Uncharted Territory by Tamsen Parker (The Compass #.5)
Released: June 15, 2015
Erotic BDSM
Self Published

Reviewed by Mandi

I enjoyed the first two books in this series. I don’t read a ton of BDSM, but India’s story and her eventual HEA with Cris is done well. And I love her relationship with her BFF Rey, who is the one who first got her into the scene, takes care of her and is probably the most important person in her life.

Uncharted is a prequel – it starts when India first goes off to college. It comes with this warning:

Uncharted Territory is a prequel to Personal Geography. This erotic coming-of-age has no happily ever after, but does offer compelling kink, scorchingly hot sex, and brutal psychological warfare.

I was very interested to see how she meets Rey and how she starts with BDSM. India has an extremely overbearing mother who is never proud of her daughter, no matter how well she does in school. Her father may talk big, but her mother runs the show and when India starts at Princeton, she is just happy to be away from her parents and start her own life. She excels at school – but when she brings home her first A in a class where no one else succeeded, she has no one to tell. Her loneliness is deep and she feels lost in life except for academics.

Her dorm manager is Rey and she takes an immediate liking to him. Rey is gay and well versed in the BDSM scene. He sees something in India and knows that allowing her to experience BDSM and what it has to offer will have a tremendous impact on her life. India eventually meets Hunter, a dominant who takes an extreme liking to her. After Rey completes his training/initiation of sorts with India, she signs a contract with Hunter and they start playing. Hunter is very strict, something India craves yet at first has a hard time with. Their relationship spans a number of years and lasts throughout the book. I don’t want to go too far into detail about how events turn out – but it doesn’t end well between them.

Knowing India from the first two books, I was so curious to see how she met Rey and was initiated into the BDSM scene. While I was engaged with India this entire book, I was a little disappointed that Rey wasn’t in this book all that much. I really wanted to get more of his back story, and while we see how they meet and how he immediately takes her under his wing, he doesn’t have a lot of page time. I had it in my head that we were getting more of his story.

Hunter gets a lot of page time. It’s hard to really get into a character when you know it’s not going to end well with him. You know India doesn’t stay with him and honestly, he turns out to be a big jerk, at least that is how I felt. So at the end, I felt like I read an entire book just to see how a relationship works out with a guy that wasn’t all that nice. I never found him sexy or fun to be around like her eventual HEA Cris.

In one regard, I like to read about India and I understand her better now because I saw her interaction with her parents and the reasons she needs to submit. I’m glad we got that. But I found Hunter very frustrating and the lack of page time with Rey disappointing.

I do recommend Personal Geography and Intimate Geography if you want a darker, erotic BDSM duology with a HEA.

Grade: C

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