Review - Mind Controlling the Brute by Adara Wolf & R. Phoenix

Bruce engages in a lot of manly outdoor sports, so he's a big strapping fellow. Big everywhere, apparently. His mother is trying to marry him off to a well-off lady, which is the thing to do. However, it doesn't help his prospects that his family is on the verge of bankruptcy, and everyone seems to know it. At one of those parties where he's supposed to woo one of those women, Bruce spots Saville. The man is everything Bruce is not. He's a head shorter, thin, and wears more makeup than most of the women at the party. When Bruce catches Saville having sex with another man at the party, his body reacts in a very unexpected way. This confuses Bruce immensely, and like many men with more muscles than brains, he sets about bullying Saville. Only, he's definitely picked the wrong man since Saville is a student of a kind of magic that allows him to control other people's minds.

“Mind Controlling the Brute” is another entry in the Mages of Corentin series of shorts set in a fantasy world where magic is common, but a small group of mages has unlocked the secret of mind-controlling spells. If you've read the other books, then you'll have a better idea of who some of the secondary characters are, but the individual volumes are more or less stand-alone. Like all the books, the stories are so short there isn't a lot of scene setting. In fact, the narration really boils down to just two scenes.

This story is told mostly from Bruce's point of view. In this case, the "mind control" magic feels more like just a form of hypnosis. Saville doesn't seem to be forcing Bruce to do anything he doesn't subconsciously want to do. The mage is just removing the “brute's” inhibitions from his narrow-minded upbringing.

“Mind Controlling the Brute” is available from Smashwords.