F+
Genre: LGBTQIA, Paranormal, Romance
Here at the Bitchery, we’re dedicated to finding you the best tentacle butt sex book available, and I’m sad to say we haven’t been doing a great job of it. What we’ve found is that there are a wealth of covers that imply “t in b” action (I’m looking at you, Someone to Cuttle) but so far none have really followed through with the money shot.
I regret to report that First Watch by Peter Hansen comes close to fulfilling the tentacle-in-butt promise, but then drops the ball.
Also shout-out to Amanda for sending me this gem and then also to the rest of the Bitchery for participating in a conversation about whether or not the green stuff on the cover was a really bad tattoo, runes, or tentacle jizz.
First Watch is a short story set post WWI about a Swiss Legionnaire named Edouard who is cursed into serving as the sexual slave of a tentacle monster aboard a submarine. I sort of wish that was the weirdest sentence I’ve ever typed for Smart Bitches, but it’s not.
Edouard apparently lay dying on a battlefield while terrifying winged creatures circled him and started to nibble on his still living body when he made his deal with the devil. He gets to live, but now he has to serve this Cthulu-like monster known as “The Captain” aboard a submarine. Edouard wants out of his contract so he meets up with an old friend and lover, Farid, and asks Farid to join up on the ship and help him kill The Captain so he can be free.
That’s basically the entire book right there. I read it in like 20 minutes, so I think the $2.99 price tag was a little high. The writing was good, but I’m fairly certain I can find some Davy Jones/ Pirates of the Caribbean: Why Jesus Did We Need a Sequel erotic fanfic for free. Just sayin’.
So, here are my thoughts:
First of all, to all you tentacle writing authors out there, quit skirting the tentacle butt sex scenes. Clearly we’re buying these books because of the implication that a tentacle will go in someone’s butt. You need to up your game. So far the most graphic tentacle scene I’ve read is in Beyond Heaving Bosoms, and I’m not sure Sarah actually wants to own that award. (SB Sarah: I totally own it. I wrote the tentacle buttsecks in the Choose-Your-Own-Romance section.)
This is really the best we get (NSFW):
He turned his head for a kiss, because if he kept looking at their reflection he would see the teeth gleaming in the darkness all around him. He would see the limbs like thick, pulsating ropes, each one glistening wetly in the half-light. With his mouth open, his eyes closed, he could condense the whole world to the prick of those needle-teeth in his lower lip, the probing of that long tongue. If he could forget who was doing this to him, give himself over to the sensation, then he’d open to the touch. He let slip a low, muffled sound, and he couldn’t have said if that was encouragement or refusal but it was need, and that tongue stroked him open as another set of teeth grazed his neck.
A limb caught at his thigh, latching there with mouths or suckers or God only knew what, but it held him fast; another wrapped tightly around his other ankle and pulled his legs apart. Between them, a long finger searched and stretched–it was easier if he thought of it as a finger. Easier to imagine he was kissing a man who had bound him in thick ropes, who rocked against him and into him with long, probing fingers. Those teeth on his nipples were some other man’s teeth, and the delicious ache where they closed had nothing to do with his debts. The slickness streaming down his wrists was sweat or semen or anything but blood; the tentacles wrapped around his cock were some other man’s hands–
I mean, that’s a pretty decent sex scene, but if that’s all I get for paying $2.99 on the promise of squid-monster-on-WWI-vet sex, I’m disappointed.
Also:
- Convenient that the tentacles are self-lubricating, I bet that saves a lot of cost
- I hope Edouard is getting lots of iron in his diet if all the little suckers have teeth.
Also, is it really a squid monster then? Or more like a lamprey? Lampreys are really fucking icky and I’d go with squid if I had to choose. Also squid are supposedly very intelligent so you could have nice after sex cuddle talk about literature and art and why sperm whales are right bastards.
Another thing, why does the tentacle monster even need a submarine?
Yeah, I know you’re like, “Elyse, that’s the one fucking question you took away from the WWI Legionnaire sex slave to tentacle monster story?” YEAH, IT IS, OKAY?
I mean, he’s a tentacle monster from the deep. I totally got an Elder God Lovecraft vibe from this, so WTF is he doing in a U-boat? I bet he’s a shitty Elder God and while Chtulu and all the others Who Shall Not Be Named got entire galaxies and dimensions and fucking mountains to themselves, this guy got a U-boat. Can you imagine how humiliated his parents must be? “What the fuck, Carl? We did not send you to Elder God school for you get assigned a shitty U-boat for your turf. Where did we go wrong? Did we not hug you enough as a child?”
And really, why is Edouard bitching anyway? I mean, yeah, being the sex slave to a tentacle creature known only as “The Captain” sounds pretty icky, but he was sprawled out in a WWI battlefield slowly dying of his wounds while scavengers picked at his still-living body. I’ve seen a lot of WWI documentaries and I’m willing to bet a lot of those soldiers would have gone with tentacle butt sex versus the shit deal they got. If you threw in the part about the tentacles being self-lubricating, there’d probably be a fucking line.
So Edouard is sick of his deal with Carl the Shittier Chtulu and he gets his old lover Farid to help him kill Carl, but when he tells Farid that his captain is a monster, he doesn’t specify what kind. Granted that conversation would kind of awkward, but I think when you enlist someone to help kill your tentacle-monster sex lord, they deserve to know the whole situation before going in. When Farid discovers what’s going on, he rallies admirably, and you have to admire a man who can handle “tentacle monster butt sex submarine” without throwing up or sobbing uncontrollably.
