Title: FrankenDom
Author: Robin L. Rotham
Publisher: Robin L. Rotham (27 October 2012)
ISBN: 9781301029679
Mary Shelley meets Grey’s Anatomy meets Torture Garden.
‘Let’s experiment’ is the tagline for FrankenDom and flippin’ heck does it ever. Reading this book was the literary equivalent of walking into Heston Blumenthal’s Michelin-starred The Fat Duck, ordering the snail porridge and, after a tentative taste, scraping the bowl clean with enough enthusiasm to chip the porcelain.
FrankenDom is by far and away one of the most original and engaging BDSM books I’ve read this year; the plot is awesomely wacky, the characters original, and the D/s relationships in play both unusual and captivating. A medical drama on crack and filmed in a Rocky Horror Show-esque dungeon, if you will. (Or more, accurately, castle Bangenschloss in Montavena.)
I’m not really sure I can give a non-spoilery plot synopsis for this book – not one that will make much sense, anyway – but I’ll do my best.
Rachel McBride, a talented vascular surgeon whose career is on the rise, is confronted with a very tempting offer. The chance to work on a highly confidential project with her ex-lover, Doctor Colin Carter, and his boss, the brilliant and charismatic Julian Kilmartin, who many view as a medical visionary. Professionally, she knows she’d be crazy to pass the mysterious opportunity up, despite a sixth sense telling her there’s some sort of catch. Personally? Let’s just say that being attracted to the two men she’d be working beneath doesn’t make her decision to participate any less complicated.
“From a professional standpoint, I’d have to be insane to pass up such an offer—I knew I has the diagnostic instincts, the surgical skills and the competitive drive to play with the big boys, and this project could be history in the making.
But from a personal standpoint, I was hopelessly outclassed and likely to make a complete fool of myself.
I’d have to be insane to accept.”
Sometimes a little insanity is a good thing and in the case of FrankenDom, it’s a bloody excellent. If you’re not wriggling around like you’re on the slab yourself whilst reading this … well. I’m not normally turned on by electrical play in BDSM fiction but I must admit, even I started eyeing up the electrical sockets in the house after reading this book. And there’s a, uh, rather well done medical scene in this novel that I think is fair to say would not likely be covered by any sort of standard health insurance. I dare you not to laugh out loud at Julian’s playbook folder-naming conventions, too – well, Rachel’s folder anyway.
Joking aside, for all its quirkiness, FrankenDom isn’t a comedy. It actually asks some pretty heavy ethical questions of both the characters and the reader. Further, the relationships it portrays – and, yes, there is more than one at the heart of this book – are not necessarily conventional. I was actually quite surprised by the dynamic that settled into place at the end of the story. (For me, the most climactic part of FrankenDom was actually in the middle, rather than at the close.)
My favourite FrankenDom moment ? Julian’s treatise on erotic pain:
“Think of your pain tolerances rather like the strings on your guitar. Each has its own perfect pitch in a given moment, but they tend to go flat between uses and you have tune them every time you play.”
.
.
.
“That magical line, where the pain is most intensely pleasurable, is the perfect pitch I’ll strive for each time we play.”
There is irresistible urge when reading FrankenDom to contrast it with Mary Shelley’s original gothic novel, to try and work out who slots in where, even though I’m not sure that we (as readers) are actually meant to. Jordan, I think I can place quite easily (!) but Julian feels like some sort of Victor Frankenstein/Lord Byron hybrid; Colin, perhaps, a melding of both Captain Walton and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Rachel? I want to say Mary herself.
One final note. This is a self-published work and a very well written one at that. However, there are some typos in the text. My personal view? The story is strong enough to make them seem like irritations rather than major annoyances.
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