Slave World (novel)

A series of six erotic novels by Stephen Douglas featuring a cold war between England and Britain - the same country, but in different timelines. Britain is pretty much like a dark portrait of Real Life Britain, while the Alternate History England exists in a world where the Roman Empire never fell and the Dark Ages never happened.

It is a world where the technology is more advanced, except for weapon technology, but where there is no pollution. There doesn't seem to be any racism or sexism to speak of. However, the ruling class controls the world with an iron fist. Any sign of insubordination from a serf, and the serf is likely to be transformed into a superhuman cyborg slave, forced to enjoy serving the royalty.

The six books in the series are:
 * Slaveworld
 * Royal Slave
 * Slave School
 * Slaveworld Embassy
 * Slave Lords
 * Slaveworld Rivals

While most conflicts are ambiguous, there are also a few relatively unambiguously unsympathetic villains.


 * Abusively Sexy: The alternate timeline England covers all four levels. On the civilization level, the entire slaveworld is this kind of grim Fetish Fuel Future. On the organization level, the army of England is designed to maintain social order by turning uppity serfs into Sex Slave cyborgs. On the couple level, Prince Samuel and Lady Isobel has this as their mutual hobby. On the individual level, most aristocrats qualify for the appropriately gendered trope.
 * Abusively Sexy Lady: Most female aristocrats qualify, with Lady Isobel being the most prominent example. It should be noted that her attitude of cheerfully taking whatever she wants without even wanting the partner to consent is what make one of the main characters fall in love with her in the first place.
 * Abuse Mistake: The third book starts out with a female police officer getting raped by a corrupt male policeman. When caught, his violation is mistaken for consensual sex, so they both get in trouble for it. (She gets fired from the police force, and then hired by a government conspiracy trying to infiltrate an Alternate Timeline to steal their superior technology. But that's another story.)
 * Affably Evil: Lots of characters, including one of the main villains.
 * Alternate Timeline: The base premise for the series.
 * And I Must Scream: Tough luck if your vocal cord now have an "off" switch.
 * Apocalypse How:
 * Badass Gay: In the final novel, two female protagonists have to go on a daring rescue mission behind enemy lines - infiltrating the timeline they once belonged to, The queen trust these women with this mission not only because of their well known intelligence and skill, but also because of the one thing that make her certain that they will never betray England at this crucial point in history: Their undying devotion to Lady Isobel and Lady Abigail respectively.
 * Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Not merely common, this is a social institution surrounded by all kinds of rules and protocols.
 * Bi the Way: Orientation is no big deal in this world.
 * Blue and Orange Morality: Slave World morality is, of course, quite different from what we are used to.
 * Brains and Bondage: Most of the main characters (Slave owners as well as slaves) are scientists. In both worlds, the technology to travel between timelines was invented by a female genius who is also sexually dominant. In Slaveworld it was Lady Isobel, in Britain it was the mentor of the first batch of British main characters.
 * Casual Kink: ...with the level of casualness totally bewildering the visitors from Britain.
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Certain British leaders do this a lot.
 * Crap Saccharine World: The beautiful England, where anyone's life can turn into a lifetime of torture and rape and being made to like it
 * Crapsack World: The bleak Britain. While technically a democracy and theoretically caring about dignity and human rights, it appears completely corrupt and morally bankrupt, caring only about gaining advantages for its own corrupt elite.
 * Dirty Old Man: The Ambassador.
 * Dominatrix: With its love for messing around with gendered stereotypes, subverts this trope. The society is all pretty much gender neutral. (And also race neutral, skin color being a mere side effect of what country you come from.) However, they have an entire social caste filling a sort of dominatrix role: The "soldiers," who are trained for the training and grooming of slaves rather than for any battles. And these soldiers seem to be more or less Always Male.
 * Don't Try This At Home: Indirect disclaimers here and there, often in some form of "This would be very harmful if it wasn't for our medical super-technology."
 * Dressed All in Rubber: It just happens to be in fashion.
 * Equal Opportunity Evil: The aristocrats don't seem to discriminate much.
 * Evil Versus Evil: A struggle between Crapsack World and Crap Saccharine World, with corrupt authorities on both sides.
 * Everyone Is Bi: It looks that way during the first five books. In the six book, it turns out that one of the main characters have been 100% homosexual all along. Although it might seem surprising, a reader who goes back to the previous books will find that it is consistent throughout the story, not a Retcon.
 * Face Heel Revolving Door: Sarah, switching sides as fast as if both factions were playing ping-pong with her as the ball...
 * Face Heel Turn: Arguably, the ambassador as well as the leaders of the British agents, as they become corrupted in their quest for power and life extension.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Comes complete with a huge dose of YMMV: Some consider the enslavement process the most horrible fate one could ever face. For others, it's paradise.
 * Faking the Dead: Twice.
 * Fetish Fuel Future: The alternate England.
 * For the Evulz: A stock motivation for several of the characters, if it can be called "evil." Sure they like to torture people for fun, but they are really sweet about it, and although it's not consensual in any way they generally make sure their victims enjoy it.
 * Freedom From Choice: In the later novels, some of the enslaved protagonists are stranded in their old world. Thus they are free. But they want to go back to Happiness In Slavery, and this is one of the main reasons why.
 * Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: The slaves are biochemically altered to always be horny, which makes it very easy for them to enjoy their captivity and fall in love with their captors.
 * Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Lesbian relationships and sex acts are given a lot of focus throughout the books, perhaps more so then their heterosexual counterparts. None of the male characters seem to be gay, and while several of them are defined as bisexual this is mostly an Informed Ability.
