Susan Wright, A Pound of Flesh

A Pound of Flesh

Susan Wright

Roc, Feb 2007, $14.00

ISBN 0451461274

Throughout the land, children are sold to Pleasure Houses where they are trained to become "pleasure slaves" servicing their often abusive masters. Once in a rare moment a slavemaster frees his slave. This happened in Vidaris where former slavemaster Lexander liberated his love-slave Marja.

Over the objection of Marja, Lexander and his Thule warriors assassinate his former partner Helanas, and burn down Vidaris. By this act he declares his intent to destroy the rotted system by force; officials in turn affirm that Lexander is an outlaw to be killed by his former peers. He and Marja travel Londinium where their next assault is to be on Becksbury by manipulating the Krishna followers into destroying the facility. To gain entrance, Lexander pretends to be an important slavemaster with Marja posing as his slave; roles both know from experience. However, Lexander goes berserk when the local slavemaster viciously beats his Marja. Lexander and Marja split over how to change society as Marja sees how helpless the freed slaves are, while Lexander's insists that all Pleasure Houses must burn and their masters killed with no thought towards the future of freed slaves. This conflict sends the pair on separate journeys in spite of the need to team up when it comes to confronting the house of Saaladet.

The sequel TO SERVE AND SUBMIT, A POUND OF FLESH feels in many ways like a feeder book as no major progress on the goal is achieved. Still this is an interesting tale as the sub Marja and the Dom Lexander struggle to do what each believes is the right thing. There are a variety of sexual encounters (willing and not willing) and supernatural beings. Fans who enjoy something different in their reading will appreciate this erotic fantasy though reading the first book enhances the understanding of this exciting thriller.

Harriet Klausner