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reviews_and_ramblings
I admit that I was not yet a M/M romance reader in the ’70s when probably William Maltese wrote the majority of his pulp fiction, those little books you probably could find hidden in some shelves (read The Golden Age of Gay Fiction by Drewey Wayne Gunn for references), and then, even if I was, they are not exactly the type of romance (if they are romances at all), that a young “impressionable” lady would read ;-) Then in the ’80s, William Maltese, alias Willa Lambert, took another path, the Harmony style romances, albeit not so prim and proper as some of those ‘80s romances were, and I think that a bit of that romance got stuck in modern William, and so lately, his novels were indeed more suitable for those “impressionable ladies of above. But naughty William is still there, and it’s clear in every one of his books. But even more in this first book in the “I” series. Not only the feeling is more of a ‘70s novel than a contemporary one (even if, I believe, nowhere is specified a date): yacht at Cannes, posh hotel in Paris, hunting lodge in Romania, these are all the imaginary setting not only of Maltese “classic” novels, but for example, of other erotic novels of the time, like Emmanuelle, at the time more or less “trashy” books, and now considered erotica mainstream.
In “I, Debauchee”, a family friend (again, as often in William Maltese’s books, the novel is in first point of view, and the narrator has no name) is asked to debauch a virgin boy; the request arrives from the very father of the boy, who fears that his “alternative” and “excessive” lifestyle will run scared the kid if he is not properly introduced. What nor the father or the Narrator know, is that probably Mallory is more than willing to be debauched by the handsome friend of his father, and maybe he even directed things toward that point.
In a way the debauchee becomes the one to debauch, since he ruins the Narrator to other experiences: no one of them is as good as Mallory, and Mallory will prove to be quite selfish in his pleasure, willing to share the Narrator with other men, but only if, in the end, the Narrator will prove to be mainly “his”. Now don’t get me wrong, you will not find here the Harlequin style happily ever after, there is an HEA but it’s more in line with what you would expect to find in the alternative lifestyle of an international jet set. As it’s in line the construction of the story: each single chapter is a new debauching experience for the more than willing debauchee, the timeline is like a perfect clockwork, introduction, execution, climax, from low to high, and then again.
http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=ISERIES1
Buy Here
Amazon: I, Debauchee
Amazon Kindle: I, Debauchee
Reading List:
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Erect for William
Date: 2010-03-09 07:25 pm (UTC)Erect Mick
www.MykolaDementiuk.com
Re: Erect for William
Date: 2010-03-09 07:31 pm (UTC)