hilarious.
#4 by jmc on February 12, 2010 - 10:20 pm
Y’know, whenever I read about panties getting damp, I think the heroine has a bladder problem. And mentions of hungry cocks make me imagine a cross between a cock and a moray eel, with the mouth open to consume…whatever.
#5 by Heloise on February 12, 2010 - 10:39 pm
Oh my. Hungry cock never glowed so bright in my mind until now, thanks jmc.
This can only be rivaled in hystericality by the facebook status I read earlier today. Mom talking to kids asks what they should make for Dad for Valentine’s Day. She asks, what would be romantic. Kid answers, “A new Mom.”
#6 by kaigou on February 12, 2010 - 11:05 pm
Topaz arrives at the ranch, and is treated coldly by all except Corky, “a robust black lady with a shining round face and a very friendly smile” who refers to our newly arrived slut as “Mizz” and the brothers as “Master”.
The rest is hysterical (albeit unintentionally on the author’s part… I suppose), but that one paragraph made my jaw drop.
#7 by pamelia on February 12, 2010 - 11:09 pm
OMG!! ROFLMAO! Great work! Must send link to EVERYONE I KNOW!!! thanks for the tears of laughter (and the puzzled yet concerned glances from my husband…)
#8 by katiebabs on February 12, 2010 - 11:10 pm
Thank you for reading this book so I don’t have to.
#9 by Marie Therese on February 12, 2010 - 11:49 pm
Just delurking (been following you now for ages) to remark that I died laughing over this! Well, at least my cat thought I was dying, as he’d never before heard me choke, snork, and sniffle quite so loud while surfing the internet.
The sad thing is that this book, godawful as it may well be, doesn’t actually sound all that different than the usual run of one woman/multi-brother menage stories. In fact, it sounds remarkably similar to most I’m familiar with. Which just goes to show…well, I’m not exactly sure what it does show, besides the authors’ extraordinary lack of imagination.
#10 by Jessica on February 13, 2010 - 7:41 am
@jmc: LOL!! If only I had worked the eel metaphor into my review. It’s perfect.
@Heloise: Ouch! If those were my kids, I would send them to their room for a week without food or water … or air.
@kaigou: Yes, it did mine too. The text makes several explicit and approving references to Gone with the Wind.
And 95% of African Americans in the US are Christian monogamists: why would it make sense for the one black character to suggest handfasting and approve of menage? Sure, handfasting has historical significance to the black community in the US, to the extent that they sometimes used this old tradition (isn’t it Celtic? Pagan?) as a substitute for a Christian, legal wedding, which they were denied under slavery, but they were never pagans by choice.
@Marie Therese: I don’t think I had ever read a menage where the characters all ended up together, and I had never read one with brothers. So it’s interesting, although not shocking, to hear they are all the same. While it’s not difficult to see what might be sexually attractive about this arrangement, I had been kind of curious as to how the emotional aspect was handled. The only qualms the brothers had over it were patriarchal: how the children’s real fathers would be identified and whether they could keep the arrangement secret so as not to suffer reputational damage in their community.
#11 by Maili on February 13, 2010 - 9:32 am
For what it’s worth, it’s definitely not a Scottish or Gaelic tradition. It’s a silly myth, based on an unfounded claim by an English author (can’t remember his name) and later popularised by Sir
Silly ArseWalter Scott.Awesome review, though.
#12 by RfP on February 13, 2010 - 3:54 pm
As far as I know, Lora Leigh popularized this setup with an Ellora’s Cave trilogy, Men of August. I think they’re her strongest books, although [insert many caveats about the squick factor].
#13 by Kaetrin on February 13, 2010 - 7:55 pm
Thanks for “taking one for the team” Jessica! Your review brightened up my morning.
#14 by cecilia grant on February 13, 2010 - 8:35 pm
Oh, dear. Does Miss Doreen know about this?
And I have to ask – how did she decide which brother got to rend her exalted hymen?
