Tracy’s review of Captive Desires by Diane Whiteside.
Quiet Danae Livingston has two lives. One is her lifeline: a career as a hardworking member of a top New York dance troupe. The other is her secret passion: fan-fic author, writing scorching tales about the dazzling realm of Torhtremer and Alekhsiy, her favorite hero in that haunting universe. The only time her worlds merge is at GriffinCon, the summer’s largest science fiction convention.
There an obsessed fan prowls the crowded convention halls, hunting for the.one author who can rewrite Torhtremer’s saga to his own twisted liking and have the legendary villain win everything.
But Alekhsiy and Torhtremer are far more real than even she or its greatest devotees could ever imagine. Knowing that danger threatens his home once again from Earth, Alekhsiy comes to GriffinCon to stop it using any means necessary, even if that means destroying the unknown dancer who’s saved his life so many times…
Soon fantasy and reality will merge, swords and sorcery will cross, and a sensual world of one woman’s vivid imagination will be the most impossible one of all to resist—or escape.
Danae Livingston, dancer by day, fanfic author by night is at GriffinCon when she runs into her dream man, literally. She has had dreams about Alekhsiy, a character in a series of books, for years. None of the men who have tried to play this character in movies quite matched up to the picture in Danae’s head of the great man, but when she meets a man named Alek she’s head over heels. He looks exactly like she thinks Alekhsiy should and very quickly attaches herself to him.
Alekhsiy has crossed the void from his homeland into earth to find two people; a catalyst who will bring great destruction to his world and the person who holds the key to getting that catalyst there. As focused as he is on his mission he’s also very excited to be near Danae who he has watched from his world and has fallen in love with. The thought of being with her is almost more than he can handle.
Alekhsiy and Danae quickly begin a sexual relationship and act like boyfriend and girlfriend but Dane believes that Alekhsiy is just a character actor and they will go their separate ways when the Con is over. When she realizes he’s the real thing she’s a tad bowled over, but more excited to have the living, breathing man in her arms. But there are very evil forces at work at GriffinCon and Alekhsiy is going after them – but he has to keep Danae safe as well.
Captive Desires brings a fun sexual romp, a great Con experience and fantasy all together. I very much enjoyed reading about the different fighting bouts that the Con held, but there just wasn’t enough of them described! lol
I felt that Danae, even though she was a fanfic author and totally into the fantasy world, believed Alekhsiy’s declaration that he was The Alekhsiy far too easily. I can’t say if someone straight out of one of my favorite books came up and told me who they were I wouldn’t laugh in their face. Danae didn’t do any of that. She just kind of accepted it and it was a little disconcerting.
I have to say that I would recommend reading the first book in this series, Captive Dreams, before reading this one. I was able to follow along quite well while reading but references to events that had taken place in book 1 were a tad confusing. While the story was entertaining I didn’t have a problem putting the book down to go do other things. I also found the end to be more than predictable which was a bit disappointing.
Rating: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here .
On New Years Day I decided that I needed to read some of the manga that had come to me from the 
