You learn your wisest lessons from your enemies. Assuming, of course, you survive the encounter. Kendras is a casualty of war: injured, penniless, and quite possibly the last surviving member of the only family he's ever known–the elite fighting force known as the Scorpions. When a steel–eyed stranger offers him medicine and shelter in exchange for submission and a secret task, Kendras has no choice but to accept. He is a Scorpion; he'll do whatever it takes to survive. But his true goal is to rebuild the Scorpions. Neither Steel's possessive nature nor Kendras's shattered foot can keep him from finding the last of his brothers... or the mysterious leader of the Scorpions, a man who held Kendras's heart long before Steel tried to take it for himself. The goal is simple, the situation anything but. To rescue his leader and escape from Steel for good, Kendras must fight through a morass of politics and intrigue, where enemies are allies and even allies have hidden agendas.
Review
Aleksandr Voinov's Scorpion, from Dreamspinner Press, is what Showtime's Spartacus would have been if all of the male leads had been gay. It takes place in an ancient, alternate world where the city-states of Fetin and Dalman have just concluded a brutal war. Kendras, an exotic, dark-skinned, blue-eyed warrior, is one of the few surviving members of an elite fighting unit known as the Scorpions, which was all but wiped out in the war. Wounded and helpless, he is taken in by a mercenary named Steel, who offers him medical care and shelter in exchange for sex. But Steel wants more than sex from Kendras. He falls for Kendras, even as he draws the injured Scorpion into a web of political machination involving priests and kings. Kendras, however, is in love with the leader of the Scorpions, who is a captive of the priests, and he will stop at nothing to free his leader and rebuild the Scorpions.
I won't say much more about the plot, except to mention that there are battles, assassinations, betrayals and intrigue. And lots and lots of man-on-man sex between warriors, priests, slaves and kings. Voinov very effectively transports you into this world without bogging the story down in pages and pages of eye-numbing exposition. And he populates the novel with full-bodied characters that are believable, at least within the confines of their world. The story is bloody and violent, but it is also sexy and it kept me turning pages even when I should have been taking care of other things.
