In 1926, Sara Newsome, daughter of a black British physician and his high-society white wife, journeys to glitzy bustling Harlem to make silent films. Sara doesn't merely want to act, however; she wants to produce and direct her own movies, movies about love, life and sex aimed at a black audience. She has the gift of revealing the sensual truth even in a feigned sexual encounter. Furthermore, she's not afraid to break the rules and expose the naked flesh and raw emotion of actual couplings - working both in front of, and behind the camera. Struggling against economic and social constraints, Sara nevertheless assembles a small, dedicated band of talented black actors, writers, directors and technicians, and founds Sapphire Films in a flat upstairs from a hardware store on 125th Street. The company makes blue movies with a difference: plot, intelligence, emotion, fantasies that nevertheless speak directly to their audience.

A Darker Shade of Blue follows Sara's life and career through roaring twenties New York, with its speakeasies and rent parties, to Hollywood during the Depression, though the Second World War and into the repressive Fifties. Sara's beauty, wit, creative genius and unfettered spirit draw both men and women. Her lovers include Gil, her director, collaborator and creative rival; alcoholic playboy Benjamin Austen, whose cynical humor hides his deeper feelings; and the charismatic, ambitious and radical Paul Robeson. She faces challenges from bigoted politicians and empty-headed studio executives, as well as from the people she cares for. She is lionized and abandoned, achieves notoriety as well as some genuine artistic regard, but is eventually ousted by the directors of the studio she founded, and left to begin again.

This book is a genuine historical novel, but does not completely fit my definition of erotica. Although it includes multiple graphic sex scenes between Sara and her various partners, as well as a few matings in front of the camera, sex is not a primary motivator of the narrative. In fact, the sex could be removed or at least muted to the PG-13 level without impacting the story significantly.

This is not necessarily a complaint. The tale of Sara's odyssey from porn extra to cultural icon is engrossing in its own right. Furthermore, the sex is not gratuitous; it does help develop Sara's character and those of her companions. It's also generally enjoyable, hot and sweet, slightly naughty without dark edges.

I suppose that ultimately, the category to which one assigns a book does not matter. The real test is whether the work leaves you satisfied or disappointed. Although I enjoyed A Darker Shade of Blue, while I was reading it, in retrospect I was aware of its weaknesses.

It's obvious that Ms. Campion engaged in significant amounts of research in preparation for writing this book. She dwells on historical details such as the advances in movie-making technology and the social structure of 1920's Harlem. Somehow, though, she did not manage to bring history alive, at least not for me. (This is, of course, an extremely difficult feat to accomplish.) Her New Yorkers feel more like tourists than denizens. The book spans nearly five decades, but I didn't have a strong sense of the changes those decades brought - changes in mood and world-view. Every now and again, an anachronism was jarring enough to completely pull me out of the scene. For example, I'm fairly sure that no woman in the twenties would gush over a man's "abs" and "pecs".
My other disappointment relates to the character of Sara, and is more idiosyncratic. She is a believable character, an admirable character - but ultimately, despite all her carnal encounters, she struck me as cold. The book covers much of her life, and during that life she experiences many lovers, but little love. She feels affection, respect, lust even jealousy. However, there is no great love in her life, no relationship that even begins to mean more to her than her ambitions and artistic vision. I'm undoubtedly being influenced by the conventions of the romance genre. However, without that romantic spark, I felt that her life, full as it was of adventure, innovation, and achievement, was somehow empty.

I must admit that I loved the ending of the book. It's the early seventies, the era of anti-war protests and black power. Sara and Gil are invited to address a Film Studies class at Columbia University, to discuss their early silent work. They screen one of Sara's first films, one which broke taboos by showing Sara and Gil actually making love. The scene has as much impact on this audience of hip young people as it did when it was first released, shattering their presumptions and exciting their senses. The reader remembers the chapter, early on, when this scene was created, and smiles with the sense of completion.

A Darker Shade of Blue is an original and quite ambitious novel that explores little known corners of black American history. While it is not without flaws, it is different enough to be worth reading.

Accidental Slave opens in a dungeon.  A dom named Gary ferociously whips a bound and gagged submissive while ruminating on his anger towards his boss Elizabeth.  He transfers that rage to his flogging, continuing to lash at the slave even after she executes the gesture they've agreed upon as a signal for him to stop. He even calls the poor woman Elizabeth.

I'll be honest. I nearly stopped reading right there. The scene set all my red lights flashing. If I had not committed myself to reviewing the book, I probably would have tossed it out, assuming (incorrectly) that this was an example of the kind of crude non-consensual smut that gets some people off.

As it turns out, that would have been a huge mistake. In fact, Claire Thompson's novel revolves around the sort of ethical, tender and romantic D/s relationship that pushes all my buttons. The individual introduced in this first scene is the villain in Ms. Thompson's saga.  Passed up for a promotion to vice-president when his company decides to hire the eminently qualified Elizabeth Martin, Gary Dobbins plans a devious revenge on the woman he sees as his nemesis.  Accompanying her to a company-sponsored charity function, he spikes her drink with a date rape drug and leads her to a BDSM club, where he offers her for sale at a slave auction.  Handsome, wealthy dominant Cole Pearson  purchases twenty-four hours of play with the gorgeous brunette, only to have her pass out on him when he gets her home.

From this point, the book focuses mostly on the relationship between Elizabeth and Cole. They are irresistibly attracted to one another, but Cole wants more than just sex or even love.  He seeks a true D/s partnership with a woman who is as serious and committed to exploring the boundaries of power exchange as he is. His first marriage fell apart because he couldn't be honest about his real needs. He is determined that this is not going to happen again.

Ambitious, intelligent, and work-obsessed, Elizabeth initially seems like an unlikely submissive. However, Cole sparks her curiosity with his talk, and his demonstrations of the seductive nature of erotic power.  Gradually Cole leads her deeper into submission, to the point where she agrees to spend two weeks (her long delayed vacation time)  in 24/7 slave training. This is a make-or-break experiment for both protagonists. Although Cole has the typical confidence of a dom, he really doesn't know if Elizabeth is capable of the sort of surrender he requires.

The book includes a subplot in which the evil Gary attempts to blackmail and disgrace Elizabeth, while she and Cole struggle to unmask his deceptions. For the most part, however, Ms. Thompson is concerned with the growing attraction and trust between Elizabeth and Cole. Elizabeth's work is a serious obstacle to their deepening bond. She uses it as a shield to keep Cole from getting too close, as an excuse for lateness and even disobedience. Cole's patience is tested again and again, but unlike Gary he understands that anger has no place when punishing a slave.

Accidental Slave is smoothly written and professionally edited. And of course it involves my personal favorite erotic scenario: initiation of a new submissive by a caring yet authoritative dominant.  By the time I reached the chapters detailing Elizabeth's training (which are relatively hard-core BDSM, not merely a few bonds and spanks), the book was pushing my buttons and influencing my dreams.

Somehow, however, I found the end of the book less satisfying. As the two-week training period nears its end, Elizabeth's resistance has melted away. She has been transformed into the willing and skillful slave of whom Cole has dreamed. The two look forward to an idyllic future together. In short, the book concludes with a happily-ever-after (except for Gary, who is subjected to a particularly appropriate revenge).

In trying to analyze why this conclusion felt like a let-down, I came up with two theories. First, it was too easy.  Elizabeth is not going to abandon her work, and there are bound to be conflicts with her relationship, committed as she is. Second, although the book includes many climaxes with a lower case 'c', there is no real Climax, no single transcendent interaction that pushes the D/s connection to a higher level.  A collaring, a branding, some ritual in which Cole seriously took possession of Elizabeth, would have helped. After the emotional intensity of the earlier parts of the book, the ending was surprisingly bland.

 I debated for a long time how to rate this book. (I really wish that Erotica Revealed didn't have these ratings, to be honest.)  Starting the book with the villain's scene was, I think, a mistake on Ms. Thompson's part. Readers with tastes similar to mine will be turned off and not continue. Ending the book with a ho-hum HEA also detracts from what, overall, is an arousing and competently written BDSM tale.  However, I ultimately recognized that very few erotic books manage to engage my personal fantasies the way Accidental Slave managed to do for much of its length. For this accomplishment, the book deserves a thumbs-up.

What happens when you begin an erotic novel with a fascinating and provocative premise, and then invite some of the most prominent authors in the genre to serially contribute individual chapters? The result could be inspired chaos, a kaleidoscope of erotic visions and fractal views of the main characters through the lens of each writer's unique style. Alternatively, the novel could end up as an incoherent and annoying muddle. Unfortunately, American Casanova is more the latter than the former, though it does offer occasional flashes of brilliance.

Maxim Jakubowski sets the stage and introduces the protagonist in the intriguing first chapter. Giacomo Casanova, burdened by the decrepitude of old age and the bitterness of lost loves, drifts into deathly sleep in Venice in 1798 and awakens in 2005. Reveling in his renewed vigor and youth, he immediately resumes his old ways by seducing an apparently innocent Italian girl who works at the local cafe. Christiana mentors him in the strange and outrageous ways of the modern world, as well as regaling him with the pleasures of her flesh. She accompanies him to a mysterious private party where the sexual excess of the guests shocks even his debauched sensibilities. It is here, at this lascivious ball, that Casanova first glimpses the intoxicating woman he calls Athena, leashed and collared, clearly a slave, yet with a beauty and presence that pierces even his jaded heart. As Athena disappears, he vows to find her and make her his own, thus beginning the quest that will drive (albeit in fits and starts) the novel to its conclusion.

The first few chapters unwind themselves in a reasonably consistent and satisfying fashion. Christiana helps Casanova discover the source of his invitation to the ball, the enigmatic Power Company. When he makes his way to their headquarters to confront them, he is drugged and abducted. He wakes on an enormous ship, a sort of floating dungeon, where he is forced to watch Athena being abused and debauched, even as he himself provides perverse entertainment for the ship's passengers. Christiana reveals herself to be no innocent, but a lustful slut who tops and bottoms with equal zest.

The ship docks in Key West, where Casanova escapes and nearly drowns. By the time he makes land, he finds that Athena (or O, as she turns out to be named) is being auctioned to a vicious punk rocker, Toby Faith. Along with D, one of the slaves from the dungeon ship, and with the help of a local cowboy, Casanova pursues Faith's caravan, driven by his need to possess O.

At this point, the narrative begins to fall apart, careening wildly from Key West to New Orleans to Seattle to San Francisco and finally to New York. Each subsequent chapter introduces new minor characters, who pop in and out of the story, changing roles and tugging the flow of the tale out of its main channel and into weird, distracting eddies.

Mark Timlin's chapter begins the dissolution by starting to tell the story from O's point of view. Before too long, there is also a thread narrated from D's perspective. We lose the pleasure of seeing the modern world and its sexual extremes through the eyes of Casanova, a cultured gentleman from another era as well as a sexual predator, and with that loss, much of the grace and intrigue of the tale.

Mitzi Szereto violates the perfect image of O by turning her into an idiot. She sends O on a benighted quest for enlightenment, seeking a God that she identifies with Kurt Cobain among bemused drug addicts and religious fanatics in Seattle. Then Michael Hemmingson's chapter layers on the wretchedness, filth and degradation in his characteristic neo-Beat style.

The plot thickens to the consistency of sludge as new chapters introduce yet another secret society, The Order, which exists to liberate and rehabilitate slaves from the clutches of the Power Company. D, Christiana, and various other characters reveal themselves to be double, or perhaps even triple agents, in this worldwide battle for flesh and souls. Casanova (who has by this time become almost passive, suffering lust and torment as he again and again catches up with O only to lose her) realizes that he has been brought back to life by the Power Company for some obscure purpose. This intriguing concept, alas, is never elucidated, although we discover by the end of the novel that O is also a revenant, the famous submissive of Roissy who has been brought to life in the new millennium after an untimely death in the 1950's.

Maxim Jakubowski makes a valiant attempt to tie up loose ends in the final chapter, which includes dark echoes typical of his writing. The final scene returns to Venice, with satisfying unity that is sorely lacking in much of the book.

As a single narrative, American Casanova lacks coherence and focus. On the other hand, from such an assemblage of erotic luminaries I would expect some beautiful, disturbing or evocative writing, and I was not wholly disappointed. Thomas S. Roche delivers an arresting chapter in which an aroused and conflicted Casanova chastises O and wins her devotion. John Grant's chapter includes one of the most intense sex scenes in the book, a coupling between Casanova and Croy, the in-your-face black DJ/chauffeur/body guard who works for the Order. And Sage Vivant's chapter, early in the book, provides a deliciously ambiguous encounter between Casanova and a woman who might, or might not, be a resurrected ex-lover from his own time.

I was ultimately disappointed by American Casanova. I can't help but wonder about the motivations of some of the authors as they fashioned their chapters. Building on someone else's plot twists and characters must be quite difficult, but I know from past reading experience that these writers could have done better. I had the sense that some contributors were playing a game in which each tried to outdo predecessors in offering ever wilder and more outrageous characters, events and interpretations. Certainly, in many cases, there seemed to be little consideration paid to the narrative as a whole.

Although the cover glosses the book as "An erotic novel directed by Maxim Jakubowski", it's clear that he exercised very little direction over his contributors. The result is a novel that I suspect is quite different from what Maxim imagined, based on the glimpses provided by his initial and final chapters. That novel, I think, I would have greatly enjoyed.

Lately, it seems that I have gotten a reputation as a fan of femdom erotica. I have reviewed several femdom titles and I’m in process of reading another for an upcoming review. I receive unsolicited emails from femdom authors, begging me to look at their work.

Though I’m always intrigued by power exchange, I must admit that the staple elements of fetishistic femdom usually do not excite me. Many of the books I’ve read in this genre blur the line between domination and abuse to the point where I’m frankly uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who has read my own stories will know that I don’t shy away from heavy BDSM scenes. I don’t mind pain, as long as it is illuminated and transformed by desire. But in much of the femdom I’ve encountered, that desire is missing. The powerful women are merely cruel. They despise the men they dominate. Safe, sane, consensual – these concepts don’t seem to exist. Perhaps this is exactly what thrills those who enjoy this sub-genre, but physical and psychological abuse unleavened by any shred of responsibility or concern falls outside my personal definition of erotic.     

The Ancestors of Star by William Gaius identifies itself as focused on “female domination”. However, the mood and tone of this novel differs markedly from most other femdom titles that I’ve read. The Ancestors of Star is the extended tale of a young man coming to know and to worship a powerful older woman.  He is in some sense her slave, but a willing, even a joyous slave, who receives the most acute pleasure and satisfaction from serving his beloved mistress.  

Tim Hyatt takes a year off from college to work in the clinic at a remote American Indian reservation. His motives are hardly altruistic; strapped for cash to go to medical school, he is hoping that the experience among the Lagalero tribe may earn him a scholarship and help him climb into the social stratum of his Chicago high society girlfriend Natalie.

The clinic was founded and is managed by Elaine Yellow Star, a tough, intelligent native RN who has a well-known weakness for handsome younger men. Working for Star is a true education for the immature, macho city boy.  He learns firsthand about the bleak and brutal lives of the folk on the reservation. He begins to appreciate the spiritual bonds that unite and elevate the Lagalero community. He overcomes his original distaste for cunnilingus in order to become an enthusiastic servitor between Star’s thighs. He becomes willing to forgo his own release in order to give her pleasure. Gradually he acquires a sense of personal responsibility, and the maturity to recognize and claim what he really wants – the long-term love and respect of his demanding boss.

The Ancestors of Star includes some steamy sex scenes. Furthermore, its core conflicts deal with sexual pleasure, trust and commitment in the context of a relationship that is not exactly vanilla. In both these senses, the book can stake its claim to being an erotic work. However, the novel is far more than a book about sex. Mr. Gaius paints vivid pictures of the blasted New Mexico countryside around the reservation: stark beauty and terrible isolation. His characters, too, are vivid – not just Star, but more minor characters as well: Metal Head, the Vietnam-vet-turned-shaman; Matt Hunter, the tribal cop; Lucy White Eyes, crystal meth addict and shaman’s apprentice; Dr. Frank Willis, the honorary Navajo who is Star’s former lover. Then there’s Natalie, whose disastrous visit to the reservation demonstrates to Tim how much he has changed. Shallow, prissy, ultra-chic Natalie is almost a caricature, but her interactions with Star, the woman she senses is her rival, keep her believable and human.

I was virtually left out of the conversation, but after a few minutes, a light dawned in my thick male head. Star had somehow read Natalie’s suspicions and was cleverly disarming them. How did women do it? They read one another’s innermost thoughts, and carried on battles and alliances and betrayals, right in front of unsuspecting men, who thought the conversation was only about schools and clothing.

Soon, they had moved on to weddings, and Star told of the high point of the Lagalero wedding ceremony, which used a special pot made with two spouts. If one person tried to drink from it, he or she would get soaked. But both partners could drink from it with ease. After the drink was taken, and they had eaten cornbread from the same basket, the two were considered married.

Although the literal subjects of the conversation didn’t interest me, I listened carefully, not knowing what I might be called to account for later. In my head, I tried to translate the innocuous conversation of women:

Natalie: “My parents want us to have a big, traditional wedding, in the church. Me, I’d just as soon get married at City Hall.” Translation: ‘I’ve fought off other women before. I can fight you off, too.’

Star: “If I had gotten married, it would have been a traditional Lagalero wedding.” Translation: ‘Tim knew nothing of real sex before I got to him.’

Natalie: “That would be nice, to keep up the old traditions.” Translation: ‘I finally seduced Tim into going down on me. Once I got him to do that, he’s mine, and you can’t have him.’

Star: “Just as well, I was born on the rez, and I expect to die here and be put with my ancestors.” Translation: ‘Well, guess who taught him that, Sister! Not only does he go down on me nearly every day, he cleans my room and does my laundry and gives me back rubs. He even shaves my legs.’

Natalie bent the conversation back to the privileges and duties of a doctor’s wife. It began to dawn on me that this was Natalie’s real ambition. She was going to be a doctor’s wife. If I happened to play the part of the doctor, that would be nice. But it could be anyone, really, so long as he had ‘M.D.’ after his name.

Mr. Gaius writes with grace and insight. His prose reveals character and situation, without getting in the way. The Ancestors of Star is a long book, more than 300 pages, but I never found myself bored. This is despite the fact that the novel does not have a traditional plot arc from an initial state up to a crisis and then down to a resolution.

Instead, the novel is episodic, offering a series of mini-crises: Star’s rejection of Tim after he asserts his macho side; Tim’s near-death experience among ancient, treacherous ruins; a traditional hunt for prong horn sheep set against the background of rivalry for Star’s affection; a drug buy gone bad that leaves two young natives dead.

At one point it occurred to me that Mr. Gaius had perhaps adopted Native American narrative conventions, which do not follow the same rules as our own. Toward the end of the novel, however, I understood. The Ancestors of Star is a classic quest tale. The callow young protagonist sets out on his journey to self-knowledge and emotional fulfillment. He undertakes trials and overcomes obstacles on the way to achieving the goal that, at the outset, he does not even understand. Star is both his guide and his greatest challenge. By the end of the novel, he has become a sort of hero, glorified by his willingness to submit himself to Star’s desires and needs, as well as by his sincere commitment to her culture and her people.

I greatly enjoyed reading The Ancestors of Star. It’s a serious book, with more depth than one normally expects from erotica. At the same time, I did find it sexy, far more so than most of the other femdom works I’ve read. Tim is uplifted by his servitude to Star, and the reader is, too. The theme of sexual pleasure as a healing and ennobling force is hardly original, but that does not make it any less satisfying.

I've often observed, both in my stories and in real life, that the most erotic moments derive from complementary fantasies. Exhibitionist and voyeur. Sheik and harem girl. Strict schoolmarm and naughty schoolboy. And of course, Dom and sub. You want to do something. Your partner wants to see/feel/taste/touch you as you do it. Each participant is aware of the other's desires. That awareness sets up an erotic circuit, each person's excitement amplifying the other's arousal.   

Anneke Jacob's remarkable novel As She's Told presents an extreme case of this sort of reciprocity. Her heroine, Maia, craves complete submission. She wants to be owned—the life of a slave with no choice at all. She has harbored these desires since childhood, struggling to make her way in the world, pretending to be a "normal" person, but knowing that only this total relinquishment of her will can make her feel whole and safe.

Anders is Maia's complement, a dominant who finds the games and play parties of the BDSM scene silly and frustrating. He wants complete control over a woman—the freedom to do anything at all to his slave, to require any service, to experiment with any sort of pain or bondage that appeals to him. He wants a woman to be his belonging, his chattel,"his own thing". When the story opens, though, he has almost given up hope of ever satisfying his deep-seated desire for total control.

Anders first encounters Maia in a BDSM chat room, where she asks, in response to a discussion about negotiation: "but doesn't that spoil it?" and later adds: "I mean if a sub chooses that means control. Contradiction in terms."  Anders hardly dares to believe that he might have finally found his counterpart, but when they meet in person at a "munch", mutual understanding and mutual attraction are both immediate.

The early chapters, when Maia and Anders first realize that their dreams may have come true, left me breathless. Despite their lightning attraction, Anders forces them to go slowly. Step by step, he leads Maia into a new world of unquestioning obedience. All does not go smoothly. Although she is desperate to please, Maia is also sloppy, irresponsible and occasionally rebellious. In addition, she is unrelentingly horny, and Anders rarely allows her any release for her sexual tension.

In each chapter, Anders introduces new torments or requires new adjustments. A waist chain is replaced by a tight corset, then labial piercings, then a chastity belt, then a bit and bridle and leather mitts that turn Maia into a dumb animal. In the early stages, he regularly checks with his would-be slave to make sure that she has not changed her mind. By the time they have been together for a year, however, she is truly his, and he stops asking her to describe her feelings or give him feedback.

 Anders is a perfectionist, a construction contractor with a passion for detail. As She's Told is almost obsessive in its descriptions of the equipment he designs to decorate, test and torture his slave. The book includes all the familiar trappings from the BDSM canon: the slave suspended and whipped; the slave plugged with dildos and vibrators but not allowed to come; the slave used as furniture; the slave eating out of a dog bowl; the slave harnessed to a cart and forced to trot and gallop. (Ms. Jacobs also dreams up some more unusual and imaginative kinks, but I won't spoil the impact by describing them here.)

 We've seen all these notions before, in Carrie's Story, in the Beauty Trilogy, in The Story of O. The difference is that in As She's Told, these are not treated as fantasy. Ms. Jacob is convincingly realistic in her depictions of what Anders does and how Maia feels. At some level, this book is still a fantasy, a thought experiment exploring how an extreme Master/slave relationship might develop, but the tone demands that the reader take the whole process seriously.

In fact, parts of this book are sufficiently extreme that they may be difficult for some readers. I found that I could not read more than a few chapters at a sitting because, despite my long-time fascination with BDSM, they made me uncomfortable.

