Tunnels and Troll

Troll Erotica

By: Christie Sims, Alara Branwen

Narrated by: Audrey Lusk

Length: 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Warning: This is a tale of beast sex. This story was made to unlock your darkest fantasies and innermost desires. It is not for the faint of heart and is not your mother's erotica. All of the sexual descriptions found in this audiobook are very explicit in nature. It's not suitable for someone under 18 years of age. Listen at your own risk.

Trying to catch a lost cat, Regina enters a cave. She is dismayed when she realizes that the cave is the entrance to a labyrinthine cave system. Now she's the one who's lost, trapped in the cool darkness. As she wanders, Regina feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise - someone is watching her. She shrugs the feeling off - there's no one else in the labyrinth.

But someone is watching her. Or something. Something old and lonely that has been watching her for a long time. Something that has used its magic to lure her into the cave. Something that has decided it has been alone for too long, and that it wants Regina to slake its carnal hunger.

©2014 Dragon Style Press (P)2014 Dragon Style Press

Makes me wish for "my mother's erotica"

I laugh every time I see stuff like "This is not your mother's erotica" as if people are re-inventing the wheel just because it's online. Or that they're writing taboo things just because they say they're taboo.

Is there a troll? Yes. His name is Ryan, because the author has the imagination of a hedgehog. He lives in a series of caves that somehow everyone knows about, including the main character Regina. Except it's a huge surprise for her when she stumbles into them.

That's right, 22 whole minutes of plot and there are continuity errors.

Is there beast sex in this book? In a word, no. Ryan is basically a human who smells kinda bad but is the neatest cleanest kindest troll ever. I mean, right up until he rapes her. But he's still the neatest cleanest kindest most caring rapist ever.

This book is 20 minutes of a character with the intelligence of a 4-year-old wandering lost in caves surprised that it's dark in there, 2 minutes of utterly vanilla and completely without description sex. It could have been a human or a horse going at it from the generalized handwaving, unless "he pushed his penis into and out of her" over and over is considered a descriptive sex scene. I've read more erotic menus.

The audio performance was... well. It existed. It sounds like Audrey Lusk is so damned done with her job, the whole story sounds like one big sarcastic sneer. It might not be Man Booker material, but I respect the hell out of performers who give a good effort no matter what their contract has them reading. I might not have been impressed by the writing but can think of three performers off the top of my head that still would have managed to make it listenable, not phoned it in entirely.

That said, it's STILL better narration than some of these authors' books have, so on a scale of Taken By The Triceratops to Taken by the Dragon (yeah there's lots of creativity going on) this is like, a 5-star performance. I would take this narrator all day long over the ridiculous whining of several others, and I mean, the editing itself was okay? Considering they likely did this in a single take, I don't know how much praise it deserves, but the editing and lack of screwing that part up is the only real nice thing I have to say about this book.

Why do I keep listening to them? Because some are actually really enjoyable! Unfortunately it's a crapshoot, especially as people are afraid of reviewing erotica or something.

I'd love some kind of consistency to these, like decent writing AND a decent narrator. Amber Foy's books were pulled from Audible, but they were excellent (and are still available on Kindle). They likely got pulled for being what these books claim to be, heh.

I'm blind, so audiobooks are my windows to the world etc etc, and my screen reader does a better job reading some of these books (and it sounds like a demonically possessed Speak-n-Spell at the best of times). It's why I get disappointed. Audible has an excellent refund policy but at over 500 books they get a little crabby when it comes to returns, so I keep trying out cheap books in hopes of finding another keeper.