James Van Ryan is one of the hottest porn stars on Earth as well as its far-flung colonies across the galaxy. He's had a long and lucrative career, but his manager warns him that changes in technology as well as industry fickleness means that his amuse-by date is rapidly approaching. So when the love-struck ruler of a planet on the outer rim makes a proposal to James to be his consort, it seems like the best option. When James arrives, he is relieved to find that it won't take any of his acting skills to like Olver. As James spends more time with Olver, like begins to grow into something more, but he also catches glimpses of things that tell him life for those outside Olver's gilded palace isn't so pleasant. When James is contacted by a group of revolutionaries, their leader Sylas shows him the dark side of life on the planet that Olver keeps hidden. Sylas wants James to help him overthrow Olver and give power to the people.
This book wasn't what I was expecting at all, based on the short blurb. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The description made it sound like this might be a hot and steamy love triangle romance with some political intrigue thrown in. While there are several different definitions of what constitutes a romance, I am confident in saying that this book doesn't fall into any of them. The plot would better be generalized as a futuristic spy thriller. There is romance of a sort, but more on that later.
It's also difficult to review this story without giving away any spoilers, but I'll try. The book is mostly told entirely from James' point of view. Chapters of his “present-day” life getting to know Olver are interspersed with looks back at some of the events of his past. However, about a third of the way through, a few short passages start to appear that seem to be from a different person. It all comes together at the end in a way that sort of makes sense, although not in the way I expected. The thing is, when it all does get tied up, most of the flashback chapters, while interesting, aren't very illuminating. It felt like they were more filler, padding out the story rather than adding to it.
I suspect the author was trying to use the trope where none of the main characters are who they seem to be. The problem is that we don't really ever get to see who they really are, nor do we form enough of an emotional connection with any of them to care. This, to me, is the main reason I'm feeling very ambivalent about this story. The writing is almost devoid of any emotion. You could say that this is par for the course in spy novels. However, the core plot depends on us believing that James has enough feelings for Olver that he is conflicted about betraying him and yet is also drawn to Sylas enough to consider it. It's a classic example of “telling rather than showing” a story. We're told here and there that James has these feelings, but they're never really on display. Likewise, James is shown and told about some of the cruel things Olver has supposedly done to keep his grip on power, and yet almost all of James' interactions with the man show him to be, at worst, a rather benevolent dictator. There's never a glimpse of the evil monster Sylas makes Olver out to be. Yet James seems willing to believe the worst about the man he supposedly knows intimately. The ending does make this rather moot, but that's all the more reason I'm disappointed with the story.
You might also expect a book with a galactic porn super-star as the main character to have a significant heat level, but you'd be wrong. The erotic content here is near zero. Absolute zero. We're led to believe that sex occurred rather than having it described in any way most of the time. Even on the few occassions when it's actually on the page, the description is generally unarousing.
One last little nit to pick about the book is the quality of the proofing and formatting. The e-book was twice the price of most books I buy, so I was expecting a higher quality product all around. There were numerous proofing errors, such as the wrong word used in places. I've come to expect these in most books these days, but was still surprised by the number of them. It's the formatting choices that really threw me, though. Within chapters, there were often time jumps from one paragraph to another with no transition. I sometimes had to reread sentences to pick up on the time change, which in some cases was days. Most books use a space or other visual divider to separate scenes within a chapter, but not this one. On top of the convoluted storyline, it just made this an all the more frustrating read.
“The Consort” is available from Amazon (commissionable link).