 * Green-Eyed Monster: Several, and most of them are main characters. Portrayed as a side effect of Stockholm Syndrome: Having been made emotionally dependent on their owners, the slaves are desperate for their attention and thus very jealous of each other.
 * Go-Go Enslavement: Pretty much all British agents who get captured, as well as most of the convicted serfs.
 * Happily Ever After: For most of the characters, actually.
 * Happiness Is Mandatory: This is used as an addition to Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul - The slaves are biochemically altered for certain kinds of happiness, and they get punished if they try to resist the effect.
 * Heel Face Turn: While a lot of Britain characters switches sides to England in one way or another, there are also two prominent Slave World royalty characters who finds the new ideas about democracy and human rights to be very seductive.
 * He-Man Woman Hater: The Ambassador is a true misogynistic bastard.
 * Heteronormative Crusader: While this phenomenon doesn't exist in the England timeline, it's part of what makes the Britain Timeline into a Crapsack World. In the beginning of the third book, the new main character gets sexually abused by a fellow police officer. To add insult to injury, their superiors respond by following this trope by having her fired for being kinky.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: gets this - hard - in the last book.
 * Hollywood Masochism: Played with - Many Hollywood Masochism stereotypes are lampshaded and justified with Applied Phlebotinum. In the first few books, this includes the stereotype that all real submissives enjoy everything in the kinky spectrum. This is backpedaled in the later books, where it's established that most people have some things they just can't handle, much less enjoy, no matter how much Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul you apply to them.
 * Hot Scientist: Many of the main characters are hot young PHD's. Well, physically young, anyway.
 * Informed Ability: Lady Isobel and Professor Webber are both geniuses, each of them having created a gate out of their respective universe - the gates found each other in subspace and together formed the bridge between the worlds. However, this was right before the story began. During the actual story arcs, neither of them ever do any actual academic work. When research or emergency engineering is needed, they happen to be elsewhere.
 * Lampshade Hanging: Some aristocrats have a tendency to treat their slaves in ways that are not good for their health, or would have been impossible to do in a healthy way if they had been regular mortals. This is often dismissed with some version of "so what that this might eventually damage her spine - we can just transplant a new one, spines are cheap". In other words: "Don't try this at home, mkey?".
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Pretty much every book introduce a new set of main characters, without removing the old ones.
 * Mischief for Punishment: One rather epic scene is when Ruth attacks Lady Isobel in front of a lot of witnesses.
 * Original Position Fallacy: In the first novel, the heroine is horrified with how naively her colleagues embrace the Alternate Timeline world they have found. The scientists joins the society, believing that they will get to be part of the aristocracy and thus accept the social order where the aristocrats have absolute power over everyone else.
 * Zigzagged in the third novel, as Sarah seems to be falling in the same trap as her predecessors.
 * Power Is Sexy: One of the main reasons Jenny falls in love with Lady Isobel is seeing her have power over other people. Even greater aphrodisiac is that her discreetly forceful attitude makes it clear that she's used to having people bend to her will.
 * Property of Love: Some characters (on both sides) have this as their main goal, others just happens to end up there.
 * Queer Romance: The novels have many relationships that breaks with heteronormativity in many ways, from being same-sex relationships to having a power dynamic that isn't at all based on gender.
 * Questionable Consent: Played with, with the slave hunters using psychological profiling to find people who will (after being given the right medical treatment) love the fact that they are getting exploited and only consider the fact that it's non-consensual to be an extra turn on.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: The Slaveworld have a "rejuvenation treatment" that let people look like young adults until they are over 40, still be reasonably fresh & hot in their 70's, and live until they are 140 or so.
 * Sex Slave: A cornerstone of the civilizations' social infrastructure.
 * Stockholm Syndrome: Lampshaded, discussed, played straight, et cetera.
 * Stripperiffic: Common fashion among the cyborgs... when they are allowed to wear clothes at all.
 * Totally Eighteen: In the kingdom of England, you have to be at least eighteen before you can become a slave or own a slave. The first part is merely mentioned (especially in connection with those few slaves who are exactly eighteen - most are significantly older). Non-noble characters younger than eighteen simply doesn't exist in the story. The rule against underage slaveowners eventually does becomes a plot point, however. A prelude to this is given in the second book. It is mentioned that some teenage nobles are frustrated and annoyed over not being allowed to own slaves yet, and a few sixteen years old nobles fondle the protagonist while she happens to be helpless. Around the same time a young adult noblewoman is scolded for being immature and reckless, not taking proper care of her slaves. In the last few books, a young prince join the cast as the Love Interest of an enslaved journalist. He is sixteen, she is in her thirties, but because of the social power dynamic he's the one with all the power. The queen eventually punishes him for covertly taking a slave before he's old enough... by sending him off to France... Where sixteen-year-old nobles are allowed to own slaves... And yes, he gets to bring the former journalist with him.
 * Transhuman Treachery: The cyborgs don't have control over their emotions, in some cases not even their senses.
 * Your Normal Is Our Taboo: In the alternate England of the novels, it's considered perverted and socially unacceptable to have sex as equals. Sex is supposed to be between an aristocrat and a slave who has legally been deprived of basic human rights. And the sex slave has to be tied up or similar; to have sex with an unrestrained person is also considered perverse.