Dutch by Madhuri Pavamani

Dutch by Madhuri Pavamani ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GENRE: Fantasy/Romance ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BLURB: I've spent years holed up in the deepest, darkest parts of the city, fighting to keep Death and her Poochas from crossing the dead back to the living. My skill with a blade is bested only by my menace, my despair, my anguish - the strongest weapons I yield. Then I meet Juma Landry and it all goes to hell. She is beauty and love and sex and light, everything I am not. And she makes me want things I haven’t desired in years. But the monsters of my life, the evil lurking in the dark corners of my soul, those places craven and vile, bind me to a past I cannot shake free. As the most skilled Keeper for The Gate, nothing and no one can prevent me from excelling at a job I never wanted. I do it because it is my legacy, a fate I cannot outrun, but when Juma becomes my next assignment, each of her nine lives to be ended by my hand, I must decide: the legacy I never wanted or the love I don’t deserve. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EXCERPT: I was eight years old the first time I rode an elephant. I was visiting my grandparents, and the local zoo’s specimen had given birth to a dwarf, so everyone in the household wanted to witness the freak. They bustled up the whole lot of us, waved down some auto rickshaws, and off we went, zooming toward the unimaginable feat of nature. I took one look at that dwarf and knew it was scared. I also knew it was a complete bore. The mom was much more interesting and already back earning her share, offering rides to any souls brave enough to climb atop her back. My cousins needed no invitation, and before anyone knew what was happening, grandparents included, they scampered up the poor beast’s back and were raring to go. I stood off to the side and watched, shy and somewhat quiet, still a bit ill at ease in my new environs. It was not every day I was shipped halfway across the world on a bird in the sky, summarily deposited with two elderly souls I barely knew and certainly did not trust. The elephant was a good move. I was warming up to the two brown people smiling at me while their eyes flashed back and forth in rapid succession to the brood atop the grey beast. My grandmother clucked warmly in my direction, offering some words of encouragement as the mahout waved me over. He was awfully scrawny, rather filthy, and I shot him a foul look. No fucking way was he controlling anything if that grey monster decided to stop taking anyone’s shit. But I was eight, and I was curious, and it was an elephant for fuck’s sake. So I stopped putzing around on the outskirts of the action and leaned in contemplative somewhat curious. Which was enough for Mr. Mahout. Faster than I would have ever assumed he could move, he grabbed me by the nape of the neck and hoisted me onto the dwarf’s mama. Not on her back, with my cousins but right behind her ears, on what seemed to be her neck, my hands resting on her head. She was just like the old man who swam laps at the YMCA every Monday and always bent over to lotion his legs, providing me the perfect view of his ass—hairy and wrinkled and grey. The mahout settled in behind me and gave his signal, but old girl wasn’t going anywhere. She bobbed her head side to side, and he yelled something in Tamil, all of it unintelligible since I didn’t speak a bit of anything from the motherland. At least not then. He yelled again and gave her some swats with his whip, but she didn’t give a shit. Instead, she lifted her trunk into the air, pushed it about like a show off, raised it to her head, and sniffed my hands. I froze, for a second worried I might piss my pants. I did not want to piss my pants, sitting there high in the air, because I did not want to soil her neck, but really I did not want another excuse to be the laughingstock of my unruly gang of cousins. So I let her do whatever she needed to do, praying all the while her trunk wasn’t full of tiny teeth that could suddenly inhale my hands and then my arms and then my head to chew me up and feed to the dwarf. I had not flown halfway across the fucking globe to wind up dwarf fodder. So I shut up and home girl sniffed me up and eventually she started walking, doing a slow rotation of the park, giving us kids the ride of our lives. I was eight, and it was magical. I am now thirty-seven, and let me tell you, this world is anything but magical. My name is Dutch Mathew. I kill for The Gate and I am a Keeper. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AUTHOR Bio and Links:  Madhuri Pavamani writes twisted love stories and dark poetry. She loves whiskey, tattoos, Bukowski, and yoga. She laughs constantly, says f*ck a lot, and dances anywhere. She is the author of the paranormal romance trilogy, THE SANCTUM, and the fantasy trilogy, THE KEEPER SERIES, published this year by St. Martin’s Press. She’s currently working on something evil and delicious. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @madhuriwrites https://www.amazon.com/Dutch-Keeper-Madhuri-Pavamani-ebook/dp/B01MZI3C0A https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25781343-dutch ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY INFORMATION  Madhuri Pavamani will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Enter to win a $50 Amazon/BN GC - a Raffleocpter giveaway Review: Fast paced, incredibly sexy and violent - Dutch is a story about death. Death has limited room in her domain, so she has minions called poochas who can bring the dead back to life. Juma is one - she's one of the poochas, and she has nine lives. Each of her nine lives will be spent serving Death, and each will be ended by a Keeper - one of the minions of the Gate - an entity bent on keeping the dead in their place.  Dutch is a Keeper, and he meets and falls in love with Juma - despite all the rules and regulations that are intended to keep them apart. And then he is assigned to kill her - in the most painful, horrible way possible. Most of this book is sex, and it's hot. The author certainly writes erotica superbly. The setting is urban fantasy - and the world the author created is fascinating. This reviewer would have liked less sex and more story, but that's jut my opinion. Anyone who enjoys an incredibly fast-paced, complex and extremely well written highly erotic urban fantasy should grab this book - it's for you!