“Captured” by Helen Kirkman [Femdom Book Review]

One of the hardest parts of this project remains that books with femdom in them are poorly labeled, giving you little warning about what you are getting into. It’s only recently that romance.io even made a distinction between “fem-dom” (do not ask me why they think it needed a hyphen) and general “BDSM” as a tag, and otherwise we are stuck with recommendations and trying to judge books by their proverbial covers. When is a “take charge” heroine code for one who merely shows a modicum of competence, and when is it signaling and will grab the hero by the literal balls? 

At the same time, it usually takes me a couple of days of focused attention to read a novel length book, and at a weekly review schedule that means that it’s perfectly possible to pick a book that *might* be potentially worth it and come away bleakly disappointed. Which, for pleasure reading is just part of the experience, but for my (self imposed) deadline eats into time I could spend on something I know definitely at least meets criteria of having femdom. That inversely is at odds with my other hope with this project, to expand the pool of searchable works beyond the same handful of titles getting recommended over and over. But if I find a dud and other people thought it was femdom I am at least doing a public service by calling attention to a false flag. 

Inversely, I am not sure how much people want to read 600 to 1000 words of “Pearl had a hunch based on the ghost of a hint and was wrong”. And you really can’t tell. You would think a work like Her Bridegroom Bought And Paid For would have delivered, but that one was rather Alphahole male dom. This is a game of roulette with both my time and exposure to squick. 

Captured, therefore, was a big risk only made possible by slotting reading it into what was supposed to be fun time not review time. Having found Daughter of the Blood an unpleasant read, and stumbling on a thread of books that inverted the trope of a Princess being given to a Barbarian to a Barbarian being given to a Princess, I gave it a careful look over in case anything popped out. Most of the titles suggested were the usual he men alpha shocks priss who then surrenders to his aura of erotic menace, but on the list was Forbidden by Helen Kirkman, promising to be a princess and slave. The male lead was in chains on the cover.  So I tried to find a copy. 

Only Kirkman is a now obscure, trad published (Harlequin) historical author who seemed to stop writing in the late aughts. The best even behemoths like Amazon can do is help you buy you a second-hand paperback from a third party. You cannot buy her work as an e-book, at least through any search engine I tried.  And yet, I gave it a shot in my library catalogue and found not my goal but another captive male romance by her later in the series Captured. It was free, so why not? I could always just DNF and it was Sunday night so I had time to grab a more reliable replacement if I had to. 

I say all this to let you know how low my expectations were going in. Reader, I inhaled the damn thing that night, staying up until midnight to finish it. I liked it. I liked the dynamic, the setting, the plot, even the purple prose sex scenes where everything is a bit discombobulated and dream-like. 

As for what you get: It’s England in the 700s, a period when everything was a fractured bunch of smaller tribal groups and you could find three absolute kings in what is now day trip driving distance. This may be a tough setting to jump into for people whose preference for historicals leans more to the restrained and familiar Regency period, but for someone whose parents met through the SCA, the deep cuts of the cultural roots of the UK are my happy place. 

Princess Rosamund is living in a Viking camp after being handed to them by her Mercian Royal relatives as a bargaining tool. Things have not gone well. The Viking are plundering their way through Wessex, and just brutally murdered a bunch of hostages so that they can keep doing that. Rosamund, knowing this will not end well one way or another, is looking to get the hell out of here with the money she has squirreled away being the favoured mistress of one of the ranking members of the group. And then she stumbles upon Boda, a battered, chained and unconscious captive in the hands of the guy who personally carried out the killing of the hostages. Rosamund takes one look at his helpless body (and red hair) and is smitten. She assertively wins the guy in a game of dice and hauls him back to her tent. 

She then waits until he is conscious to have her way with him, in a dramatic and immediate escalation. I had been extremely worried that the books genre and time period would mean things would go the way things usually do, where the captive male lead (restrained or not) terrorizes the heroine with his erotic assertions. But, while there’s a brief point where he tries to assert himself, it isn’t via sexual assault to put her in her place or some such, and Rosamund takes control again by giving him a handjob she is very clearly enjoying, both the act itself and the knowledge she has the literal upper hand in her skill at seduction. 

The book also takes advantage of her understood profession as a camp follower to give her lots of dialogue about just wanting the captive as her bed warmer. We do not need her to be a virgin he opens to pleasures she has never known, or coy about this or her immense sexual confidence. While Rosamund’s not exactly happy about having been handed over to Vikings, she’s been thriving about as much anyone can, with remarkable savoire faire.

But all isn’t as it seems. Boda is an escaped slave-convict from the peasantry of Mercia, rough speaking and working as a mercenary for Wessex, but his capture is no mere chance. Meanwhile, cultured refined Rosamund is hiding a secret of her own. Nevertheless they both have their own reasons to be unwilling to return to Mercia and Boda agrees that when the time is right he will help her and her teenage maid Merriwen escape. 

Merriwen is one of the other things that adds charm to the book. With everyone’s perception she is “simple” you get what would be more accurate to a describe as an autistic person who has been accidentally infantilized due to people underestimating her capacity to function. Now 16, Merriwen will do some things that cause problems for our leads, but these make sense once you know who Merriwen really is and compare how she is being treated. Honourable mention also goes to the way two side characters, Olga, another camp follower, and Od, one of the minions of the book’s villain, are handled. Both could have been depicted as one dimensional, the bad sex worker to contrast with the virtuous heroine, and the superstitious mini-boss to be overcome. 

Of course you are probably mostly wondering about the femdom, and what I would say is that you have is a combo of plot conveniently giving some fetish fodder (whump, bondage) and structural explorations of fealty that dovetail nicely with maintaining Rosamund’s power even into book end.  This is another place to see handled well, particularly more than just “well you won’t have any more real world power any more, but let’s be kinky still” is usually as good as it gets.

Working in service to this conclusion is Boda’s massive childhood trauma. He has deeply internalized his lowly status, not just peasant but the tier below it, as a thrall  pushed into that status by his father’s crimes. Thus the other obstacle in the characters’ way, outside of the primary issue of marauding Vikings and medieval war crimes, is his ambivalence about accepting rewards for his exemplary military performance that would raise his rank. He has already turned them down once, and Rosamund, regardless of the real truth about her, is a noble. Despite her clear and straightforward interest in him and repeatedly pointing out absolutely 0 people would successfully prosecute a war hero in a completely different kingdom for being an escaped slave, he’s all set to throw away their HEA based on not being good enough for her. 

The resolution of that is deeply satisfying and narratively consistent to that concept of fealty. After receiving lands and status as a reward for various heroics, he passes them all to her. He will marry her, yes, but she has to be the head of their household. While it also turns out she was correct and the risks of his dark past putting him in trouble is him wildly blowing things out of proportion, their respective roles with each other remain in a way they both find works for them. Even no longer a slave, they are able to turn the dynamics of fealty and of knight and lady into a very satisfyingly implied FLR.

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Where to buy: 

Look for copies on places like thriftbooks.com or check your local library because this one is a hard to find gem. 

Liked this review? Check out more titles in my 2026 Femdom Book Review Project!