Michael Black Black من عند Rodinka, Kaluzhskaya oblast', روسيا، 249087
Great book! Bought it without it's cover jacket at Goodwill guessing it was a satirical look at the politics of Mars Exploration. Ended up loving it for an entirely different reason. This book does it's best to define comedy and what makes us laugh, while at the same time telling a pillow-hugging story about a futuristic space adventure.
This is a twist on the tale of sleeping beauty to put it mildly. Its been classified as erotica or bsdm but for me it was horror erotica. There is a fine line between bsdm and abuse and the line is consent. If you take away the fantasy part of this novel with the queen and princes and castles and such and just look at the relationship between beauty and her prince you get an insite into an abusive relationship. Beauty doesn't consent to be treated this way, she only wants to please her prince. She comes to believe that his displeasure and the spankings and beating that she gets is somehow deserves. She believes that she deserves to be made to eat off the floor and to be displayed as an object. She comes to think if she can only do this or that right then he won't strike her. When in reality its not her fault. He only wants to be seen as powerful. The sad reality is women are abused by those they love everyday and more often than not they do feel this way. There are also scenes of rape in the book where Prince Alexi is being held in the kitchens. Rape is by definition not consentual and what happens to hem there is horrible. I never thought of sex as horror before I read this book but it certainly goes there. For all its horror this book has a sense of fantasy or fairy tale as things are conveniently unrealistic. There is no break for menstral cycles, nobody gets pregnant, and most of the slaves never eat. If I had as much sex as these people I would be hungry but the slaves rarely eat and never seem to be hungry. There's no description of the weather either. It never rains or is cold, even tho they are naked they don't notice the temperature. I guess thats the fairy tale side of the story.