In this erotic romance set in a dystopian future, healer Gabriel’s attempt to convince slavegirl Mariah to trust him goes too far, endangering his life, his freedom, and his sanity. Mariah can save him from the despair that envelopes him only if she can find the strength to trust herself. Gabriel, on a mission of mercy, is horrified by what he finds when he arrives in Riviera, a land far from his … far from his home. So-called “humans,” bored and decadent, amuse themselves with the senseless torture of their slaves. Yet Gabriel finds unexpected friends. An artist named Animal, who notices everything except Rose, his slavegirl. And Mariah, a slave foisted on Gabriel when he unwittingly prevents her from escaping.
Mariah knows that Master Gabriel’s talk of a different way of life, in which slavery does not exist, is merely the latest and cruelest of the mindgames that humans have inflicted on her for her entire life. She must play along, but actually believing in it would bring disaster to her and to everyone she cares about.
Mindgames is about love, and friendship, and the potential for redemption. It is about how one person can change the world, or be destroyed by it.
Reviewers online call Mindgames “absolutely amazing. The perfect balance of substance and sex and never a dull moment.” “Simply magnificent.” “The writing is spare, clean and sprightly.” The writer “proves that writing is an art form that possesses the ability to transfix and transform the reader to faraway lands.” “I LOVE this story, and I think about it all the time.”
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I’m unsure what to make of this book, but waht I will say is that it is UNIQUE and that is so rare to find now days. I picked it up expecting an erotic romance, and while there was a lot of sex in it, it was the normal descriptive type sex found in erotic book. Thankfully the story stood up on it’s own and carried me through despite the sexy part not being what I had expected.
I hope this author can improve their description of sex, because I really look forward to their next book.
This book…OMG..this book!
I felt pretty much every emotion that my little black heart is capable of feeling while reading this amazing novel.
It was just…wow.
It’s a dystopian fantasy novel with some of the most in-depth and perfectly detailed world-building I have ever read.
I almost feel as if I didn’t read this book but watched it, lived it! The characters feel like my friends…I just can’t express how deeply this book touched me.
There are four main characters in this story and I feel like I know each one of them personally. I laughed with them. I cried with them. I hoped and dreamed with them.
GABRIEL – A healer from a faraway land with a pure and honest heart. Horrified by the atrocities he witnesses the ‘humans’ commit against their slaves.
MARIAH – A slave with fire in her spirit and soul and a stubborn streak a mile long. She is given to Gabriel to ‘use’ as he wants during his visit.
ROSE – Another slave with the purest heart and kindest intentions. She dares to hope for the future no matter how many times life has beaten her down.
ANIMAL – A bit of an outcast artist, he’s Rose’s master and the one tasked with housing Gabriel for the duration of his visit. They become more than friends. More like brothers.
Gabriel has never heard of such a thing as owning slaves but the people in this land he has come to visit have slaves that they honest to god believe are not human and need to be beaten and raped pretty much daily in order to manage their day to day duties.
These people make a sport out of the worst actions they can think of to hurt and humiliate their slaves.
When Gabriel tries to help the poor souls he comes across they are terrified of him and beg him not to be kind to them – not to treat them with kindness as it’s the worst of the mind games and destroys the soul, not just the body.
He decides that he needs to help them however he can but when it comes to the very woman he tried to help escape, he has his toughest challenge yet.
The things that these slaves – both men and women – have gone through…omg.
The torture, the degradation…the rape!
They even drug the food in order to keep them in a constant state of arousal and therefore easier to control.
There are pretty much no rules to protect the slaves so the sky’s the limit for these disgusting creatures (the Masters, not the slaves btw).
SEX SCENES
Okay, the scenes in this book were intense and dark AF.
I know it’s a long one but I want you to see what’s inside, lol, so…
She flicked the whip, trying for an impact that was not so soft as to arouse Mistress Desiree’s ire, and not so hard as to make Tabitha move her legs. As the blow landed Gino put his fingers in her crack, one of them resting on her asshole. He tongued her in wide circles below her clit. But Mariah was nowhere near ready. She flicked the whip. Tabitha cried out. Gino moved his thumb down and gently penetrated her vagina with it, circling her clit with his tongue, not touching it. The whip, and Tabitha’s groan, and Gino’s thumb moving up her slit. The whip, and Tabitha’s pain, and Gino’s thumb just below her clit. The whip, and Tabitha in a blur, and Gino using his tongue to push her clit onto the hardness of his thumb. It was not enough. Mariah was panting, from Gino, from her exertion, from the confusion, but she was not ready yet. “Aim for her crack,” Mistress Desiree commanded her. Mariah did. As the lash landed, Gino pushed his finger into Mariah’s ass. Then his thumb was in her pussy, and he was pushing his finger in and out of her ass and his thumb in and out of her sex as he licked her clit. Mariah whipped Tabitha. Tabitha cried out. Her body wriggled as she struggled to keep her knees wide. Gino swept his tongue from the entrance to Mariah’s pussy to just below her clit, and stopped. Mariah whipped Tabitha. The cry, the wriggle, the struggle, and Gino’s tongue on her. Again, and again. And then, every time the whip connected to Tabitha, Gino licked Mariah’s clit. On the backswing he pulled back. She whipped Tabitha. He licked her clit. Lightning behind her eyes, but only when the whip connects. The whip, the tongue, the whip, the tongue. She is close now. She accidently flicks the whip harder, and Tabitha cries out louder. Gino draws her clit into his mouth. His tongue continues to circle. Mariah hits Tabitha hard, and Tabitha cries out. The whip, the cry, the tongue circling. The crash is about to overtake Mariah. The whip goes wild; it wraps around Tabitha to the side of her breast squished into the footstool, and Tabitha shrieks, and Mariah shrieks, and Gino fingers her ass and her pussy harder, deeper, and sucks her clit, and Mariah brings the whip down one more time and Tabitha cries out one more time, and Mariah is pushed over the edge, into Gino’s mouth, spasming, and as she does she whips Tabitha again, again, and her cries are louder than Tabitha’s. And then she can barely hold up the whip, or herself. Gino has pulled back, and Tabitha is quiet and still, bleeding where the whipmarks have crossed. And Mistress Desiree says to them, “You are dismissed.”
As I said, I felt every emotion while reading this book. It reminds me a little of R Lee Smith who, you hopefully know, writes some of the most epic massive fantasy/sci-fi novels ever!
WARNING:
This is not for the faint of heart. Meaning…it’s perfect for me.
There is abuse, rape, torture, slavery, public humiliation and a look into the darkest and cruellest corners of the human mind.
And I wish I could read it again for the first time!
Final Thoughts on MINDGAMES by Jasmine Gold
PLEASE, PLEASE read this book! I need you to read it and discuss it with me!
It’s a little slow in the beginning but stick with it! It utterly blew me away.
5 Stars.