I’m a huge fan of erotic romance. I like my books chockfull of sex and violence, but I’m wacky like that. I have no problem if there were sex scenes on every other page nor do I care who’s actually having sex—girl/boy, boy/girl/boy, boy/boy—as long as they’re not just throw-away sex scenes and actually do something to advance the plot. If I’m reading your book and I hear a bow-chicka-bow-wow when your characters are about to have sex, I’m going to have hard time taking it seriously and will probably end up rolling my eyes and scoffing instead of getting turned on. But what about when the sexin’ is integral to the plot, but you still hear the porn music? Well, my friends, this book totally answers that for me. I believe I can safely that every single sex scene here is integral to the plot, because each one is executed for the purpose of saving the heroes’ lives. No, I’m not kidding. That is not a joke. The sex in this book is for healing purposes only, just like in… dare I say it… Anita Blake’s world! Okay, that was mean. Evangeline Anderson is a better writer than LKH. Anyway, combined with two of the most cardboard male characters I have ever encountered in the world of fiction—I swear to God, they’re straight out of a Starsky and Hutch fanfic—and a heroine who is so damned naïve and clueless that I just wanted push her out of the way lest she get squashed by a truck, I couldn’t read this book without laughing out loud… unintentionally. On the other hand, the sex is really very super-hot and the world-building, or whatever there is of it, is quite impressive. I swear, if this were a straight buddy-cop sci-fi (with the two male detectives occasionally having sex together), it would be… hey, Evangeline Anderson’s The Assignment!

Sadie is a wide-eyed, gee-whiz cub reporter from a backwater town located on Io, which is one of Saturn’s moons. All she wants is to be taken seriously as a journalist. She thinks she can do this by posing as a prostie-borg, synthetic women with synthetic brains created solely for sexual purposes, so she can get a firsthand account of what it’s like to be such a creature and maybe snag a Solar Pulitzer for her troubles. Nearing the end of her assignment, Sadie’s Overlook-Me chip, which renders her invisible to prospective johns and other unsavory characters, malfunctions and she is picked from the prostie-borg lineup by two handsome men, a dark-haired one and a blond one. Hmm. Sadie’s instinctive reaction is to run away screaming, but she would get busted because a prostie-borg wouldn’t do that, so she is forced to go into a room with the two gentlemen. Sadie goes on attack mode the moment they are alone, but as it turns out, the two men are actually police detectives from Old Earth, named Dave Starsky and Ken Hutchinson. Just kidding, their names are David Blakely and Christian Holtstein. They are undercover trying to find out who’s behind the brain-napping spree. You see, somebody is stealing human brains and implanting them in the synthetic bodies in order to create more realistic prostie-borgs. Sadie thinks she can help the two detectives, despite her instant attraction to them, and would do so if they were to help her get back to Io, her home planet. Holt and Blake agree, provided that she gave them a little somethin’-somethin’. Sadie suspects that there is something going on between the two detectives that is a little bit beyond two men working together, but she can’t quite figure out what it is. Unbeknownst to her, Holt and Blake are connected by something called a T-link, which deeply connects them at a mental and emotional level, but they can’t explore its full potential because they would need a woman who will serve as a conductor. Make of that what you will. Bow-chicka-bow-wow.

My biggest problem with this book is the two male characters. They’re just not believable as cops. They don’t seem very tough and care more about plugging Sadie’s… um… sockets than the case they’re supposed to be working on. They call each other “babe” and act like totally bitchy queens who bicker and argue, but end up cooing and making kissy noises at each other by the end of the day. In fact, they’re more La Cage aux Folles than Miami Vice. I was surprised that there isn’t a scene in this book where the two of them just shove Sadie aside so they could make out and forget that bitch. I know they’re supposed to be connected mentally and emotionally and are very good friends, but to me, they’re basically interchangeable. Neither of them made a mark on me as characters and the only way I could tell them apart was through their hair color. Holt is blond and Blake has dark, curly hair. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, the two of them are heartbroken because they don’t think they will ever find a woman who will allow them to take her on at the same time. You see, it actually physically hurts them to have sex with a woman without the other. One of them believes that they will find such a woman someday, but the other is more cynical, especially since every woman they have asked either ran away screaming or slapped them upside the head, then ran away screaming. The other caveat is that they have to find a woman whose brain chemistry matches theirs or the sensations of BEING PLUGGED IN BOTH HOLES would be too much for her and could literally kill her. How hard would it be to find a woman whose brain is compatible with theirs? They’re just Ken dolls with giant penises.

