Emily May's Reviews > Pleasure Unbound

For a book that is supposedly urban fantasy but is actually just a kind of paranormal erotica, I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would. And, sure, I'm not a complete idiot and I understood beforehand that any book, urban fantasy or not, that is called 'Pleasure Unbound' will have more than it's fair share of smut and/or romance. But... is it really so difficult to get a good UF mystery going in the background before the main couple get it on. I'm slightly disappointed but no longer surprised. It seems that recently every book I read from the UF/PNR pile is very little of the former with a whole lot of smutty emphasis on the latter.

I read erotica, I have a lot of respect and adoration for authors who can build up sexual tension; but if you're going to write a book that is little more than entirely erotically based, why even bother getting the reader's hopes up by calling it something it isn't. For the most part I enjoyed this novel. I liked him a lot better than I liked her, which isn't particularly good when I'm trying to relate to the female protagonist. Their sex scenes were scorching and some of the darker aspects of the novel were in equal parts disturbing and gripping - like a car crash.

If you compare it to Storm Born, which is another novel that is more sex than it is plot, then it's far more enjoyable and far better written. I'm of the minority opinion that Storm Born was probably Mead's greatest failure (that I have read so far anyway) mostly because I, as a Richelle Mead fan, went into it expecting something like her Succubus series and got hastily (and poorly) put-together random monsters, mythology and a general mish-mash of nonsense.

And now that I'm done ripping apart Richelle Mead, I'll get back to my point: I liked Pleasure Unbound. It had the potential to be a great book if Larissa Ione had worked more on the general plot instead of going on and on about a demon with semen to rival that stuff you get in pots on the back shelves of Ann Summers (you think I'm joking? I'm not). At the moment I'm not rushing out to read more of this series because I have so many other books awaiting my attention, but I won't say that I'll never return to it.