This is not  (despite some horrified reviews on Amazon.com) a story of abuse. Anders does not negotiate, but he cares for his slave and makes sure that she will not be seriously injured.  When he offers his brother, cousin and several women friends free use of Maia's body, he makes sure that they use condoms, even for oral sex. He is giving Maia what she wants, and she is suitably grateful. Still, I wouldn't want Anders for my Master. He's too interested in stripping away Maia's pretensions of being human. He delights in turning her into an animal or even an inanimate object. Toward the end of the novel, Maia spends eight weeks without the use of her hands, sleeping in a stall, forbidden to speak, and worst of all, banished from her Master's bed. I can scarcely imagine this—it sounds too horrible to be endured (far worse than being forbidden to or unable to come). But then, I'm not Maia. Ms. Jacobs managed to make me believe that Maia could and would endure it, in order to please Anders.

As She's Told is not without its faults. It is a long book without much plot. Each chapter pushes new limits, but there's no climax and very little conflict. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Maia to rebel or for someone to be hurt or killed, for some revelation or resolution, but in fact nothing much happens. We're led to believe that this relationship will continue, satisfying both of the participants, as they live out their complementary fantasies together. I think that this is Ms. Jacob's point, to suggest that such a relationship could actually exist and that it could be healthy and mutually fulfilling.

I don't know whether I am completely convinced. People change. Maia is very young (she graduates from college in the course of the book) and Anders not much older. Furthermore, it seems that there must be an objective limit to the escalation Anders practices on Maia. My Master and I have debated the question of escalation, the continued pushing of limits. Clearly there must be some point when you can't push any further without doing serious physical harm. What happens then? Do the participants get bored or jaded? Or is it the case that a truly imaginative dominant will never run out of things to do with his slave?

 The very fact that I'm thinking about these issues, though, is a tribute to Ms. Jacob's skill. As She's Told is a rare item, a serious novel about BDSM relationships that does not sacrifice realism for titillation. I found it exciting, disturbing and challenging. I just bought a copy for my Master.

Editor’s note: As She’s Told was the winner of the 2008 National Leather Association-International Pauline Reage Novel Award.

Fantastic has several meanings.  In the context of Cecilia Tan's new anthology, the word refers to fiction which has elements of the supernatural or the futuristic.  At the same time, “fantastic” also serves as a superlative, a synonym to “wonderful,” “exceptional” or (in today's parlance) “awesome.”  I have no hesitation in using the word in its second sense to describe this collection.  Cecilia Tan and Circlet have winnowed down a set of more than five hundred submissions to present eighteen of the best erotic science fiction and fantasy stories that I, at least, have read in a long time.

This anthology is noteworthy both for its originality and its diversity.  The tales range from Arinn Dembo's exquisitely lyrical “Monsoon” to Thomas Roche's hilarious satire, “The Night the New Hog Croaked, Or the Lascivious Dr. Blonde: A Romance”.  Kal Cobalt's “The Lift” is pure cyberpunk, set in a world in which the lines between human and machine have become tragically blurred.  “The Caretaker,” by Fauna Sara, offers a deliciously traditional fantasy world inhabited by unicorns and their virgins.  “The Bridge,” Connie Wilkins' contribution, gives us a war-scarred veteran who encounters the mythical Green Man, while Catherine Lundoff's “Twilight” presents a sassy, modern half-vampire who meets her match in the sexy descendant of a legendary vampire slayer.

Several of the stories contemplate the distance, or lack thereof, between man and animal.  In Robert Knippenberg's “And What Rough Beasts,” a faddish treatment that allows humans to become part animal results in the gradual disappearance of homo sapiens. Jason Rubis' enigmatic and disturbing “Circe House” considers transformation from human to animal, from male to female and back, as a sort of extreme fetish.

Any contemporary volume of erotica is likely to include some BDSM, and this collection is no exception.  However, in the hands of these Circlet authors, the themes of surrender as a gateway to freedom; pain as a precursor to pleasure, become newly exciting.  Corbie Petulengro's “The Harrowing” concerns an evil sorceress who exacts a ransom of sexual servitude from a brave female warrior, teaching her young slave how to accept her craving for submission and suffering.  “Marked,” by Cody Nelson, one of my favorite stories in a book full of candidates, presents an odd plague that confers heightened sensuality and sensitivity upon its sufferers while at the same time condemning them to horrible pain if they touch each other.

“Zach forcefully unclenched his teeth and slowed his shallow breathing.  He rubbed his aching cock against the mattress and felt its steady throbbing.  He moved his hips rhythically under Brendan's hand.  He let the pain wash through him, felt its circuit flow from point of contact to point of contact, butt to belly to breast to arm to hand.  He felt the electric pricks and tingles and bites.  And he relaxed his mind and invited the pain in.

Something changed then.  The pain didn't go away and didn't abate, not one bit.  But it was no longer something to be feared and shunned.  It was searing and gorgeous and wonderful, and Zack found his body racked with laughing sobs at the joy of it.”

In the end, Zack is cured – only to realize that he still wants the lust and the pain that he has left behind.

There are many more wonderful stories in this volume.  “Music from My Bones,” by Anya Levin, explores a different kind of submission, in which a woman allows her body to be played as an instrument in a performance of sexual ecstasy.  Jean Roberta's “Smoke” entertains the notion that Lucifer was a woman, with all the attendant implications.  “Nocturnal Emissions,” by Joe Nobel, is a delightfully sensual chronicle of an elderly Christian priest in the sixteenth century who comes face to face with the old gods and his own suppressed carnal desires.

“The Gantlet,” by B. Lynch Black, offers a parable about the dangers of too much control, set in a classic sci-fi dystopia.  Renee M. Charles' “Opening the Veins of Jade” gives us oriental magic and feminine power.  Argus Marks' “Copperhead Renaissance” is a creepily erotic picture of mutual addiction.  “Venus Rising,” by Diane Kepler, takes us into the familiar territory of android sex toys, but adds an ironic twist.  Last, but hardly least, Carolyn and Steve Vakesh offer the clever, funny “Capture, Courting and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Aggression”, part of the dissertation research of a young dragon sociobiologist.  (“We are educated, politically correct dragons.  We do not eat humans anymore.”)

Normally when I review anthologies, I don't mention every story.  Usually there are at least one or two that are better left in the dark.  Often I want to allow the readers to discover some of the tales on their own.  In the case of this collection, every author deserves a mention, for all of the tales are exceptional for their craft as well as their creativity.

Best Fantastic Erotica is, indeed, fantastic.  I'm hardly surprised, since every Circlet anthology that I have read or reviewed deserves the superlative.  For Cecilia Tan, every Circlet Press book is a personal labor of love.  It shows.

I’ve been reviewing erotica for more than six years. During that period, I’ve probably read and passed judgment on at least fifty titles. (I’ll know exactly one of these days, when I finally find the time to update the publishing history page on my web site!) I wouldn’t be surprised if a quarter of these titles began with “Best”. Sometimes I wonder whether anthology editors or publishers just lack originality. Wouldn’t “Worst Bisexual Alien Leather Erotica” attract more attention?

Seriously, though, when I open another “Best” collection, I tend to do so with a barely suppressed sigh. Rarely, in my experience, do erotica anthologies deserve the superlative. Most commonly, erotica collections will have a few stories that are stellar, a few that are appalling, with the remainder being predictable and workman-like but unmemorable.

Richard Labonté’s collection more or less fits this pattern.

On the positive side, the stories in this anthology are surprisingly diverse given the narrow theme. Bondage includes rope, leather, silk, latex, hand-cuffs and even live snakes (more on this below). The essence of bondage is constraint, whether self-imposed or inflicted by another. The authors in this collection explore the broad limits of this definition. There are several tales – Larry Townsend’s giddy “My Eighteenth Birthday” and Simon Sheppard’s uncharacteristically light “The Man Who Tied Himself Up”– in which the main characters accomplish some amazing feats of self-restraint. Then there’s Doug Harrison’s sweet and satisfying tale, “The Harness”, which demonstrates that bondage isn’t just for bottoms.

My favorite tale in this collection is Shanna Germain’s “And Serpent Becomes Rod”. (I notice that Ms. Germain has received top kudos in several of my recent reviews.)  The protagonist in this story, a wealthy submissive so jaded that he has become impotent, treks through the jungle to the summit of a volcano in order to meet the shaman-master whom he hopes will cure him. The shaman lives in a shack lit by hundreds of candles and inhabited by dozens of snakes. The snakes bind the man while the master takes him and makes him new.

When he stepped back, I tried to follow. The snakes held me there with a raised head, the slip of a tail along the curve of my balls. Everything drew up tight. Still. I bowed my head as much as I could without losing my breath. I waited for the man that I knew would save me.        

...Something flickered at the crack of my ass. Snake tongue? Man tongue? I moaned, low in my throat.

The story is vivid, intensely physical, and unrelentingly arousing. What impressed me, though (other than the creative notion of using snakes as bonds) was the clear connection between sex and spirit. This acknowledgment that bondage might mean something, might be something beyond a mechanism of arousal, is missing in most of the tales in this collection.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Hot, anonymous sex is great, and gay fiction especially seems to like to celebrate it, as illustrated by Bill Brent’s enjoyable contribution, “Keeping It Under Wraps”:

We catch our breath, staring at each other and grinning like idiots. Soon we will leave this couch and become separated by ever-growing number of men, miles, days, years — but right now we’re just two blissed out guys, happy to be together in this room, no longer horny.

Bondage can be dangerous, though. It’s not the sort of thing one wants to undertake at the hands of a stranger. Bondage can also be a route to enlightenment, but few of the authors in this collection seem to view it this way.

A disturbing number of tales in the collection feature non-consensual sex and bondage. Perhaps the most extreme is “Marking Territory” by Sean Meriwether, about a petty criminal being pissed on, beat up and sodomized as punishment for double-crossing the boss. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would find this arousing — not because of the acts themselves (hey, I’ve fantasized about golden showers) but because of the absolute cruelty with which these acts are inflicted. Then there’s “The Taking of Brian Krowell”, which details a carefully planned rape. I have to admit that even though this story by Shane Allison left me queasy and uncomfortable, I was also aware that its remarkable portrait of a man driven to violence by frustrated lust made it one of the better stories in the collection.

His dick tensed in my mouth, beyond my tenacious lips, cum surging through his black body, willing or not... I left him stained with his cum, my cum, my spit, his jelly. Done. His never was my now.  

TruDeviant’s “Number Twenty-Four” offers a similar scenario, a neglected and abused fag obsessed with a baseball player. In this tale the rape, though vivid and visceral, full of sweat-soaked uniforms and locker room odors, is nevertheless only fantasy. Does that change things?

At some level, all fiction is fantasy, though in some cases this is more obvious than others. Certainly the sex slave in the temple of the Owl Goddess in David Holly’s slightly ridiculous “A Gift to the Rising Dog Star” is pretty transparent, as is the world-weary dirty old man in “Norceuil’s Garden” (Andrew Warburton). In many cases, the fantasy aspect of these tales subordinates the story. There’s no real plot. The characters exist only to act out the author’s fetish. I might find a story arousing, but afterwards, when the tale releases me, I’m empty.

Some of the stories in this collection are well-written. A few show noteworthy originality. All in all, though, this anthology does not, in my opinion, completely merit its title. “Gay Bondage”? Certainly. “Erotica”? In some cases. But “Best” would be better reserved for a collection that more consistently challenges the mind and stirs the heart, as well as exciting the senses.

Anyone who is at all familiar with Singapore, in reality or reputation, will find the concept of Singaporean erotica rather difficult to believe. Who could be publishing erotica in prudish, politically restrictive, cleanliness-obsessed Singapore, where one can be fined for chewing gum or not flushing the toilet, where I once saw a movie ("Cave Girl" with a young, nubile Daryl Hannah) so severely censored that characters showed up in the credits that I'd never seen on the screen? In fact, the publishers of Best of Singapore Erotica received special permission from government censors to produce and sell this book, with the stipulation that it had to be sealed in cellophane to protect those who might be offended or corrupted by its salacious content. It was with considerable curiosity that I tore off the wrapper and began to sample what the authoritarian city-state had to offer in the way of sexy writing.

What I discovered was a collection of stories, essays and poems that help clarify why Singapore has a sex-hostile reputation. Legal restrictions on homosexuality and other "deviant" sexual acts are only the beginning. The obstacles to satisfying sex in the city-state appear to be many and formidable: ferocious upward mobility and a punishing work ethic; shortage of affordable housing, which leads to young adults living with their parents in situations with little privacy; traditional values that favor security over romance; and finally, a complex, multi-racial class hierarchy with social distances that are near-impossible to bridge.

In spite of, perhaps even because of, all these barriers, some of the authors represented in this volume do succeed in creating arousing and emotionally involving tales that I would classify as erotica. One of my favorites is Ricky Low's "Clean Sex," in which a successful young Chinese businessman falls in love with an Indonesian housemaid, only to lose her when she's accused of stealing the expensive presents he has bought for her. Another highlight is "Naked Screw" by Alison Lester, which portrays an initially confrontational but ultimately sensual encounter between a free-spirited ex-pat who likes to walk around her apartment without clothing, and a traditional South Asian laborer who claims that her nakedness offends him. Meihan Boey's "A Dummy's Guide to Losing Your Virginity," in which she chronicles her methodical approach to finding and bedding her first lover, is a clever comic gem:

"Feel free to fit us both into any convenient category of human behavior. Rest assured, I will not complain. Complaining, I find, is the refuge of the weak and unimaginative who have neither the courage to put up with shit nor the wherewithal to get out of it."

"And Then She Came," by Jonathan Lim, is a creepy yet unquestionably sexy story of a helpless student "not sober enough to be superstitious," who attracts the attention of a voracious female ghost. Aaron Ang's "A Perfect Exit" is a sweet, sentimental and finally surprising story of geriatric lust. I also enjoyed "Self-Portrait with Three Monkeys," by Chris Mooney-Singh, although it is more a character study than a story, the heroine a middle-aged career woman who consoles herself for her loveless couplings with an orgy of art. Another notable contribution is Weston Sun Wensheng's "An MRT Chronicle," a wry commentary on the trials of being young and horny in a society that offers no privacy at all.

Some of the other stories in this collection, however, made me suspect that the authors had not had much opportunity to sample currently available erotic literature. Some entries like Robert Yeo's "What We Did Last Summer," Gerrie Lim's "Walking the Dog," and Emilio Malvar's "Expeditions in the Twilight Zone," are dispassionate essays about sexual topics that are moderately intriguing but hardly engage the senses or emotions. Other tales like "Do You Have a Toothbrush?" by Lee Lien Mingmei, Rachel Loh's "Body Drafts," and Felix Chong's "Dancer from the Dance," are little more than descriptions of sexual encounters, with little if any plot. I suppose that in Singapore, the impact of simply having sex might be enough to make a story seem worthwhile, but for a reader who has been spoiled by the likes of M.Christian, Alison Tyler and Marilyn Jaye Lewis, just sex is not sufficient. Finally, there is Richard Lord's "The Phoenix Tattoos," which has the makings of an incredibly intriguing story, but which simply ends without resolution, intensely frustrating, for this reader at least.

Best of Singapore Erotica also includes a handful of poems. Most are, in my opinion, undistinguished, however Jonathan Lim's Speedo Dream is an exception, a sleek, streamlined homoerotic meditation:

i could not breathe
air whispered thinly around me
whispered sins that sounded like heaven

i longed to lick the salt off that skin
coat the smoothness with mine

All in all, Best of Singapore Erotica is uneven, but worth reading, not only for sensual thrills but also for cultural education. Although some contributions seem amateurish, the editors deserve respect for making an attempt to foster the development of erotic writing against considerable odds.

I noted that the book is available online from Amazon.com. I can't help but wonder if it arrives securely wrapped in cellophane.

What do women want?  Freud’s perennial question recurs again and again in my wanderings as a reviewer through the thickets of contemporary and classic erotica.  Violet Blue’s latest anthology of erotic fiction by women, and presumably for women, offers a possibly surprising answer.  Women want the thrill of an anonymous encounter, the sensual high of breaking taboos, the peak experiences of pleasure or pain without the complications of a long-term relationship.  Almost all the stories in this excellent volume fall into the category of sublime quickies with near strangers.  One might almost call the anthology “erotic non-romance.”

Violet Blue sets the tone with her compelling introduction, “For All the Johnnys.”  She begins by telling us that introductions are boring, but then treats us to a smoldering and possibly true account of sharing a lap-dancer with her fuck buddy and maybe-lover, Hacker Boy.  “I never saw Johnny again,” she writes, “but I wish I could read this entire book to her.”  The tale reeks of alcohol and come, garnished with tattoos and desperation, but it is sexy as hell.

Jacqueline Applebee’s “Penalty Fare” offers a furtive blowjob in the cramped bathroom of a train, an exchange for a deliberately lost ticket.  Jordana Winters’ “Peekaboo” gives us a plain Jane who discovers at a sex club how much fun it can be just to watch.  Saskia Walker’s lovely “Winter Heat” offers a bit of sweetness as a woman reminisces about her first orgasm, but still, it’s at the hands of a young man chance met at a bus stop.  EllaRegina’s prize-winning story, “The Lonely Onanista” is an original account of a woman who lives inside the Washington Square Arch and screws any passerby who knows how to find her.

One of my favorite stories in the collection, probably because it taps into my own fantasies, is Xan West’s “Please.”  The narrator meets an intriguing guy in a bar, and he fucks her, body and mind, in the bathroom.

“Here are the rules.  I do what I want to you.  You don’t touch me without permission.  If you want me to stop, you say ‘stop.’  That is the only word that will stop me, but if I hear it, I will stop immediately.  I won’t do anything to harm you, but I may want to hurt you a little, and I definitely want to fuck you.  Are you game?”

Imagine hearing these words from a stranger, and then discovering, at this stranger’s hands, the purest pleasure, the truest release, that you’ve ever known.  In a sense, this story distills the essence of what Violet Blue is trying to present – the intoxicating notion that the ultimate sexual experience waits for you, just around the corner, in the most unexpected places, with people that you haven’t met but who are destined to fulfill your dreams.

Of course, there are some stories in Best Women's Erotica 2008 that don’t exactly fit this mold.  In “Strangers in the Water,” R. Gay’s narrator returns with her uncomprehending American husband to her native Haiti, to the river where her grandmother conceived her mother in a furtive tryst with a fugitive.  Alison Tyler’s “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John” is a high-spirited romp that will make you want to return to college.  Donna George Storey takes us back to the Japan of her novel, Amorous Woman, in the elegantly sensual story “Wet.”  “You Can Do Mine,” by Cerise Noire, gives us a couple who have been living together for a while, pushing their limits.  And then there’s A.D.R. Forte’s deftly-written tale, “Mercy,” about three co-workers whose pair-wise relationships meld into a scorchingly original ménage.

“Picture the cast of characters:  Rhys — dark hair just a little too long at the neck, tie loosened slightly because it’s hot here at the hotel bar, pretty-boy mouth set in that unintentional but totally fuckable pout so at odds with his seriousness; Kyle — half a head taller than every man in the room, blue eyes, wearing the power suit to end all power suits; charisma and control in different ways.

And me, staring at both of them over my glass of cabernet, my mind so deep in the gutter I’m afraid I’ll need scuba gear to find it and drag it out again.”    

Finally – well, not finally, because I haven’t covered every one of the excellent stories of the book since I want to allow you to discover some by yourself – still, I have to mention the strange and poetic “Lost at Sea,” by Peony.  This story is hazy and potent, like a dream; I read it three times and I still wasn’t sure that I understood it all:

“You.  A synapse fires inside my head.  Somewhere near the surface I can see a faint glow fractured by surface ripples.  I must be a long way under.  We shouldn’t have.  We did.  It’s done and cannot be undone.  We’re on the other side of that which had grown so large between us, the lust that devoured us, swelled fat from the absurdity of it.” 

In a way, this tale echoes the exhilaration and desperation of Violet Blue’s introduction.  This is what lust can do, these stories say: strip you naked, rip you open, leave you with scars that you will finger longingly in the future, when your lover of the moment is long gone – remembering.

This slim volume of short stories is subtitled “Stories of Tainted Desire.”  The description is apt. Ms. Hipple's evocative prose-poems summon the sharp pain of regret, the ache for opportunities lost, the searing fire of anger and the ice of a lover's disdain. There is beauty, passion, even sweetness in these tales, but they are a far cry from the light-hearted romps so common in contemporary erotic story collections. Ms. Hipple writes from the heart -- from personal experience, I suspect. She does not shy away from darkness: cruelty, drunken self-pity, the seductive lure of suicide when one is desperate and lonely.

Bittersweet includes twenty-two brief stories. Many are no longer than two pages. In fact, few are stories in the classical sense; they offer no plot arc and no character development, though they often chronicle changes in the narrator over time. The pieces in this volume are meditations, fantasies, extended flashbacks, vivid erotic scenarios that exist solely to evoke emotion. In “Blood on Snow,” a woman descends ever deeper into submission, until at long last her lover fulfills his promise to shed her blood. “Let It Be Uncomplicated” offers a snapshot of a marriage in which sex has become a constant reproach due to the woman's inability to conceive. “I Promise I Won't Break You,” with more of a plot than most, shows how abandonment can lead to despair and then beyond, to a hardness that even the lover's return cannot shatter. In “Waiting in the Rain,” a woman spends the day fantasizing about her husband's arrival, only to have him reject her, while in “Seems Like...” a husband reprises the decades with his beloved as he gazes on her corpse.

Some stories are told from a male perspective, some from a female. The two I liked best both have F/F themes. “White Musk” illustrates the evocative power of the sense of smell. A middle-aged wife and mother, shopping for Christmas presents, catches a whiff of the perfume favored by the woman she loved in her youth and is submerged in memory. In “Mar,” a woman who lives alone by the ocean is visited by lyrical and mysterious dreams of a gorgeous female sea-creature.

Ms. Hipple's prose is sensual in the truest sense, steeped in descriptions of sight and smell, sound, texture and taste. She skillfully captures the connection between environment and emotion. Sun, wind, mist and rain mold and reflect the characters' moods. Her sex scenes are more poetic than graphic, though you'll find no euphemisms here. The flesh is filtered, always, through the prism of emotion.

On the negative side, the stories in this collection are distressingly similar in their style. Every one is narrated in the first person, often in the present tense, with the object of passion a frequently unnamed third party pronoun. The most begin with some description of the weather or the season, setting the emotional tone.  As I note above, Ms. Hipple does this quite well. However, it becomes monotonous after a while. Even though the stories explore a range of situations and emotions, I found it difficult to separate them in my mind. Another initially effective device that is overused is the reprise of the title in the last paragraph of the story. After three or four tales, this starts to seem amateurish.