Sadie is… for lack of a better word—nay, phrase—a gibbering idiot. Not only does she rush headlong into danger without thinking of the consequences, she is also easily manipulated. In short, Blake and Holt can play her like a violin. She’s the kind of twit who’ll protest that she’s “not that kind of girl” and kick and scream, but give Blake and Holt about five minutes and they’ve got the bitch stripped down to her drawers giving a blowjob to Holt while taking it below the belt from Blake or any other combination. The reason Sadie is such a prude is that she comes from a small town where women still get stoned (as in they get stones thrown at them till they’re dead) for being DIRTY, DIRTY WHORES. She was raised by an aunt and uncle (we never see them) who instilled in her that good girls don’t take it up the butt from one guy while his heterosexual life partner pounded you from the front. She’s all wide-eyed innocence and hand-fluttering protestations, but there’s nothing else to her. She’s like that chick in Manga who gets banged by two dudes who screams “No, please, no, I’m not that kind of girl!” (one lone tear and everything) while begging them to keep going because it feel sooo gooooood. Fool. Sadie is a victim and a sucker. She’s nothing more to Holt and Blake than a pair of tits with legs and three holes. Poor girl. I feel bad for her, really. She’s a passive character all around; everything happens to her, but she doesn’t make anything happen. How deep is that shit?

My other issue with this book is that nobody had sex unless it was a life or death situation. They were either having sex to save Sadie’s life or one of the detectives. At one point, the three of them actually had to have sex because they had a gun pointed at their heads. It all just seemed contrived. Sure, the two dudes get to have fun while getting their asses saved, but poor Sadie just gets to take it in the ass, period. I just felt that the author could only get beyond Sadie’s “but I’m a good girl” hang-up was if Sadie were placed in a position where she had to have sex or die. I could almost hear Holt or Blake in my head saying, “But you have to let me put it your butt. You don’t want me to die, do you?”

There is some casual world-building here. It’s set sometime in the near future where human colonies occupy other planets protected from the lack of atmospheres by bio-domes. They seem to also have the capacity to build synthetic humans and grow them in something called a flesh tank. Anderson implies that this technology may advance to the point where humans are able live forever by transferring their brains to the next body once their own bodies got old and useless. This technology, of course, may also be used for eeeevil. In the case that the detectives are investigating, for example, the bad guys are stealing brains from innocent folks and implanting them in prostie-borgs. The ramifications of it, when you think about it, are astounding. Just imagine being a straight dude whose brain gets hijacked and transferred into a synthetic female hooker who is banged and abused by hundreds of nasty, horny dudes each night. What would you do if you were taken from the only body you’ve ever known? Hell, if somebody took my brain and implanted me in Qi Shu’s body, I wouldn’t mind it, but what if they stuck me inside Carrot Top… or dear god, Andy Dick? Man, that made my skin crawl just now. Excuse me while I rinse out the vomit from my mouth with Listerine. I think if Anderson had ditched the erotic romance angle and pursued this storyline on its own, it would have been a much better story. She’s got the writing chops to do it. But then… Aphrodisia wouldn’t have published the book, right?

In the end, even with the hotter than hot sex scenes, this book just left me freezing cold. I couldn’t buy that Holt and Blake really cared about Sadie as a woman instead of a socket they could just plug themselves into. Honestly, I thought the two guys were more in love with each other and Sadie was just someone they were using for their own selfish needs, which made my skin crawl a little bit. Sadie, unfortunately, is too stupid to know better. It was really too bad that everything in this universe was contrived to work against her. While I’m a fan of Evangeline Anderson’s work, I gotta say that I’m not a big fan of this effort. The dialogue is pure Velveeta, the set-up to the sex scenes are so contrived that you actually hear porn music in your head, and there is very little, if not zero, character development. By the way, kids, in case you were curious, this was originally published as “Tandem Unit” by Liquid Silver Books. There are some good elements here, such as the world-building and the sci-fi stuff, so you might want to check it out for those. Other than that, I can’t heartily recommend it. Frankly, when it all comes down to it, Anderson is a better sci-fi writer than a romance writer, and that’s just cricket (a little Brit slang courtesy of my buddy Karen).

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 11:19 am and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Sci-fi/Fan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.