Rating: DNF
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
A rogue Dom without limits. A BDSM community ready to break him. Can he grovel his way back to the top?
Taylor “Dom Seven” Little’s own painful history drives his excessive cruelty to the submissives in his care. But when the Cadre captures him for his unforgiving abuse, he discovers failure to submit to retraining will land him behind bars. And now to re-earn his right to be a Master, he has no choice but to learn to crawl like a slave.
With his freedom on the line, Taylor struggles to prove himself a docile and obedient student. But every task demanded of him tests his resolve and scrapes further at the wounded layers hiding his abusive past.
Can Taylor slay his inner demons, or will he succumb to his own tormented desires?
The Cadre is a transformative standalone BDSM novel. If you like powerful stories of redemption, insights into human psychology, and realistic portrayals of subcultures, you’ll love this uncompromising tale from BJ Cox.
Buy The Cadre to break the chains of torture today!
Note: The Cadre was originally published under the title 7 With 1 Blow by Caraway Carter. The Cadre has a new title, cover and pen name. Nothing new has been added otherwise.
The idea of this story I got from the blurb is what made me pick it up: Someone trying to be a Dom who doesn’t know how is taken in hand by senior Doms in the community and taught how to be a better better person. How to have empathy and control, and — hopefully — make friends along with way. The execution of this story, though, did not work for me at all. So much so that I put it down at 30% and can not recommend it.
Taylor is an abuser who thinks beating someone makes them dominant. He may or may not be a sadist; certainly he likes hurting his boys. Taylor takes young subs and makes S&M films with them. He has broken a sub’s nose, sprained or broken an arm of another, and left subs with bruises and whip marks. He makes it very clear that safe words aren’t something he supports or listens to.
The Cadre is a Dom club that has its own house out in the rural countryside with an underground dungeon that they can use to play without upsetting the neighbors. Several Doms in the Cadre get together and compile evidence on Taylor and it turns out to be significant enough it would send him to prison. The Cadre Doms tell Taylor, point blank, that he’ll either do what they tell him to do or they’ll send him to prison. This is something they have done to someone else before and have no compunction about doing it again to Taylor. They then kidnap, drug, and torture Taylor in an effort to “break” him.
Taylor isn’t just some overeager young man who doesn’t know when to stop. He’s someone whose actions should send him to prison, someone they have enough actual evidence on to send to prison. This is laid out in the book. Instead of sending him to prison, though, they decide to “break” him (using the author’s own words) and mold him into a proper Dom, or what they consider a proper Dom. I’m not clear why they don’t just share the damning information they have with the police, rather than deciding they will take on this violent “re-education” effort of sorts themselves. Also, someone who cages, drugs, and psychologically tortures someone without consent is not okay… unless they’re part of the Cadre, and then the actions are seemingly justified? They also don’t seem moved by the pain of the submissives, as much as irritated that Taylor isn’t doing things the way they do them.
I’m sorry, but this is a hard no from me. Again, I stopped the book at 30% when Taylor was drugged for the dozenth time — after being told the Cadre of Doms had taken over his business and were holding him hostage, that no one would care or mourn his loss, and he had to do what they told him or they’d send him to prison (with the requisite prison rape jokes). I was entirely turned off by this book and its handling of BDSM and, well, everything.
If this had been listed as horror or a dark romance, I would have entered into this with a different mind set. However, even then, I would have struggled with the handling of the situation, the actions taken, the setting, and the fact that no one in the book (up to the 30% mark where I put the book down) is framed in anything but a self-righteous and sanctimonious light. I do not recommend this book.
Note: The Cadre was originally published under the title 7 With 1 Blow by Caraway Carter. According to the blurb it has a new title, cover, and pen name, but no other changes.