The book would also benefit from more extensive editing. I noticed quite a few misused words, some of which are clearly typographic errors (“chain” rather than “chair”) but others clear confusions (“travesties” instead of “trials” or “tortures”). An effective editor could also have curbed Ms. Hipple's over-fondness for run-on sentences, three or four independent clauses joined by “and”.  I read an Advanced Reader's Copy of the book that perhaps was further edited before release. I do hope so; if this were my book, I would be a bit embarrassed by these mistakes.

I always enjoy reading collections assembled by Richard Labonte. He has a finely honed literary sensibility, and tends to choose stories for their emotional intensity as opposed to their physical extremity. He views the gay world with compassion and wisdom, revealing its complexities to outsiders like me. Boy Crazy is sweet, hot, occasionally silly, and on one occasion, brutal, but always respectful of the challenges faced by gay men in a het world.

This anthology is subtitled “Coming Out Erotica” but I think “Initiation Erotica” would have been more appropriate. Most of the stories feature young men—in their teens or twenties—finally experiencing the homoerotic intimacies they have imagined for so long. While a few of these boys—the bookish cello player in Dale Chase's “Army Brat,” the “lumpish, clumsy” hero in “Larry and His Father” --go through the painful experience of admitting their sexual orientation to their family and friends, most of these tales are concerned with more private revelations.

Being a teenager—constantly horny, eternally insecure, perpetually misunderstood, at odds with family and the world—is hell for most of us. Being a gay teenager must be far worse. On top of everything else, there is the isolation, the inability to share one's fantasies with anyone for fear of being rejected, ostracized or even beaten up. These stories make that isolation real for non-gay readers. In both Michael Rowe's evocative “August” and Martin Delacroix's lusciously detailed “A Beautiful Motorcycle,” the boy is forced to endure the torture of seeing the object of his affections in the arms of his self-involved older sister. In “Paperboys,” by Natty Soltesz, two boys in lust pretend that they are just kidding around as they share their bodies. The heroes of these stories insist that they are not interested in men, even when they are dying to touch and be touched by one.

In some sense, there's only one story here: boy meets boy, or boy meets man, and is recognized, accepted, usually fucked and changed forever. As with a fairy tale, the reader knows how the story will end, but that doesn't diminish the pleasure of reading. The emotions make it all worthwhile, the unendurable longing and the incredible intensity of that first touch, when the longing is finally satisfied. These stories are a celebration of requited lust, and sometimes love.

One of my favorite tales in the collection is Alana Noël Voth's “Sundelin”, in which a college kid is obsessed with the barista at the local coffee shop. One reason I loved this story was that, paradoxically, it included no sex other than the narrator's outrageous fantasies. (It's also the kinkiest story in the book, since those fantasies are submissive in the extreme.) Ms. Voth leaves the reader to imagine what will happen next.

Another standout is “Game Boyz” by F.A. Pollard. In this incendiary tale, the narrator is swept off his feet and into the back alley by a gorgeous tough guy named Zen, only to be discovered in flagrante by his straight roommate.

Nearly all the stories in the collection are told from the perspective of the “boy” being initiated. The one exception is the amazing “The Pasta Closet”, by Davem Verne. Verne's narrator lusts for years for the hairy, meaty body of Gino, his childhood friend in Boston’s Little Italy. But it's Gino, the local Italian Stallion, who is ultimately forced to realize that he craves men as much as or even more than women.

A review of Boy Crazy would not be complete without a mention of the peculiar, outrageous, silly and entertaining tale “The Dolphin Temple”, by David Holly. This story, set in Crete under the Minoans, postulates a religious cult in which the primary ritual is mutual masturbation. The young hero Androgeous (!) is literally initiated into the mysteries of the Dolphin God by Phaeax, his boon companion and the object of his nocturnal fantasies.

The “brutal” story is William T. Hathaway's “Coming of Age”, which includes a gut-wrenching description of two hippie guys on their way from Kansas City to San Francisco being raped by a bunch of red-neck military men. Overall, I found this story a bit distancing, especially when it skipped over two decades of gay history in a few paragraphs, but the earlier scenes hammered home the pain faced by boys who love boys, but who can't or won't admit it.  

When I was assigned to review Broken, I quivered with anticipation. Here was a serious BDSM novel, or so I’d heard, written by a lifestyle Domina with years of experience in the scene. I expected that her book would not only get the details right, but would succeed in conveying the emotional impact of a D/s relationship—the intimacy of submission, the intensity of enduring pain in order to serve one’s master or mistress, the thrill of topping a willing slave. 

Alas, I was sorely disappointed. Broken does indeed describe punishments and pain in lovingly graphic terms. However, the psychological dynamics behind these relatively extreme scenes are distorted or missing, to the point where I sometimes found the book offensive.

Jessica, the book’s protagonist, is a spoiled rich girl gradually working her way toward a Ph.D. in psychology while shopping, eating out and driving around in her Mercedes. When her father commits suicide, Jessica learns that she is suddenly penniless. In order to survive and continue with her graduate work, she is forced to drop her preferred research topic and advisor, and beg for a T.A. or R.A. position from Professor Lawrence, the creepy head of the department. The Professor refuses unless she also agrees to serve him as his collared slave. Desperate, Jessica agrees. She is savagely beaten and abused, by the Professor as well as his gorgeous subs Felicia and Sandra. The Professor requires her to submit not only to him, but also to his party guests. In addition, he finances his lavish lifestyle by renting her out to his kinky colleagues, giving her a pittance of the proceeds.

Jessica endures all this, but only because of the money. She despises her master and all the other men who use her. She cheats, arranging private engagements with her most devoted customers, delighting in the fact that she’s getting the better of her sleazy Dom. Although she does appreciate the Professor’s intelligence and connections as he works with her on her dissertation research, she can’t wait to be free of him. Her experiences in the BDSM world gradually lead her to the understanding that she is a natural dominant herself. As she begins to exercise sexual power over others, including a delightful little blonde named Dora whom she steals from the Professor, she finally experiences some pleasure and satisfaction.

Broken is competently written, but the characters are unsympathetic to the point of being repellent. Jessica is scheming, selfish and judgmental. She takes advantage of everyone, whenever she can. She has no sense of devotion or even responsibility to her master. Her servitude to Professor Lawrence does not break her, as suggested by the novel’s title. It merely hardens her.

Meanwhile, I will admit that, apart from his intelligence, the Professor offers nothing to inspire devotion in a slave. He is bald, short, dumpy and impotent. He too is selfish, and genuinely cruel, caring nothing for the welfare or happiness of his subs. Worst of all, he is disgustingly mercenary. His beautiful slaves are nothing but his meal tickets. Meanwhile, he uses the lure of money to enslave them.

For the most part, I found the “sex” scenes in Broken completely unarousing. Certainly, Jessica is never aroused. She is nothing but a body to be beaten, pierced, bound, whipped, raped. She knows this as well as her partners do. Her primary desire is to get through the scene somehow, avoiding pain as much as possible. She and her tormenters share nothing, no connection, no understanding, no sympathy.

This changes toward the end of the book, as Jessica recognizes her sadistic tendencies and acquires her own slave in Dora. At this point, some sparks fly, precisely because Dora has willingly and lovingly submitted to Jessica. Even Jessica melts a bit when confronted by such perfect devotion. Alas, at this point, the damage was done, at least for this reader. I shook my head as I watched Jessica turn into a Domme just as money-hungry and superficial as her former master.

I may be naive, but I felt that this book violated some of the core tenets of the BDSM lifestyle. Jessica’s enslavement stretches the meaning of consensuality nearly to breaking.  Yes, Jessica agrees to become the Professor’s slave, but her submission is borne of desperation. Furthermore, it is not genuine. She shames the collar that she wears by cheating her master.

Not that the Professor deserves her devotion or respect, of course. In fact, he is nothing but a well-educated pimp.

I will admit that there were one or two scenes in this book that engendered a kind of queasy excitement, despite the novel’s emotional sterility. Two and a half pages devoted to needle play had me squirming and wondering whether I would, could, endure that, at my master’s hands. I had strange dreams afterwards. For Jessica though, this was not a test of submission, not a peak experience, not a pushing of limits. It was merely one more thing to be gotten through, for the sake of the money.

A year ago, I reviewed Janine Ashbless’ Burning Bright, the sequel to Divine Torment. At the time, I commented that I was curious regarding the main characters’ history. In Burning Bright, we learn that both Myrna and Veraine had betrayed their peoples and their destinies for the sake of love, but little more. Thus I was delighted to receive an invitation to read the volume that details the adventure that brought Myrna and Veraine together.

In Divine Torment, the warrior Veraine, scion of a great general of the Irolian empire and a slave girl, is dispatched with his army to protect the vassal city Mulhanabin from the devastating attacks of a fierce Mongol-like horde of nomads. Mulhanabin, an ancient stone edifice at the edge of the desert, is the demesne of the Malia Shah, the Yamani goddess of destruction, pestilence and chaos.

The latest incarnation of the Malia Shah is a copper-haired, dark-skinned girl trained to disregard both pain and pleasure in her quest to escape from the cycles of rebirth. She becomes Veraine’s obsession from the moment he sees her, yet she appears to be serious and aloof, insulated from mortal concerns. Whether performing ceremonies of human sacrifice or enduring the disgusting worship of the eunuch head priest Rasa Belit, she remains unmoved. Yet she dreams of overwhelming passion in the arms of the Sun, experiencing in her visions the annihilation of individuality that is the essence of godhead.

Not much happens after Veraine arrives. The Horse-Eaters attack the temple-city and Veraine’s army, though desperately outnumbered, defeats them, assisted by an earthquake invoked by the Malia Shah. Rasa Belit attempts to murder Veraine and of course fails. Veraine witnesses the Malia Shah’s bloodthirsty rituals, yet his horror is not sufficient to kill his desire. Finally, the two fated lovers come together, in a marathon coupling that leaves them bruised and sore, yet completely unsated.

Only when they are discovered does it become clear that both of them have thrown away their present lives for the sake of their love. The goddess, caught in the blasphemous act of fucking a mortal, is interred in her room and left to die slowly. Rasa Belit prepares to carve up Veraine’s genitals, slice by tiny slice.

I will not reveal any more of the plot, although the existence of the sequel obviously means that both protagonists survive.

I have very mixed feeling about Divine Torment. The early chapters are bland and lack coherent structure. Random sex scenes occur to liven things up, but the plot seems to limp. The Malia Shah is more an absence than a character. Her primary attribute is her cultivated lack of emotion, which makes her seem other-worldly but hardly the figure to ignite such desire in an experienced cocksman like Veraine. Of course, they are destined soul-mates, so perhaps no justification is required. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to care about his obsession because it seemed arbitrary and implausible.

The last seventy five pages, on the other hand, pulse with passion and drama. When Veraine and the Malia Shah are torn apart, the full weight of their choice and its consequences crashes down upon the reader. The worst aspect of their individual punishments is their separation. This is high romance, well-executed, with the emotional intensity that I’d been waiting for through the earlier sections of the book.

In my review of Burning Bright, I praised Ms. Ashbless’ ability to vividly portray differing cultures and exotic locales. Divine Torment does not measure up in this regard. I never really developed a clear sense of the temple and its precincts. Although Mulhanabin lies in the desert, I never felt the dryness in my nostrils, suffered under the parching sun, saw the dust swirling in the narrow lanes of the city. The religion of Mulhanabin borrows heavily from the Hindu cult of Kali. It was audacious of the author to make her goddess frightful and cruel rather than beneficent, but the theology is hardly original.

And yet, when I go back and re-read selected passages of the novel, I find thoughtful, well-crafted prose. I don’t fully understand why my overall reaction is so luke-warm:

"I feel the fly tickling across my thumb onto the back of my hand. The sensation is like a line of light drawn across a dark place; I can’t ignore it. The feeling is there. It is an insect, so I should be irritated and flick it away. But if it were not an insect, if that same sensation were a fingertip drawn across my skin by a man, would it be pleasure I felt instead of irritation? It depends on which man. The meaning is not in the feeling, it is in my response."
. . .
He is not the master of his flesh. He has not learned that significance is a habit of mind. I was taught long ago that it is not necessary to give meaning to sensation. Pain does not matter any more than pleasure. Lust is not more significant than an insect itch. The marks on the scroll do not have to be words. If you look at them, they are just marks.

But, she thought, the poem is beautiful.

I do not want it to be lost when the priests die."

I leaf through the book and find pages like this, quiet and glowing insights into the mind and heart of the girl-goddess. Perhaps it is because they are so quiet that they made so little impression, on my first reading. Perhaps it is because they are scattered, unpredictable, among the rough actions and unreflective decisions of the brave but somewhat boorish Veraine.

Perhaps if I reread the book from the start, I’d find more that I missed.

As this is an erotica review site, I probably should say something about the sex scenes in Divine Torment. What shall I say? The first such scene in the book, a frolic involving Veraine and two slave girls, screams “gratuitous sex”. It neither furthers the plot nor reveals character. Other scenes have more to redeem them. The second, a tale of sexual discovery and torment recounted by Veraine’s cultural attaché Rumayn, has the virtues of illuminating Yamani superstition and cruelty. There is a male-male scene, in which Veraine inflicts his frustrated lust upon his handsome and willing chariot driver, and a breathlessly intense coupling between Veraine and the Malia Shah that turns out to be a dream. There is a brothel scene, and a prison/bondage scene, and a wonderfully kinky and repulsive scene in which the high priest grovels at the goddess’ feet. If you are looking for sex, this book offers quite a bit, but in some cases it is not well integrated with the plot.

Finally, I am left with confused impressions: searing passion and mundane lust, unearthly wisdom and ordinary confusion, divine fate and mortal blindness. I think I must recommend that readers form their own opinions.

I am basically a kind person. I believe in the Golden Rule, or put another way, in karma. What goes around comes around. I’m convinced that simple courtesy could solve quite a few of the world’s problems. So, I hate to write a profoundly negative review. An author myself, I can vividly imagine how I’d feel if the tables were turned.

Unfortunately, having committed to reviewing Dragon Candy by Talia Skye, I have little choice.

To put it simply, Dragon Candy is the most poorly written book that I have read in at least five years. Ms. Skye’s frequent errors in sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary make me wonder whatever inspired her to turn her hand to writing. Her prose suffers from overuse of the passive voice, run-on sentences, participles without a subject, overblown description and incorrect word choices. Allow me to provide some examples.

“The two individuals became extremely agitated and the angry tones in their voices gave sudden cause for concern. Addressing them in the fragmented Japanese she had been encouraged to learn for business dealings, the conversation suddenly ended and the transmission was cut off at the source.” (page 10)

“The blank gaze of the beast was almost lost beneath a knotted frown and it snarled as she pawed vainly at the strangling grip. One hand let go and returned as a balled fist that sent knuckles dancing across her temple. The impact jerked her head aside and dazed her so severely that she could offer no resistance to its next vindictive action. With a whirling turn, the monster threw her against into the wall. A brittle crunch sounded and it was followed by a soft crumpling thump as Candice folded into a slack heap, her consciousness expelled by the collision.” (page 15)

“Candice bit her lip and held back a wanton cry. The feeling of him charging into her bound and owned body was surprisingly intense. When he nudged to her deepest recesses she broke into a quivering fit and gasped for breath. Her legs curled up and locked around him. Her thighs tightened in fits as he began to shift his hindquarters and thus commence a dilatory ravishment.” (page 42)

I wish I could say that these are extreme examples, but they represent only a few of the painfully contorted and obscure passages that I marked while reading.

Dragon Candy is billed as a BDSM novel, so I was hoping that the novel’s content would distract me from the terrible writing style. Alas, the book offers a not-very-original rehash of John Norman’s Gorean themes, mostly without the philosophy. Candice, a powerful and successful businesswoman, is swept by a mysterious vortex into a savage parallel world where she has value only as a slave and rather suddenly discovers that she is a submissive and masochist.

Ms. Skye spends considerable attention describing the restraints and bondage devices inflicted on her heroine. Unfortunately, her descriptions are so confusing and difficult to follow that in most cases I could not visualize the physical situations at all. My personal taste in BDSM runs more toward the psychological than the physical, but I realize that some people become highly aroused by descriptions of extreme physical abuse. Perhaps those readers would enjoy Dragon Candy – if they can follow what is going on.

There is one scene in this novel that, despite all odds, I found intriguing, even arousing. Candice (now known as Candy) has become a favored slave of the Kami, a society of sadistic half-gods. In an intense session with the Lady Uzume and her henchman, Candy finds herself so overwhelmed by masochistic desire that she begs her tormenters for more punishment. She experiences the ultimate satisfaction in pleasing her masters, by enduring ever more intense pain. The dynamic was sufficiently genuine to pull me into the scene, despite the writing.

Alas, this was an isolated experience. For the most part, I struggled to get through Dragon Candy. More than once I was tempted to simply toss the book in my wastebasket. However, I have decided to keep it, in order to remind me how much grammar and vocabulary and editing matter.

I think that Ms. Skye may have some original ideas and I suspect that she personally finds BDSM arousing, which is critical to getting readers aroused. As the book neared its conclusion, and I learned more about the Kami and their politics, I began to find the story more interesting. However, if Ms. Skye wants to write additional novels, I strongly suggest that she find a writing class, a critique group, a competent editor, or all three. Writing is a craft that can be learned. In acquiring this craft, Ms. Skye has a long way to travel, but if moved by passion, perhaps she should attempt this journey.

Short stories can be frustrating. Just when you're getting interested in the characters, really eager to discover what happens next, the story ends. Sometimes, too, a short tale can produce sexual frustration; there's rarely enough space for more than one steamy scene, and who can really be satisfied with just one?

Fantasies I, an eBook published by Phaze, offers a solution. This volume is comprised of four multi-chapter erotic novellas, each about sixty pages long, by four woman authors. Each can be read in a single sitting; each offers a generous helping of sexual shenanigans along with more plot and character development than could be crammed into the word limits of a typical short story.

Alessia Brio leads off with "¡Pura Vida!", a sizzling exploration of polyamorous, pansexual relationships. Charlie hasn't seen Stormy in a while, but has white-hot memories of their previous encounters. When his travel business brings him to Costa Rica to consult with Stormy about an advertising campaign, she meets Charlie at the airport with her handsome Latin assistant Pietro in tow. She makes it clear that Pietro is her lover as well as her business associate, but that doesn't bother Charlie - if anything, he finds it exciting. He's used to sexual groupings that are flexible with regard to both gender and partners, since his company back in the States is made up of individuals who tend to mix business with pleasure. In the course of this story, we don't meet Jess or Sam, while Mia and Richard are just voices on the phone, but we're told that:

"If intimacy was the sun, they orbited it like planets – each independent, but influenced by the pull of the others...While their interactions might seem seedy and tabloid-worthy to the unfamiliar, within their ranks they functioned much like a Heinlein family."

The reference here, of course, is to Heinlein's classic exposition of free love, Stranger in a Strange Land.

Stormy, Charlie and Pietro embark on a quest that takes them through the exotic landscapes of Costa Rica, trying to capture the essence of what makes the country so special as a travel destination. At the same time, they explore the sexual territory of their mutual interactions. Ms Brio treats the reader to a variety of couplings and menagés, including an intelligent, realistic and arousing scene in which Charlie and Pietro help Stormy to truly release control and simply allow her body to react. The tale climaxes with an incandescent male-male scene that is no less intense for its inevitability.

I grew up with Heinlein. I find nothing sexier than mixed gender, multi-person menagés, where inhibitions and prejudices drop away and nobody is jealous because everyone is sexually and emotionally satisfied. Hence, Ms Brio’s story strongly appealed to me. However, I felt that it suffered from excessive description and too much backstory.

Costa Rica provides an appropriately exotic backdrop for this amorous tale. Sometimes though, the author seems to forget that this is just the setting. I think she's personally in love with the place, and it shows. However, I occasionally found myself getting annoyed at all the cultural details. I wanted to focus on the action.

This story is clearly part of a series involving the same characters. There are too many references to these past adventures, including allusions to events that seem irrelevant to the current tale. It may be that Ms Brio is trying to influence her readers to go back and read the other installments. Personally, though, I think this made the current story less coherent and compelling.

The second tale in Fantasies I is Leigh Ellwood's "Midnight Passions". Colleen is a divorced single mother who's trying to balance her own sexual needs with the desire to be a responsible parent to her pre-teen daughter. Her self-centered boyfriend Daryl doesn't make life any easier, but he turns Colleen on so much that she doesn't dare to complain. She endures his crassness and sexual selfishness, until the night she discovers that he's also seeing other women. As she tries to throw him out, her rented duplex begins to rattle and shake and the air is filled with a menacing voice, ordering Daryl to leave. He scuttles away, terrified, clutching his jeans in front of his genitals.

Naked and dazed, Colleen steps out onto her front porch to survey the damage from what she supposes is an earthquake. But all is quiet. Just as she realizes that anyone in the neighborhood can see her nude body, her neighbor and landlord, Professor Spence, steps up and offers her a luxurious satin robe to cover herself. Thus begins a series of erotic surprises that ultimately bring Colleen more love and fulfillment than she had ever dreamed of.

The delightful and unexpected twists in this story are one of its best points, so I won't spoil the experience by revealing any more of the plot. All I'll say is that it involves literature, magic, and lots of sex. "Midnight Passions" turns out to be a genuinely fantastical story. The outrageous events later in the story, and its sexy fairy tale resolution, contrast sharply with the painfully mundane but realistic description of Colleen's relationship with Daryl. In fact, if I hadn't been working on a review, I might have given up the story in the face of Daryl's churlishness and Colleen's insecurity. They were just too real to be enjoyable. I'm glad that I kept reading.

"Service Recall" by Bridget Midway is the third story in this collection. This is more of a conventional romance; an impoverished, discouraged and sex starved divorceé meets the man of her dreams when she calls for a plumber to unplug her sink. Although this is familiar territory, the story is engaging and well written. Unfashionably voluptuous Carla is convincingly needy but has a bit of sass. Duke is competent, solid and warm, middle-aged attractive and believably unsure of himself. Their torrid couplings will raise your temperature, and you're guaranteed to despise cruel and sarcastic Roy (Carla's ex) and the cold, upwardly mobile Allyson (Duke's previous girlfriend).

The final tale in this volume is Ann Regentin's "Midnight Conversations". Although it includes romantic elements, this story is also a beautifully crafted exploration of individual and societal attitudes toward sex, as well as a sensitive portrayal of the effects of emotional abuse.

The story begins in the middle of a conversation between two unidentified voices:

"'He was amazing in bed. That's why I married him.'"

"'Tell me,' I said. I needed to hear as much as she needed an audience."

The story of seduction continues, the speaker and the listener both find release, and we still do not know the participants in this conversation.

