This one is another favourite, an 100% for dommes F/m delight about a gruff space admiral (Kira) and the ruggedly handsome slave (Mak) she rescues and then comes to love and appreciate. I think what I enjoy most about this book is that it’s not only completely focused on wish fulfillment, and not afraid to go absolutely off the deep end into the background grim, but that there’s a sort of amusing self awareness about things that bug dommes. Additionally, there’s enough plot and worldbuilding to keep things interesting between scenes of the characters making gooey eyes at each other and hopping into kink, so much so that even if this was somehow closed door I’d still find it fun. Gold tells a good swashbucking space yarn, but it also has the rare distinction of a character in a leadership role who is given a lot of on page time to show why they are a good leader.
A lot of books don’t do that. Be it royalty or a titan of industry, the day to day of how the character is awesome is made as vague as possible. They might work long hours with paperwork, close amazing deals or be narrated as giving stirring speeches, but ultimately things are pretty handwaved or worse, gives rather the opposite impression. As a reader who has complained of other books with queens being all tiara, no tax policy; or that make the supposedly business savvy characters feel like failsons and saps, I can’t emphasize how much I enjoyed seeing Kira take charge thoughtfully.
It’s a workplace romance of sorts, where the workplace just happens to be a hypercapitalist libertarian, slave owning space dystopia and where BDSM is just the normal recreational activity. I am not even sure this society has a concept of vanilla, even among consenting parties.
Otherwise, as far romances go, The Admiral’s Acquisition leans to incredibly horny insta-lust, with a very rapid escalation into sex and both diegetic and non-diegetic BDSM aplenty. Obviously you can expect a happily ever after, and this one does a pretty good job of letting the sub show they are useful without making them the main event. While the story is told from a dual perspective, it also has a very unusual technique of running scenes a second time through the viewpoint of the other character, rather than using the jumps between Kira and Mak just to advance the external plot. The effect is almost like when you play with someone and then you get them to run back with you how much they enjoyed it during aftercare.
I flagged earlier that non-digetic BDSM makes a big part of the setting (and the resulting conflicts that follow from it). That’s worth an additional caveat for some readers that Kira will be threatened by odious coworkers (though she defends herself well) and nearly everyone in this universe is bisexual and very comfortable with public sex between any combo of genders, consenting or not. Kira is a bit of a stick in the mud for her society, and rejects what other people get up to, but if you don’t want to see male dominants with female subs, even depicted negatively, consider yourself forewarned. And if the idea of the book that almost immediately shows you a very graphic, on page M/m sexual assault is distressing, consider this flagged as well. Mak’s need for rescue is lingered on enough that it’s clear it’s there for titillation as much as extra emphasis. I liked this because I like the rougher stuff, you might not find that your cup of tea.
And, if you are a strict nothing but un-caveated consent person, ditto this might not work, because the power imbalance between the characters remains consistent even to the ending. Nevertheless, I think Gold’s emphasis on Kira being an actually good boss also helps here. It’s not just that she doesn’t whip her crew or do the other awful things villain characters are depicted getting up to, but she also sets crew up for success and independence, a mindset she’s clearly also applying to Mak. In the various ways we might try to tell a BDSM romance with non and dub con while still leaving the dominant character sympathetic, the twin tropes of “oops I accidentally a slave” and “my society is worse than me by comparison” remain the most tried and true ways to gently elide around the reader’s sensible moral scruples and let one just be indulged by a fantasy. This, in itself, is nothing new, but Gold does a good job of not letting her privileged character be lazy about their moral obligations, which books also don’t always do well. You get a sense that some of the meta-point here is that the massive social inequality is getting in the way of the D/s the couple would naturally prefer. Mak doesn’t want to be chattel, and Kira doesn’t want to be objectified.
Kira, the dominant lead, also grapples with both a fair bit of sexism around her role as an Admiral (in this case meaning the commander of a large combo cargo/combat ship with a fair bit of other authority in her society) and in navigating the way other people tend to project their own fantasies onto her, both a a challenge or expecting her to play the admiral with them in her personal life. Mak, our sub, was submissive in the kink sense before he was thrown into slavery bombards her with a fair amount of idealized hero worship, but part of his arc is about rediscovering he can enjoy submission again in a (mostly) consenting context.
All told, this one remains on my top 10 lists, probably even top 3. About the only thing I can really complain about it that we probably aren’t getting a third book in the series, but as this is also clearly a labour of love, I am going to count myself luck with what we got.
Where to Buy
Where to Find the Author
I cannot locate so much as a defunct twitter account, but if anyone has anything better than an Amazon author page I would love to update this.
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