The Flesh Cartel
(Season 1: Damnation)
By: Rachel Haimowitz & Heidi Belleau
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: Jan. 17, 2013
Genre: Horror Erotica
Rating:
The Flesh Cartel: an international, multi-billion-dollar black market that trades in lost souls. Or more specifically, their bodies.
Highly organized and frighteningly efficient, the Flesh Cartel could teach even the KGB a thing or two about breaking a human mind. Fortunately for their ultra-rich clients, they’re just as skilled at putting people back together again—as perfect pets, well-trained and eager to please.
No matter what your secret tastes or dark desires, the Flesh Cartel—for the right price, of course—will hand-design the plaything of your dreams.
The first season has two stories back to back.
My thoughts on Capture…
Dougie and Mat are beaten and kidnapped from their house and taken to a place where they are locked up and raped for what seems like weeks. They’ve no idea why they’ve been taken or what will happen to them but what they do know is that Dougie is the prized one and Mat will do anything he can to keep the monsters away from his brother even if it means that he takes the beating.
Is there even an emoticon of your jaw dropping the floor? (yes there is, and I found it) 
I don’t normally read this type of novel but I had seen such high reviews and my curiosity got the best of me when I saw it available on NetGalley. Not that it’s poorly written but it’s just so graphic and horrific that the majority of the time I read it with my eyes wide open. I couldn’t imagine being one of the brothers and going through what they went though. Even though we don’t get a lot of back story on the characters and there isn’t a ton of character development before the abduction, my heart broke for them. Both brothers would rather gain the attention of the guards so that the other brother won’t have to endure the pain. I just felt so bad for these characters and humiliated for them. This short novel evoked so much emotion from me that I literally could not put the story down.
My thoughts on Auction…
We find out that the brothers were abducted for human trafficking but why Dougie was targeted specifically was still unclear. I don’t quite know how they find the people that they do, other than you realize that the people that they take have been fostered or have gone through the system somehow. So therefor they have no family looking for them if they were to disappear. Even though they didn’t want Mat to begin with they have decided to present him to the potential buyers at the auction. Dougie is determined to do whatever he can to keep them together and to get auctioned off as a pair.
Not only was the first part about their horrible treatment while in captivity bad enough but then the auction is even more horrific. First they are cleaned up… well Dougie is. Mat is bruised and battered, drugged and then, to make him look more “bad-ass”, they shave his head and take a razor to his eyebrow and stitch him up to give him a scar. I mean, seriously?! I just felt so bad for him. Then the things that they are made to do on stage for the potential buyers to try to get higher bids is just vile. My brain just couldn’t wrap around it.
I would classify this series as “horror erotica” if there even is such a thing. I mean, not only was it very graphic but like I said my eyes were bugging out of my head the entire time. Kudos to the authors though. It’s rare that a book evokes such emotion out of me and they definitely had my brain reeling. Right from page one I was shocked and the shock factor just kept going up with every page. This story is like a gruesome car crash that you just can’t look away from. I will definitely be “rubber necking” it to see how this story ends for the two brothers.
“A beautiful young woman, as naked as he was, was coming at him with a scrub brush, and he couldn’t help it – he laughed. What a fantasy this might’ve been – him helpless at the mercy of a nude supermodel while she soaped him down – if only he hadn’t been, oh, kidnapped and gang-raped. That’s what it took to get a woman like this to notice him?” -Douggie
“How many times could you rape a boy, beat and humiliate and taunt him, before you just… broke him?” -Mat