Gradually Ms Regentin reveals the truth about the voices, ghosts in a house left vacant for thirty years because of its haunting. Little by little we get to know the narrator Cass, a frightened and angry woman pursued by her own ghosts. As Cass works on the old house, strips the wallpaper away and rips up linoleum to expose hardwood floors, we slowly learn more about Cass and her past and why it is so difficult for her to trust anyone. Meanwhile, the ghosts converse with her in the night, sharing their experiences of sexual highs and lows: audacious seductions, impossible attractions, extramarital affairs and forbidden loves.

Gradually, too, Tristan Millman, the former owner of the house who originally refused to sell it to her, woos Cass, tries to show her how the future could be different from the past. She resists him every step of the way, despite being drawn to his generosity, calmness and self-confidence. The story is over before the two of them actually climb into bed together. Still the growth of their mutual attraction mirrors the intensity of Cass' midnight conversations, and the result is a story at least as arousing as the three more explicit tales that precede it.

Together, the four tales in Fantasies I offer a welcome relief from short story frustration. I look forward to reading other offerings from Phaze.

When I was in high school, “fast girl” was a barely polite term for a slut—a girl who'd do anything with anyone, at any time. Unlike “slut,” however, the term carried a hint of admiration. Fast girls didn't worry about their reputations, at least not when that conflicted with their pleasure. Fast girls were brave and bold. They went places and did things that the more timid, good girls, might only dream about.

Rachel Kramer Bussel's collection Fast Girls pays tribute to this image of the girl (or woman) who is not afraid to defy convention in the quest for her own satisfaction. The theme is evocative without being too constraining. The stories that Ms. Bussel has assembled take a variety of perspectives on the concept of  “fast.” Some authors, like Jennifer Peters in “Confessions of a Kinky Shopaholic” or Kayla Perrin in “Temptation,” give us women who are willing to act on attraction to a stranger.  Others—Jacqueline Applebee in “Five-Minute Porn Star,” Tenille Brown in “Speed Bumps,” Charlotte Stein in “Married Life”—show that it's possible to be “fast” in the context of a committed relationship or even a marriage.  Angela Caperton's “Playing the Market” and Rachel Kramer Bussel's “Whore Complex” explore the forbidden allure of playing the prostitute. Kristina Wright, on the other hand, creates a heroine who gets her kicks playing on the right side of the law in “Chasing Danger.”

The Table of Contents includes many familiar names, and practically every story is worth reading. I thought I'd mention my personal favorites.

Tristan Taormino's “Winter, Summer,” the only lesbian tale in the anthology, is an exquisite tale of a bar pick-up that turns out to be much more. The unnamed femme narrator tells us at the start that her motto is Get close enough to get off. No closer. Yet the dominant butch who claims her manages to break through her frosty shell.

It was as if she had diligently studied my body and knew all its curves and tender spots by heart, like she knew the pool table: hands gliding, stroking, pressing until my soft flesh relaxed into warmth and wetness underneath her, ready to go into whatever deep pocket she was pushing me. She pulled back from me and stood studying my body with her acute, extreme eyes. Her concentration and the quietness that surrounded us were terrifying. Electric.

Stunningly beautiful and lewdly intense, this is the story that will stay with me the longest.

Another exceptional contribution is D.L. King's femdom fantasy “Let's Dance.” I have to admit that one reason I loved this tale was the fact that I know D.L. King personally—and this is a very personal story.  The narrator, an author of erotica, notices a cute guy dancing, discovers (through some first-hand exploration) that the boy's genitalia are shaved, and decides (with his enthusiastic agreement) to take him home, tie him up and flog him. The scene in Eve's loft is explicit and arousing, but what sets this story apart is the humorous, natural dialogue and the way it shows off Eve's fast girl attitude.

Once in the cab, I said, “Hey, Cute Boy, who shaved your boy parts?”

A blush began at the top of his ears and traveled to his cheeks. “Uh, I did,” he said.

“What made you decide to do something like that?” The blush spread to his forehead and neck simultaneously, and he looked at the floor of the cab. “Aw, c'mon, you can tell me.” I rested my hand on the inside of his thigh and gave him a good-natured squeeze. […]

“Well, see, I was reading this book...and the guy in it—I guess it was a dirty book...” He looked out the window at the Manhattan Bridge.  “Where do you live?”

“Brooklyn. Go on.” […]

“Brooklyn?”

“Don't worry about it. It's not a foreign country,” I said.

A third tale that touched me is the breathtaking D/s saga “Lessons, Slow and Painful” by Tess Danesi. The terrifying sincerity of the heroine's submissiveness struck a deep chord.   Ms. Danesi takes the “fast” in the anthology title literally. Her master punishes her for taking shortcuts, doing things too quickly.

“Beg me to cut you, Tess,” he whispers darkly. “Beg me, bitch.”

I don't hesitate. I can't pretend I don't want this. “Do it, Dar. Do it. Go on and just do it,” I reply.

“And you expect me to do it hurriedly, Tess? I don't think so,” he says, accompanied by a cruel little laugh that chills me.

And lest visitors to Erotica Revealed wonder why all my favorite stories appear to involve BDSM, let me also mention Donna George Storey's lively and intelligent “Waxing Eloquent.” The narrator, house sitting at her brother's Manhattan Beach condo and trying to break up for good with her married professor lover, ends up falling into bed with the television actor who lives next door.  She decides to get her pussy waxed in order to have the full L.A. experience (“I guess in L.A. a woman is supposed to look like Barbie with her clothes off, too.”) and discovers that the reported heightened sensitivity of a bare pubis is only the beginning.

As I ride him, slowly, then faster, I realize I am much more sensitive down there. It’s as if my time on the salon table was a kind of rough foreplay, priming me for his cock. Cody’s wiry curls chafe my tender lips, and I feel as if I’m straddling not just him, but a knife’s edge—one side is pleasure, the other sweet pain.

Okay, there's that familiar pleasure/pain dichotomy, but I swear, this story does not involve any bondage or discipline!

Cherry Bomb's brief but eloquent contribution “That Girl” seems to sum up the entire collection.

I’m a promiscuous girl…only not the way you think. Oh, I know what they say about me. I hear them back home, clamoring in judgment, their whispers. They don’t even wait until my back is turned anymore. I know what they think of me, which is why the second that you show any interest in me, any desire to get to know me, they will come to you with the same words on their lips:

“Watch out for her. She’s dangerous.”

And I guess I am. What else would you call someone like me? Someone so emotionally reckless, a dangerous fuck. I am the girl that wants everyone and everything, the girl with the uncontrollable lust and insatiable hunger.

--This is what it means, to be a fast girl. But it's not as simple as it sounds, as the authors in this collection demonstrate.

Rachel Kramer Bussel has what is likely to be another success on her hands with Fast Girls. For its variety, intensity and quality of writing, I have to give the collection two thumbs up.

I worry about superlatives. The cover of Kevin Killian's short story collection Impossible Princess claims that the author is “the greatest unsung genius in contemporary American literature”. Susie Bright calls the book “impossibly captivating” and “an endless inspiration”. Another blurb gushes that each story is “a little outburst of brilliance”. 

I worry that there must be something wrong with me when I don't agree with the general consensus. Impossible Princess is definitely not ordinary. It's bizarre, obscene, violent, and, I suppose, original. However, with the exception of one gem of a story, I would not call it erotic, although it oozes sex (and I believe that ooze is the appropriate term, evoking as it does the primordial depths where primitive, sightless creatures squirm and wallow). Yes, this book is soaked with semen, sweat, piss and blood, but most of the time I found the sex empty, mere physical contortions unleavened by the emotional experience of lust, which I consider to be the sine qua non of erotica.

I am not even sure that some of the pieces in this volume deserve the title of short story—memoir might be more appropriate. Mr. Killian is the central character in many of his tales, which reminisce about his past antics and excesses. In some stories, this works. “Hot Lights” vividly recounts the author's experience acting in low budget gay porn during his wild late teens. Other tales, such as “Dietmar Lutz Mon Amour”, struck me as self-indulgent rambles without any point.

Then I begin to feel embarrassed. Maybe the point is there, but I just don't get it. I am after all a white, well-educated product of the middle class with little experience on the edge Mr. Killian walks: drugs, drunkenness, vagrancy, rough and anonymous sex with guys who are disgusting but still turn you on. I've never liked stories that deliberately go out of their way to shock. Perhaps I am the problem, not the book.

I can appreciate the fact that Killian's writing sparks with flashes of genius, interspersed with malapropisms, lazy fragments and run-on sentences. Consider the following passage from “Spurt” (one of my least favorite stories in the book):

Something magical about really flogging your car, and the clear stretch of highway ahead; and feeling the motor and its complex accoutrements shudder under your heavy foot. And dipping an elbow out into the hot summer night and watching towns go by like reflections in shop windows—whole towns and neighborhoods, gone, gone, gone. You lose touch with the world—a car is an island all its own, another world from which, perhaps, you might never return. The radio, staticky and shrill, burst out with bass-heavy Motown, then the abrupt, insinuating guitars of the Eagles. A low-slung, dark car passed me on the right, gleaming like a streak of phosphorescence under a Jamaican sea. Sucker must be doing a hundred easy. Lotus. Then the driver seemed to slack in speed and I was passing him. I saw his face—couldn’t help it, he was staring right at me.
...
One hand rested on top of the wheel, lazily, as though he could drive without looking ahead. I sped up, and he sped up too. Cruise control. I caught him looking at me, again and again, and he flicked on the driver's seat light, a plastic dome that filled his car—for a brief moment—with a thin plastic light, like cheap statuary of the Church. I guess he knew how hot he was. His lips parted. I could see him starting to speak, or signal. Eighty miles an hour and his mouth was saying, “Wanna fuck?”  I nodded, he nodded, I got hard, I shifted the bottle, the Eagles wailed, over and over, about how dangerous life was in California.

This passage will give you a feeling for Killian's style, which doesn't vary much from story to story. Sometimes he erupts with incredible images that make you catch your breath. Sometimes he meanders along, the same sort of breathless stringing together of words that might or might not make sense, the same kind of blissful disregard for grammar and punctuation.

Okay, I'm being tight-assed here. I'm a writer myself—I know that once you've mastered the rules, you can break them. Killian doesn't care about rules and I suppose that's not really a problem. Neither did James Joyce. The problem is, perhaps, my expectations.

Despite my reservations, Impossible Princess is worth reading for the one tale that I did find erotic, despite its darkness.  “Zoo Story” is a brief, first person account from a man with a cat fetish. What makes it unusual in this collection is the fact that Killian places the reader convincingly in the head of the narrator. He makes the insanity believable and even beautiful despite its brutality.

Next time you see kittens batting a catnip toy around, think of me on the cold concrete floor of the cage, pushed around, my neck snapping, their paws wet and warm on my chest, my legs, their claws retreating and contracting as they contrived to spread my thighs open to their hot rotten breaths.

I want to mention one other story: “Rochester,” a collaboration with a younger author named Tony Leuzzi.  Tony narrates, explaining how he met veteran gay author Kevin Killian in a dirty chat room and decided to make a pilgrimage to Rochester, New York, where the aging writer lives in degradation, exiled from the glittering metropoli (New York City, San Francisco) of his wild youth.  In the back room of Killian's filthy house, Tony discovers a human-sized chimp who spends the day typing, generating the raw material for Killian's stories and predicting the future. 

I liked this story for its wry humor and self-deprecating honesty. I'm just an ape, the author seems to be saying, churning out nonsense that includes occasional insights and flashes of brilliance. 

Is Impossible Princess really a consummate work of art? Am I simply too conventional to see the truth that's obvious to erotica luminaries like Susie Bright? Every reviewer brings his or her prejudices and preferences to the task, and I'm no exception.

You'll have to read the book and judge for yourself.

[Editor's note: Impossible Princess is the winner of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Erotica.]

Walter Mosley is well known as a writer of crime and mystery novels. Needless to say, his first foray into the genre of sex writing has occasioned a flurry of skeptical and childishly embarrassed media commentary. I first became aware of Killing Johnny Fry when someone on the Erotica Readers and Writers Association Writers Forum (www.erotica-writers.com) posted the URL of Jennifer Reese's scathing review from Entertainment Weekly.

Ms Reese has given Killing Johnny Fry a place on her list of worst books of the year. According to her, the plot of this "pornographic novel" is "but a flimsy excuse for the raw sex scenes"' the writing is rife with hyperbole and cliche; the entire book ranges from ridiculous to depressing. According to her, Killing Johnny Fry is not even "good porn", although she then admits that she's never really considered just what might deserve that label.

Rather than dissuading me reading Killing Johnny Fry, this sex-averse tirade made me intensely curious. Could a book by the popular and acclaimed author of the noir classic Devil in a Blue Dress and the eerily spirtual science fiction novel Blue Light really be so awful?

My conclusion after reading Killing Johnny Fry is that Ms Reese's review says much more about her own lack of comfort with sex and lack of understanding of erotica/pornography than it does about Mr. Mosley's talent.

Killing Johnny Fry is indeed full of raw, extreme and even violent sex. However, the sex is in no sense gratuitous. Although the story is narrated in plain, matter-of-fact language (despite Ms Reese's complaints), it has a mythic quality. This is a story of passions and revelations, a pain-filled odyssey of personal discovery.

Cordell Carmel, the protgagonist, unexpectedly drops by the apartment of Joelle, his lover of more than nine years, to find her being sodomized by Johnny Fry, a mutual acquaintance. Cordell slips away unseen, but the experience shatters his world and his sense of identity. Previously he was a mild-mannered, middle-aged schmoe, hardworking, abstemious and responsible, a considerate but unimaginative lover. After viewing the graphic evidence of Joelle's betrayal, he undergoes a transformation. He finds himself constantly aroused, especially by the ambiguous dynamics of D/s situations. He is newly, inexplicably potent. Women are drawn to him, and he takes them when they offer themselves, bringing them to painful ecstasy even as his own orgasms reach apocalypic proportions.

Meanwhile, emotionally, he is confused and lost. He understands the emptiness of his previus life, but cannot comprehend the changes that seem to be tearing him apart. Tortured by headaches and nightmares, he turns to the mysterious Cynthia, a desembodied voice on a phone help line, for comfort. Meanwhile his world becomes more and more bizarre as he oscillates between raging lust and pitiful self-doubt, incandescent anger and paralyzing fear. In a twist that stretches credibility but works in the context of the story, he meets Sisypha, the star of a pornographic video with which he has become obsessed. She becomes his guide to a sexual underworld, his White Rabbit in a terrible and thrilling Wonderland.

Killing Johnny Fry explores the relationships between sex and anger, and between freedom and desire. This is far from a trivial fuckfest. Cordell is a sexual Dr. Jekyll; seeing Joelle's secret self, the lust-crazed, abuse-loving creature that she becomes when she is with Johny Fry, releases his Mr. Hyde. He experiences many climaxes, but little satisfaction, as he tries to understand his motives and to reconstruct his life and self-image.

In Killing Johnny Fry, Mosley also concerns himself with the complex interactions between race and sexual identity. Like most of Mosley's main characters, Cordell is black. So is Joelle. Johnny Fry is white. Mosley makes it clear that Cordell's previous well-ordered, compliant life is an attempt to make it as a black man in a white world, to be accepted and financially successful and to prove to his abusive father that he is worthwhile. Johnny Fry steals not only Cordell's lover but also his manhood, his pride as a black man. The historical echoes of slavery are there; Mosley doesn't have to harp on them.

Is Killing Johnny Fry erotic? My initial reaction would be negative; most of the sex scenes did not particularly arouse me while I was reading them. Yet after finishing the book, I found myself in the grip of intensely erotic dreams, so the work must have touched something in my unconscious.

Certainly, Killing Johnny Fry is a serious book about sex and identity -- or at least it pretends to be reading some of Mosley's coments about his own work, I began to wonder if in fact it's all a sham, a publicity stunt. Perhaps the book was intended to be exploitative, banking on its controversial subject matter to attract media attention and stir up sales.

Even if this is true, the book stands on its own merits. I found it intense, though occasionally uncomfortable. The sex is messy and dark but somehow fascinating. You can't look away. The cleverness of the final plot twist left me with a smile, and relieved some of the tension that knotted my stomach so badly that I couldn't read more than a few chapters at a time.

Could Mosley have written a serious novel, despite himself? You, the readers, need to decide. Don't pick up this book if you're squeamish about rough sex. If you're curious, though, about just how hardcore a mainstream-published novel can be, I recommend it.

Divorced, practical, thirty-something Sandy Jackson runs a café in the suburban British town of Kissley. When she's not waiting on customers or worrying about her finances, she dreams of the young man who rescued her from a mugging fifteen years before.  Jay Bentley can't forget his sweet princess, the girl whose lips he tasted briefly after driving away her attackers but never saw again. Years of debauchery and an auto accident that left him scarred, impotent and in pain haven't been enough to erase that precious memory. When he visits Kissley to inspect the property his wealthy father is about to buy, he recognizes Sandy as his long-lost princess and realizes that his father's plans are likely to drive her out of business.

 Pretending to be a stranger, he has little difficulty in seducing Sandy, who reacts with uncharacteristic ardor to Jay's advances. Within fifteen minutes of their meeting, he is licking her pussy in the garden of the notorious Waverley Grange Hotel (which has featured in several other novels by Ms da Costa). Their incredibly intense sexual connection soon has them engaging in various carnal activities in a wide range of circumstances: in the washroom of Sandy's cafe, under the table in a classy restaurant, parked in a country lane, on the food preparation counter in her café kitchen, and of course in Jay's room at the naughty inn. Jay both teases and instructs Sandy, introducing her to a variety of minor kinks and making her marvel at her own constant horniness (as well as his).  As they spend more time together, though, it becomes increasingly difficult for Jay to hide his identity--or to imagine living without her.

Will Jay's secret destroy their incendiary passion and their growing intimacy?

Of course not. Jay and Sandy are destined for each other.  Each has haunted the other's fantasies for more than a decade. Their sexual affinity might seem like casual randiness (as Sandy tells herself, to blunt the impact of Jay's inevitable disappearance), but in truth it stems from their unacknowledged mutual love.

 The simple plot of this novel screams "romance," however, Kiss It Better can also be viewed as  erotica, pursuing as it does the classic theme of sexual awakening. Jay serves as Sandy's sexual mentor, encouraging her to act out her fantasies and revealing to her the depths of her own lasciviousness.   Like the accomplished dom that he is, he pushes her limits, daring her to explore new extremes of sexual abandon.

 There is a lot of sex in Kiss It Better, arousing and satisfying sex that involves the characters' whole selves, not just their bodies. Ms da Costa excels in turning up the heat by giving the reader a window into the lovers' sensations and emotions. Most of the novel is presented from Sandy's perspective, but we get occasional glimpses of Jay's bitterness, confusion and frustration. His private cynicism and insecurity contrast with the image of the wealthy, self-confident rake he presents to Sandy.

Sandy is a vivid, appealing character with a distinctive voice and a streak of stubbornness. From the first moment I met her, inwardly cursing the high heels she'd borrowed in order to look elegant, I loved her.  She's irresistibly attracted to Jay and perpetually astonished by her own reactions, not to mention her daring. Practical, responsible, a bit conventional, she manages to shock herself again and again as Jay leads her into ever more outrageous sexual situations.

Jay feels less well-rounded and realistic, possibly because the author identified more strongly with her heroine. He's the Flawed Hero, in capital letters; his sins are visible in his scarred visage. His fixation with the princess from his past seems less plausible than Sandy's fantasies of her prince. Still, he fulfills the role of master and mentor with sufficient conviction that Sandy succumbs, and the reader likewise.

I should warn the audience of Erotica Revealed that despite my using the terminology of dominance and submission to describe Jay and Sandy's relationship, the actual power games they play are far milder than what you will find in many of the books we review.  A bit of spanking, a little bondage, a butt plug or two--the kink here is recreational rather than fundamental. Nevertheless, Ms da Costa manages to communicate the thrill of Sandy's surrender, which I believe is the essential aspect of a D/s interaction. 

I've come to the conclusion, after considerable deliberation, that Lofting is intended as an elaborate joke. The fictitious Alma Marceau (Lofting was actually written by a man), widely traveled in "the Paleo- and Neotropics", author of a PhD dissertation entitled "On the Genealogy of Morels", has penned a self-consciously literate, extravagantly smutty novel that pretends to be serious erotica. In reality, the author winks at the reader on nearly every page. How many more mindless sex acts, how many more pints of semen spattered across our heroine's anatomy, how many more obscure nouns and overblown metaphors will it take, dear reader, before you realize that I'm poking fun at the whole concept of literary erotica (and possibly, at you, esteemed reader, as well)?

Lofting begins well. Claire, a brilliant, articulate New York psychotherapist, engages in witty and erudite cyberchat with the equally glib and mentally adroit Andres (a married man who lives in Denver). Gradually their double-entendres metamorphose into cybersex and then phone sex. Claire discovers an unsuspected submissiveness lurking in her psyche. She also begins to fall in love with Andres, who predicts that she will soon encounter a real world lover who will more completely satisfy her needs.

The early chapters of Lofting are probably as overwritten as the later ones, but I didn't notice. The intellectual, sexual and emotional connections between Claire and Andres were sufficiently genuine to invite my identification. When Claire meets Nick, however, the man who will become her new master and mentor (and who, tellingly, originally enters her life as a prospective patient), I abruptly lost interest. Nick is virile and handsome, but he is also dishonest, manipulative and shallow. He lacks both the sympathy and the cleverness I found in Andres.

Nick engages Claire in a variety of extreme and occasionally repulsive sexual scenarios: masturbating her to orgasm in the reptile house of the Staten Island Zoo while she watches a python consuming a dead rabbit; taking her from behind in a deserted corner of Macy's house wares department; handing her over to be used and abused by friends and associates, male and female. These scenes are not even slightly arousing (in my opinion), mostly because, despite Ms. Marceau's purple depictions of Claire's eventual orgasms, Claire really doesn't seem to be enjoying herself. Nick and his cohorts are genuinely cruel and depressingly selfish in their assaults on Claire's body. Their primary concern seems to be self-gratification, even though Nick claims to be orchestrating these activities for Claire's benefit.

Lofting perverts the D/s dynamic. There's hardly any real communication between Nick and Claire, and little if any trust. At times, Claire fears that Nick really has lost touch with her completely, and this fear seems justified. Nick (and Ms. Marceau) clearly have not studied SM 101. Some of the bondage scenes struck me as distinctly unsafe. Meanwhile, the book focuses on the physical activities and accoutrements of BDSM, completely ignoring the psychological and emotional interactions that are the essence of power exchange.

I should mention that although the sex in this novel is frequent, graphic, and attempts to present itself as incredibly perverse and decadent, it has little claim to originality. With the exception of the snake interlude (which in retrospect I believe was intended as an overly-clever Freudian allusion), there is nothing in Lofting that I haven't encountered in a dozen other dirty books. The final chapters unfold at the stereotypic remote mansion where the entire cast of characters (including, implausibly, Andres) converge to perpetrate one indecency after another on our poor heroine. (Yawn.)

