The Novel Approach

Gold Digger by Aleksandr Voinov

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke

I must be bi-text-ual. How else can I explain why one half of me loves the sort of fairy tale romances that are written with the express purpose of making my wee little heart go pitter-patter, while the other half of me loves combat-sex; the kind of erotic fight for the supremacy of flesh and feelings that Aleksandr Voinov delivers, where men circle and challenge and verbally spar, and then go ahead and get their sweat on? I can’t, so I just had to make up a word. It works.

Nikolai Krasnorada and Henri LeBeau’s sortie begins not on the battlefield but in the boardroom, and eventually ends in the bedroom, where, of course, they flesh out (if you’ll pardon the pun) the lines of demarcation between what is business and what is pleasure and what is the business of pleasure and what that pleasurable business means to Nikolai, who, up to that point, had never found a man interesting enough to make him forget he’s not gay. It’s a tangled web of emotions—the kind you feel in your heart and mind—and feelings—the kind you sense on your skin, the sounds and smells and tastes that burrow their way not only under your flesh but into your psyche, as well; the sorts of things that make you begin to believe your every thought has been hijacked by lust, warring between instinct and intellect.

Set against the backdrop of what was supposed to be an investment meeting between LeBeau Mining and Cybele Exploration, a meeting that soon turns into a bid for hostile takeover, Nikolai and Henri’s simple sexual encounter becomes a confusion of mistrust and loyalty and betrayal and anger; it becomes a matter of sleeping with the enemy, and Nikolai must retreat while at the same time strategizing an action plan that doesn’t include his heart becoming involved. He won’t go gentle into that good night. He will stand and fight—until it becomes clear Nikolai’s friend and mentor and Cybele CEO Ruslan Polunin has other plans.

The surest way to defeat a man in a battle of his own making is to refuse to enter the fray. It’s the kind of tactical maneuver that has a way of deflating an over-inflated sense of self-importance, calling the bluff of a man who has threatened you, then walking away with all your weapons intact, as well as acquiring a new one in the bargain; ready, willing, and able to relocate and allocate in new territory because it’s the parting shot that hits the mark and leaves behind the most damage.

Gold Digger is the story of a man who mines for gold but ends up discovering a far more valuable commodity when he explores his feeling and finds that someone and someplace to call home might be the greatest treasure of all. It’s the story of a man who learns that blood and biology aren’t necessarily what defines a father and son. It is the story of a man who eschews labels and simply goes about the business of claiming the one person who could very well make him happy for the rest of his life.

Nikolai and Henri are shrewd men and clever heroes who know how to push each other’s buttons, and who know that victory isn’t always measured in wins and losses, but in mutual triumphs.

This is pretty much Aleksandr Voinov the way I’ve come to expect him to be—at his provocative best.

Available to purchase in all formats here:

Dark Soul: Volume 5 by Aleksandr Voinov

And they all lived.

When you live a life without limits, a survival of the fittest, kill or be killed existence, what more could you possibly hope for but to live? What does happily ever after mean in the grand scheme of things, when the best you can wish for at any point in time is simply to live to see the next hour, the next day?

Stefano Marino might tell you it’s better to live with regrets than to die with honor. Or maybe he’d say it’s better to live with honor than to die with regrets. One thing is for sure, though, he’d absolutely tell you he’d give up everything to protect the two people he loves more than anything else in the world, and where honor is concerned, where regret is concerned, they’re sometimes a knife that cuts both ways.

Stefano knew a Spadaro would eventually be his undoing, and he was so right. But in the midst of his life fraying at the seams, he found a way to stop the damage because he found a way to tailor a new existence from the tattered remnants of the old. When you live a life without limits and you fill that life with people who do the same, you’re bound to find the means to pattern an ending that you can live—or die—with. Stefano discovers that there are times when living and the mere threat of dying can feel like the same thing.

And so it ends for fans of the series.

For Silvio, for Donata, for Stefano, however, it simply begins at the end as something new, and that will serve as little more than a torment for me because this new beginning is something I didn’t see coming. Sometimes a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and Aleksandr Voinov was the master of my education, from start to finish. He led me by the senses and tweaked at my emotional boundaries; then, when he got me to a point of clarity, he brought down the curtain.

And I can do nothing but applaud.

Buy Dark Soul: Volume 5 HERE.

Dark Soul: Vol 4 by Aleksandr Voinov

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a series before that has taunted and provoked me the way “Dark Soul” has, wanting two characters to be together more than anything else, then rethinking that, wondering if they did end up together, would they even be good or right for each other? Then again, maybe there are times when want and need supersede good and right. This is a time when vice and virtue mingle and tweak at the conscience and make me want things I hadn’t ought to want. If I was a really good girl, that is.

Throw into that mix a man whose mere presence is a dangerous seduction and a temptation to them both, as well as a suspicious (rightly so) wife who I want out of the way now–and what does that say about me and how much I want Silvio and Stefano to have some sort of chance together?–and, Lord, what a tangled web Aleksandr Voinov has woven around my emotions.

This installment in the “Dark Soul” series felt like progress, but that’s also a dangerous feeling; there’s always a sense of one step forward and two steps back when it comes to these two men. The fact they’ve made a pretty significant move forward can’t mean much right now, not when things are still so complicated, but at the same time, it could mean everything. Obsession, attraction, addiction, jealousy, coveting; yes, the wanting is unmistakable and utterly delicious and defines, brackets, underscores and puts an exclamation point on the connection between them. And I want more.

H.G. Wells wrote “We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.” If that doesn’t describe the sharp and tangible need between Silvio and Stefano just now, I’m not sure what does.

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Dark Soul (Volume 3) by Aleksandr Voinov

Dark Soul by Aleksandr Voinov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I do believe Aleksandr Voinov is the only author who can push my comfort level to its very limits—and make me love it, every salacious, kinky, erotic step of the way.

Anyone who’s been following this series knows that Silvio Spadaro is an entity unto himself. He is at once seemingly without conscience yet has a sense of loyalty that runs so deeply he will extend himself beyond every accepted social boundary to avenge the man he is sworn to protect. All while seducing that man—who is very married—pushing Stefano to accept his attraction and give in to the lust that draws them to each other.

The more that’s revealed about Silvio, the more I’m drawn to him and his utter lack of inhibitions. He is an entirely carnal being who knows how to use his innate sensuality to his benefit, whether it’s against his enemies or for the benefit of those he desires. There have been many times that I’ve wondered at Silvio’s complexity, yet understand him in ways that seem too simplistic to be true. He is, at his basest level, a man who lives by his own rules, but is also a man who is entirely ruled by his need for pain and pleasure, by his sense of loyalty and duty; there is no right or wrong for Silvio—only the ends justify the means by which he gets results. He is unlike any character I’ve ever known. He’s the sort of man who shocks and surprises and seduces with equanimity.

As the war against the Russians escalates, Stefano may have gained another weapon in his arsenal in Franco Spadaro, a man who promises to be every bit as complex as his brother, and whose relationship with Silvio is…unconventional, to say the very least. One thing is certain; it will be interesting to see how both of these men affect the status quo of Stefano’s life.

The Dark Soul series is Vashtan doing what he does best: daring his readers to think outside the paradigm of romance and venture into the realms of the forbidden erotic, to find intimacy in the unexpected, but fully accepting the untraditional is essential to the story.

It is a seduction of the most sublime sort.

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