The Queen of Swords by Alana Melos

Meet Caprice, better known as the villainess Capricious Whim....

Caprice is a woman who works hard and plays hard. She's a veteran villain of Imperial City, and what you might call a 'maladjusted individual'. While she plots to achieve her own goals, she's forced to take whatever jobs may come along, and any unintended consequences from them!

The heroes don't always win in this world, but being a villain has its own unique set of problems.

   

The Queen of Swords was dark, decadent, depraved fun. The Villainess series is what I would classify as erotic sci-fi adventure, a tale of supervillains and monstrous freaks. Caprice is one such villainess - a violent, antisocial telepath. As dangerous as she is beautiful, she can get inside people's minds, read their thoughts, influence their emotions, and even exert a little old-fashioned mind control. When that's not enough, she can also manipulate them physically, throwing them across the room with a thought while she mentally dodges their bullets.

While the storyline in this first installment is pretty standard comic book stuff - invade the impenetrable fortress, kill the good guys, steal the secret technology, and get out - the execution is what makes it so much fun. Caprice is not just a kick-ass character, she's a fun narrator. She's arrogant, self-absorbed to the point of conceit, and not at all shy about sharing her darkest desires, but she also has a great sense of humor, and can manage witty banter with the best of the comic book world.

The action here is top-notch, equal parts brutal and frantic, with supervillains, metahumans, and a vampire all thrown into the mix. Think Batman, crossed with The Matrix, by way of The Expendables, and you get the idea. As for the erotic element, it's really only suggested or teased in the first few chapters (although her telepathic banter with her vampire accomplice is pretty explicit), but Melos definitely delivers the goods in the second half of the book, complete with a femdom/bondage session that is completely-over-the-top when experienced through Caprice.

If you're up for a solid mix of sociopathic supervillains, metahumans, monsters, action, mayhem, and erotica . . . if you watched Deadpool and wished it was a little darker, and a little kinkier . . . then you'll get a genuine kick out of The Queen of Swords.

Kindle: 58 pages

Published: August 2, 2015