I also felt that despite being recounted by Claire in the first person, Lofting's sexual descriptions have a distinctly male focus. There is, for instance, a preoccupation with the color, copiousness and consistency of semen that seems incongruous in a female narrator.

M.J. Rose, in her 2002 review of Lofting, claims that the book is "written in polished, evocative prose" and praises its "legitimate literary qualities." I have enormous respect for Ms. Rose's own subtle and sensual writing; thus I was a bit surprised by this evaluation. It's true that Ms. Marceau's vocabulary is astonishing, and that she peppers her dialogue with literary references and sly puns. However, the pages of Lofting are rife with bizarre metaphors and gratuitous polysyllabisms that are sometimes painful to read.

It's a bad sign in a dirty book when you notice the figures of speech.

Consider the following passage:

"I was close to coming, my speech halting and clipped. At the penultimate moment, Nick's hands found my nipples and twisted them savagely - exquisitely apposite torture that served only to precipitate the crisis. But fearing the cruel mercy of a silent, glassy descent, I begged Nick to fuck me full force. He answered my call with an allegro of half-thrusts: like a pestle striking a mortar, his cock pounded my vagina with short, percussive blows until, tumbled across the collapsing face of the swell, I lost muscular control, fell twisting and writhing onto my belly, and finally came to rest, splayed out like storm-cast wrack on the draggled beach of the bed sheets."

Or, another sample:

"Nick was splendid at the end, his face frozen in rapture, his muscles rigid, his cock hard and red as an ingot spewed hot from the blast furnace. His penis recoiled violently as he climaxed three long strokes, casting turbid aspersions of semen in broad, flossy arcs upon my belly, breasts and throat. Drenched in his warm emission and my own copious juices, I lay back in bed and stretched my sore limbs before curling with satisfaction into a fetal crescent."

"Turbid aspersions of semen?" I just cannot believe that prose this purple could be accidental. I continue to suspect that Lofting was deliberately constructed to parody literary erotica by combining near-ridiculous hyper-intellectualism with crude carnality. The result is a strange hybrid that in my opinion offers little literary merit (except as a clever parody) and less eroticism. As she continues her researches into "fungal systematics", Ms. Marceau must smile to herself when she reads the puzzled but effusive reviews she has received from readers who have taken Lofting seriously.

If I had noticed Love at First Sting on the shelf at a bookstore, I probably would not have picked it up. The main title is awkward and derivative, the subtitle makes the book sound like frothy porn, and the olive drab cover, featuring a blurry, corset-clad torso, is hardly compelling. If I hadn't been asked to review the book, I probably would not have read it. This would have been a shame, because this collection is one of the best erotic anthologies that I've encountered in a long time.

I read a lot of BDSM, partly from personal interest and partly because as a reviewer I've been pigeonholed (accurately, perhaps) into the "kinky" category. Alison Tyler's new volume is a refreshing contrast to some recent anthologies that focus on the more recreational aspects of spanking, bondage, and other perverse sports. The stories in this collection (with a few exceptions like Lisette Ashton's frisky "Bound to Kill" and "The '76 Revolution," a sweet tale by Nikki Maggennis) concern themselves with the darker side of dominance and submission. Temptation, obsession, guilt, fear, ecstasy and revelation - these stories crackle with serious emotion. These are not about "play parties".

In Teresa Lamai's breathless "Small Windows," a man and a woman are drawn together by mutual needs that neither can fully understand, or control.

"I have one cell phone just for his calls. When it vibrates, I drop everything. I feign sickness if I have to. I once left court and ran twenty blocks in the fog because there were no taxis. I thought my heart would burst.

Each time he opens the door the fugue starts again. I know once I see him I'll feel the shock in the solar plexus, the painful flash of heat behind my pubic bone that sears out all other questions, that cauterizes my mind until it's closed and quiet. With Josh I'm a starfish, spread flat and writhing gently, mindless and swollen and tingling."

James Walton Langolf's raw and lyrical "Abraham" begins:

"She is his Isaac laid out on the hood of his Ford - open, bared to his blade."

The tale continues, a fierce conflagration of a fuck between a man who's lonely and a woman who's desperate, but all the roughness ends in redemption - "the rain is washing her clean."

In the quieter darkness of Alison Tyler's "The Kiss," a master deliberately traps his sub in an impossible situation by forcing her to disobey him, and then makes her suffer the consequences.

Vida Bailey's "Torn" features a severe older woman and the disobedient young man whom she's tutoring. She tans his hide to improve his motivation, but the focus here is not on this classic situation, but on the dominant tutor's reactions and regrets:

"She watched his back; his long legs walking down the lane, away. His stride was more careful than the one he had come with. He was tender. Tears rose in her eyes. If she could she would keep him tied, to her bed, to her body, to move within the circle of his warmth and have him smile a smile that was for her only, secret, teasing and possessive."

Silence is Golden is perhaps the best story I've ever read by the prolific Rachel Kramer Bussel. When she is bound and gagged, a talkative woman learns to really pay attention:

"The silence rang in my ears as I came, the absence of sound coaxing me over the edge as saliva pooled in my mouth, my burning wrists took the imprints of the rope, and I reveled in his fast, hard, hammering thrusts. When we were done, there was no need to speak."

Two other tales that deserve special note are Sommer Marsden's "She Looked Good in Ribbons," and Brooke Stern's "The Art of the Suture." The former is a beautiful, intense account of two strangers meeting for the first time to fulfill their most cherished fantasies. The latter is a highly original pseudo-historical tale which may be the most perverse in the entire collection, even though it includes no graphic sex.

My favorite piece in this book is Donna George Storey's "Blinded." A woman and her lover stumble together into an escalating series of games involving a blindfold. Their physical communion masks the misunderstandings between them, which climax when he seems to be threatening to kill her. The story is an amazing roller coaster of emotions: lust, terror, uncertainty, silence, anger, love. I was shaking when I finished reading it.

Dominance and submission have been claimed by popular culture, and tamed into bedroom games played with fur-lined cuffs and whips made of feathers. Undiluted, in its original form, though, BDSM is strong stuff. A few stories in this collection were too rough, too cruel, for my personal tastes. Overall, though, Love at First Sting recaptures the thrill and the terror of genuine power exchange. Readers who have no experience with BDSM may find it confusing and disturbing, or possibly enlightening. Initiates are likely to recognize themselves in these stories.

True love is supposed to involve mutual understanding. Real lovers are on the same wavelength. They instinctively comprehend each other’s desires. They thrill to the notion that perhaps, as predestined soul mates, they can read each other’s minds. There might be some conflicts that arise from differences in experience or goals, but these are superficial, insignificant compared to the lovers’ communion when they are together.

It ain’t necessarily so.

In Love Runes , Jay Lygon gives us a relationship which, without a doubt, involves true love. The protagonists, Master Hector and his boy Sam, care deeply about one another. Each is miserable when separated, emotionally or physically, from the other. They also share mutually complementary sexual kinks. In the dungeon, Hector knows how to give Sam what he needs; Sam delights in suffering the way Hector wants. At a deeper level, though, the two are not in touch. Sam lies to his Master and hides behaviors that he knows Hector would criticize. Hector is jealous and moody. When he’s feeling hurt, he rejects and isolates Sam. Love Runes is the story (continued from Lygon’s first novel, Chaos Magic) of Hector’s and Sam’s quest for a relationship based in trust rather than suspicion and fear.

This might sound like a rather tedious soap opera, but in Lygon’s hands, the premise is emotionally involving and impressively believable. This is despite the fact that Hector and Sam live in a world of specialist deities who are intimately involved with the lives of ordinary mortals: Aggie, the God of Agriculture; Crash, the God of Computers; Deal, the Goddess of Negotiation; Angelena, the Goddess of Traffic. In fact, Hector and Sam discover at the end of Chaos Magic that they are themselves the God of Love and the God of Sex, respectively. Alas, supernatural power doesn’t guarantee emotional success. Hector and Sam have to work out their problems like any other pair of benighted humans.

As befits the God of Sex, Sam is irresistible. He’s the ultimate Boy Toy, with a pretty face, a gorgeous body, and a butt to die for. He believes that his boyish appearance is the primary reason for  Hector’s attraction and so he surreptitiously trades some of his power to the Goddess of Eternal Youth, in order to keep himself looking nineteen. Meanwhile, Hector is waiting for Sam to grow up, to release some of his childish insecurities and habits and become a man who can meet him halfway emotionally. Hector discovers Sam’s subterfuge, and the revelation comes close to severing their fragile connection. But of course, since this is a romance (albeit an unconventional one), the two men reconcile and move forward to greater trust, before it is too late.  
     
Jay Lygon writes deftly, with confidence and style. He is particularly skilled at evoking the physical and social environment of southern California, where Hector, Sam and their fellow Gods reside. At times, he skirts the edge of parody, but never tumbles over. Consider his brilliant picture of the predatory Goddess of Eternal Youth:

“Sammy!” The Goddess of Eternal Youth stood in front of one of the many bookcases lining the walls of the living room as if she were searching for something to read. Her perfume preceded her across the room. As she advanced on me, she held out both hands, grasped mine, and squeezed until her rings cut into my fingers. Even though it was the middle of the night, she wore a tailored suit, ecru blouse, and a strand of pearls like
drops of pale honey. I had no idea if she had a day job, but if she did, I bet she sold multi-million dollar mansions in parts of Los Angeles so exclusive that I’d never heard of them. ...

She started to sit in Hector’s big poppa chair, but I glared at her, so she perched on the arm of the couch and carefully avoided the old crocheted blanket draped across it as if it might infect her. She crossed one svelte leg over the other. The skirt of her suit clung above her knees with the kind of modesty only a very expensive suit could provide, showing just enough skin and shadow but not a hair’s-breadth more.

Equally sharp and amusing is the scene in which Deal, Goddess of Negotiation, accompanies Sam to a job interview in a hip LA restaurant.

Deal sniffed the air. “Do you smell that, Sam? Power. Raw money power. I love this place.”

Then there are the sex scenes, primarily BDSM, invariably intense – occasionally heavy enough to make me uncomfortable. (Even if I don’t have balls, I can imagine the pain of having them abused.) If the participants were strangers, one might really worry. However, it is clear from the very first that Hector and Sam are truly soul mates from a sexual perspective, at least. The goal (usually achieved) is mutual satisfaction, and the aftermath always involves some tenderness.

Hector plunged his tongue in my ass. To show him how much I loved being rimmed by a stiff tongue, I set my lips in a tight circle and slowly pushed them down over his cockhead. That got us both moaning. I was so damned hard. He loved to torture me with a long rimming session while I squirmed and begged to be fucked. I was trying to concentrate on his body, though, so no matter how much I wanted his cock inside me, I didn’t plead. Hector lapped at the outer ring of my hole. I swore I was going to shoot if he didn’t stop.

He sank his teeth into the cheek of my ass. The pressure of his bite intensified. Just when I thought he’d break my skin, he lapped my hole again, and then bit my other ass cheek. His hand gripped where I’d been bit.

It was too much. “Sir, please.”

He mercilessly tongue-fucked me for a while and then asked, “What, Boy?”

I could barely speak. “I’m going to come.”

Hector shoved me off him, pushed my face down into the tangled sheets, and smacked my ass until it burned. “You don’t tell me when you’re going to come. I tell you.”

“Yes, Sir.” My ass got smacked harder. “Yes, Sir! I’m sorry, Sir!”

If you enjoy this sort of rough action, you will find plenty of it in Love Runes.  Floggers and gags, clamps and torture racks, handcuffs and rope, leather and chains, this book is a cornucopia of kinky gay sex. (There’s no group sex, though; Hector and Sam are emphatically monogamous.) The gusto with which Sam and Hector engage each other in the bedroom (and the dungeon, and the car, and the street) pushes this novel over the line from romance (which it is, thematically) to erotica (which I believe is how the author would prefer to see it categorized.) The scenes are narrated from Sam’s point of view, but they’re arousing from the perspective of a bottom or a top.

I enjoyed Chaos Magic when I read it a few years ago, but I thought it had a few rough edges. Love Runes is smoother and more consistent. It is always a pleasure to watch an author developing a distinctive voice.

Sex – even juicy, well-written, moderately transgressive sex – is not enough. Not enough for me, in any case. Justine Elyot's On Demand, one of the last books to be published by the now disbanded Black Lace, returns to the roots of that imprint. It offers chapter after chapter of enthusiastic and explicit sexual high jinks: anonymous couplings in parking lots, workouts in the gym, dildoes and strap-ons, peep shows and corporal punishment, anal initiations and orgies. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of character development or plot to tie all these lovely sex scenes together.

I believe that On Demand is intended as a novel. By the traditional definition (and On Demand does not strike me as a literary experiment) this implies a core set of protagonists with possibly some supporting characters that move the action forward, and a plot arc with a problem or conflict that will be explored and resolved by the end of the book. Perhaps there will be a subplot involving the minor characters that illuminates or contrasts with the primary narrative exposition.

On Demand offers none of this, really. Instead, the book is a collection of sexual anecdotes linked only by their setting, an upscale British hotel and conference center. Characters appear without any justification and disappear (in some cases) completely after the services of their naughty bits are no longer required. There is in some sense a “main” character (the receptionist Sophie) and a primary problem (her lust for the stern hotel manager Chase and the fact that he persists in ignoring her charms), but Ms. Elyot abandons this narrative thread for chapters at a time while she describes the sexual adventures of other visitors to the hotel and even Sophie herself (who certainly is not sufficiently debilitated by her unrequited passion to mope, moan and stay celibate).

The mechanisms used to introduce these unrelated romps tend to the clumsy. Most often the experiences are recounted to Sophie by the characters involved (implausibly, without leaving out any salacious detail or losing the slightest bit of immediacy). In at least one case Ms. Elyot adopts an omniscient point of view, just for the duration of the chapter, in order to tell the reader about the characters' history as well as their current sins.

I cringed.

The book begins well. Sophie, a bored office drone with a lascivious imagination, misses her train and heads over to the fancy hotel across from the station for an espresso and a more pleasant wait. She falls into fantasy, stimulated by the cushy surroundings and the delicious sense of anonymity engendered by hotels. Ultimately she picks up a stranger and screws him in his car. I was licking my lips, eager for more. The author managed to pull me into Sophie's head. She also allowed Sophie to be just a bit horrified by her own daring.

Alas, that lovely spark of shame is soon lost. Before long Sophie is regularly visiting the hotel bar, picking up one or two guys, even men she finds unattractive, just because she can. I started to get bored. (I would assume that Sophie must have been also, since she didn't give all that many details.) Then the dishy hotel manager Chase offers Sophie the job of receptionist, presumably because he has noticed her seductive behavior and her pick-ups. Sophie is struck with a thunderbolt of lust and the reader thinks, “Ah! That's better. A conquest that means something!”

However, Sophie's pursuit of Chase is desultory in the extreme. Not only do other characters get their rocks off again and again without moving her any closer to her goal—it appears that FOUR YEARS pass, while Sophie consoles herself with the personal trainer, the lifeguard, and the endless supply of businessmen passing through.
?Then, all of a sudden, the book lurches in an entirely different direction as Ms. Elyot introduces a new character (on page 186 of a 240 page book) who is, it turns out, THE ONE-- the man who will not only fulfill Sophie's every fantasy but also give her the emotional connection she didn't even know she needed. Chase conveniently fades away without any explanation as to why he ignored his luscious receptionist for so long.

Other than the fact that Chase's evaporation strained my credulity, the last chapter or two were more complex and involving than most of the earlier chapters. Ms. Elyot clearly can write arousing sex and characters who are more than just cardboard. I only wish that she had done more of this in On Demand. The book feels like a short story or novella that was padded with truly meaningless sex in order to get it to novel length. If the author had eschewed most of the minor characters and focused only on Sophie, she would have written a far better book.

I'm American, but since I've been networking with fellow authors from "across the pond," I've picked up a bit of British slang. There's "bollocks," for instance, a far more elegant way to swear than our one-syllable American curse words.  I love to say that I'm "chuffed." It's the perfect word to describe that excited, proud, cocky state we writers enter when we learn about an acceptance or first see our work in print. The other day I told my husband, “Don't get your knickers in a twist”. Aside from the fact that he doesn't wear knickers, this phrase is a magnificently evocative description of annoyance and discomfort. And then there's the slang usage of the word "brilliant."

Everyday American English applies the term "brilliant" to works of surpassing artistic genius, like Mozart's "Requiem," or to the inspired leap of intellectual power that leads to great scientific discoveries, like the structure of DNA.  Brits, however, appear to use "brilliant" to describe aspects of contemporary culture that are clever, well-executed, and wildly entertaining.

 In the British sense, Once Bitten by Lisette Ashton is definitely brilliant.  Once Bitten is that exceedingly rare article, an original vampire story.  It is also sly, sexy and hilariously funny. 

Forget about gothic mansions, shadowy crypts or fog-hung alleys.  Ms. Ashton's heroine, a twenty-something slacker named Tessa Cameron, is made a vampire on the couch of her dingy rented flat, in the throes of a Sapphic encounter with her best friend Melinda. As far as Tessa can tell, the main features of being undead are heightened senses, an immortal body that can heal itself of any wound other than a stake through the heart, and an insatiable libido. Oh, and the fact that she can't see herself in mirrors, a detail that causes the somewhat vain Tessa a bit of consternation.

Tessa doesn't even drink blood. She drinks vodka, a clear holdover from her very recent days as a mortal.

We'd been drinking vodka. Mel had found the bottle in the kitchen cupboard of my third floor apartment. It was next to a mouldering loaf of bread and a rusting tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce.  The bottle wasn't anything special?one of those made-up Russian names (Glasnost, Prada, Kervorkian or something) that are meant to sound authentic and as though it had been shipped direct from behind the Iron Curtain. The main thing I remember is that it was cheap, the aftertaste wasn't too bad, and it mixed well with the dregs of the Dr. Pepper Mel had brought to our impromptu girls' night in.

Tessa's few qualms about making love to a woman vanish almost immediately under the influence of the vodka and Mel's seductive caresses. However, it turns out that Mel's motives are far from merely sexual. Tessa's century old pal has turned Tessa in order to bring her as an offering to the man she loves, a handsome, tortured and very kinky priest named Alan. By bringing him a vamp to exorcise, Mel hopes to win his affection. Alan, however, betrays Mel herself into the hands of the mysterious Legion of Vampire Hunters, a band of rogue monks dedicated to eradicating the undead--very slowly and painfully.

Tessa may not be the sharpest tool in the shed but she has many positive qualities. She is fiercely loyal and admirably stubborn. She is determined to rescue her friend from the clutches of the villainous League. In pursuing this goal she interacts with a variety of individuals, both vamp and human: her well-hung but boring ex-boyfriend Dean (who happens to be a cop), a gorgeous, titian-haired, blood-sucking lawyer (or is that redundant?) in a power suit named Christine; and the swarthy, hairy, charismatic vampire Dom, Carlos san Miguel.  A good deal of the book takes place in Carlos' luxurious home, sort of a cross between the Playboy Mansion and a house of horrors. With the enthusiastic assistance of his voluptuous blonde subs, the Ron Jeremy-esque Carlos subjects poor Tessa to delicious and painful sexual torments that would likely kill a mortal, in an attempt to make her submit. The indomitable Tessa takes it all in stride. Sternly, he demands again and again that Tessa beg for his horse-dimensioned organ.  Focused on her objective of freeing her friend and just plain annoyed by the greasy Dom's arrogance, Tessa manages to resist her very strong temptation to comply.

The tale climaxes (so to speak) in Priest Alan's church, where the hapless Mel is bound to the altar and ravaged by members of the Legion. In the course of the scene, a vampire is killed and Tessa is held responsible. In fact the entire novel is narrated within the frame of her trial for heresy, treason and murder. The logic and decorum of Ms. Ashton's vampire court is reminiscent of the Red Queen's.

I don't think I'm giving away too much by telling you that Once Bitten ends happily for all concerned (except the murdered villain, who definitely deserves his fate) and indeed, that true love conquers. The fun of this book is in the journey, though, not in the destination.  The frequent and inventive sex scenes (including an abundance of delicious lesbian interaction), the meticulous attention to details of costume and setting (the look-a-like trio of subs are particularly vivid) and the occasional off-hand social commentary make the book a delight to read. It's difficult to write humorous erotica without slipping over the line and becoming ridiculous, but Ms. Ashton succeeds wonderfully.  The sex scenes manage to be arousing even though they tend to be (as we Americans say) "over the top". This is partly due to the intimacy of Tessa's first person narrative (and the fact that she's an exceptionally horny young vampire).

No, I don't think it's an exaggeration to call Once Bitten brilliant. It might even be appropriate in the American sense. In a literary scene awash with vampires, Tessa stands apart. She might not make you swoon, but she'll definitely make you howl--with laughter and perhaps even with lust.

I've been looking forward to reading Open for Business for months, ever since the book arrived and took its place at the bottom of my stack of commitments. As I watched it move closer to the top of the pile, I admired its sassy cover - a conservatively dressed couple stretched out under a desk, obviously very busy. The book title is cleverly displayed in an uneven Courier font that looks just like the output of the old typewriter I used in college.

When I finally opened the book and read a few stories, however, I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed. The stories were sexy, fun, generally well-written, but they were so short! Each one was a hot little vignette, but there didn't seem to be anything other than sexual hanky panky to keep me interested. Characters were sketched lightly, with a very broad brush. Conflict was more or less non-existent.

Perhaps I'm too demanding, but even in a brief story, I want some meat, and I don't mean instances of the male organ. I’m looking for an original premise. I crave characters who are distinctive, with personal voices that make them seem real. I want some physical or emotional barrier that stands in the way of the consummation of their lust, or perhaps a plot twist that violates my expectations without being ridiculous.

Fortunately, as I read further, the stories began to come closer to meeting my admittedly severe specifications. "Headhunter," by C.B. Potts, was the first tale where I turned down a page, my method for reminding myself to mention a story in my reviews. A female exec from one investment firm takes a savvy lady from a competing company out for drinks. Of course they end up in bed, but on the way there's some wonderful repartee. These characters have substance, even though the story is short. And they are adversaries, at least at first, making the mutual seduction much more intriguing.

"You're making half as much money as you could be. We're familiar with Langston, and even with a generous year-end bonus, you're not going to earn fifty percent of what we're willing to pay you."

Cradling my glass between wide-splayed fingers, I said, "You're talking about half a million dollars."?
Meredith laughed. "Nice try. We're talking about three hundred thou--plus more chances for advancement than you'll ever get at Langston."

"Because I'm Chinese?" Sullyman's Pacific Rim division had been doing well lately. Very well.

"Because you're talented as hell. We watched the O'Hare purchase. It took balls to route that through Kenya. Not many traders would have sent that much money into Africa."

