K.D. King
Grade: C
The story's blurb:
Anaria Okam breathes war. She lives for vengeance. Wekari, an enemy planet, took the most precious thing from her –her mother. Though her mother lives in body, she is broken in spirit. Since the time Anaria could understand words, her father, ruler of the planet Loden, instilled in her the need to seek vengeance and destroy Wekari.
While trading goods on the neutral planet of Atlzo she spots the enemy, Marshall Kalil Umba, leader of the Wekarian armies. Seizing an opportunity, she follows him. As she gets close to him, her body lights with need. Then the embers of desire cause her whole body to glow.
Kalil, of the space ship Destruction has finally found his mate. He realizes she is a warrior from the enemy planet of Loden. He captures her. Now he must make her trust him, love him, and leave everything she has ever known.
The premise of K.D. King's SF/Erotic short story, Torn, intrigued me: High-born enemies of an intergalactic war glow in each other's presence, indicating they are mates. The hero captures the heroine, intent on forging her trust and her love, particularly after he brings her to his home planet so that she may learn the truth about the feud.
If only the execution worked as well as that thumbnail sketch. Unfortunately, the author fails to connect the story's preface with the rest of the story. While I picked up the author's clues and realized that what the heroine believed about her life and family was predicated on a lie, I remained unable to connect the dots between the preface and the lie, and as a result, was as shocked as the heroine was, later on, when reality was revealed. My guess is that the author intended otherwise, but a lack of precision in her writing resulted in an unintended, unwanted result.
The romance between hero and heroine worked far better, particularly toward the end when the trust issue turned on its head, but there was nothing memorable about the story's erotic component. On balance, then, I'm not at all torn about Torn, an average read at best.
Torn was published earlier this month by Red Sage.I read a digital copy provided by the publisher, but it does not appear to be available for Kindle at Amazon.
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