Leave your morals at home (overall series review)

SO YOU LIKED LORDS: If you're here, I'm going to assume you've read the Lord's series and liked it (if you haven't I would recommend reading it first). So you probably know you're in for at least some dubcon/noncon at least in book one, the Dukes definitely double down on that so be warned. Overall I'll say if you liked Lords you'll probably like Dukes, it's different enough to be interesting and fresh while scratching most of the same itches. The Dukes trilogy addresses some of the nitpicks I had with the Lords series, BUT it's also missing at least one of the things I loved in Lords;

THE GOOD: I've always been a bit annoyed by the 'almost all the women other than the protag are bitches' troupe and Lords definitely fell into that category, so I'm happy to say Dukes address that. There are still some token bitches but the broader representation of women was more well-rounded and I appreciated the solidarity,
Also, I loved Lavinia's revenge moment, absolutely a great 'good for her' moment.

NITPICKS: The one area Dukes lacked something the Lords had though was in the k*nks. Don't get me wrong, the spice is still fantastic, but I loved that Lords was brave enough to include some more taboo and niche k*nks. Other than the dubcon/noncon, and a couple other kinks that are basically just staples in the Royals series, I feel like Dukes lacked some fun and specific k*nks like what we got in Lords.

One other thing that sort of bugged me is a character writing thing. Simon's 'all women are whores' attitude and treatment of Lav doesn't quite make sense to me given what we learn about him. The misogyny and shitty behaviour of the men in Lords is explained pretty well by their upbringing, the culture of Forsyth and their influence from Daniel. Simons is somewhat explained by his issues with women but the fact he has loving parents, including a mother who's a damn sex therapist, and that he had a close female friend, kind of conflicts with it and makes it hard for me to believe he would've formed an attitude that extreme.

Other than that I don't really have any complaints other than one very campy moment in the 3rd book that was just very cringe for me personally, but some campy moments are to be expected in college romance and easy to overlook.

THER PERFORMANCES: I always enjoy Troy Duran's voice so no complaints there, the female narrator wasn't my favourite voice wise and I didn't love her voice/characterisation of one of the guys in particular but overall her performance was good and once I got used to it I enjoyed it just fine. I really wish this series used duet narration but it's not a huge deal.

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