In any case, First Watch is just another post WWI undersea tentacle monster story that fails to deliver on the sexxytimes or a sufficient explanation as to why The Captain is on the sub in the first place. I personally am hoping for a prequel where we learn how The Captain came to be, why he got a U-boat versus a vast undersea chasm filled with sulfuric hell-fumes, but I’m not holding my breath. With more depth and more penetration this could have been a stellar book, but sadly it wasn’t to be.
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YAY, another F+ review!!! I have to admit I squeed out loud.
Also, tentacles and Swiss legionnaires! I fully expected this to be as hilarious as the Orca shifter time travelling penis with Tom Hiddleston commentary. But instead I’m a little disappointed, like Elyse.
Sometimes I wish someone would just take one of these niche, kinks/tropes and just run with it. Just go wild instead of being coy. Considering how werewolves and vampires have managed to become a thing that a lot of people read, I don’t really see how tentacles couldn’t?
I’m only half joking here.
I really think I could read and enjoy a tentacle novel if the author gave it their all instead of bailing out like this. It could be cracky, wtf hilariousness, compelling erotica, or some sort of intelligent beauty and the beast plot. Just convince me, already! Make me believe in your characters and your story!
I have to admit I read these reviews in the hope that one day, one of these books will be good, surprising us all; that it will make me want to read it, not just make me laugh at the review.
Incidentally, I went to school with a Peter Hansen. Who was extremely into WWI. So that added an extra tier of wtf-ery to all this. o_0
Thanks for taking one for the team. I always look forward to your reviews of the weirder books.
Love that your point is…there’s not enough crazy in this. LOVE IT.
Also, F+ reviews are better than morning coffee. Yeah I said it.
I went out with someone whose name was like Peter Hansen, but not quite, and he was a douchecanoe, and the thought of him writing unsatisfying Cthulu-porn makes me very happy, even though it probably is someone else.
this review is the best thing in the history of ever.
I saw the F+ and made myself go do a task I have been avoiding so that I could read this review as a reward for getting it done. So. Worth. It.
I have read this! and actually thought it was decent — I liked Farid, and he and Edouard had some potentially fascinating backstory hinted at; but it was just a sketch of what needed to be a novel. The tentacle-monsters-on-a-submarine thing is hard to explain, to be sure. You didn’t mention that the sub’s other officers are also monsters; they regard humans as prey, and thus are understandably perplexed by the Captain’s erotic and romantic obsession with Edouard. There’s a bit where the First Officer talks to the Captain and basically says “WTF dude, you’re committing bestiality with food!” I like a book that owns its weirdness that way.
“Carl!” *angry yelling*
Love it 🙂
This may not be the tentacle porn we deserve, but this is the tentacle porn review we deserve. And that’ll do, lamprey. That’ll do.
You know there is lizard tail butt sex in “Claimings, Tails and Other Alien Artefacts” by Lyn Gala – is that close enough? But that book and its sequel are awesome.
Also I can’t believe I wrote that – and in public 🙂
My favorite maybe-maybe not double entendre: “with more depth and more penetration.” Hah!
BTW, there actually *is* a Carl Cthulhu. It’s from Little Gloomy and shows what Cthulhu would be like as a sad-sack office worker. (His light-up eyes are a portent of things to come, though.) It can be seen on eBay (along with a possibly unrelated book called CARL CTHULHU NEEDS HUGS TOO).
I have so many plush and toy Cthulhus…
Don’t worry Elyse, fanfic tin can fulfill all your tentacle-buttsex longings! Of course I can’t remember the names/fandoms of any of these stories but I know they exist.
Legit tentacle butt sex. Claimings, Tails and Other Alien Artifacts by Lyn Gayla. Not as horrible as the title suggests either.
This review made my day…especially the U-boat rant. In terms of t-in-b books, have you read Mistress of the Jellyfishmen yet? It’s pulpier than freshly squeezed oranges.
Elyse (& CarrieS, Amanda, SBSarah):
Keep writing such entertaining reviews for this kind of books, and I will eventually crack and write Fix-It Fics for these books according to your specifications.
There’s already a part of my brain trying to figure out how dinosaurs ended up mastering economy.
tail sex.
What was that book?
Daughters of Terra, The Ta’e’sha Chronicles
Theolyn Boese
How on earth do you describe a MMF series with and MM Alien couple kidnapping the female to mate with?
Add it dysfunctional aliens, rape, and tails on the aliens?
Cannot quantify that at all.
Ambushed by Nik Valentine has great tenacle butt sex. The sequel, not so much.
@jimthered – we also have Carl Cthulhu! But his eyes stopped lighting up, making him even sadder….
I stopped by specifically to recommend Lyn Gala’s Claimings series for excellent alien tail anal action, and two (2!) other commenters beat me to it. I love this community.
Don’t be fooled by the horrible cover or title – it’s really good. Well written, decent world building, good character development. And the sex is hot and not coy about where the tail is going.
One more thing.
Elyse – have you read Joey Hill’s mermaid books? I have not but I hear that they are full of crazy sauce in the best possible way (including sexy times between a tinkerbell sized female angel and normal sized man) and I would LOVE to read your reviews.
Every single thing about this delights me to the core of my being. If laughter burns as many calories as I’ve been told, this is my new official daily workout.
Okay, so the review leaves unanswered the REALLY IMPORTANT question, is the title submarine allusion or a bad swiss/watches pun/allusion??