I smiled. "I have a soft spot for emerging market equity."

My next pick was Maxim Jakubowski's "In the Empire of Lust." There's no sex in this story, just the lustful imaginings of a manager with a corner office, about the various women who work for him. Well, actually, there is the narrator's lonely masturbation, but what brings the tale to life is the vivid, emotionally nuanced portraits Mr. Jakubowski paints of each of his subordinates.

I was quite enchanted by Rachel Kramer Bussel's "Secretary's Day." I normally enjoy her work, but this was the first story of hers that I'd read that was told from a male point of view. She managed to be quite convincing. "Secretary's Day" is a spicy exploration of female dominance, related by a young man who adores being used by a smart, powerful woman. There's even a lick of romance in the mix
.
Then there's the peculiar but engaging "One Cubicle Over," by Jeremy Edwards, about two people with nothing in common who nevertheless are sexually obsessed with one another. This tale of the triumph of pheromones over rationality is cleverly told, and despite its tongue in cheek tone left me with a big smile.

Savannah Stephens Smith offers "Lonely at the Top," the confessions of a female executive who fucked her way up the corporate ladder and enjoyed every minute of it. The narrator's no-nonsense voice and gutsy pro-sex attitude did not prepare me for the bittersweet ending, but then, I enjoy surprises.

Possibly my favorite story in the volume is "On the 37th Floor," by Tulsa Brown. Ms. Brown's characters are so sharply drawn, they cut you to the bone, and this story is no exception. She also has a sense of how where you come from influences who you are, a knowledge that plays a significant role in the plot of this sensual, celebratory F/F tale.

There are twenty two stories in this volume. Half a dozen of them really grabbed me. The remainder? They're not bad stories, not at all. The collection includes many acclaimed erotica authors. Lisette Ashton, Donna George Storey, Mike Kimera and Alison Tyler are all among my favorites. Alas, none of their stories in this anthology made me sit up in bed and go "Wow!" I enjoyed them, but I'm not all that likely to remember them.

Maybe I'm just reading too much erotica. Perhaps I've become jaded and overly critical. Or perhaps there are just too many anthologies coming out these days, and not enough stellar stories to fill them. I did notice, with some concern, that about a third of the stories in Open for Business were previously published in other anthologies -- including some by the same editor. At least one story I immediately recognized, and couldn't bring myself to reread.

Maybe we need some fresh blood. Or maybe we need to move away from the notion that the primary goal of erotica is to titillate or arouse the reader as opposed to telling a story or exploring some of the less obvious aspects of sexuality.

Or perhaps I should just get off my soapbox and finish this review, before I really offend my illustrious colleagues. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

For generations, sado-masochism has been characterized as a disorder of the psyche. Those who subscribe to this position view the sexualized desire to inflict or suffer pain as abnormal and unhealthy. Usually, they claim that this desire can be traced to traumatic events in the deviant individual’s past that caused discipline or punishment (as either giver or receiver) to become linked with sexual excitement. No one could possibly want to participate in such bizarre sexual rituals, they reason, without some childhood experience that warped their sexuality into perverse forms.

Nonsense. That has always been my reaction. I’ve found intense pleasure, joy and fulfillment in a BDSM relationship, yet I had the most normal, supportive, loving childhood anyone could ask for. It’s true that I was drawn to submissive scenarios at a very young age. Many practitioners of BDSM will say the same. But I don’t think anyone will find the key to this early attraction in my real world history.

After reading Melanie Abram’s novel Playing, however, I do find myself wondering whether this perspective of kink as pathology might in fact be true for some people. Certainly, Ms Abrams paints a convincing portrait of a woman tortured by her past, seeking momentary release in the punishments inflicted by her dominant lover.

Josie is a smart, attractive young woman, just starting her graduate work in anthropology. She takes a job as live-in nanny to a borderline autistic boy, supposedly to eke out her stipend, but actually because she feels drawn to the boy and his beautiful, vivacious mother. Mary reminds Josie of her own mother, with whom Josie has an extremely conflicted relationship – but Mary seems to accept and approve of Josie in a way that her own mother never could.

Josie’s and Mary’s relationship is strained to near breaking when Devesh, a charismatic Indian surgeon whom Mary wants for herself, chooses Josie instead. It turns out that Devesh is sexually dominant.  As he and Josie  “play”, he fulfills fantasies that have haunted her ever since the death of her infant brother. For Josie, their scenes of discipline and desire are cathartic and overwhelming. Little by little they break down the walls of self-deception she has built to protect herself from the awful truths of her childhood.

Josie is an extreme and yet believable character. Though she is in her late twenties, she is in some sense a victim of arrested development. She sulks and throws tantrums. She is petulant and deliberately disobedient. Though she has an adult’s sense of responsibility, she acts like a child.

Devesh loves her, and thinks that he understands her, but he can’t see the dark secrets that swirl inside her, the nightmares that will release her.  As he comes closer to knowing the truth, Josie pushes him away. He begs her to join him on his visit to India, but she refuses. Finally, disappointed and hurt, he travels by himself, leaving Josie to face her demons alone.   

If erotica is defined as writing intended to arouse, I’m not sure that Playing qualifies for this label. The scenes where Devesh and Josie “play” constitute a relatively small portion of the novel, though they are sufficiently intense that their influence lingers:

The unfairness of it pricked her, and she tried to turn her back to him, but he held her still. He ran his fingers through her hair and held tightly. “Now,” he whispered. “I’m going to give you five more, and you’re to count each of them, nice and loud. Do you understand?”

It was unfair, but she felt her head expand, her body yield, and she nodded.

“Good.” He stepped away and brought the crop down, a hot fiery snap.

“One,” she said.

Quickly, he did it again, and she cried. “Two.” It was electric, and she could feel the welts rise, the heat emanating from the crop to her flesh to her very center. “Three.” The top of her head seemed to open up, and with the next molten snap of the crop, she felt sucked into the ether. It was a familiar feeling, this going outside herself, but this time, her consciousness disintegrated, leaving her body below and counting. “Four.” Just bones and flesh planted firmly. “Five,” and then he was telling her to beg to be fucked, and she was begging, over and over until he was cupping one of her breasts in his hand, and then pushing inside her, his mouth tight on her ear, telling her all the nasty things she’d only thought to herself for years and years and years, and her head was pushing into cold iron, full of nothing but space and air, her insides alive and present, her outsides his completely.

As illustrated by this passage, the novel is far less explicit than most work characterized as erotica. At the same time, this book primarily is about sex, about the intricate relationships between sexuality and all the other emotions in our lives. The core conflict revolves around Josie’s guilt, which has become eroticized and now can be expiated only through punishment at her lover’s hand.

Playing succeeded in making me wonder, briefly, whether there is in fact some key childhood experience that accounts for my kinkiness, something that I’ve blocked from my memory but which continues to affect me. And yet the novel concludes by suggesting that D/s fantasies can be as much a cure as a symptom, if they’re played out in the context of a loving relationship.

Devesh readily admits to having had dominant desires for as long as he could remember.    Still, he denies that this is pathological. For him, BDSM is simply a path to intimacy and pleasure. Josie, on the other hand, needs to confront the reality of her past, stripping away the sexual charge that has accumulated around her deeds and those of her family. Once she does this, she discovers that playing with Devesh, surrendering her self to him, becomes a process of healing. 

We're all guilty. All of us authors, I mean. We take a personal experience, an actual erotic encounter, and turn it into a story. We burnish it. We perfect it. Then we offer it to the world, usually pretending it is fiction when in fact it's the truth, retouched with fantasy.

Pleasure Bound purports to be a book of true confessions. I am not willing to go out on a limb and guess which stories are “real” and which are not. It's a continuum anyway. Every erotic story contains at least a germ of personal truth. Some of the stories feel more genuine than others, but that could reflect the author's craft as much as the reality of the experience.

So I'll treat all of the contributions in Ms. Tyler's volume as fiction and review them as such. As my husband often claims, “There's no such thing as reality.”  Especially when you are talking about erotica.

Possibly my favorite tale in the collection is Alison Tyler's own “Stickler for Details”. The author/narrator contacts a Dom for research purposes. He chides her for using capital “I” in her emails to refer to herself, and she's justifiably annoyed. When she finally meets him, however, his presence overwhelms her:

He was there, waiting, his silver hair brushed back from his forehead, his suit jacket open over a stark white shirt—no tie, no frills, crisp and smart as Courier font.  From his gaze, I realized that I no longer had to worry about my Is or my eyes, because the sense of submissiveness fell over me like a cloak.  I didn’t have to think about how to behave…I wanted to be his with a capital H… When I pulled up a chair at the table, when I said my greetings, when I brought out my notebook—every gesture about me whispered of my desires.  Every story I’d ever written had led me to this point.

Okay, I'll admit that I'm ready to believe this tale. It was too heartfelt not to be true.

Another standout is Teresa Noelle Robert's “Big Hands.”  It's one of the few stories in which the female is dominant—at least for a while. Jim is tall, dark, handsome and built so solidly that he was one loincloth and some archaic weaponry away from being a fantasy barbarian warrior, just the sort of guy to give a girl a spanking she'll never forget. But Jim has other ideas, and they turn out to be as arousing as the narrator's original notions.

Having maintained my own long distance BDSM relationship for more than two decades, I identified strongly with “The Visit” by A.D.R. Forte.

“How would you like to be fucked here?”

I was exhausted and filthy from traveling for more than a day. My back ached and my eyes hurt, and I hadn't eaten except for the lone hot dog in Chicago and countless bottles of caffeinated soda.

I looked at him and my breath caught in my throat.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes what?” he asked as he came to stand before me, and I took a deep breath. It scared me that it came so easily, that we'd picked up our old ways so seamlessly.

“Yes, Sir.”  And I was trembling as I said it. “Please.”

The emotion is genuine. Never mind the facts.

Other standouts include Shanna Germain's “Deal”. Ms. Germain paints a gritty portrait of  a last semester in high school, two couples playing cards, the narrator fucked and near strangled by the other girl's boyfriend and loving it all. “Mr. Smith, Ms. Jones Will See You Now,” by Malcolm Harris, gives us a blow by blow (literally) account of a man's visit to a dominatrix--a visit funded by his wife. The story succeeds in convincing the reader that BDSM is the road to physical as well as mental health, at least for some of us. Annette Miller's “Do I Look Like I'm Joking” is a humorous and arousing tale of a husband pushing his wife's limits. “Bound to Act,” by Brooke Stern, incorporates more extreme submission and suggests that in order to be an effective actor, you literally need to let go.  Thomas Roche's “Ghosts of the Wildflower” is smart and sharp and slightly wistful in its portrayal of a compulsive liar who happens to adore bondage.

One of the things that I appreciate about Alison Tyler's anthologies is her willingness to explore the darker side of BDSM. Some stories in this volume—Sophie Valenti’s “On the Mend,” Tess Danesi's “Tears of All Kinds,” Stephen Elliott's “Once More Beneath the Exit Sign”—dwell more on the sadism component in the acronym. I don't necessarily prefer stories of really rough sex myself, but I know that they're part of the power spectrum and I applaud Ms. Tyler's discernment in including them in her books.

I am not talking about a lack of consent here. Mercy isn't in Marc's vocabulary—and for that I'm thankful begins Ms. Valenti's story. That sums it up. Some people crave a level of pain beyond what I'd seek. For some, real fear is truly arousing. Ms. Tyler recognizes this, unlike some editors who shy away from the darkness and treat BDSM as a kind of game. 

Pleasure Bound is another exceptional collection of BDSM fiction--or is it fact?—from a daring and sensitive editor who clearly understands her topic from personal experience.

“Power tends to corrupt”, wrote Lord Acton in 1887. When I opened the erotic anthology Power Plays, I was looking forward to a set of decadent and decidedly corrupt stories about the way that people in politics wield their power in the sexual realm. I rubbed my virtual hands together at the prospect of feverish trysts fueled by the charisma of a popular leader. I expected that some of the authors would bring together the notions of political power and the “power exchange” that is at the heart of BDSM. Perhaps I would see political potentates gladly surrendering to the erotic power of a master or mistress. Maybe some author would explore the implications of a seasoned Dom being elected as president or prime minister. 

For the most part, I was severely disappointed. As a group the stories in Power Plays do not exploit the potential of the anthology theme. They are mostly rather ordinary sexual romps in which the political affiliations of the characters have little impact on the conflict, the plot or the interactions. Several of the stories, notably “The Sanctuary” by Olivia London and “Changing Moon” by Angela Cameron, stretch the definition of “politics” well beyond what seems reasonable. Ms. London's story chronicles an affair between an office temp and her supervisor, with a passing mention of “office politics”. Ms. Cameron's tale is a sexy and atmospheric werewolf romance concerned with a leadership struggle within the pack, a sensual tale, but too far from the book's proposed topic to fit well.

“Filibuster” by Vanessa Vaughn offers a tasty ménage with a bit of an edge, but it hardly matters that female and male protagonists are both members of Congress. We might see these office antics in any company or organization. Victoria Lacy's “A French Tryst” gives us the first woman president, seduced in a museum by a classically sensual Frenchman. Their coupling is torrid but the scenario (a U.S. president, on her own without security?) is completely improbable. In any case, the heroine could be any high-powered businesswoman. There's sex here, but no power, no politics. “Board of Directors” by Jen Bluekissed, is set against the backdrop of a corporate election, but its main focus is sex and chocolate --always a popular topic, but not really related to politics and power.

A few stories save the collection from total mediocrity. Maryn Bittner's “Whatever It Takes” is a satiric gem. Set in Florida during the disputed presidential election of 2000 (and with artful references to the future election of 2004), the story is told by a savvy Republican mover and shaker, sent to guarantee a Bush victory. He meets a wealthy and distinguished man who promises to deliver just that – but at a carnal price.

“Voter Registration” by L.A. Mistral is also noteworthy for its original voice. Gorgeous and horny Tequila, the main character, is a power junkie turned on by the politicians she sees on TV:

The onscreen politician reached out to her and her alone from the high-def, quantum-leap megapixels of her TV. His sturdy, knowing hand reached out for support and for national unity. I want to support you, he said. I'm reaching out to you, he said. Tequila imagined his hand on her, holding her, supporting her. His four-square image and the conviction of his imagination spread over her pale body like a symphony, plucking every secret need and every unspoken melody. His words untied her diaphanous robe and let it fall away. Her red robe was so sheer, it was more of a whisper than a word. His face smiled over her body as she lay open for him, his eyes appreciating her favors, her rapt attentions and her pledge of support. Tequila did the rest.

Despite the occasionally mixed metaphors, the author manages to create a unique character here, one for whom politics is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

A third story with some unusual aspects is “Small Town Tastes”, by K.D. Grace. A randy congressman attends a small community's annual picnic and is captivated by the mayor's nubile daughter. We think we know the outcome, but in this story, nothing is quite as it seems.

Overall, however, this collection is far from outstanding. I found the editor's one-line commentary at the start of each story gratuitous and annoying. For the most part the production of the book is adequate, but for some reason the final story was marred by such serious formatting flaws that it was nearly unreadable.

Followers of Erotica Revealed know that, at times, sex is the mirror of the soul. Sexual congress can be a spiritual experience, an act of rebellion, an expression of need or an existential confrontation with one's own mortality. The erotic genre explores the multi-layered nature of desire--its meaning for the individual and for society. Erotica can be inspiring, enlightening, shocking or educational.

Sometimes, though, it's just plain fun. Jeremy Edwards' novel Rock My Socks Off is a prime example.

Rock My Socks Off is a breezy tale featuring a brilliant, gorgeous and unrelentingly horny astronomy professor named Normandie Stephens. (“My parents called me Brittany, and when I turned sixteen in a sea of other young Brittanys, I said 'Fuck this' and swapped it for the next French province over.”) If there were a Nobel Prize for lust, Normandie would win hands down. Jacob Hastings is the lucky journalist who catches Normandie's eye at a grad student party and eventually wins her heart (with many and varied clinches along the way). Normandie desperately wants tenure--almost as much as she wants Jacob--and over the course of the book they concoct a half-way accidental scheme that wins her national acclaim, almost destroys her career, and brings them into contact (and I use the term advisedly) with a collection of other equally randy characters. These include Normandie's department head Kate (a savvy and salacious bisexual cougar), Jacob's photographer Susan (superficially shy but with a deep appreciation of the erotic--at both a professional and personal level) and the dumb but charismatic dance club god Brandon.

There's a lot of sex in this book. In fact the thin plot has little function other than to provide the sexual superstructure. This is clearly intentional rather than an artistic flaw. I have read other examples of Mr. Edwards work and I know he produces a realistic story with non-trivial conflicts if he has a mind to. Rock My Socks Off is a romp with a capital R. Everyone gets off, all the time, in a wide range of environments including in the traditional utility closet, on the department chair's desk, at a roadside rest area and in the audience of a TV game show.  All the while, Jacob and Normandie engage in witty repartee, emphasizing the fact that Jacob is as enamored of Normandie's prodigious intelligence as he is of her pert ass.

In some ways, this book reminds me of classic Victorian erotica like The Pearl. It is pure wish fulfillment. No one is ever too tired to fuck. No one ever gets jealous. There's enough cock and pussy for everyone. Normandie is an educated man's dream (well, she'd be my dream if I were an educated man!): articulate, self-confident, funny and horny, with a streak of mischief a mile wide and a huge wardrobe of candy-colored bikini panties that are perpetually damp.

Curiously, my most serious complaint about this book relates to the sex scenes. They are frequent but often very short, a paragraph or two. Not only are they brief, but they are also short on detail, emotional or physical. There's little time to build up tension. When a character itches, he or she scratches--or gets a partner to do so.

The characters are revealed almost entirely through their conversation. We rarely if ever get a glimpse into their minds or hearts. Even Jacob, the point of view character for most of the book, rarely shows us more than his whole-hearted appreciation for Normandie.

On the plus side, I liked the fact that sex in this tale means more than just fucking. In Mr. Edward's fictional world, sex is a whole body experience. Oral sex, groping or kissing can be just as satisfying as whole hog penetration. Probably half the sex scenes involve something other than intercourse. Furthermore, the characters enjoy bringing each other off almost as much as they like coming themselves. Not every scene is symmetric and that's just fine with everyone involved.

If Jacob Hastings reflects his creator at all (and I suspect that he does), Mr. Edwards really adores women. Jacob is not in the least submissive, but he's almost awed by Normandie and willing to let her take the lead. He has a healthy attraction to other women as well, which Normandie encourages. She's smart and experienced enough to know that his attitude is rare and precious.  

You’re not a little boy who’s trying to compete with me, and you’re not a big boy who’s trying to own me, and you’re not a selfish boy who wants me to just shut up and fuck.  …Do you realize how special that makes you?

Mr. Edwards paints a delightful picture of a relationship grounded on mutual respect and mutual horniness. The result is satisfaction for all, including the reader.

If you're looking for deep insights or revelations, don't buy this book. On the other hand, if you're in search of some good-natured, cheeky entertainment, I recommend it highly.

The minute I started to read Shar Rednour’s Foreword to this collection, I realized that I was the wrong reviewer. I have an anti-sweet-tooth. At age two, family legend claims, someone gave me a lollipop and I didn’t know what to do with it. I could live for months without ever craving dessert. When I do want something sweet, it’ll be fruit, or crême caramel, or maybe ice cream, certainly not something gooey or chocolatey. Never (alas dear Rachel) have I yearned for a cupcake!

I’ve engaged in the traditional sexual experimentation with whipped cream. I’ve been as turned on as anyone by the famous eating scene in the classic film “Tom Jones.” For the most part, though, my personal sexual proclivities do not tend toward the sorts of sugary adventures portrayed in this book.

My overall feeling after finishing Sex and Candy is that the book is not up to the usual standards of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s collections – for instance the amazing He’s on Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission, which I just finished reading.

Even though Sex and Candy includes many of my favorite erotica authors, the majority of the stories felt superficial: sweet, sticky, sometimes nasty romps without much plot beyond the avid consumption of the focused confection. What I can’t decide is whether this is a realistic view of the collection, or whether it’s conditioned by my own personal tastes.

I’d suspect my subjectivity was the cause, except for the fact that the book does contain two completely wonderful stories that follow the theme, but take it much further and deeper than most of the contributors. Shanna Germain’s “Kneading” left me in wet, astonished awe. It is lyrical and tough, intense and original, featuring characters so far from the stereotypes that I guarantee you, too, will be amazed. The editors showed great wisdom in using a quote from this tale as the introductory blurb for the collection.

“At home, I don’t let her touch me. There is only this: my fingers tangled in her thin apron strings, cascade of cotton and flour against the floor, Macy’s dark arms iced with sugars and spice. My recipe is simple: Macy and me, hands and skin, kneading and heat. ‘The best recipes just taste complicated.’ This is something I plan to teach her.”

Equally fine, in a different way, is Donna George Storey’s “Six Layers of Sweetness.” The tale is as carefully constructed as the dessert in its title. Sharp, spicy layers of physical desire alternate with more subtle emotional flavors. Ms. Storey is an expert chef, and it shows.

A few other stories in the book have bent over pages, meaning that I felt they were worth mentioning. “Cling,” by Tenille Brown, is the delightfully tongue-in-cheek tale of a mature woman who can’t quite bring herself to give up her lover even though she knows he’s not “marriage material.” I enjoyed Bianca James “Green Chile Chocolate” largely because her “Chile man” so completely matched my image of male sexiness. R.Gay’s “Other Girls” is a carny romance, shot through with the wistfulness of a man who’s always just passing through. And Catherine Lundoff’s “Phone, Sex, Chocolate” offers a sticky, poignant look at a hopeless lesbian fantasy:

“We make plans for lunch next week and you sign off with some flippant comment about beauty sleep. I drop the phone, sending both hands between my legs to rub soft chocolate on my clit in tight, firm circles. I imagine you in your power suit, taking me on your desk with expensive chocolate dripping onto your memos and I come hard, my back arching against the couch.”

If you like sugar, if you think that having sex in a pool of fudge or on a bed of crushed cupcakes is hot, if you’re turned on by eating marshmallows from between your lover’s breasts, or sticking a peppermint candy cane into one of your lover’s orifices, then you’ll love this book. If you’re like me, someone who could live the rest of her life without caring if she ever tastes chocolate (and I realize this sounds incredible to some of my readers), Sex and Candy might leave you a bit hungry.

Clichés are a hazard for any author. They are a particular problem in the BDSM subgenre, partly because a very few influential works have strongly shaped readers' expectations and writers' imaginations. How many dozens of slave-infested mansions have I encountered in my reading? How many S&M clubs where hapless submissives are publicly beaten and abused, where cruel mistresses drag their pets around on leashes and masked Doms glower and posture?

