For thousands of years the Chateau de la Grotte Cachee, Hidden Grotto, has existed to provide for the needs of the sexually adventurous. Those that find their way there are faced with a banquet of every whim and fantasy. The residents of the Hidden Grotto are only too eager to assist the guests with whatever they might desire. Watching over the Hidden Grotto though, are its administrator and the seigneur des Ombres who keep the deeper secrets of the Grotto and its true history from prying eyes.

Though they are never aware of it, the guests at the Grotto frolic about with residents who are a satyr, a succubus, a sex-changing elf, and a djinn who prefers the form of a small grey cat. The guests provide a means for the three former to ease their insatiable sexual appetites but the latter, the djinn called Darius, prefers to keep himself apart from everyone for reasons of his own. As the book moves back and forth through time, recalling different moments in the Grotto's history, we are given pieces of history for each of the residents and how they came to be there. Embedded in the history of the Grotto is the love story of a couple who are forbidden to be together but find a way through abilities of one of the residents.

All of this is played against a backdrop of orgiastic S&M parties as groups come and go to the Grotto, including the infamous Hellfire Club, an historical but somewhat sketchy "gentleman's club". Also dancing through this debauched time-warp of remembrance is a young lady scientist who arrives with her historian father and his assistant to study the Grotto's architecture. She soon learns oh so much more then the classroom can teach her.

Though the obviously grand desire of this book is to be a beacon of highbrow erotica, it falls somewhat short of the mark. I found myself more fascinated by the history of the Grotto itself and how the residents came to be there then I did the actual sex scenes. The character of Darius alone could provide a novel's worth of material. As for the "erotica", as the saying goes "There's nothing new under the sun" and that's as true of sex scenes as anything else. While I will contend that they may be well-written, in the end they begin the merge with the countless others that fill the shelves. I give Louisa Burton kudos for the effort but you can't re-invent a genre like this; you can only try to breathe a few new puffs of air into it every once in awhile to keep it moving along.
---------------------
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Bantam (January 30, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0553384120
ISBN-13: 978-0553384123