Slave Trade
by Susan Wright
Rose Rico was a wild child of a highly-placed government official. However, there was nothing even her mother could do when she is abducted by aliens and sold as a pleasure slave. The practice of using humans as pleasure slaves is well-established, because humans are always “in season”; whereas, many star-faring races have complicated mating cycles that rarely overlap with others of their species on the same ship.
Typically Earth-born slaves have a very short livetime. Ash, a hermaphrodite “creche”-born slave, has always believed that this was due to some kind of flaw in the Earthling’s constitution. However, he finds out differently when Rose concocts a plan to hijack the alien ship transporting them. He sees that Earth-born slaves know what true freedom is, and that they can’t bear to live without it.
Wright weaves this story on many different levels. Based on the cover art and title, I was expecting some cheesy erotic novel, and was pleasantly surprised when I got a well-crafted, textured story. I’ll definately be looking up the second book in this series.