It's been noted elsewhere on the internets that if you took all the sex-related stuff and historical filler out of this book, the plot would take up a mighty 12 pages. This isn't an exaggeration.
Well, maybe 13 pages.
There is a LOT of smut in this book. It's not sexy IMO, but it was fun in a "Holy shit, did I just read that?!?" way. Not for all tastes, definitely, but if you're not averse to some epic cheesy hardcore man porn (with an undeniable whiff of homoerotica) then there are good moments to be had. I'm sure it has more plot than the average porn movie, but less than what you find on Skinamax at 2am.
The plot is inanely simple: Blond hunk of manmeat Vesuvio is lolling about in the decadent Baths of Nero, being all uptight and faithful to his future bride Miranda, when he receives word that one of his slaves was found murdered alongside the road. He rushes home only to find that Miranda has been abducted. So he sets out to rescue her and the odyssey takes him to Greece, Antioch, and then back to Rome as a slave in a pleasure palace called the Villa Orgiasta (where he catches the eye of young heir-apparent Hadrian). Meanwhile, we are shown a wide array of every depravity and nastiness that the ancient world c. 110 AD has to offer.
Of course, like any good Cecil B. DeMille morality lesson - in this instance, hanging onto the old republican ideals of personal conduct in the face of a decaying empire - we have to be shown all the titillating, naughty stuff. Except in this book, it sometimes felt like you were having your face ground into the secretions. Good thing I'm well nigh unshockable and have a love for the absurdly excessive and excessively absurd.
This review would be a mile long if I were to detail all the sleazy bits, but there were a few that stood out like a turgid phallus for a variety of reasons:
...from the LULZY, like a mime show at the Baths of Nero where a man dressed as Priapus battles a python strapped to his groin...
Some of the crowd cheered for "Priapus" to conquer the python whilst others called instead to the "phallus."...to the "Holy shit!", like a nighttime beach orgy to the Thracian goddess Bendis...
"Go on, get him, you big prick!" one man shouted.
"Wrap yourself across that ugly face!" another urged.
"The throat! The throat! Drive down the throat and suck yourself, Priapus! Suck yourself!"
Vesuvio remained motionless, watching the horse's black phallus inch faster now from its sheath, rapidly growing in proportion. The girl was stretching herself upwards, using her feet to guide the blunt point of the horse's pizzle into her--...to "I think this author might be gay or working through some issues", like Vesuvio's plot to "straighten out" a flirty twink aboard his ship using an obliging hooker...
She winked playfully at Vesuvio as Babel clumsily jabbed the crown of his penis toward the roots of Vesuvio's manhood visible from the glistening slit...Homoerotic? Oh, a tad. And with DP, too!
She coaxed, "No, ease yourself alongside your golden friend.... Yes, like that.... Yes, let me feel you inch inside me with your friend.... Yes, I can now feel both of you.... Stop! For a moment! Please! Stop! Do not move! Not for a moment...." {more porny stuff here}
Finally, Vesuvio moved again, plunging his manhood into Asiatica's wetness alongside Babel, the two phalluses pressed tightly against one another in the moist grip of the prostitute's warm womanhood.
Vesuvio push, push, pushed his penis alongside that of Babel's. He felt as if the two phalluses were one, as if Asiatica were cohesing their veins, their skin cresting their excitement into one organ of pleasure.
As I kept reading, Vesuvio really started to take on all the attributes of the worst doormat BR heroine. He gets abused and degraded six ways from Sunday, sold into slavery, gang-banged for days by an entire crew of leather-bear pirates, and he isn't on top of his game in the whole "vengeance" department. The two baddies - who have smut scenes of their own as well (did you doubt it?) - get their comeuppance at the hands of others in a penultimate chapter where the plot came tumbling out of the Marx Brothers stateroom where it had been locked up for the vast middle of the book. For such a burly superstud, he doesn't even really put up much of a fight at every new obstacle that keeps him from pursuing Miranda. He pretty much closes his eyes and thinks of England.
So Mr. Vesuvio Crunch Buttsteak was pretty underwhelming as a hero, but looking at him like a BR femme who only lasts by dint of primitive will to survive made it work. Who knows what the author intended beyond sprinkling a humpy bangfest with enough research to make it seem mildly legit.
Still, I can't rate it lower than 4 stars. Why? It was fun in its own way and I actually wanted to know how it would end (whether the execution was good or bad), which is more than I can say for some of the boring, shitastic books I've read. This is the second book in a trilogy, and I'll definitely pick up the others...once the horse imagery has faded a bit.
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