The Beyond Novellas by Kit Rocha
This review is actually a review of three novellas: Beyond Temptation, Beyond Solitude, and Beyond Possession by Kit Rocha. As the names suggest these novellas are all part of the Beyond series of explicit erotic romance novels, featuring a gang of bootleggers in a post-apocalyptic world, living lives of love, freedom, and consensual but oh so dirty sex.
These novellas take place during or between books 3-6 of the series, with each featuring couples who are occasionally mentioned but not taking major roles in the main books. They're shorter stories, so the stories get into the sex quicker than the novels, but they all work fairly well for their length and are all very enjoyable. Recommended for those who enjoy the series, although those who haven't read any of the series will likely be a little lost.
Plot Summaries:
Beyond Temptation: Noah Lennox, brilliant hacker extraordinaire, comes to Sector Four and the O'Kanes looking for allies to take down Mac Fleming, the head of Sector Five who ruined his friend. But what he doesn't expect is what he finds: Emma Cibulski, his friend's sister who he helped get out of Sector Five four years ago. Emma is a proud O'Kane now, but she still carries a flame for Noah, a flame she's all to eager to act upon...if Noah's secrets don't destroy them both....
Beyond Solitude: Derek Ford may be injured - and god forbid you treat him like an invalid - and he ay not take part in their more open carnal pleasures, but he's still a valuable cog in the O'Kane gang, the one who does the office work to manage their whole enterprise. Mia escaped Sector Two, where she was raised to be a whore and trophy who hid her intelligence, and came to Sector Four hoping for a new start in freedom, where she could use her intelligence openly and find something more. As Ford's new assistant, she's perfectly able to help him take the O'Kane business to a new level - but what neither of them may be able to handle are the feelings they invoke in each other.....
Beyond Possession: Tatiana Stone is the daughter of Sector Four's late leader - a hated tyrant dethroned by Dallas O'Kane. She's moved on past that stain on her reputation to become a respected craftsperson, but one of the other crafters, who has seduced her younger sister, is making noise about trying to use the Stone name to revolt against the O'Kanes, which would throw her carefully maintained and hard fought life into disarray. And then there's Zan, the O'Kane enforcer ashamed of a former failure who keeps coming by to see her...and almost certainly has been doing so on Dallas O'Kane's orders. But Tatiana and Zan can't keep away from each other for long, and as the status quo threatens to fall apart, the two will come together to try and build something new...if there's anything left.
Thoughts: If you've read the series, you know what to expect from these novellas: A couple (or grouping as two books feature poly relationships) comes together and learns to love each other through steamy steamy sex, before something happens (usually the guy screwing up) to throw them apart, followed by conciliation and happiness. And yeah that happens in all three stories to an extent, although the shorter page length means that for Temptation and Possession, we get to the sex scenes even faster than in most of the novels: not a page to waste here.
But still the formula is the same so what makes these work are the new couples. Noah and Emma (Temptation) are the most familiar from the novels, and honestly their novella is the weakest: Noah is almost a stereotypical super hacker, Emma's art is familiar from the novels, and their conflict occurs over a mistake of the past that they can obviously get past. But the other two new couples are great, especially Ford and Mia (Beyond Solitude), which finally shows us an O'Kane who isn't in to all the public performing and orgies for himself, as well as the actual businessmen behind the scenes of the O'Kane operation. I really love the idea of these two working as the underlying office managers and data analysts making everything run well and profitable, and falling in love through that work: they're truly great and fun. And Zan and Tatiana (Possession)'s story honestly feels like it could've been expanded into a full novel if it made sense in the series' meta-arc, and features one of the better finales of any of the Beyond novels: with the conflict between the main couple for once not being caused by anyone making a mistake, but totally outside circumstances and being resolved without the guy needing to have someone yell at him.
All three novellas are filled with tremendous steamy sex scenes, as you'd expect by the way. So they're all great. But I really enjoyed Beyond Solitude in particular, and am glad I splurged on this bundle to get more of this series.
No comments:
Post a Comment