Review: Beyond Shame, by Kit Rocha

[Russ Allbery]

Beyond Shame
by Kit Rocha

Series:    Beyond #1
Publisher: Kit Rocha
Copyright: December 2013
ASIN:      B00GIA4GN8
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     270

I read this book as part of the Beyond Series Bundle (Books 1-3), which
is what the sidebar information is for.

Noelle is a child of Eden, the rich and technologically powerful city
of a post-apocalyptic world. As the daughter of a councilman, she had
everything she wanted except the opportunity to feel. Eden's religious
elite embrace a doctrine of strict Puritanism: Even hugging one's
children was frowned upon, let alone anything related to sex. Noelle
was too rebellious to settle for that, which is why this book opens
with her banished from Eden, ejected into Sector Four. The sectors are
the city slums, full of gangs and degenerates and violence, only a
slight step up from the horrific farming communes. Luckily for her, she
literally stumbles into one of the lieutenants of the O'Kane gang, who
are just as violent as their reputations but who have surprising
sympathy for a helpless city girl.

My shorthand distinction between romance and erotica is that romance
mixes some sex into the plot and erotica mixes some plot into the sex.
Beyond Shame is erotica, specifically BDSM erotica. The forbidden
sensations that Noelle got kicked out of Eden for pursuing run strongly
towards humiliation, which is tangled up in the shame she was taught to
feel about anything sexual. There is a bit of a plot surrounding the
O'Kanes who take her in, their leader, some political skulduggery that
eventually involves people she knows, and some inter-sector gang
warfare, but it's quite forgettable (and indeed I've already forgotten
most of it). The point of the story is Noelle navigating a relationship
with Jasper (among others) that involves a lot of very graphic sex.

I was of two minds about reviewing this. Erotica is tricky to review,
since to an extent it's not trying to do what most books are doing. The
point is less to tell a coherent story (although that can be a bonus)
than it is to turn the reader on, and what turns the reader on is
absurdly personal and unpredictable. Erotica is arguably more usefully
marked with story codes (which in this case would be something like MF,
MMFF, FF, Mdom, Fdom, bd, ds, rom, cons, exhib, humil, tattoos) so that
the reader has an idea whether the scenarios in the story are the sort
of thing they find hot.

This is particularly true of BDSM erotica, since the point is arousal
from situations that wouldn't work or might be downright horrifying in
a different sort of book. Often the forbidden or taboo nature of the
scene is why it's erotic. For example, in another genre I would
complain about the exaggerated and quite sexist gender roles, where all
the men are hulking cage fighters who want to control the women, but in
male-dominant BDSM erotica that's literally the point.

As you can tell, I wrote a review anyway, primarily because of how I
came to read this book. Kit Rocha (which is a pseudonym for the writing
team of Donna Herren and Bree Bridges) recently published Deal with the
Devil, a book about mercenary librarians in a post-apocalyptic future.
Like every right-thinking person, I immediately wanted to read a book
about mercenary librarians, but discovered that it was set in an
existing universe. I hate not starting at the beginning of things, so
even though there was probably no need to read the earlier books first,
I figured out Beyond Shame was the first in this universe and the
bundle of the first three books was only $2.

If any of you are immediately hooked by mercenary librarians but are
back-story completionists, now you know what you'll be getting into.

That said, there are a few notable things about this book other than it
has a lot of sex. The pivot of the romantic relationship was more
interesting and subtle than most erotica. Noelle desperately wants a
man to do all sorts of forbidden things to her, but she starts the book
unable to explain or analyze why she wants what she wants, and both
Jasper and the story are uncomfortable with that and unwilling to leave
it alone. Noelle builds up a more coherent theory of herself over the
course of the book, and while it's one that's obviously designed to
enable lots of erotic scenes, it's not a bad bit of character
development.

Even better is Lex, the partner (sort of) of the leader of the O'Kane
gang and by far the best character in the book. She takes Noelle under
her wing from the start, and while that relationship is sexualized like
nearly everything in this book, it also turns into an interesting
female friendship that I would have also enjoyed in a different genre.
I liked Lex a lot, and the fact she's the protagonist of the next book
might keep me reading.

Beyond Shame also has a lot more female gaze descriptions of the men
than is often the case in male-dominant BDSM. The eye candy is fairly
evenly distributed, although the gender roles are very much not. It
even passes the Bechdel test, although it is still erotica and nearly
all the conversations end up being about sex partners or sex
eventually.

I was less fond of the fact that the men are all dangerous and violent
and the O'Kane leader frequently acts like a controlling, abusive
psychopath. A lot of that was probably the BDSM setup, but it was not
my thing. Be warned that this is the sort of book in which one of the
(arguably) good guys tortures someone to death (albeit off camera).

Recommendations are next to impossible for erotica, so I won't try to
give one. If you want to read the mercenary librarian novel and are
dubious about this one, it sounds like (although I can't confirm) that
it's a bit more on the romance end of things and involves a lot fewer
group orgies. Having read this book, I suspect it was entirely
unnecessary to have done so for back-story. If you are looking for
male-dominant BDSM, Beyond Shame is competently written, has a more
thoughtful story than most, and has a female friendship that I fully
enjoyed, which may raise it above the pack.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed: 2021-04-27

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/beyond-shame.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>