IN THE GARDEN OF SIN

Author: Louisa Burton ISBN: 9780553385311 7/2009 EROTIC/PARANORMAL/HISTORICAL/CONTEMPORARY Publisher: BANTAM DELL
Time Period: 1620s, 1700s, present day

Two linked tales are set in an ancient castle where four exquisitely beautiful beings who thrive on carnal energy entice and ravish their human guests. Hannah Leeds is The English Courtesan, a seventeenth-century maiden who apprentices herself as a courtesan-in-training to Venetian nobleman Domenico Vitturi, offering her body in exchange for his patronage. Don Domenico has resigned himself to a life without love, his once-handsome face having been disfigured by the scars of war. He brings Hannah to the Castle of the Hidden Grotto to be tutored in the arts of love by its insatiable and inventive residents, little knowing that she has come for more than just an erotic education…. In Hunger vampires Anton Turek and Galiana Solsa satisfy their voracious erotic appetites while feeding on their prey. Weary of playing lapdog to the powerful, sadistic Galiana, Anton renews his quest to possess Lili, the beautiful succubus with whom he’s been obsessed for centuries—while Galiana sets her sights on the godlike, sexually ravenous Elic, whom Lili loves but can never make love to. Desire and vengeance reach a fever pitch at the Castle during an invitation-only Renaissance festival with a BDSM twist.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Louisa Burton sets her erotic paranormal romance IN THE GARDEN OF SIN (Hidden Grotto Book 4), in a secluded area of France where a large manor house, known as the Château de la Grotte Cachée, is protected from the outside world by a Seigneur des Ombres and an administrator. They protect the four immortal residents of Château de la Grotte Cachée known in French as the follets—devilkins who have insatiable sexual appetites: a satyr named Inigo; a succubus called Ilutu-Lili, who was worshipped in Babylonia as the Goddess of the New Moon; a djinn who goes by the name Darius, so reluctant to be contacted by humans that he often appears as either a cat or a thrush; and a dusios, or incubus, known as Elic in his male form and Elle when he changes to his female form.

The first story focuses on Hannah Leeds, an English girl who travels with three other young women to the Château to be trained as a courtesan by Domenico Vitturi. Her reason for going, though, is just a cover, as she needs to get close to the Duke of Buckingham who has imprisoned her uncle and sentenced him to death for treason he did not commit. She comes up with an unusual arrangement, whereby she is to be trained yet remain a virgin, which she believes will give her time to plead her uncle’s case with the Duke who is also visiting the Château, and then escape from her arrangement. The second story is one of Karmic justice. It is set in the present, with two vampires who have crossed paths with the Château residents in the past. The Venetian courtesan, Galiana, is a vampire who has lived thousands of years, and when Domenico Vitturi was monstrously scarred in battle, she was repulsed by him and had him beaten, further disfiguring him. Anton was a med student in Venice in the 1600s when Galiana turned him after he spurned her. In the 1700s, he became infatuated with Ilutu-Lili when they were attending a debauched party at the Château. He tried to turn her, but Elic came to her rescue, and Anton wound up in the Bastille for 40 years, escaping when the prison was stormed in 1789.

Burton brings together the perfect blend of the erotic with the horrific. The education the novitiate courtesans learn at the hands of Elic and Inigo are deliciously explicit, and further enhanced by the follets’ special paranormal abilities, skills I’d hands down rather have than ESP or being able to fly. She describes the Château and its location so thoroughly, that I’m sure I’d be able to find it. Except that it is protected by supernatural beings who would be able to affect my mind and keep me from seeing it right before me. Drat! Despite the intense heat of the erotic scenes, she keeps the readers’ attention also on the story. For Hannah and Domenico, it is a romance beyond compare. She sees him as the person he is, not the wounded body before her. For Elic and Lilli, it is the story of their love in spite of his physical inability to make love to another follet. The compassion they have for each other spans centuries, and when Galiana unwittingly gives them a solution to their problem, it is fitting since she should pay for her millennia of misdeeds.

IN THE GARDEN OF SIN can be read on so many levels. It is completely satisfying as a picture of erotic pleasure. It is also a beautiful portrayal of love and romance between couples that stands the test of time. And for those readers who like a little bloodsucking horror and mayhem, that base is also covered. I’ve read it through several times and see new things each time. I love this series and look forward to more of Burton’s sexually inventive tales.

Susan Barton