Malena MCD - Part of the Virasana Series
Science Fiction Romance, Science Fiction Adventure, Romance, Adventure
Independent
March 23, 2023
Kindle
212
Amazon
Mauve is a pet, a human pleasure slave. He is smart, ambitious, horny – and the only witness in a murder case. Or rather, he is 'evidence'.
Luckily, the crime was committed on Malicorn, where an unsolved murder would disturb its profitable reputation as the safest planet of the Empire. So Mauve ends up in the hands of the Malena MCD, the local Major Crimes Division, run by ex-space-marine Alexej Sirenkov and his brilliant wife Andrea. Unwilling to see him stored in the evidence locker, the Sirenkovs take him home for a few days. And while Mauve hopes they might just be the perfect forever-owners, he has no idea of Mistress Andrea's plans for them...
Written by award-winning authors Beryll and Osiris Brackhaus, 'Malena MCD' is a funny, naughty, police procedural throuple rom-com set in the wildly diverse, hopeful 'Virasana Empire' universe and can be read as a stand-alone.
Reviewed by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Mr. and Mrs. Brackhaus are unique in the modern fiction world. Their books are a delicious treat, from the elegant prose (which, despite their fluent English has a wee foreign accent that is wonderful) to the fantastical world building. The Virasana empire is a place that, to me, is both alluring and repellant. The Brackhaus’s make it eerily familiar, with its pop culture and shopping malls, fast-food joints and beach resorts. At the same time, they make it uncomfortable, reminding us that it is an Empire, run by a (benevolent) dictator; and a place where the nobility rules and is not bound by the laws that govern everyone else. It is the best and worst of the world we know all in one deceptively wry, shiny package.
And there’s the crux of this book: it’s all written from the point of view of a slave. Not just any slave, mind you, but a pet, a very specific kind of slave that is BRED to be a sex toy. In fact, the slave at the center of this story doesn’t even have a name, until the adolescent daughter of the husband/wife police team who rescues him gives him a name, Mauve.
Disguised as a police procedural and a murder mystery, Malena MCD (Major Crimes Division) is a slightly squidgy commentary on the bizarre notion that a civilized, high-tech, culturally diverse empire would have a thriving, and highly protected, slave industry. The fact that the planet of Malincorn is a pork-based civilization is surely a comment on something…
I was, for the first time, a little reluctant to read this, because the whole M/M/F thing pushes the boundaries of my comfort zone. But, I gotta say, the book – for all its intentional discomfort – is charming, and amusing. Mauve is a wonderful character. He should be tragic, given the life he’s led; but his pragmatic approach to his circumstances keeps him from being a figure of sadness. He is poignant, and his emotional upheaval over the Sirenkovs’ kind treatment of him would be heartbreaking if he himself was not so resilient and hopeful.
The book clearly is meant to remind the reader of “The Pet and His Duke,” an earlier installment of the Virasana empire which involved a slave who finds unexpected happiness. Of course, there’s Darios, the slave that Sir Yaden’s mother and father buy him when he’s still a wild, unteachable boy. Darios is still the housekeeper for Yaden and his husband. His quiet presence has been a reminder throughout the Virasana series that this is world that will never be quite graspable to us, while also being all too understandable. The joy of the Brackhaus duo is that they make the impossible plausible.
LGBT/ROMANCE/FANTASY/FUTURISTIC/SCI-FI/ACTION ADVENTURE – SERIES
