Ancilla

by Sera Maddox Drake

Overview

"Magic and philosophy sandwiched in between some of the hottest scenes I've read in recent years... Loved it!" - Hannah Gonzalez, Reedsy Discovery

"Love is brutal, bloody, and ecstatic in this passionate romance... A richly imagined, lurid love story that's not for the faint of heart. (Our verdict: Get it!)" - Kirkus Reviews

"A singular tale, braided with blood, mystery, and intellect, that dares to fuse the sacred and the profane" - The Prairies Book Review

She had it all - riches, a college scholarship, a girlfriend - until her conservative, hyper-religious parents found out about the girlfriend and made her choose between conversion therapy and disownment. That was the end of her academic career.

Three years later, she met a shy public reference librarian in a bookstore. He'd been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she was starting her whole life over. What ensued between the two was magic. Given that he was about to become her tutor in the magickal and erotic arts, that was only to be expected.

But at what cost? The mysterious older man was all she could ever have wished for, but she might need to choose between her developing identity and the most profound love she had ever known.

With its mystical, darkly romantic academic setting and richly developed characters, this is a queer coming-of-age story like you've never read before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798889404378
Publisher:	Lavande Mistral Press
Publication date:	12/22/2023
Series:	The Magnum Opus , #1
Sold by:	PUBLISHDRIVE KFT
Format:	eBook
Pages:	415
File size:	74 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sera Maddox Drake is an independent, self-published author who specializes in literary erotica with esoteric, occult themes. Their work has a special focus on the viewpoints of neurodiverse, queer characters.

Editorial Reviews

2025-05-29
Love is brutal, bloody, and ecstatic in this passionate romance.

This first installment of Drake’s trilogy follows a nameless narrator (she’s often calledAncilla, a Latin word for a female slave) who’s a nerdy, fantasy-gaming, bisexual, red-headed college dropout, disowned by her Catholic parents for her sexual adventurousness and now living in an unnamed rustbelt city. She meets a distinguished librarian twice her age with a taste for occult literature and a BDSM fetish; she dubs himMagister and begs him to make her his submissive. A whirlwind of kink ensues—with informed consent and safe-words carefully established—in which Magister whips Ancilla with a riding crop, pierces her with needles, cuts her with knives, and performs a traumatic magic ceremony that causes her to black out and dream of the underworld. Ancilla loves the abuse, and the megaton-scale orgasms that follow (“We explode as one, we cry out as one, we burn together and are One”). Fortunately, Magister isn’t cruel: he’s extravagantly respectful of Ancilla’s desires and insists that she return to college and build an independent life. Unfortunately, her budding dominant side threatens to undo the relationship when he can’t take the kind of pain he’s been dishing out. Drake’s erotic saga is full of graphic sex, detailed BDSM scenarios, and intricate tutorials on occult sex lore (“A lot of it is Thelemic sex magick, with an eye to gnosis through ecstasy and self-perfection, but a good part of the practicum comes from Siberian and Finnish shamanism”). The prose sounds rather academic at times, but at its best it conveys the charged thrill of BDSM and the sense of intimacy and release that flows from Ancilla’s voluntary surrender to sexual torment: “‘I love you,’ I cry, when the third blow lands, burning like fire….Eventually, the blows stop, and he’s behind me, leaning into me, kissing tears off my cheeks and sweat off my neck.” BDSM afficionados will love it, but normies may find it too much.

A richly imagined, lurid love story that’s not for the faint of heart.

Kirkus Reviews