Please remember that this story is set in a dystopian future where the illegal immigration problem was solved by reducing people to slavery. Is it dark? Yes, Is it against our current laws? Yes. Could it happen? One last time, I feel compelled to answer “Yes.” – Reluctant Retiree
“It’s just a formality.”: An Intense MM Dystopian Saga
This isn’t supposed to happen to guys like me. I’m not a criminal or an illegal alien. I’m a middle-class boy from a good family.
But my dad’s business hit a rough patch, and he needed a loan to save it. And he only had one asset left that the bank would accept as collateral.
Me.
Dad said that it wouldn’t be so bad. That it would only be for a few years, and I’d be a free man again as soon as he paid off the loan. He made it sound like I’d be waiting tables or mowing lawns. Hard work that would “build character,” he told me.
But Dad hadn’t thought about how things would change once I was in the collar.Or what other uses the bank might find for a blond eighteen-year-old slave.
Note: This is the start of an intense dystopian MM saga. While the series ends in an HEA, the first few books are a descent into the shadows. Expect high angst, psychological intensity, and a hero pushed to his limits.
The Reviews!
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a great start to the series!
Let me recap what we have learned about our main characters:
1. Dominic (the father) is a restaurant owner who has no idea how to change with the times. When the town was booming, he built a successful restaurant business. However, when things in the town went downhill, he either had no idea how to keep his business afloat, or was unwilling to make the necessary changes.
2. Doug (the older brother) apparently has been a bully all his life. Unfortunately as he has endeared himself to his father, he can do no wrong in his father’s eyes. Doug is the one who convinced his father to talk Wes into becoming a slave so Dominic can use Wes as collateral for a loan. Dominic apparently hasn’t researched anything about owning a slave but you can be sure that Doug has.
3. Wes (main character) is within mere weeks of turning 18 and becoming a citizen. Unfortunately the only way his father can get a loan to save the family restaurant is for Wes to be enslaved and used as collateral for the loan. Wes loves his little sister and doesn’t want to see her homeless. So he naively believes his father’s promises.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great dystopian novel
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2025
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The Collateral is a great dystopian novel masquerading as an mm dark romance/erotica. Set in an ordinary California town in a future not so far away (and startlingly realistic) where slavery is back as a way of solving the problem of rounding up undocumented workers en masse, it chronicles the slow and steady degradation of Wes, an ordinary middle-class blond, blue-eyed teenager who agrees to allow himself be enslaved for four years to solve his father’s money problems, as a way of getting his father to love him. He is so naïve, so innocent.
In the first volume, the outline of his likely future is laid out in some telling short episodes: as a slave, he is simply regarded as a sexual object. The power of the enslaver to abuse slaves sexually, to make them the object of sexual violence and humiliation, is at the heart of slavery (shades of Toni Morrison and any other number of Black theorists) in Hunter’s analysis: this is where the genre of gay erotica and dystopian novel overlap. Most of his father’s promises to him are quickly broken within the first few hours of his enslavement: this first installment only covers a few hours, with some backstory. It only gets worse. This series really got me by the throat, in part because it uses the violence that is now being made visible in our politics and takes it one step further. Is this our future?
Book Reviews by the Reluctant Retiree 