Winter Pleasures by Anya BastWin­ter Plea­sures by Anya Bast starts off quickly with the arrival of Sienne being pre­sented at Lord Marken’s Court for cross pur­poses. Cyrus and Sienne are both from Sudhra. At a time of peace, Cyrus presents Sienne to the Lord of Nor­dan as a sign of diplo­macy. Lit­tle does Marken real­ize that Sienne is a pawn in a game of pol­i­tics and war.

Sienne is a sex slave and it’s all the life she’s ever known thanks to Cyrus. Cyrus has done much to her and against her to make her fol­low the ruse of spy by threat­en­ing the life of her fos­ter fam­ily. Sienne is instructed to “spy” on Marken and glean as much infor­ma­tion as she can that can help Sudhra politically. Marken is quickly taken with his “gift” and imme­di­ately awards Sienne her free­dom to her dis­may. The Nor­dans have a very dif­fer­ent view of women and do not believe in treat­ing women like chat­tel. In fact, the Nor­dans believe in lov­ing freely and do not believe in monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships. Theirs is a cul­ture threat­ened with the lack of chil­dren or heirs. A woman who has con­ceived is a woman to be hon­ored. Marken goes out of his way to show Sienne that she deserves love and hap­pi­ness of her own. So, she sticks around.

Being Lord of Nor­dan, Marken has his pick of the lit­ter but finds him­self only drawn to Sienne. This is clearly against their cul­ture to pick only one mate. Alas, they spend the win­ter months locked in pas­sion and lust. How­ever, Sienne some­how tips her hand and Marken deduces that Sienne has come to spy on him and that Sudhra has plans to start war. Marken falls hard for Sienne and hopes that if given enough time and trust, she will come to him will­ingly and ask for help against Cyrus. Fur­ther events spark war and Marken and Sienne must con­front each other and fight for their HEA.

I enjoyed this story very much. Alas it was a very quick read. Bast knows how to write some of the hottest love scenes, ladies. We’re talk­ing smok­ing hot. This is a well plot­ted story with a few sec­ondary char­ac­ters to help move the plot along. Most of the story is focused only on Marken and Sienne. The story has a quick pace to it so it was hard to put down. I must admit that I often felt the dia­logue was stilted in some places, but that just might be me.

Also, I thought that Sienne made a error in judge­ment only to draw out the con­flict between her­self and her lover. After war breaks out, Sienne runs off think­ing that it’s best for her and for Marken to never see each other again (!) but then comes to her senses when she is cap­tured and under­neath him again. How I hate such hero­ines when they do this! Alas, this is fic­tion after all and the mak­ing up is always nice.

Win­ter Plea­sures, over­all you have decent char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, great chem­istry, great sex, a decent story; this book gets a strong rec­om­mend from me and a new fan at that, B+.

P.S. I’m not a big fan of CGI peo­ple on the cover. Alas, I’ve seen worse.

Tech­no­rati Tags: , ,