AUTHOR: KJ Charles
COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 253
PUBLISHER: Loveswept
SETTING: Early 19th century London
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Part of the Society of Gentlemen series
I bought this one without reading the blurb. I think I confused it with another Charles book I'd seen people talking about, and when I saw it was about 50p on amazon, I just clicked. It became obvious I'd been thinking of a different book pretty much as soon as I started it, when I found myself in the midst of a BDSM sex scene. Really, really not my thing. I'll be honest, if I'd been somewhere with wi-fi I would probably have returned it right there and then, but I wasn't, and I thought it might be a good idea to step out of my comfort zone and give something different a try.K. J. Charles turns up the heat in her new Society of Gentlemen novel, as two lovers face off in a sensual duel that challenges their deepest beliefs.
Silas Mason has no illusions about himself. He’s not lovable, or even likable. He’s an overbearing idealist, a Radical bookseller and pamphleteer who lives for revolution . . . and for Wednesday nights. Every week he meets anonymously with the same man, in whom Silas has discovered the ideal meld of intellectual companionship and absolute obedience to his sexual commands. But unbeknownst to Silas, his closest friend is also his greatest enemy, with the power to see him hanged—or spare his life.
A loyal, well-born gentleman official, Dominic Frey is torn apart by his affair with Silas. By the light of day, he cannot fathom the intoxicating lust that drives him to meet with the Radical week after week. In the bedroom, everything else falls away. Their needs match, and they are united by sympathy for each other’s deepest vulnerabilities. But when Silas’s politics earn him a death sentence, desire clashes with duty, and Dominic finds himself doing everything he can to save the man who stole his heart.
Well, unfortunately, sometimes giving something different a try doesn't pay off.
Dominic Frey is a well-born gentleman who has a kink he's never been able to properly indulge in. He's submissive and needs a sexual partner who orders him around and humiliates him. This has even ruined a relationship with a man he loved, who just couldn't deal with what Dominic needed. As the book starts, Dominic has been able to make an arrangement. Every Wednesday night he goes to an establishment where a great big brute gives him exactly what he wants. Dominic is happy, the other man, Silas Mason, is happy.
Problem is, Dominic works for the Home Office and his job involves stamping out the publication of seditious printed material (basically, anything that questions the Government). Which is exactly what Silas is involved in: he owns a bookshop known as a gathering place for radicals and operates a secret printing press. The first time they meet outside of their trysting place is when Dominic supervises a raid on Silas' bookshop.
If the BDSM had been the only thing I had a problem with, I think I'd have been ok (I probably sound really judgmental here. I don't have a problem with BDSM itself, it's just that when something is written with the intention of being hot and sexy and it doesn't strike the reader that way, that's an issue). But it wasn't the only thing. The whole setup of the series struck me as sordid. This group of men seem to all have slept with each other, and I was uncomfortable by how much detail of each other's sex lives was shared with others, even those who weren't particularly intimate. Everyone seems to know about Dominic's Wednesday deal and his kinks. That almost "sex club" setup really didn't work for me.
I also had issues with this beyond the sex, particularly with Dominic's politics. I have enough of a problem with modern-day Tory politics already, so 19th century Tory politics simply enraged me. Dominic is very much for maintaining the existing social order (which benefits toffs like him, duh) and dismissing the concerns of those who are not as well treated by it. He does have some (very mild) problems with his Government's proposals to trample on people's civil rights in an extreme fashion in order to contain any radicalism. However, his position is that, even though he doesn't support these measures, if they do become the law, then he must enforce them. Look, I'm a civil servant myself, so I do understand that your job will sometimes involve implementing policies you don't agree with. But there's a limit there, and if you have grave enough ethical problems with something, the only honourable path is to resign. This won't happen often, but the sorts of policies we're talking about here are one such situation. To be fair, this might happen later in the book, but I didn't like that Dominic was the sort of person who would need to be in a situation where this impinged on his own welfare (by putting a man he cares about in danger) before he'll even consider whether what he's doing is wrong.
Not for me, I'm afraid, which is a shame, because several people whose taste I usually share love Charles' books.
MY GRADE: A DNF.
What a pity! I loved this book, so my experience was the opposite to yours. Perhaps it was that I read the series in order, so I knew the characters and how their story could be beforehand. Your review makes me think about the effect of this book when you read it with no previous references.
ReplyDeleteBona: That might have been an issue. I didn't mention it in my review, but I was annoyed by how things seemed to happen off-stage (I assumed they'd have been in the foreground in previous novels) and there was a huge part of the relationships that was just there, with no development. But actually, I don't know if I would have liked it even if I'd read those. There were quite a few things I didn't like that were independent of that!
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