The cover doesn’t really do it justice. It’s dark. It’s got depth. It takes its time building the plot so when things really get moving you care what happens to the characters.
It really is dark. It’s got violence, references to rape. People get attacked and assaulted. It’s not fluff, but it’s so good.
This book was so intense, it literally gutted me and I LOVED IT! It was also recommended by @fuck-yeah-monsters-and-villains and I’m so glad I’ve read it.
But seriously, this book is really dark, it had me crying a few times so be prepared to suffer!
Hey guys, they’ve also wrote a book called The Last Hour of Gann. It’s one of my favorite books of all time! It’s about a plus size woman on a pilgrimage with a badass religious lizard man and a bunch of incompetent human assholes. She writes some of the best character you will Fuckingloathe. The main character Amber is my spirit animal and her lizardman Meoraq does not put up with human’s bullshit. Plus, it’s HELLA long. You have time to get super invested in all the characters. I love it.
However, I need to warn that if anyone has suffered from sexual abuse they may want to skip this read. It’s well written, but there is an entire chapter that will trigger some people. Smith’s books are always VERY dark and not for the faint of heart. That chapter is very uncomfortable, but if you can get past it then please give this book a chance.
I was kind of looking at The Last Hour of Gann(Which is over 1,000 pages) and also Heat* (about 600 pages). Both are by R. Lee Smith. All the books by this author look somewhat heavy, and like they deal with darker themes; the shittier sides of humanity, rape, torture, and brutal deaths, so honestly if you want happy fluff please steer clear.
As one person described it in their reviews; “If you’re used to reading romance, it’s going to be really dark. If you’re used to reading horror, it’s about average.”
*Heat gets its own disclaimer as being extra dark even on the scale of this author. One of the main characters is an evil sadist. Tread carefully.
I can absolutely confirm everthing that’s been said about this author. I’ve read three books by R. Lee Smith so far and I have to say that there are hardly any writers out there that got me invested that much in their characters. The plot, the descriptions, the world building, actually everything is unbelievably good.
Imagine my surprise when I started The Last Hour of Gann for the space lizard-man alien erotica but got so much more. But yeah, it left me emotionally drained. The themes and descriptions are VERY intense.
Cottonwood was a light fun read in comparison. Although this still might not be the the book for you if you are easily triggered.
Unfortunately this one fell a bit flat for me in comparison to the two other books. The writing is still top notch, I simply wasn’t overly invested in the main characters. The male main character has a harem (yes, yes he’s lonely and tortured and a man’s gotta cope…) and the heroine is a mix between a “sacrifice everything for the cause” and a “stand by your man” type. I’m into neither of those things. Still, great writing, far above the average fare within this genre (or any genre, actually). Don’t let my personal taste deter you from reading! 😉
For centuries, there has been a legend of a hidden school where magic is taught by the demons who dwell there to anyone who seeks them out, but they ask a terrible price: Anyone who reaches the door of the Scholomance may enter, but the Devil takes every tenth student who tries to leave.
A hidden school. Demonic masters. An inescapable fate for one out of every ten graduates. But Connie would do anything to have the magic her best friend was born with.
And Mara would do anything to get Connie back.
X-rated Harry Potter but with a female protagonist and demon sex? Yes, please!!!
As far as I could glean from the reviews on Goodreads this might feature a love triangle, a trope which I normally loathe (unless it ends in a three-way, then it’s fine). But if there’s one author I’d trust with the execution of a love triangle it’s R. Lee Smith.
This book was made for me, I s2g. It’s cover is the worst I’ve ever seen outside of an MS paint doodle, but the prose is phenomenal and its like the Marquis de Sade on crack. Honest-to-god-monster angel meets Giger fever dream meets zombie apocalypse meets death and the maiden. Its the darkest, goriest, most existential erotica I’ve read in ages.
Spoiler alert: the protag, Lan, shacks up with Azrael, literal Biblical Angel of Death. He’s this 10ft foot tall grey-skinned motherfucker walking around like a strung-out Pyramid Head, complete with claws and eyes so bright they basically burn and a voice that makes your ears bleed. He wears a ram helmet–or has ram horns???–and wears a golden mask because his face makes people freak the fuck out, like actual angels do.
In between fucking Lan with a cock the size a horse, he opines about existentialism and the nature of pain and how he wishes he had a mother, so its oedipal too. Did I mention there are zombies???
10/10 recommend and I’m only 20% through this book.
I mean its so oedipal he’s literally creating “children” out of corpses because he’s lonely af. He makes them call him Father. He’s a goddamn tsundere with image issues that just wants to be loved, but he also has no earthly inkling of how do this because he’s going around impaling people and flaying them alive and creating torture rooms that put the cenobites to shame. So far he’s landed on earth–cast out, maybe?–and he’s set up some sort of sadomasochistic garden of Eden and started a zombie apocalypse in the interim. The dead rise because he controls the dead, and they cannot die unless he reaps their souls, so no one is escaping this pain anytime soon.
The motherfucking protag entered this underworld via literal ferryman in a pseudo-coffin. She paid the ferryman–who is dead–by sucking him off. So I guess there’s necrophilia too???
Fuck. This is going to turn into a liveblog. Spoilers, fuk. sPOILERS-
THERE IS A SCAR TOUCH. I REPEAT, A FACIAL SCAR TOUCH STRAIGHT FROM THE MOST HEATHEN REYLO DREAMS-
Add incest to the list of taboos this fic ticks off. I’ve got to the part where the brother and sister fuck like rabbits while they complain bitterly about their “Father’s” concubines.
oh my god. oh my gOD
This is the most sinful shit I’ve ever read. It is me. I am the new vanilla. My own words are dempster’s white bread compared to this cornucopia of eldritch horror erotica. I have found God and dug too deep in my quest for kink. I am undone and made raw
Day 2 of Liveblog:
This is either gonna end in redemption or tragedy cuz this cenobite-cum-angel just wants to be loved and has it bad for Lan, and she doesn’t get it at all. gOD MY SHIPPER HEART
Fun quirky linguistic fact about this book: zombies are called eaters and concubines are called dollies and Azrael has had exactly 483 dollies and is trying to work his way to 484. There’s a new dolly in this city of the dead he’s set up–this post-apocalyptic garden of eden–and her name is Cassius. Considering the historical significance of the name Cassius I’m pretty sure she’s here to kill Azrael and is gonna try to kill Lan in the process, because Lan is loyal to him.
The book has been making a big deal about how he rises up the dead like vampires to keep them preserved forever, but refuses to do it with Lan and gets straight up triggered by the notion. $10 says Cassius gonna poke Lan with the sharp end of a needle and he’s gonna be forced to rise her up, or something similar, and it’s gonna wreck him.
Seriously though, this book cover is a fucking crime to grace a goddamn masterpiece like this. Look at it. Not even a mother could love it:
It’s a combination of the worst typography impulses known to man, the sort of graphic design my first year professors would fail me for, and that bargain-bin Rey from the TLJ porno parody. Who the hell signed off on this. My soul is cringing into oblivion and crab-walking backwards out of my body
Ah yes, great book! The author is the queen of monster romance/erotica (complete with good plot and characterization).
I’ve put two of her other works on my list of books with monsters as love interests. I only didn’t include this one because I liked the other two on the list even better and I wanted variety.
Monsters and Villains 