Grade: C

Wow, speaking of whores, here’s another story featuring an honest-to-goodness whore. Call me a big ole perv, but I am just a huge fan of plotlines involving real whores and not just ho-posers who don’t have to sleep with anyone but the hero in the entire story. The heroine in this book is a bitter, cynical, crackwhore who’d do just about anything for… well, um… crack. The hero in this story is a pimp. He’s not her pimp, but that’s his honest-to-goodness profession. It’s too bad that he’s not the kind of pimp who cruises around in purple velour suits, gold teeth, and fedora hats, while brandishing around a cane with a solid gold skull as its handle. That would have been awesome. No, kids, this is purely a rescue fantasy where the pimp with the heart of gold rescues the hooker a la Pretty Woman except the hooker is on crack and they’re in Russia (”in Soviet Russia, the crack smokes you…”). The first few chapters of this novella definitely had me hooked. I mean, here we’ve got a girl who’s living in the gutter, whoring herself out to anyone for crack money, and then we find out that this mysterious Russian demon pimp has been watching her for months and wants him all to herself. What does he want with her? What makes this girl so special? What the hell kind of world does this demon pimp come from? Does everyone in this world know about these demons? Do I get the answers to these questions? Sadly, no. The demon pimp wants the crackwhore for a girlfriend because he is attracted to her “purity”. No, really. That’s it.

Alli is a whore. She likes crack. She seems to be American, but this isn’t made clear. She’s in Russia, however, and can’t speak too much Russian. Out of the blue, a man approaches her, offering her a big bag of drugs, if she were to do a couple of things for him. He makes her bathe in ice-cold water, clean up, dress up, and takes her to a brothel. In the brothel, another man approaches her, this one well-dressed and obviously rich, and takes her away from the brothel. He also wines and dines her, offers her all the riches and luxuries in the world if she were to sign over her soul to him (he is an ice demon), they have sex, he turns her into an ice demon, and then we find out his “ulterior motive,” which isn’t really much of one. I was kind of expecting Dimitri to turn Alli into some kind of assassin or something, but instead she becomes some kind of manager for his brothels. And his girlfriend. That’s it.

According to the authors’ website, this is supposed to be the first book in the series, but I found myself completely lost about the supposed mythology of this ‘verse as though it were the tenth book of the series. For example, Dimitri the Pimp is the “third son to King Leviathan, Ruler of the Conglacio lands in the Afterverse,” but I don’t know what any of this stuff means. There are some information on their website about this universe, but I just can’t–let me borrow a phrase from my friend Karen here–”be arsed” to open a browser, type in their site address, and look up the info I need when I don’t understand what’s going on. Lord, give me an info-dump, give me something in the book itself. Hell, I would have settled for a lengthy, stilted, awkward expositional monologue from Dimitri himself if it would help me learn more about this world. Is the world that Ally lives in the same as our world, only with demons in it? Is it an alternate universe? Is there a bridge between this “afterverse” and our world? How come power-transfers in paranormal romances can only be done through sex? Throw me a bone here, kids, ’cause I really don’t know what’s going on.

As for Alli and Dimitri, I think I would have liked them more if I knew more about them. Why is Dimitri a pimp? Why is Alli a whore? Where did she come from? How did she get hooked onto drugs? What does her transformation into an ice-demon mean for her? I was momentarily fascinated by Alli in the beginning, especially since she seemed so hard, so cynical for one so young. She reminded me of a rabid stray dog at first, unwilling to let anyone get close to her, and I bought it because it was the only way she could have survived living in the frozen tundra that is Russia as a homeless whore for so long. But then it turned out that she was just a princess in need of rescuing and I just had to shake my head. That scene where Drake, Dimitri’s right hand man, hassles her and she ends up crying in a corner? The Alli in the first chapter of this book could have totally handled him. Hell, she could have been the one to make him cry. I just don’t get how she could so completely fall apart and become so dependent on Dimitri. In a way, though, it made sense because this girl had been so strong by herself for so long, so when a guy she could lean on came along, I could understand her need to just surrender everything to him, I guess. As for Dimitri, on the other hand, I couldn’t get a bead on him because at first, he seemed like a creepy stalker with a dark ulterior motive, but as it turns out… yeah, I don’t know. I find myself hard pressed to analyze the motivations of these people ’cause I knew close to nothing about them.

What really drew me into this book, I must admit, is the pimp storyline. It’s a unique one, that’s for sure, and I really wish that the authors had taken the ball and ran with it. They portray Russia as this Winter Wonderland that’s basically a playground for Alli and Dimitri, as though they completely forgot that these two are a whore and a pimp, respectively. Where was the Russian underbelly? Why isn’t the landscape grittier and dirtier? Their two leads are a pimp and a whore, for God’s sake! Where’s the violence? Where’s the blood? Where’s the realism? While there was adequate chemistry between Dimitri and Alli, I just wish there had been more between them. I wish there had been more to this story, period. More character development, more mythology, more… MORE. As it is, it’s just wasted opportunity… with a fairy tale ending. But like I said, this is the first book in the series, so hopefully, we’ll learn more about this world in the sequels or something. Check it out if only you’ve never read a book where the romantic lead is a pimp and the curiosity is killing you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 12:07 am and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.