Submission is a book with a split personality, The first half is a wellwritten, entertaining erotic comedy as the Irish rogue Mick Savage beguiles his way into the beds of a variety of Englands uppercrust, male and female, and robs them.
With the assistance of his sidekick, the cutpurse Cat, he goes after the greatest prize of them all: The Gloucester Diamond, Disguised as a pair of priests, they discover that men of the cloth are just as fallible as the randy lords of London, Greed is his downfall, and he and Cat are arrested and transported to the colonies,
Meanwhile, the bookish and mild Christopher FitzGibbons is betrothed against his will to Lady Violet, Completely ignorant of sex, he finds himself strangely attracted to a Willicombe, an underfootman and young man like himself, With Willicombes help he attempts to get a sexual education and comic mishaps ensue, Just when he and Willicombe are finally reaching a mutually pleasurable understanding, they are discovered by Lord Christophers father, Lord FitzGibbons enlists his son in the navy to make a man of him,
And the book falls apart,
Once Christopher is assigned to the HMS Impregnable under Captain Rock, and Mick and Cat are tossed into the filthy hold along with the other prisoners Captain Rock is charged to deliver to the penal colony, the author loses faith in his materials and reverts to gay porn scenes.
Previously in the book the numerous erotic encounters had some point in the storyMicks cuckolding of the betrothed Lord Christopher when each has no idea who the other is, for example, is an amusing scene that grows out of the characters of the various people involved and sets up the complications that will ultimately bring the two men together.
The sex scenes aboard the Impregnable are not the result of any particular motivation aside from the authors need to fill out the requisite number of pages of men screwing.
Needing to resolve Willicombes unrequited love for Christopher, suddenly we discover that he and Cat knew each other when they were boys and are happy to be back together again.
After mistreating Mick, Captain Rock is enlightened and suddenly forgives and embraces his own gay son, Preposterously, all this happyending occurs aboard the ship belonging to the Spanish pirate El Niño, The Boy, who isnt a boy at all, but either a hermaphrodite or a girl in disguise.
It is El Niño who rearranges everything so that everybody except Captain Rock gets laid and everybody forgives and embraces everybody,
Im all for happy endings, and those who know me know Im utterly in love with wooden ships, but
the second half of the book was a snooze.
The author couldnt tell a jib from a square sail, and aside from a few bits of wit when the other midshipmen set up the gullible Christopher for a prank, the nautical errors and mechanical behavior of characters who had formerly been engagingly believable, had me turning pages in a hurry to finish the book.
One has the feeling that the publisher had a look at the manuscript in progress and snapped, “Im paying you to write about men screwing, not Regency manners!”
What a pity.
Gordon has a knack for humor, The bookish Lord Christopherwho is so earnestly struggling to be the man his father wants him to be while yearning for his books and other menis the perfect foil for comic interludes.
The reader cant help sympathizing with the poor bewildered Christopher during the first half of the book, At the same time, Mick and Cat, whose flexible morality allows them to prey on the English, find that their streetwise wits can get them into more trouble than they bargained for.
Even when were rooting for them to succeed, we cant help but be amused when they get whats coming to themas in when Cat attempts to rob Mick after they have become lovers.
I would have been very happy to read an entire book like this and given it five, but the second half of pirate porn ruins it,
Three. I really liked the first half of this book, The story held my interestChristopher's naivete and Mick's intrigues were fun to read about, And who wouldn't like the cutpurse, Cat! The sex was fun, and had something to do with the story, However, The second half of the book, on the HMS Impregnable, fell apart, The story was pretty well lost amidst the constant sex scenes, and the eventual capture by El Nino was incredibly disappointing, Thestar rating is because the first half was worth the read, Christopher is forced to become a sailor on the high seas, Aboard HMS Impregnable he meets Mick, who is bound for a life in bondage in the penal colonies of the Americas, The two soon become aware of a strange relationship between the crew members and are initiated into a series of power games, .