Book Review: Clipped by Devon McCormack

Clipped
by Devon McCormack
M/M Erotica/Paranormal
3.5 Stars
Review copy from Netgalley

Blurb:

Though mortals have been convinced that God cares about their souls, nothing could be further from the truth. He created the world as a gift for his lover, Satan. But when Satan left him, he decided to end what he saw as his most grotesque creation.

Satan and his army of demons are man's only hope...

The demon Kinzer and his lover, Janka, have been sent by Satan to spy on The Raze, a gang of rogue demons who are working with God to bring about Armageddon. When someone exposes their true allegiances, The Raze clips Kinzer's wings and murders Janka. Kinzer manages to escape. He tracks down Satan's allies to warn them about a mole in their midst when he learns that they've located the Antichrist—a powerful weapon that could prevent the apocalypse. Now, he's on a mission to protect the Antichrist and avenge his lover’s death.

Review:

Love and hate, good vs evil, the fate of the world.

At the beginning of this book, I felt as if I had started reading halfway through. A lot seemed to have happened before the book started and I was left feeling very confused as to what was going on. The exotic names didn't help either.

Kinzer is one of the fallen, a fallen angel who is trying to save humanity and wakes up with his wings clipped, which negates all his supernatural powers as well, and realises he is now a sex slave in a very rough club. He meets Kid, the youngest person there, who has been a prisoner in the club since he was fifteen and doesn't really know any other life.

Being new, Kinzer doesn't know the rules and strikes up a conversation with Kid in the club's weight room, but it's Kid who gets punished by being tasered, as he did know the rules - no fraternising with the others.

Eventually, Kinzer had enough and engineers an escape, taking Kid with him and trying to figure out who betrayed him to the Raze, the unfallen angels who are trying to bring about Armageddon.

They meet up with two other angels, Dedrus and Treycore (who'd been working as strippers) and these two angels have kidnapped a pregnant woman, who they believe is about to give birth to the Antichrist, the saviour of humanity, not its downfall.

This book was not a boring read, but for me it was an uncomfortable one. There are lots of scenes with very rough sex, including biting, blood play and a lot of pain - as angels are very well-endowed and it hurts, a lot. I don't mind erotica, but that much pain for me isn't erotic. It is erotic for Kid, he enjoys it.

It's definitely erotica rather than romance, as Kid and Kinzer have sex almost within minutes of meeting, despite it breaking the rules. Then Kinzer gets with Dedrus, and Kid ends up with Treycore, an angel who detests humans and thinks they smell foul. It doesn't stop him from having sex with Kid, in many places and positions, even though having sex with him could kill a human because he is so large. Not a book for the faint of heart.

The sex scenes are a bit more raunchy than I was used to, very explicit, no purple prose here. But there did seem to be sex in every chapter, sometimes more than once and that just seemed a bit excessive.

I did come to grow to like Kinzer and Kid, Dedrus I'm still not sure of and I didn't really like Treycore at all.

Towards the end of the book, the betrayer is revealed and I didn't guess who it was, so kudos to the author for pulling that twist. I loved the paranormal elements with a twist on the fallen angels etc., but for me there was a bit too much sex and not enough plot.