Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Given the title, I really should have known what to expect. I was led to believe that this book was a decent urban fantasy with a few steamy sex scenes thrown in for good measure. After reading it, I think somebody was leading me up the garden path. I haven’t read the urban fantasy genre too extensively, but I do know that quality writing is to be found within it (Jim Butcher’s Dresden series for example).

This book was about as far from quality writing as you can get. It basically consists of the following - a fallen Greek god being turned into a sex slave for the pleasure of any woman who should summon him after happening to stumble upon the pages of the book he’s bound to for all eternity. The novels main character performing said summoning and then spending the rest of the book trying to escape having sex with him (when I say sex, I mean penetration, there’s oodles of foreplay. Yeah, she’s really trying hard here.) and doing her best not to fall in love. She’s been hurt badly before (obviously), and does her very very best (yeah yeah) to fight all of these sexual urges that we’re constantly reminded of. Yet in the end she’s determined to free him from his prison because she can’t live without him.

I would say there was a plot apart from the whole sex thing, but there isn’t really. At least not one of any substance. Oh sure, a few Greek gods and goddesses appear to exchange harsh words now and again, and there’s a teeny tiny bit of ancient Greek ‘history’ (I use that term very loosely), but apart from that it’s pretty much all foreplay and then finally full blown sex. Think Mills & Boon with a few Greek gods thrown in for good measure.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against erotica. What I object to is badly written and very cheesy erotica parading under the guise of urban fantasy. Seriously, I wonder how these things manage to get published!

I’ve been told the series gets better, and that this first book isn’t part of the Dark Hunter series proper but that it introduces some of the main characters. Yeah, there’s more of them. I have to say I’m very sceptical, this was so appallingly bad I can’t imagine a writer who has produced this improving that much. I do however have the first book in the Dark Hunter series, which I bought at the same time as this one. I may read it at some point, maybe if I’m the mood for a good laugh!