Eternal Love by Mizumi Takaoka
Not that I read many, but usually the yaoi novel are all quite... hard-core. I often think to them like little porn; maybe for the format, the print book is so small, rather cure, but inside they are scorching. Not Eternal Love: this romance is almost innocent, the only sex scenes are old style the type in which all happens behind closed doors.
Tomoyuki is a young Japanese business man; while studying in England six years before he fell in love for a college mate, Aswil, an arabian guy with a mystery halo around him. Aswil had almost a royal behavior, so proud and aloof. After months of blissful love, Aswil was forced to return home, but he promised that he would return for Tomoyuki. Months after Tomoyuki found that Aswil was the king's son of a little Arabian country and that he needed to marry for political reason. Tomoyuki gave up to their love and returned to Japan.
Now six years later, Aswil lures Tomoyuki into a trap and drags him in his country. He holds Tomoyuki in captivity, even dresses him up as a woman in the women quarters of his palace. When Tomoyuki asks for his behavior, the only excuse of Aswil is that he makes all for love, that he wants to respect the promise he made to Tomoyuki. And Tomoyuki even if he is still in love with Aswil, can't accept to loose his freedom and to be treat like an object by Aswil.
As I said the story could be very more erotic than it is. It's not that Tomoyuki and Aswil didn't have sex, it's only that you don't read about it. Only the first time you have a bit of information on the almost non consensual sex Tomoyuki has to suffer, but then you only read about the regret of Tomoyuki, on how he feels guilty and how much he wants to run away from Aswil, but the reader can't quite understand it since he doesn't know what happens between them. This romance resembles a bit the "sheikhs" Harlequin, the sweet romances which take inspiration from the "historic" bodice rippers of E.M. Hull, The Sheikhs, and which inspired the famous movies with Rodolfo Valentino. In those romances, the sheikh is always a mourning man, who sweeps the heroine from her quiet life to drag her in the desert, better if on the back of an horses... you know that the sheikh, in the shadow of the tent, makes passionate love to the heroine, but you don't read it. Same here: you know that Aswil does something to Tomoyuki, but you haven't the privilege to be present... well I feel like the author robbed me of something!
On the other hand, this is maybe the first yaoi novel I read where there are also other characters other than the two heroes, and maybe it's since the two heroes need to do something else since they aren't always in the bedroom...
Amazon: Eternal Love (Yaoi Novel)
Amazon Kindle: Eternal Love (Yaoi Novel)
Paperback: 250 pages
Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing (June 17, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1569707111
ISBN-13: 978-1569707111
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle