Villainess Love by Lexi Archer
Pages: 260
Date: January 16 2015
Publisher: Author
Review
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Read: May 21 2015
I didn't actually realize immediately, that this was an erotic superhero story. I should have, I know. What with other works by the author, the cover, the "steamy lesbian" bit in the description. Still, I didn't notice. Was coming off reading several superhero books (prose and graphic novel) and just saw this one and picked it up to read.
It's an interesting enough story. Apparently it's a "they didn't appreciate me, so I'll be a mad scientist" type story. Though this time the mad scientist is a woman. There are other "mad" female supervillains out there, I don't mean to imply that there aren't.
Harley Quinn's character morphs between being goofy, insane, mad, and playing at insane. And has a genius level intelligence. Though most of the time that part gets forgotten and she gets presented as a goofy dim bimbo. Also, a mad psychiatrist isn't the normal type of thing someone things of first when they hear "mad scientist".
Poison Ivy is a mad scientist. At times. Most of the times that aspect doesn't really come to the forefront as she acts more like a magical creature with powers over plants while wearing barely anything. But she is a scientist. And quite mad.
hmms. I could go on. Ok, strike that "this time the mad scientist is a women" and replace with . . . um . . . "mad scientist story". Right. That.
Ok then. Right from the get go the reader learns that this specific mad scientist isn't into madly creating waves of chaos and destruction. She goes out of her way to keep from killing, and from damaging . . . too much. Heck, in the first fight depicted in the book, the superhero causes more damage than the supervillain.
So, right. There's this supervillian. She's quite bored, so she robs a bank. In person. She has the technology that she could rob it electronically, or, if she really wanted to, say, roll around naked in cash, can walk in all causal like, wearing some hidden technology, push some buttons, and poof - vault of cash teleported elsewhere. Without anyone knowing she did it. So, why does so attack a bank in full supervillian costume? Enter the vault, set up teleportation, and . . . leave by the front door instead of teleporting out? Because, as I said, she's bored. Not only is she the top supervillian in the city, no superhero stands a chance against her. And the cops just have symbolic gestures of "we are trying to stop her". Because they know they can't stop her. And she's nice enough to limit the damage, and death.
Except, there's this brand new superhero in town. Who zooms in and beats the tar out of the supervillian. While also causing massive collateral damage. Granted, the supervillian was kinda distracted by how aroused she was by the superhero, but still, the beat down was mostly a combination of 1) superhero just that good; 2) supervillian is out of practice with fighting someone at or above their weight class; 3) supervillian is just so gosh darn aroused by the superhero's mere presence (and confusion of same, since they are both female and she doesn't recall being overly attracted to women before).
Going in the way I did, without realizing the erotic nature of the book, I would have to say that the overall story has some neat little twists on superhero/supervillian/random non-supers interactions. While at the same time the story was . . . well, roughly on the level of a superhero story. A campy superhero story. With graphic sex. As opposed to only skimpily clad supers and implied intimacy.
Well, in terms of "great literature", this ain't that. In terms of superhero stories, it's decent. In terms of erotic stories, it has what it needed. Checked the boxes, so to speak.
This book certainly isn't the best book I've ever read, but I would most likely gobble up at least one more book set in the same universe.
