Review: Named and Shamed by Janine Ashbless

A no-holds-barred descent into the most filthy and degrading sexual acts imaginable, with each fresh round of shame for the heroine soon being trumped by something even more debased. Fantastic!

Tansy’s a freelance investigator of magical creatures in a world in which such beings have returned with a vengeance. And she’s not above shaking her booty to find out what she needs to know. But when she trades one quick fuck with a fairy for his help in retrieving a stolen document, she finds herself under a super-nympho curse that could kill her. With her flatmate cousin, and her fella, in tow she sets out to find the solution.  Along the way she finds herself in the hands of crazed yokels, a witch and her sons and the very king of the Wild Hunt himself. And they all want to stuff her. Repeatedly.

For a tale about shame, this book is utterly shameless. Ashbless has come up with every possible means of reducing the heroine to a set of fuckholes, with a little left over for her companions, Gail and Vince. There is no let-up in the shift from one outrageous sex scene to the next. Every possible configuration of fucking is covered along with many peripherals in the way of bondage, pain and punishment. This is a fantasy tale; don’t expect big emotional interplay between the characters. Do expect to lose yourself in a skilfully written, filthy hot romp with vivid description and a well-constructed crossover world of reality/fantasy.

I’m always impressed when an author can take a classic text and subvert it for the purposes of filth. Ashbless starts off with Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, positing a lost version which is a lot less prudish and cautionary. The tasting of the goblins’ forbidden fruits becomes a parallel to Tansy’s fuck with a fairy; she finds herself unable to eat but desperately wanting more ‘forbidden fruit’. On a wider scale, the novel’s folklore world is thoroughly researched and convincingly drawn, taking up both well-known and more obscure myths and legends and weaving them into a sinister and unpredictable reality.

Having begun the tale with Tansy’s seduction of antiques dealer Edmund – who turns out to be harbouring a libidinous ogress – I expected him to play a part in the story’s development, so I was a little disappointed when this turned out to be a plot device which didn’t involve the character’s return. Similarly, the looming war between the fairy king and the Pendragon is talked up into something significant, but then fades out. I would also have liked to know more about what happened to Gail and Vince after their escape and how they dealt with what happened to them. But these are minor gripes. Named and Shamed was a hugely enjoyable read, refreshingly dirty and compellingly written.

Named and Shamed is published by Sweetmeats Press http://sweetmeatspress.com/erotic_stories/illustrated_erotic_stories_named_shamed.html