This could have been better and should have been. It's redundant and slow. The scenes of torture and rape, aside from the glasses of semen the girls were obliged to drink, were uninspired. Each victim went through the same ordeal, and apparently all shopped at the same department store since all of them wore the same clothes, and come to think of it, the captors must have hired the same wardrobe consultants, too.

The girls typically wore white shirts, blue jeans and white briefs before being raped (only sodomy, no red-blooded he-man's sex here) and then the bad guys would adorne the poor damsels in white shifts. I don't recall a brassiere one in the whole story.

As you can tell, if I'm discussing wardrobe...in an erotic book!...then I must have been very bored as well as trapped in a dank, smelly French chateau over the weekend with no other manuscript to peruse than this marvelous little puppy.

Leave sleeping dogs lie, and read something else.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The Captive IV is one of Mantons spank spank spank books in, (whatelse) of course, another reformatory girls school setting.

Funny thing is that I think I met some of the scenes with Jenny Woodward and Noreen in some other books before ....

If your thing is young obstinate girls that seem to always get themselves in a situation to be spanked ... then this book is for you ... and it's for that reason it gets 5 stars not because I liked it ....

For me I'd rtaher wait for Mantons more serious erotic writing like 'The Odalisque' and 'Deep South' and that marvellous book 'Bombay Bound' ....

I guess I've proably read all of Manton's books and, forgive the reference, his books are like a box of cholcolate 'you never know what you're going to get!'

Richard Manton's erotic writing may be an aquired taste. But once you aquire it, it's a bit addicting. His Captive series is pure male on female sexual sadism, but written in an extremely erotically charged style that captures the obsessiveness of the sadist's mind and thought process better than anything else I have ever read. I generally prefer female on male sadomasochism, and in fact, don;t read any other male on female stuff, but I love Manton's work. It a sure fire arousal machine for me. This fourth volume in the series (but Volume I is not Manton, but a genuine Victorian work that he elaborates on in the next three installments) retuns to Cheluna and the world of Colonel Manrique, Noreen, Lesley, Elaine Cox, and the rest, but is told primarily from the point of view of a young apprentice learning the trade of torturing female captives and breaking their will. The forst half or so is pure Manton, excelent, obsessive, exquisite detail. However, then it takes a disturbing turn. He introduces snuff themes, and keeps coming back to them. One by one many of the women are not only beaten and branded, but ritualistically and "erotically" strangled. I use quotes to indicate my own sense that there is absolutely nothing erotic or sexy about murder. He lost me on this one. I find snuff repulsive, and thus had no interest in the second half of the book. Caveat emptor.