Cristina Crooks' inappropriately titled Sweet and Dirty offers two novellas (Baring It All and Forbidden Heat) that unfold in these prototypical S&M settings. Thankfully, though, she has done an admirable job in avoiding the clichés by focusing on unconventional and at least marginally complex characters as much as on the dirty deeds in which they're involved.

Michelle, the heroine in Baring It All, has been bullied all her life by her family, and then later, by her fiancé, Ted. After an unfortunate episode in which her attempt to be assertive ends badly, she flees her old life in Alabama, taking up residence in big, bad Los Angeles. Despite her desire to free herself from her past existence as a doormat, she finds herself under the thumb of Posh, proprietor of the doggy day care center where Michelle finds work. Meanwhile Ted shows up at her apartment door to drag her back to her “real life” in Alabama.

Then Posh sends Michelle to a fetish emporium to buy studded collars for the kennel's clients (one of the less plausible aspects of this tale) and Michelle encounters dominant Ro Kaliph (interrupting him in his demo of flogging).  Michelle manages to stand up to Ro's anger and asks him to teach her how to be more dominant herself. Ro is certain that Michelle is fundamentally submissive, but he's willing to play along. The action unfolds at his newly-opened BDSM club The Dungeon, and provides a number of surprises. 

Ro is a great character, an ex-lawyer who has quit his lucrative practice with his father in order to follow his heart and provide a safe, sane and sexy place for people to play. Ms. Crooks emphasizes the fact that he's not classically handsome, a relief in the world of erotica and romance, and he clearly has doubts both about his struggling club and his mixed perceptions of Michelle (or Lizbeth, as she decides to call herself when she steps into Ro's world of pain and passion).

 Nora Sabine, the protagonist of Forbidden Heat, is a very different sort of person from little Michelle. A high-powered, hard-working businesswoman, she usually knows what she wants and is unafraid to take it. When she discovers that the Twisted Wood B&B her fiancé Ryan has booked for a long weekend vacation is actually a “Bondage and Breakfast” establishment, she takes it in stride. She has never done anything kinky before and she's hardly a submissive, but she has long-cherished fantasies of being captured and raped. She wonders, especially when she sees Sylvester Vincent, the craggy owner of Twisted Wood, whether her fantasies might not be fulfilled over the fateful weekend.

Sylvester has his own demons to fight, however, stemming from a past incident where he misread the signals from another submissive. Despite his fierce attraction to Nora, he holds back, leaving her to the ministrations of the other guests at the luxurious mansion: refined and sadistic Master Andre, dominatrix Mistress Kiana, the intriguing switches Black and White, and the enigmatic Mage, master of rope bondage and electric torture. Ms. Crooks draws each one of these characters in precise, loving detail, as well as the “service submissives” Little Peter and Kitten. Unlike many tales of  Roissy-wannabe S&M hideaways, each dominant and slave is a distinct individual. Being a submissive does not mean having your personality erased. I ended up caring about almost all the characters, even as I waited breathlessly for the heroine and the hero to finally get together.

Ms. Crooks does descend almost to the level of parody in her portrayal of the two boyfriends in these stories. Both are such slimy weasels that you have to wonder how the likeable heroines ever could have gotten involved with them. Ryan is particularly horrible and dishonest, insecure, self-involved, immature, with no sense of responsibility for his supposed lover. The contrast between Ryan's despicable behavior and the sensitive, caring attitude of even the cruelest dominants at Twisted Wood is undoubtedly deliberate.

There's a hint of romance in these tales; both end with the heroine and the hero as a couple--but there's a lot of hot sex with a variety of other people before that point.  Both stories fit the classic erotica mold of the sexual quest—characters exploring their own needs, suffering or enjoying a variety of experiences on the way to fulfillment.

The portrayal of BDSM is overwhelmingly positive. Both stories emphasize the need for consent and the responsibility of the dominant for the submissive. That does not prevent Ms. Crooks from presenting some fairly extreme scenes. The interaction between Nora and Mage is particularly intense, and also ends with a great twist.

Occasionally I had the sense that Ms. Crooks lacked knowledge or experience with BDSM. The blocking in some of her scenes felt awkward; I couldn't imagine the positions she was describing.  Her description of the fetish store did not match any one that I've ever visited. However, most of the time I was able to forget these quibbles as I was drawn into the action and the characters' actions and reactions.

Swing! has a fabulous cover and, as promised by the sub-title, an impressive roster of contributors. I have been eagerly awaiting this collection, my interest stimulated by the impressive pre-release publicity campaign orchestrated by its dedicated and energetic editor, Jolie du Pré.  Still, I felt some trepidation when I opened the book to discover that it was 437 pages long.  Despite Ashley Lister’s introduction hailing the diversity of the tales in this anthology, I wondered whether a subject like swinging might not be too narrow to support a book of this length.

My concerns, it appears, were not completely ill-founded. In my personal opinion, Swing! would have been a far better book had it been cut to half its present length. The collection includes some exceptional tales, including Ms du Pré’s own contribution, “Before the Move,” a clever commentary on hypocrisy that manages to arouse despite its ironic bite. However, other stories struck me as uninspired in the extreme, shallow and predictable, and a few are just plain badly written.

Let me talk about the stories that shine.  “Dez Moines,” by Alicia Night Orchid, appears on the surface to be the standard swinger tale.  Young man marries innocent college sweetheart, only to discover that she has perverted desires he would never have imagined, which lead them into an escalating series of sexual encounters with their friends.  It is the characters in this story that make it vivid and memorable. They feel like flesh and blood, with voices that remain with the reader after the story is done.

Donna George Storey’s contribution, “John Updike Made Me Do It,” once again explores the scenario of close friends brought together on a vacation and swapping partners.  As she often does, Ms Storey brings her literate fantasies into the mix.  The real world swinging is colored by her fascination with the fictional couples in John Updike’s world, whose indiscretions loom large in her personal sexual mythology. 

“The Best of Friends” by M. Millswan is refreshingly different in both its distanced third person narration (“let me tell you about something that happened to a friend of mine”) and its bittersweet tone.  The protagonist finds himself making love to the woman he has desired since high school while her husband watches, yet he understands that the encounter, satisfying as it is, means much less to his partner.

Tawanna Sullivan’s “Just Desserts” is a tasty tale of two lesbian couples stranded in the airport by bad weather.  It’s a swinging story in the sense that the two couples swap, but says more about the erotic potential of chance than about any kind of “lifestyle.”  The initial scenes where the women eye each other and then share dinner in a typical, tacky chain restaurant are close to perfect, capturing the awkwardness of strangers and the intimacy of flirtation.

M. Christian’s contribution to the volume is entitled “Bob & Carol & Ted (But Not Alice).”  What sets this story apart, aside from its cleverly allusive title, is the way Mr. Christian explores Bob’s barely articulated desire for other men.  In too many erotic stories, the characters blatantly announce what they want and then go after it.  Here, the character is realistically confused and unsure, even as he is aroused.

“One Weekend in Toronto” by Claudia Moss is an extravagantly decadent, gender-bending pan-sexual romp that will make you hot and bothered whatever your orientation.   Amanda Earl’s “Ghost Swinger” succeeds in bringing to life the lost sexual spontaneity of the hippie years, the golden era after the Pill and before AIDS.  “The Twenty-Minute Rule,” by Ashley Lister, proves that there are exceptions to every rule, especially in the domain of sex.  In “Be Careful What You Wish For,” D. L. King conveys the reader to her fantasy world of strict but scrupulously careful Dommes and the male slaves who gladly serve them.  I should also mention the arousing and disturbing “Initiation,” by Rick R. Reed, in which a gay man undergoes a series of creative and increasingly extreme tests in order to gain admission to a mysterious sex club.  I really did not see what this story had to do with swinging, and I found the shock ending a bit difficult to deal with, but I must admit that the rest of the story pushed my buttons.   

Many of the stories that I have not mentioned above could have been excised from the manuscript without doing any damage.  Most are not bad stories – I just found them rather uninteresting.  As would be expected from an anthology about swinging, most feature sexual encounters with friends or else visits to swing clubs or parties. Several focus on a woman’s initial sexual experiences with another woman in the context of swinging.  Typically, a couple explores their desires for sex outside their relationship and then draw closer to each other as a result.  This is fine, but hardly surprising or exciting.  I mean, certainly, the sex might be feel great, but after all, it’s just sex, usually with someone who is almost a stranger. There’s little depth there, little complexity, none of the emotional nuances that drive the best erotica.  It’s an old story, and it takes some special twist or a particularly gifted writer to give it new life.

I wanted to give Swing! an unabashedly positive review. When I realized that I could not honestly do so, I wondered whether my own experiences swinging were influencing my perceptions.  My husband and I have visited swing parties and clubs.  We’ve posted and answered personal ads for sexual partners.  We’ve experienced ménages a trois with close friends of both genders.  Only the last adventures were truly satisfying, from my perspective at least.  I love the sexualized atmosphere at a club or party, but I find that it’s difficult for me to really enjoy sex with a stranger, unless there’s a rare, special spark.  Was this why so many of the stories in Swing! seemed to fall flat?

I don’t think so.  For one thing, some of the outstanding tales in this anthology offer the same basic scenario, yet managed to excite and impress me.  I can be pulled easily into the fantasy of the perfect swap, if the storyteller is sufficiently skilled.

When I agreed to review Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories, I had some serious reservations. How could a collection of twenty-plus stories with such a narrow theme sustain any level of interest? And wouldn’t a focus on a single, physical sex act – fellatio – tend to move the content away from the psychological and emotional explorations that I view as the essence of erotica toward more superficial presentations reminiscent of bad porn?

I am pleased to report that my concerns were largely unfounded. Rachel Kramer Bussel has succeeded in assembling a surprisingly varied collection of tales that feature cocksucking but focus less on the activity itself than on the reactions of the characters involved.

Most of the tales involve a woman going down on a man. However the volume also offers Radclyffe’s exuberant “Blessed Benediction,” in which a drop-dead-gorgeous femme demonstrates (in public) how she can make her tough butch lover cream by sucking her strap-on. This story, perhaps more than any other, illustrates my oft repeated claim that arousal begins in the mind. Simon Sheppard is uncharacteristically cheerful but sly and entertaining as usual in “It’s a Wonderful Blow Job,” about a gay man who’s especially turned on fellating a married man. The protagonist in T. Hitman’s “Long Relief” is ultra-straight, a baseball player on tour, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying a blow job from one of his team mates. Lori Selke turns the tables in “Cocksucker,” with a submissive male who begs to suck his girlfriend’s artificial dick. Shanna Germain takes the switch one step further in “Sculpted;” her heroine’s strap-on is an actual replica of her lover’s cock.

All of the stories in Tasting Him are on the light side – no deep conflicts, no secrets, no scars – but there’s a pleasing variation in tone and point of view. Tsaurah Litzky’s wonderful “Tony Tempo” is told in the wry voice of a former jazz great who is suffering through his golden years in the Crescendo Home for Aged and Indigent Musicians, treated like a child by the nurses but still dreaming of his deceased wife’s blow jobs. “This Just In” by Heidi Champa, gives us a second-person account of a woman living out her fantasy of sucking her commentator husband under the desk while he reads the news. Editors often reject second-person accounts as amateurish, but the perspective works in this story. “Getting Used to It,” by Tenille Brown, is a folksy third-person narrative featuring the very ordinary Herbert Miller, his wife Evelyn, and their next door neighbor Minnie, along with brisket, pot roast, peppermints, and of course, blow jobs.

My unquestioned favorite tale in this collection is Alison Tyler’s “Prego.” Although the protagonists are a long-established couple, it still manages to be outrageously spontaneous and intensely erotic.

Even our most vanilla activities tend to involve accoutrements such as rubber dishwashing gloves, velvet blindfolds and Wesson oil. So I suppose I shouldn’t have found it odd at all to walk through the swinging doors of our kitchen and discover Jackson fucking the jar of spaghetti sauce.
But I did.

Both find him, and find it odd.

As it turns out, the sauce in question is the last jar in the cupboard, intended for the pasta about to be served to the dinner guests currently assembled in the next room. It hardly matters; the lure of Jackson’s tomato-marinated cock is irresistible.

Craig J. Sorensen’s “Equanimity Unbound” was another stand-out, mostly because I empathized with the uptight, workaholic main character. Fortunately, the Goth beauty he meets at the Tshirt and novelty store in the mall knows how to loosen him up.  Then there’s the original and intelligent “A Treatise on Human Nature”, by Robert Peregrine, where the bisexual male narrator undertakes to fulfill his recently-encountered companion’s request that he teach her “how to give head like a man”.

The Roman Slave is a 395 page historical erotic novel set in 161 B.C., the era of the Roman Republic.  I particularly mention the number of pages because, to be honest, I struggled to get through them.  I tend to read in bed, and alas, I fell asleep more than once with my eReader open during my perusal of this book.

 The problem was not a lack of plot.  The Roman Slave starts with the focus on a hot-headed, ambitious tribune, Messalla, who has been exiled to the hinterland of Macedonia as a punishment for raping a noblewoman.  Messalla, with the help of his battle-scarred centurion Procinus, devises a scheme to attack and plunder a remote but wealthy village during a wedding festival.  He reasons that the gold he can supply to Rome's coffers, plus the many slaves he will capture and sell, will both make his fortune and restore his reputation.

The story then shifts to the peaceful village of Therapnae, where the reader meets Lavinia, the tomboyish eighteen year old who is the intended bride as well as a future queen, and her family of Spartan warriors.  (I could not quite figure out what Spartans were doing in Macedonia, but I let that pass.)  Lavinia receives training in both pugilistic and erotic arts in preparation for her nuptials.  On the eve of the wedding, Messalla and his men swoop down on the unprepared village, capturing Lavinia, her heroic grandfather  and village headman, Leonidas, plus her grandmother, her mother and brother and a host of other unfortunates.  The captives are divided and reach Rome by separate routes, but eventually all are reunited in the Imperial City.  Leonidas and Lavinia literally beat some sense into Messalla's head.  He is nursed back to health by a Spartan sex trainer, with whom he falls in love.  He sees the error of his ways and makes amends to the noble Spartans he had enslaved.  Everyone lives happily ever after.

Between our initial introduction to Messalla and his ultimate conversion into one of the good guys, Alexandros introduces characters with an abandon worthy of Tolstoy:  slaves, merchants, cooks, centurions, gladiators, consuls, street punks, sausage vendors, wives, mothers, sisters, cousins, and aunts.  All right, I don't recall anyone being explicitly identified as an aunt, but I could not begin to keep track of all these people.  For the most part they were one-dimensional cut-outs with few individual attributes, although sometimes they have their own plots and plans which the reader is expected to follow.

 The most prominent character trait, shared by almost all the characters in The Roman Slave, is inexhaustible horniness.  Women and men couple, often with multiple partners, at the drop of a tunic.  In fact, many characters habitually walk the streets of Rome naked.  Public orgies are routine.  Women have pleasure slaves to keep them satisfied, but don't disdain the erotic attentions of other women as well.  Hardly a page goes by without a phallus finding its way into a cunnus, or some other convenient orifice.  Jealousy hardly exists, as husbands and wives both recognize the primacy of lust.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?  Unfortunately, the author's treatment of sex is so superficial that I found it tedious.  He dwells only at the physical level--which body parts are being inserted where, who is covered with come, who is climaxing and how many times.  He seems to view sex as something of an athletic performance, or a contest, one in which his main characters Leonidas (who has the physique of a giant and a cock as thick as a normal man's forearm) and Lavinia (who is graced with a clitoris three inches long) are always the victors.

Here's an example, more or less randomly chosen (from page 212):

“This is Leonidas, and this girl here is Lavinia.  Lavinia, remove your tunica and get on that table there.  I want to see what you can do.”

Valinus stripped off his knight’s tunic, more comfortable than the toga he wore earlier, saying, “Let’s start, as I have a long day ahead.  Leonidas, I want you to go with Livia and choose some women.  I really want to have a firsthand look at your erotic skills, so don’t hold back.”

Livia had already begun to undo Leonidas’ subligaculum.  She gasped when she saw his cock, which sprang erect and well above his waist.

“Look, Master Valinus,” she said, indicating Leonidas. “It is so much like my husband’s, but much bigger.”

“Quickly, Livia, time is money for me,” said Valinus, as he climbed on the wide table where Lavinia already waited for him, lying on her back with her legs held high up and spread out.

Valinus reversed himself on her and buried his face between her legs, licking all around her clitoris and pushing his fingers deep inside her cunnus, while she reached up and swallowed his cock to the root.  Gratianus and the Egyptian girl joined them soon on the table, excited by the loveliness of Lavinia.  Gratianus knelt near them, using the tip of his tongue to probe her anus, while the Egyptian girl sucked him to an erection . Once he was hard, he positioned himself before Lavinia, driving his cock deep into her ass, even as Valinus continued to suck on her clitoris like a ripe fruit.

In the meantime, Leonidas picked out six women from the group Livia showed him and had them all climb on another wide table along with him.  Taking three of them, he first stacked them one on top of the other.  Kneeling, he began to stimulate their cunni alternately with his fingers and tongue, while Livia and the other three women swarmed under him.  As he knelt, their tongues attacked his immense cock and roamed all around his huge testicles.  Livia knelt behind him and buried her face between his cheeks, to tongue his anus.  Soon, Leonidas made another stack of three women and repeated the same process.  In a short time, he was on his knees before the first stack, driving his cock in and out of their cunni alternately, while his fingers continued to stimulate the women on the other stack.  Although he couldn’t see, as Livia had climbed on his shoulders and wrapped her legs about his broad shoulders, he never missed his mark and continued thrusting alternately into the three women, before moving to the next stack, where he repeated the process.

Valinus, who had already ejaculated two times into Lavinia’s mouth by then, had stepped down to watch Leonidas at work with the seven women.  He had never seen anything like it before and he watched him with mouth open, as did everyone in the room, except Lavinia and the six men who were pleasuring her.  She fixed herself on Gratianus who lay back on the table, her sphincter tightly gripping his cock at the base while one man knelt over her and drove his member alternately in and out of her cunnus.  Another slave knelt near her and sucked her elongated clitoris.  Two others knelt on either side of her face, with a third kneeling over her chest and with a perfect rhythm, she turned her head from side to side or up and down in front, swallowing one or the other cocks.

I suppose that some people might find the scene above (and the dozens more very much like it that this novel offers) to be exciting.  I have the notion that Mr. Alexandros was aroused when he wrote this, mostly because he repeated the overall pattern so many times.  However, when he was penning this scene, he probably identified with one (or more) of the characters.  He imagined their thoughts and their feelings.  None of the inner life of any of the characters is actually expressed in the text.  We don't know what they're feeling, even on the level of the senses, let alone emotionally.  Perhaps the mere suggestion of such uninhibitedly lustful activity is enough to turn on some people.  For me, piles of bodies are simply boring. 

 There are other problems with The Roman Slave.  It takes more than a few Latin words and disparaging references to Cato's puritanical morality to establish a sense of place and culture.  Like Mr. Alexandros, I've always been fascinated by classical Greece and Rome, but I don't feel that this book conveys the reader to a believable world of the past, as effective historical fiction should do.  Blog entries by the author suggest that Lavinia's home, the lascivious city of Mithir, was located in Phrygia (central Turkey) but he never follows up on that cultural note in this book.  In particular, he misses the opportunity to focus on the Phrygian tradition of worshiping the Mother Goddess, Cybele, though this would have fit very well within the confines of the story.

The Roman Slave does have some points in its favor.  It is definitely sex-positive and has a feminist bent.  Everyone participates willingly in the randy activities throughout the book.  Everyone comes, many times.  Women's sexual satisfaction is viewed as essential for health and harmony, and it is the women in Alexandros' Rome who keep the men as pleasure slaves.  I'd love to have a more nuanced view of these women's experiences. Unfortunately, even Lavinia, the most fully realized female character, is rather shallow.

Secondly, I was relieved to find that this book was not another tired fantasy in which the slaves are bound, beaten and otherwise abused for the reader's titillation.  Anyone who is at all familiar with my work will know that I love a well-written BDSM tale.  However, the slaves-in-chains scenario has been so overworked that it is rare to find someone who can give it a fresh twist.  Mr. Alexandros does not try.  Aside from some incest (at least, I think the protagonists were brother and sister - it was hard to keep track!), there's little kinkiness in this book (By my definition.  I suppose that not everyone would call orgies vanilla.) 

In short, I applaud Mr. Alexandros' energy in penning this substantial work.  I only wish that it offered the substance that its length requires.

Envy. It's one of the hazards of reviewing work in one's own genre. Every so often you encounter a book so wonderful that you can't help wishing you'd written it yourself. If you're not careful, it can spoil your whole day.

The Things That Make Me Give In is one of those books. Charlotte Stein has penned a collection of imaginative, intense and extremely nasty erotic tales, which manage to stimulate the senses without neglecting the intellect. I'd love to claim it as my own. This book, though, belongs uniquely to Charlotte, because I believe it's a brazen exploration of her personal fantasies (and perhaps her experiences). Usually I refer more formally to authors in my reviews, but this volume demands a more intimate tone. In this book, Charlotte bares all. 

She has a distinctive voice, brash, energetic, self-deprecating, introspective, full of sentence fragments and body parts. Her stories rush forward, born along on the current of an inner monologue.  Not every tale is first person (though many of them are), but they might as well be. We're in the head of the main character (in every case but one, a woman) who is simultaneously analyzing everything and oozing for some action. To give you a taste, here's a segment from one of my favorite tales, “Dirty Disgusting You:”

His leg brushes mine, and it's terrible but I like it. I think about last week in the cinema, watching pinkly sweet bodies pretend to enjoy each other on the screen, the screen then fading to black just as it got to the really good bits. And him whispering through the darkness at me: Do you want to make our own good bits up?

I did. I do. But then he asked me to touch myself and I couldn't do it. I told him so, too, and he laughed. Though he hadn't laughed at all when I told him that I'd never touched myself. Not ever.

The look on his face! As though a grown woman who never masturbated was the equivalent of a straight man never looking at a big pair of tits. That shocked, slightly condescending expression made me say some spiteful things to him, but none of them landed. Or, at least, he never made me feel bad for saying them.  

The voice is cheeky, fresh and a bit wild. The stories vary, but the voice is consistent. This is perhaps, the book's main weakness. In some ways it feels more like a novel than a collection of stories.  The woman whose mind we inhabit differs superficially from one story to the next, but somehow I had the sense that she was really a single character, a single woman, whom I'm fairly convinced is Charlotte herself.

This woman likes big men, sometimes more than one at a time. She's turned on by power games, whether she's on the top or the bottom. She pretends to be innocent but is willing to do just about anything if someone teases her enough. She loves to be fucked hard and deluged in come. She's drawn to strangeness, otherness, feeling kinship with people who are “Different on the Inside,” to cite the title of one tale.

