After deciding that my original pick for this week was so terribly bad that reviewing it would be a simple unkindness to myself as much as the author, my plea for some more sapphic or queer suggestions turned up a much better replacement, Kiss of Seduction, as well as a few other books I can add to my review backlog.
This one’s a contemporary paranormal romance, a succubus and a half angel, set in the author’s version of the kinky decadent court of BDSM obsessed supernaturals trope. Demons, vampires, werewolves, fae and whatnot live in harmony with the humans they have claimed, but must fight off enemy courts at their borders. Sabor is hardly the first writer to dream up that kind of zoo, but having a not particularly unique premise doesn’t mean something can’t be executed well. Sure, the setting is somewhat of a conceit to justify the aesthetics of the various relationships (and an elaborate magic collating rite), but it’s the quality of writing that can make it break a book more than the degree of novelty it tries to have.
Of course that’s particularly true in Romance. You already expect a HEA, and usually a pretty tight formula following the kind of Romance it is, Historical, Inspirational, Amish, Cowboy, etc… Being sapphic doesn’t change any of the other expected, familiar beats either: the initially helpless character in the pair coming to recognize her power; the brooding dominant softened by true love and finally confident they can let go and be their full selves with the beloved; and of course that any side characters either become insta-family obsessed with helping the main pair come together or obstacles to be vanquished.
Predictable or not, I was still interested enough to see precisely how this horny haunted commune would resolve their challenges to be entertained by it.
I was also happy Sabor avoids some of the bad habits authors can fall into when they write linked-but-stand-alone books. Past and future series characters were very present, but neither intrusive enough to hog the spotlight, nor pointless if you hadn’t read previous books. While it was true that if the characters had already gotten their own happily ever after there would be some time to show this couple still living their best life, the Court of Chains series seems to have aimed for enough variation there’s none of the more obnoxious hive mind of happiness that late in series books can fall into.
Furthermore, as inherently silly as the concept of a friendly vampire is (and in these books every supernatural but the werewolf characters are some variation of an erotic lifeforce drainer), I also find there’s a lot more honesty in starting with the concept that your (fantasy) dominants are inherently predators and figuring out how they try to mitigate that. All too often an otherwise contemporary or more grounded in the real world setting can backfire and leave the intentionally flagged BDSM elements an awkward effort to wallpaper over actual consent issues.
This can be a particular problem in any romance series, more so when a major power imbalance is an important part of each story. One dominant billionaire/Duke/BDSM club owner is a person with a fetish, four or five, all buddies with nobody else unlike them and start feeling like a conspiracy. Sabor’s Court of Chains setting has made its characters self aware, a group of monsters agreeing that their biology makes having a thrall unavoidable and trying to figure about how to put some sort of brakes on.
Nonetheless, the ensemble setting still requires certain tolerances from the reader. While this is strictly speaking sapphic, the peril of the story, told as much for titillation (though perhaps not in as much detail), is the constant threat of enslavement by bad guys. Our sub character, Evie, is a former vampire thrall, and our dom, Natalya, is stuck on earth after killing her cruel master, and has to fear being returned to service again. It seems like all the other major female characters are capable of finding Evie attractive, but they are all in straight, male dominated relationships or headed for one.
If that’s a deal breaker, it would be understandable. Lots of people looking for femdom don’t want to be bothered with male dominance, and if you are looking for sapphic *only*, a series that is majority hetero M/f and uses those couples as the side characters is not going to fill that need.
I think it’s most accurate to say the book is bisexual, so much so that the character being set up as the male lead of the next book is causally described as doing BDSM play with a man. Evie, the literally angelic sub, is exclusively attracted to women, but her brutalization is largely in the hands of men. Natalya’s past partners were chosen in a gender blind fashion, but largely due to a choice in writing she also lives in a world where she has to fear being possessed and used by men more so than women.
There are Vampire Queens, of course, to rival the settings Vampire Kings, and nothing mechanically than makes magic women weaker than magic men, but overall the tone also gives women a bit of a sympathetic buff, that you can be shitty exes or minions of the bad guys, but your heart will ultimately be in the right place. Likewise, male characters can end up enslaved in the story, but I do think there’s a bit of tilt to treating M/f like the overall setting default.
For me, I also found myself in an interesting position because I responded more to the book’s steady stream of whump than I did to the gooey, happy consenting kink parts between the leads. People are forever being shot, stabbed or otherwise maimed and in need of rescue and concern by other characters. I think that’s hot.
As a reader this is perhaps another finer point not properly talked about in the search for good femdom stories. As a dominant I am not personally attracted to dominants. I am somewhat omnisexually attracted to certain kinds of suffering and submission, but as much as I care about books with dommes, I want characters I can self insert into as a dominant that do not insult, annoy or disappoint me.
The actual on page consensual kink between our leads is mostly mild and cozy, using clear stated confirmations of consent at the bulk of its dirty talk, and showing Evie slowly warming up across the many sex scenes between the leads as a sort of mental health progress marker in her trauma recovery. Natalya is (by and large) acting as a wish fulfillment top, that creature of typically submissive fantasy that uses kink to heal and do exactly what the sub secretly wants, but behaves with a combination of shame and gratitude that she lets things go too far with the filthy things she is “making” the sub do. It’s not Sabor’s fault, I can find that romantic or interesting, but I am probably only going to find the more non-diagetic parts of the book erotic.
Likewise, Natalya’s day to day role is to run a BDSM club that provides all the heightened emotions that Fae and Fiend seem to require to eat. There, she plays a stereotypical house dominatrix-as-mentor role, coaching monsters to regulate themselves in a motherly fashion. This often gives me some reservations on the wish fulfillment front that I expect from romance, as a dominant reader.
What redeems things for me are twofold, the classic domme pedestal is framed not as the “proper” way dominants should be, but a disassociation from strong emotional connections Natalya uses because she is wary of love, and that her big pathos is around a world that tends to treat opening up and revealing your true self as submission and undermines those who do. That’s focused on a literal unwillingness to be naked before others, which is given plot reasons, but stands with its symbolism too.
As far as the power fantasy I know many readers say they want, Natalya is second in command in the collective, but perceives that more as a function of overlapping magical biology than real deference to their official leader. The blood sucking variation of Vampire functions on an ability to pool power and it is more pragmatic to leave another character with the fancy hat. Another character might be King, but the decisions are clearly determined collectively, through a fairly consensus tilted alliance.
And as much as the character is fixated on protecting and repairing Evie, the character is given lots of moments to be badass that don’t feel forced. All characters get injured a lot, but even when Natalya is most vulnerable she’s either doing the lion with a thorn in its paw thing or successfully undermining her captors.
So, Kiss of Seduction was fun. I delivers an entertaining ride, I found the characters cute, and it suggests that you can make a working book by writing a female character into a typically male role without having to change much about the characters. Now if only writers would have that kind of courage in the other direction, when they write male sub characters. Still, until there’s more options I think it’s safe to say that sapphic femdom romances do a good job of showing what’s possible.
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