Review: Payday – Sean Michael

Alan and Mark are successful, rich and have a ton of friends, all thanks to a deal they made with a demon named Riskin. To hold up their end of the bargain, every now and then they have to host Riskin in the bedroom and obey his every whim. Tonight is payday, the best night of the year.

Originally in the Care and Feeding of Demons anthology.

Series: Tales of Leather
Release Date: Sept. 10, 2013
Publisher: Torquere Press, Inc
Source: Manic Readers
Reviewer: Iris
Rating:

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Reviewer’s Thoughts

Yet again proving that I never let myself base an opinion on an author simply from one book, I decided to give Sean Michael a second chance to convince me that he should be on my authors to watch list. Sadly, I’m not convinced. If anything, I took even more exception to Payday as I did to the last book I read by Mr. Michael. Payday did not even have the pretense of a story line.

Two gay men make a pact with a demon, we can only assume he is a demon as it is never outright declared, we are left to use our imagination on reaching this and many other conclusions. In exchange for long lives and wealth, they must submit to the demon’s sexual appetite for a couple of days every month. One of the men is very eager to please and very much the teacher’s pet. The other, not so much. He prefers to push just to see how much he can get away with. But again, we, the readers are left to use our imagination to come to this conclusion as we are given very little in the way of information or even a story. The lack explanations however did not bother me so much as the utter lack of any sort of plot.  Just because a story is a short novella des not mean that it shouldn’t have something going for it.

Sadly, I must admit, that for me, this is it as far as Mr. Michael goes. This would have been merely 1 cocktail, but I gave it an extra cocktail for interesting concept. A couple that makes a pact with a demon for long lives and massive wealth but at a serious cost… that could have been a really good story if Mr. Michael had bothered to develop it.