Reviews

Willing Skin by Ella Drake

mousegoddess's review against another edition

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4.0

This one was interesting because of how gender was treated. It could have been super fetishistic but I think the author avoided that. Of course, since I'm cis I can't speak to any sort of nonbinary, genderfluid, bigender life experience, so it's very possible I could miss things. Read this series in order.

pippajay's review

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5.0

What I liked:
I wasn't sure if I would like this but I decided to take a leap of faith, and I'm glad I did. Take a deep breath because the tension and action never let up for a second! It didn't feel at all like 95K, in a good way because of the seat of your pants pacing. The tech elements were intriguing and appealed hugely to my SF side without being overwhelming for anyone who isn't that into SciFi - the concept of the skin suit for the heroine and all the mental and physical conflict it involved was hugely original and completely fascinating to me. Plus the author excels at writing explicit sex scenes but in a way that doesn't set me cringing at the words used. I was also fascinated by the cyborg bounty hunter.

What I didn't like:
Some of the phrasing got a bit repetitive toward the end, and the constant to-ing and fro-ing to the same places got a bit wearing. Also the amount of time the central couple spent snogging, fondling, and/or more involved pushed my believeability limit considering how much danger Sylla was supposedly in. These were very minor niggles overall though.

In conclusion:
While a bit heavy on the sex scenes for my personal taste, this is one hot, exciting, tense, and all-round fun romp on a space station, with some uber fascinating tech including the heroine's ability to gender-flip. I'm still thinking about the story and the characters weeks after reading. If you find the idea of switched gender sex offensive, this is not for you. About the closest comparison I can make is maybe an X-rated version of Farscape where the Scarrans are more human and sexy rather than scary, and with a Terminator-style assassin. Although book four of this series, it reads perfectly fine as a standalone so you can jump in mid-series without feeling lost.