Monday, June 14, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Review Book Review: Beyond Ecstasy by Kit Rocha

 




Beyond Ecstasy is book 8 of 9 in Kit Rocha's erotic romance "Beyond" series.  For an overview of the series, see my last review of Book 7, Beyond Ruin here.  As you might imagine for Book eight of a nine book series, the series is quite clearly at this point in the wind down,* with long term plot arcs being paid off and coming to fruition as our heroes fight against the corrupt leaders of the city of Eden for the right to live and love their lives.  But we've still got some for some romance during it all, or else we wouldn't have a series, and I've loved this series' super sexy romance so so much, with the last book being a clear highlight.  

Alas, while Beyond Ecstasy still has its moments, its probably my least favorite book in the series.  After a four-way romance in book 7, we're back to a single M-W couple here: Hawk, the O'Kane who came from the farms in Sector Six (see Book 5), and Jeni, the sex worker who had a thing with Dallas and Lex for a while in prior books.  Their individual romance, absent any other context, is still done well with one really sexy scene midway through as a highlight, but the two are some of the least interesting romantic characters in the series (at least for me) and their romance is overshadowed in large part by the larger series arc coming into play.  And I'm invested in that series wide arc for sure, but I'm here also for the romance, so the balance being off is a problem.  

More specifics after the jump:

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Since he came from Sector Six with Finn, Hawk has learned to fit in around the O'Kanes...except in one way: he doesn't know how to really approach the women in any way other than by treating them like his many many sisters.  And then there's Jeni, the woman he has always had his eyes on, even when she moved on from dancing at the Broken Circle to being a third wheel in Dallas and Lex's bed.  If he could just make a move on her, Hawk knows he could make love to her in ways they both have only dreamed of - but she would have to be his first.  

Unbeknownst to Hawk, Jeni has seen him watching her from a distance, staring with desire, and she's desperate for him to make a move.  But when he finally does, he goes all the way: offering a collar, a temporary declaration of his possession, that seems more than she can commit to for someone she's barely talked with.  Yet when Hawk takes Jeni home to Sector Six, which is preparing for war, she starts to understand what is behind his rash actions, especially with the war with Eden right on their doorsteps.  

Thrown together more quickly than either could've imagined, Jeni and Hawk will find passion in a way that even the sex worker in Jeni could not have dreamed of.  But when the flames of war approach Hawk's childhood home and his original family, will their relationship be able to survive?  
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Whereas Beyond Ruin featured a foursome whom we'd known for long periods of time - Mad first shows up in book 1 and has I believe a POV chapter in as early as book 2 for example - Beyond Ecstasy deals with a pair of newer characters, Hawk (introduced in book 5) and Jeni (introduced in book 3 in a cameo appearance), both of whom have never really been central to the events of the story.  It make this a trickier book to work, because the reader will have significantly less care and interest from the start in this duo, even if Rocha always does a good job making them all really likable in their own works.  

And Hawk and Jeni's relationship does work really well, even subverting expectations regarding commonalities it has with prior books (the collar plot angle will remind fans of Book 2, but is handled entirely differently in the end to my surprise and pleasure).  Hawk's overeagerness and desire for possession is something that makes sense given what happened to him in Sector Six, and his desires to give Jeni the world of passion even if he's not 100% sure he knows quite what he's doing are tremendous.  And Jeni, as the woman with hidden talents (near perfect recall) for whom passion with another has never managed to be exclusive, despite her desires for same, is an excellent foil.  And the book not only manages to have them figure out their own sexual adventures really damn well, but also features one scene with Jeni's old mentor Gia helping them both which is so so sexy and will please pretty much any fan of this series.  It all winds up as you might expect in terms of romantic character development, except that the moment of challenge for their relationship comes not from Hawk simply messing up (as would've occurred in books of the past) but from something far more complicated and interesting.  

Alas, the fact that I didn't have as much initial interest in Hawk and Jeni does still cause a problem, because so much of this book is also wrapped not in the romance but in the fight against Eden, which starts to finally take lives of named characters we know about.  The last book also had this issue, but its foursome was so integral to everything that it made it all work.  Whereas with this book, the romance and the war plot feel like disparate elements that clash, and this book isn't long enough for the both of them.  Again the romance is still a significant portion of the plot, and I like the series-long arc and am interested in it, but the two elements just kind of don't mix as well as they have previously, especially as the series attempts to start the wheels rolling towards its end - and beyond (we even have cut aways in this book for the second straight book to characters who will be part of the spinoff series, which just feels a little much).  

Still a really fun series, if perhaps overburdened by the series end coming up - I wonder if Hawk/Jeni might've worked better for me earlier in the series, where I could get to know them unbothered, but here they're just less fun than the prior couples.  

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