#15 by Ann Somerville on February 13, 2010 - 9:24 pm
“how did she decide which brother got to rend her exalted hymen”
With all that finger poking, it surely was a hypothetical exercise by that point
I read this review out to Spousal unit last night. We both lost our shit. It’s all Jessica’s fault!
#16 by Jessica on February 14, 2010 - 1:59 pm
@cecilia grant: She went with the one who treated her the worst, naturally, but she told the other brothers she chose him because he was the eldest (so they wouldn’t feel too bad about their inadequate levels of misogyny).
@Ann Somerville: oh, that’s high praise. Thank you!
#17 by Tumperkin on February 14, 2010 - 3:49 pm
Oh thank you! Your 3+ hours of pain give me 3 mins of belly laughs.
#18 by heidenkind on February 14, 2010 - 4:37 pm
I’m happy for you?
#19 by Marie Therese on February 14, 2010 - 7:17 pm
RfP, I think you’re right about Leigh being among the first to popularize this odd sibling setup although I believe Maya Banks was also an early adopter of this “family that f*cks together” scenario and it seems to have become curiously well-accepted among erotic romance writers and readers. Books featuring the trope have even been well reviewed on mainstream romance blogs like Dear Author and SBTB-sites I don’t really associate with the weirder fringes of erotic experience.
I wonder if this trope is so popular and so ‘unremarkable’ (for lack of a better term) because the blood relationship between the two or more men makes, in some way, for a more plausible lasting HEA. Blood ties are much harder to sever than those of convenience or even friendship and if the two+ men aren’t actually sexually/romantically involved with one another (a major no-no in most of these stories-God forbid, a penis slip into the wrong orifice or slide up against the wrong skin!) there’s relatively little incentive for them to stay in the relationship permanently or work hard to mend the group relationship should tensions arise. Ties of love (with the heroine) and blood (with the other men in the menage) perhaps help to ensure stability (at least subconsciously in the writer/reader’s mind).
On a side note, I’m always kind of amazed to find that many readers who balk at heterosexual first cousin marriage (a very unexceptionable occurrence in Western society in the past and in many non-Western societies today) have little problem with brothers getting it on with the same woman. It just blows my mind how many writers and readers will insist that it’s not “incest” in any normal, clearly recognized sense of the term. I’m always tempted to direct them to a copy of Françoise Héritier ‘Two Sisters and Their Mother’ and then watch their heads explode
(For the record, I don’t actually have a problem with the “incest” in these books. They’re clearly fantasy but even if they weren’t, I firmly believe mature adults should be able to consensually and without coercion have sex with whomever they choose. It’s not my thing but then, there’s a hell of a lot of other kinds of sex that aren’t either.)
#20 by AnnFes on February 14, 2010 - 7:33 pm
To borrow a phrase from Samuel Morse:”What hath Amazon wrought?” Now a writer can bypass all those pesky editors at publishing houses and just do it yourself! I can’t wait to see what Harlequin’s vanity pressers will offer us!
#21 by Kate on February 15, 2010 - 7:02 am
I just said “What the f***” out loud in my office with another person in here while reading this. But in a good way. I think.
#22 by RfP on February 17, 2010 - 9:10 am
You’ve probably seen that there’s a whole strain of menage books out there in which there’s no blood relationship, and often the men ARE involved with each other. I’m not sure why the “all in the family” menages broke out as they did, but without much reflection I chalk it up to (1) the obvious lack of realism and (2) they’re boundary-pushing. However, I think the non-family, omni-directional relationship type of menage is taking over with the mainstreaming of m/m.
#23 by Marie Therese on February 18, 2010 - 1:39 am
Oh yes, RfP, I’ve definitely seen the true 3-way stories you mention but the more “romantic” (rather than purely erotic) ones that I’m familiar with often seem to end with one of the male partners leaving or being less emotionally involved in the relationship, while the other male partner and the woman frequently go on to marry (I’m thinking of some of Emma Holly’s books here, particularly the aptly named ‘Menage’). This observation is probably just a quirk of my personal reading experience though and likely doesn’t accurately reflect the subgenre as a whole.