The advantage of the portal fantasy is that it can be altered to fit whatever the author wants to explore. In my most recent reads, that has been a medieval style RPG world. We get the entertaining idea of slipping into a bit of Baldur's Gate or Spellforce, and living out an exciting life where death and glory are equally likely while we throw fireballs and climb mountains. Other escapes revolve around power and privilege, such as the "ah no, actually you're adopted, and the King is really your dad, and he's coming round to take you for icecream".
This one is about sex. Sexy sexy sex. Far more sex than I expected and definitely more sex than I should have been reading about on a train. That is sort of the risk with an ereader. You click through the market on it, grabbing a few different things, then don't actually read it for three months. At which point you haven't got a blurb on the back to remind you.
Fair warning then, this is erotica. Our protagonist, Ted, shacks up with either six or seven ladies, some of whom are AIs, all of whom decide he's the best thing since sliced bread. He has a lot of the sex.
Our chap ends up horribly injured, and rather than living as a paraplegic stuck in a chair, he gets wheeled into a rather fancy VR rig, which allows full body immersion, with sensing and motion. He uses this both to play a videogame (which, funnily enough, happens to be a medieval era magic RPG) and to have the sex.
This review might be getting a bit repetitive. That is fine. So does the sex.
Trouble is, I read this expecting a slightly more plot driven book, so the erotica was a bit of a surprise. You know how sometimes you pick up the wrong hot drink without realising, and you're really looking forward to that hot chocolate, but when you finally get it in your mouth it turns out to be a hot cup of sex? This is like that.
The porn isn't actually badly written, as far as erotica goes. It's got a reasonable variety of actors, and it's not too mechanical (even when the robots are involved) and the people having the sex aren't too boring. Nice attempt at having a few different personalities. It does really fall down though in the fact that I don't actually think there's a character in this that Ted doesn't sleep with. That feels like a slight level of overkill.
Still, if you're in the mood for porn and you like virtual reality, it's probably not a bad one to have a look at. Just don't accidentally read it on a train.
Recommended.
Tagged: Book Erotica Virtual women Novel Print