In “Because I Made You So,” she's a student lusting helplessly for her stern professor. In “Her Father Disapproves,” she's the girl next door, teasing the junior accountant her father has invited to a summer getaway.  “Just Be Good” puts her in the role of the juvenile delinquent, challenging the town sheriff to put her in handcuffs. In “Yes/,”,she agrees to do whatever her partner orders; in the paired tale  “/Yes,” she's the one giving the orders. In neither case does she get exactly what she expects.

The sex in The Things That Make Me Give In is visceral and messy, but it's never just sex. There's always a subtext, always the analysis. Talking is another kind of fucking (the whole point of her bittersweet tale “Phoned In”).  Charlotte understands the feedback loop between mind and body; she can't turn off her mind even when someone is trying to fuck her brains out.

I part the lips of my pussy myself, and let that slippery tip slide against it. Pleasure surges and tries to force me over the edge into orgasm, but I hold off. I want him to rub against my clit and then push his cock into me. I want him to fuck me the way that he just fucked himself, in punishing strokes that make me pant harder and say more than I'm doing now.

And when I tell him all this, he sings my praises.

I sing his right back. I tell him all the things I've always wanted to, but left by the wayside because they sounded too cheesy or too clichéd or too much. When he pushes his cock through my slit and down to my wet and waiting hole, I tell him that he's so big, that he fills me like nothing else, that I love his cock in my pussy.

He tilts my hips to meet his thrusts, one-handed. Just one big hand on my hip. His fingers stir against my clit, and my orgasm begins something like fluttering. Wings beating against my skin. Saying something now only makes them beat harder.

Given all the fucking and sucking and coming in this collection, I find it interesting that my favorite tale involves no physical sex at all – only stories about sex. “For You,” one of the darker contributions in the book, is narrated by a nurse caring for a cardiac patient who is waiting for a transplant heart. Dwelling in the shadow of death, he concocts lascivious fables of irresistible desire for his caretaker. His words leave her damp and twitching as they bear him away to the surgery he might not survive.

This story could, of course, represent the entire book in a nutshell.

Different strokes for different folks. Reviewing erotica has made me realize the truth of this aphorism. When I read a book for review and find that it does not arouse me in the least, is that the author's fault, or my own? Is it possible for me to honestly assess the erotic potential of a work that bases its appeal on some fetish that I find completely uninteresting or even disturbing?

This question reared its head as I was reading Lance Porter's collection of femdom stories. I'm sure that Mr. Porter thinks that his stories are titillating. Virgin Books/Nexus must think so too; this is at least his second publication with Nexus, the first of which was apparently nominated for an erotic writing award.

So when I find that five of the six tales leave me unmoved at best, annoyed and disgusted at worst, is this because I'm not a femdom enthusiast? Because I am too blind to see the erotic elements in a scenario where a woman uses and abuses a man or men for her own pleasure?  Well –I've written such scenes myself, and thought that they were pretty hot. On the other hand, much of the femdom work that I've reviewed has left me cold, or worse. Is Mr. Porter the victim of my lack of erotic imagination?

I don't believe so. The Wicked Sex has some positive features, but I think that generally it lacks a critical characteristic that is a prerequisite for an erotic experience, at least for me: sympathetic characters with whom I can identify. Mr. Porter's characters, both male and female, are either stereotyped caricatures, or selfish villains, or both.

The first story in the collection, “Bound by a Woman,” is the worst. Gunther is a middle-aged German restauranteur who is waiting to meet his gorgeous Asian mail order bride. Bee, the bride, turns out to be a cruel and self-centered creature who, when she discovers that he's not as rich or young as she had hoped, binds Gunther with her stockings, stuffs her panties in his mouth, and hangs him from a hook on the wall of his apartment while she goes out shopping on his credit cards. Eventually she screws his younger and more virile neighbor, and then leaves, with Gunther still dangling from the hook.

Bee treats Gunther despicably, not because it arouses her, or him, but because she's angry with him and doesn't care in the least what happens to him. On the other hand, one can't really feel much sympathy for Gunther (at least I couldn't), who is a chauvinistic liar marrying strictly for sex (and the satisfaction of showing off his Asian beauty to all the German women who rejected him over the years). Since I really disliked both the main characters, how could I get emotionally involved in the story?

To compound the problem, this story in particular had some very sloppy writing, most notably a sudden and confusing shift in POV from Gunther to his neighbor Siegfried during the climactic cuckolding scene. Then there are sentences like the following:

“He roared in response, squeezed her juddering ass cheeks between his clawing fingers and drove himself with ever-greater vigour. “
“Juddering” may not be the least erotic word in the language, but if I were trying to paint a sexy picture, I'd avoid it!

“Teen Tease”, the second story in the collection, is more tightly written. The narrator is an eighteen-year-old sexpot who gets her kicks tormenting her ex-gangster stepfather and making her ex-stripper mother jealous. The tale offers some sly humor in its images of the narrator and her classmates in Catholic high school, trying to seduce the incorruptible Father John. I also found the unexpected twist at the end quite clever. But arousing? With whom am I supposed to identify? The truly wicked teen narrator, who delights in her cruel power? The disgusting mafioso pervert who drools at her feet? Sorry, but the only person for whom I felt the least concern was the beleaguered priest.

The third tale in The Wicked Sex is entitled “The Land of the Giant Supermodels.” The title says it all. A group of fifty or so men, applying to appear in a commercial with some famous beauties, are abducted to a world inhabited by women fifty feet tall. One by one the men try to escape and meet various horrible fates, until the narrator, the last remaining prisoner, is crushed to death in a supermodel's vagina.

This tale really is as ridiculous as it sounds. Actually, it's rather humorous, and again, has an ending that is more subtle than I had expected As erotica, though, it fails miserably, at least in my opinion.

“Heartless,” the fourth story, is a rather incoherent tale of a young man driven mad by his lust for the woman who spurned him. “Imperatrix,” the last story in the volume, postulates a competition between two dominant women to see which one can exhaust the most men. In this story, at least, the men are willing participants, well paid to service and satisfy Valerie Sales and her archrival Katerina Dominova. The story is fun, if not very original, with a few genuine fireworks set off between the two women. (The men here are  no more than animate sex toys.)

The one story that did strike some sparks for me was “Mistress of the Hunt.”  This tale, loosely based on the classical myth of Diana and Actaeon, succeeds in evoking an aura of mystery as well as a terrible sense of tragic inevitability. Young, virile Acton is hired to care for Mistress Delia's hounds. He suffers unbearable desire for her chaste beauty, yet at the same time resents the haughty manner in which she wields her power. When he spies on her bathing, she exacts the ultimate in punishment. Mr. Porter manages to suggest that this scenario has been played out many times in the past, and that the future would see new incarnations of the Huntress and her eternal prey. Although the exposition is a bit rambling and Mr. Porter throws in a variety of characters that distract from the central theme, this tale does merit the description “erotic.”

Sometimes I hate being a reviewer. I'd rather just be a reader, with no goal other than self-entertainment and occasional enlightenment. Instead, I'm engaged in ongoing evaluation every time I open a book or a PDF file.  It doesn't matter whether I plan to review the book or not. The critical mindset becomes a habit. These days I can't just read; I have to judge.

When I was still innocent--many years ago, before I began writing reviews--I might well have loved Threesomes. I've always been attracted to the notion of ménage (even before I had the chance to participate in one). I especially like group sex where everyone gets it on with everyone else regardless of gender or ostensible orientation. Threesomes indulges my polymorphously perverse tendencies by serving up pretty much every combination imaginable: gay men who are still not opposed to having sex with a woman, straight women drawn into lesbian embraces or bonds, straight men willing-- no, eager--to bend over and offer their butts to their queer companions in the mini-orgy. Even"straight" male-female interactions take on new spice in the context of additional participants.

I give Ms. Perkins, the editor of this collection, two thumbs up for the variety of its stories. I wish that I could say the same for the quality of the writing.

Of the dozen stories in this anthology, only three stand out for me as both original and well-written. "Center Part" by Hobart Glass offers an intriguing three-way lesbian encounter in which one of the participants is in some sense imaginary. Natalie is seriously in lust with her gorgeous hairdresser Hillary, but still holding a torch for the mysterious Safi who was Natalie's first woman lover. Safi returned to her native Africa and then disappeared, leaving a huge hole in Natalie's life. Hillary manages to conjure Safi to join in Natalie's sexual healing. The result is arousing and erotic in the truest sense of the word, as rich with the ache of desire as with its fulfillment.

 Cynthia Genty's contribution "Just Friends" is fascinating because of the complex relationships between its characters.  "Back when Matt and I were trying to be lovers, he used to talk dirty to me on the phone," Ms. Gentry's tale begins. Matt and the narrator have a powerful sexual connection, but personality and circumstances become obstacles too serious to overcome. They decide to be just friends, but when they meet for a seemingly casual drink, the narrator discovers that Matt still recalls her fantasies and is eager to fulfill them. There's no happily ever after, though--at least not for her and Matt.

The third gem in this anthology is Kilt Kilpatrick's hilarious "Later, Day Saints":

I know, I know, this is the part where I go straight to hell. But can you honestly blame me? Are you trying to tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing in my place? Bitch, you are such a liar!

So listen, there I am, minding my business in the Swinging Bachelorette Pad. I should have been working on my term paper, but I was still collating my data and letting the outline marinate a while. Get off my case already, that's my process, and you have to respect that, right?

I was giggling already, but my amusement turned to awe as I watched how the narrator systematically seduces and corrupts the two (extremely cute) Mormon missionaries who show up at her door.  Actually, this is not the first story I've read based on this premise. (The other was equally good, but the main character was different enough that this seemed original.) The sexual shenanigans that ensue are playful but intense, cleverly skirting the edge of parody without stepping over.

Moving from the special to the adequate,  Em Brown's "And Damian Makes Four" and Brit M.'s "Two Men and a Lady Prequel" are competently composed stroke fiction, replete with sexual activities but with little plot or point. Readers whose main interest is arousal will probably enjoy them.

The remaining stories in the collection are hackneyed, badly written, or both. As a policy, I don't mention the names of stories that I rate negatively. I'm an author myself, and I know how much that would hurt. Suffice it to say that the other offerings in Threesomes ranged from the implausible and incoherent fantasy scenarios buried in purple prose, to painfully amateurish efforts that read like offerings on a free "true confessions" website. (Sorry but I don't consider references to a woman's "rack" and "jugs" to be at all erotic.) In one case, I debated whether the story was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, a clever imitation of some vintage tale from the days of the alt.sex newsgroups. I decided, alas, that this was not the case.

Group sex is a potent fantasy, and this book tries to tap into that erotic potential. It succeeds only occasionally. One might ask whether a few noteworthy tales might be enough to save a book. However, I've read some anthologies lately in which almost every story was exceptional. Those books set the bar pretty high.

Whispers of the Flesh is the third volume in Louisa Burton’s Hidden Grotto series of erotic novels. In 2008, I reviewed the first two books in the series, noting that they were carefully crafted and highly entertaining. Entertainment and relatively wholesome titillation appear to be Ms. Burton’s objectives in this series, and Whispers of the Flesh succeeds in achieving these goals at least as well as the previous installments.

The series is set in the mysterious valley of the Grotte Cachée, hidden in the mountains of Auvergne, France. Despite its isolation, the valley has been inhabited for long ages by a variety of peoples. It houses sacred altars among ancient oaks, a marble bath house decorated with outrageous erotic sculpture, a volcanic cave with a healing spring and psychotropic vapors, and the medieval chateau where generations of seigneurs have lived out their lives over the centuries.

The valley is also home to a quartet of immortals whom the seigneurs have sworn to protect and serve. Inigo the satyr is a happy-go-lucky ambisexual with prodigious genitalia and a libido to match. Lili is a stunningly beautiful Mesopotamian goddess who requires sexual congress with mortals in order to survive. Elic is a Norse demon who can assume the shape of either male or female in order to couple with humans of either sex. Finally, Darius is a djinn with the power to assume animal shapes and to heal. He is cursed with an irresistible sensitivity to human emotion; if he senses a human’s desire, he cannot help but fulfill it. 

The earlier books were structured as a series of vignettes jumping back and forth through time. Through privilege or chance, humans would visit the chateau and be drawn into the sexual games and intrigues of the four “follets”. The follets need a continuous supply of human lust. The lord of the Hidden Grotto is committed to providing this. Across the centuries, the chateau has played host to innumerable seductions, orgies, slave auctions, and mock satanic rituals. The humans involved rarely come to understand that their primary role is to fulfill the sexual requirements of the immortals. Nevertheless, they usually leave sated, and often wiser, for their experiences

Whispers of the Flesh offers a slightly different structure. The action occurs in three time periods: the eighteen twenties, the early nineteen seventies, and the present. However, the stories are intertwined. Back in the nineteenth century, a rigidly chaste Jesuit arrives at the chateau, ostensibly to complete a landscape design plan but actually to investigate persistent rumors of demons and black magic.

At the height of the hippie era, a clot of young pleasure seekers converge on the valley for a week of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Among them is the future wife of the current administrateur, the seneschal whose descendants over the ages have organized life for the seigneur of the Grotte Cachée.

In the present, the adminstrateur Emmett Archer lies on his deathbed, suffering from aggressive pulmonary fibrosis. His daughter Isabel has arrived at the chateau to spend what are probably his last days, and to contemplate how to refuse the responsibility of taking over his hereditary position. She cannot bear to spend her life serving the young seigneur Adrian Morel, for whom she harbors an impossible passion. Also visiting is Hitch, an old comrade of Emmett’s from the days of the Vietnam war.

Each thread of the tale influences future events. To avoid revealing to much, I won’t say anything more about the plot. However, the new structure of this novel gives it a different rhythm than the previous books, in some ways more effective.

When I reviewed the earlier books, I commented that the characterizations of the follets seemed   less fully realized than those of the humans around them, partly because they do not involve themselves emotionally with their  “victims”. I found Whispers of the Flesh more satisfying in this regard. Both Darius and Lili reveal themselves more fully, especially in their interactions with the priest David Beckett. Elic and Lili, lovers who cannot physically consummate their passion, suffer from jealousy and remorse. And Isabel, a woman from the outside world despite her familiarity with the follets, has some serious conflicts with them.

Although it delves somewhat deeper into the immortals’ history and motivations and even has intimations of tragedy and death, Whispers of the Flesh still struck me as a light-hearted romp, full of extravagant sexual excess enjoyed mostly for the pleasure of it. The two exceptions are Lili’s seduction of Beckett, who struggles against his own vows of chastity, and Isabel’s apparently doomed coupling with Adrian. Both of these scenes offered an emotional intensity lacking in most of the sexual interactions. 

Ms. Burton’s sex scenes are a lot of fun. Also, the entire attitude of this series is emphatically sex-positive. Sex almost always produces favorable outcomes.

On the other hand, my personal notion of eroticism requires something more than just mutual pleasure. For me, a story needs to have some sort of edge to be erotic. Something more important than a climax needs to be at stake. Thus, though I found Whispers of the Flesh to be entertaining, it was only occasionally arousing. This of course is a personal reaction. For some people, the very notion of unbridled sexual activity is exciting. The follets gleefully violate taboos left and right. For some readers, this will be a turn on. I may just be jaded.

In any case, Whispers of the Flesh offers safe, sane, diverse and diverting sex, set in an historically-convincing environment laced with just the right amount of magic. If this sounds appealing, I recommend the book highly.

Zenthe is the Earth Mother, the supreme Goddess of fertility and desire. Zenthe is also the volcano that towers over the far-flung lands of Corsinium, from the lush fields of Margate to the desert frontiers at Damtown. The dark waters of Zenthe’s Mirror, the bottomless lake that half-fills the crater, reflect the gleaming spires and halls of her centuries-old temple perched along the volcano’s rim. Within the temple, High Priestess Adita, the latest ever-young incarnation of Zenthe, presides over orgiastic rituals of fleshy bliss and waits for the one true Lover who will claim her forever. Adita struggles against loneliness, resisting the despair that has been the downfall of so many of her predecessors. Meanwhile, the rising power of a violent, paternalistic faith threatens to subjugate and destroy the Goddess and her people.

In Woman of the Mountain, Angela Caperton has created a vividly sensual world maintained by an intriguing mythos. Woman of the Mountain is about religion and sex. It is also concerned with the feminine, nurturing principle, contrasted with the masculine instinct to conquer. As I am personally fascinated by the spiritual aspects of sex, I found Ms. Caperton’s thesis exciting. Unfortunately, she does not completely succeed in realizing the promise of her theme.

One problem (and I’m certain my readers will find this astonishing) is the fact that Woman of the Mountain includes too many sex scenes. Perhaps I should qualify this and say that the book contains too many scenes where the characters couple purely for immediate pleasure, without any deeper connection. In Zenthe’s world, sex should be a sacrament, but all too often, even among the folk of the temple, it seems to be no more than a recreation. Rarely is there a sense of reverence; a sense of communion in the flesh should sanctify Zenthe’s rites.

A second difficulty lies in the characters, who are generally too simple and one-sided to be realistic or to invite identification. Adita, in particular, seemed empty, a sketch of a woman who fills a necessary role in the plot but who never comes alive. Casmin, her loyal captain of the guard, has more depth, with his steadfast faith in the Goddess and his earthly but suppressed desire for Adita, but he is still the archetypal hero, with no flaws to make him real. The scheming, sexually opportunistic priestess Rivah was particularly disappointing. When we first meet her, she is an ambitious novice in Zenthe’s temple. There’s an almost childish glee in the manner with which she blackmails an older Priestess into granting her the boon of ordination. I was hoping that Rivah would prove to be a complex villain, or at least a powerful one. Ultimately, she turns out to be treacherous, but weak and uninteresting in her uninspired evil.

Perhaps the most successful character in this tale is Sul Tarkus, the prophet of the Father-God Kahmudj, leader of the hordes who lay siege to the holy mountain and the body of Adita. With his charisma and his fanatic certainty that he is the incarnation of his god, he is intensely believable (and indeed, familiar). When he finally stands face to face with Adita and is vanquished by his own doubts, the reader feels relief and joy, but also sympathy.

Woman of the Mountain is at its best in the scenes of high drama, when the mysteries of divine power are made manifest. When Sul Tarkus captures and opens the sacred floodgates on the River Sorrow, loosing the torrent to flow into the desert lands even as he dangles the sex-besotted Rivah above the abyss, I hardly dared to breath. I half-expected him to sacrifice her to his brutal god. I half-expected the power of Zenthe to rise in the traitorous priestess, calling her back to fulfill her long-ignored vows. When Sul Tarkus confronts Adita, alone at the pinnacle of Zenthe’s Needle, I knew that a miracle was imminent. And when the volcano/goddess belches lava and steam to fight off her attackers, I became a true believer.

All in all, I found Woman of the Mountain diverting but disappointing. The grand themes of sexual union as a sacrament, of devotion and sacrifice to a higher power, of love as a force transcending death and time, rise in the background, but they are obscured, like Zenthe’s face behind its seductive veil. I have the sense that Ms. Caperton wanted to write a different book, a book of erotic mysteries that celebrates the magic of the flesh. Of course, her audience may prefer the book that she actually produced, full of saucy wenches and lively, superficial rolls in the hay. As for me, I regret the loss of the vision that I sense behind this book, the hints of transcendence that are, for the most part, unrealized.

It's tough to say anything original about vampires. I'd estimate that at least 20% of the ebooks rolling  onto the 'Net each month feature blood drinkers of some sort or other. Of course, most of these beguiling monsters are not lesbians (though quite a few are gay). Cecilia Tan's collection gives lesbian vampires their day in the sun (metaphorically speaking). All in all, these tales succeed remarkably well in providing a variety of scenarios and styles, taking the classic themes of love, blood and death and ringing some exciting changes.

Possibly the most creative tale in the book, and one of my personal favorites, is Lori Selke's "At the Pageant, the Vamp". The vamp of the title is none other than Theda Bara, super-star of the silent screen, whose dark allure captivated her generation. "Men fall at her feet like cherry blossoms," Ms. Selke writes. "She consumes her lovers to the bone. The century is still an adolescent, and she is the ultimate expression of the era's New Woman: independent, predatory, sweet and deadly as a poison flower's kiss." When the diva is asked to judge an international pageant of female "vampires," however, she discovers that she is just a pale imitation of the real thing.

"Till Death," by Fran Walker, gives us a lesbian vampire couple with relationship problems that seem all too familiar. The nameless narrator gets turned on by danger. Her girl Valerie is more cautious and can't give her what she needs. The silences, the half-truths, the recriminations, are achingly realistic despite the paranormal nature of the characters. There's a happy ending, though, involving a wooden stake.

Cat Rambo's "The Queen of Goth and Sugar" begins: "Some people read palms; I read groceries." The queen of the title is an elegant vamp with a taste for candy, who obligingly helps the narrator escape from her abusive boyfriend as well as provides a sample of vampire sex.

"A Sunny Sky," M. Johnson's tightly-written contribution, revolves around two dykes, one of whom has a huge crush on the other. Against a background of nicely orchestrated BDSM, Ms. Johnson spins a satisfying tale of female power and lust.

Sacchi Green's story "Jessabel" is set post-Civil war, where a woman living as a man discovers the girl she loved and lost to death dancing in a saloon. The dialect and the emotions in this story both ring true.

Meanwhile, Jewelle Gomez' tale, "Hope on the Mississippi: 2025," paints a future in which individuals struggle against corporate dictatorship and an ex-slave turned vampire returns to meet the grand-daughter of her human lover.

The awkwardly-titled "When Not to Be Receives Reproach..." by Elizabeth Thorne, is a philosophical tale in which Moira tires of eternity and chooses to become mortal. After this decision, she encounters her long-time vampire lover Celia. Their coupling, a moment snatched from time as Moira ages, is poignant and intense.

"Strange Bedfellows" by Moondancer Drake gives us another battered woman, this one a vampire fleeing with her children. Sari, a woman of the Wolfen clan, harbors her, loves her and helps her to free herself from her abusive mate.

Not every story in the book deserves praise. Several struck me as contrived and over-written. One had an appealing start but became so confused and incoherent that I really didn't get the point. No collection is perfect, however, and this one includes some exceptional stories that balance the less successful ones.

Furthermore, even the stories that I liked less offered some creative premises: a fallen angel ravishing an innocent at the altar; a trio of lesbian vampires pulling a bank job; a vampire and a werewolf matched by a computer dating service.

Creating a vampire tale that doesn't get lost in the crowd is a challenge. I know, because I've tried. Women of the Bite offers more surprises than you'd expect from this somewhat over-exposed genre.

A few years ago, my dear friend Seneca Mayfair wrote a wonderful erotic story entitled “The Bookseller's Dream,” which was published in my Cream anthology. The heroine in this story, Alexi, has a book fetish; she loves to touch books, smell them, rub them all over her body until she comes.

X: The Erotic Treasury would have had Alexi wet in an instant. Bound in claret silk patterned with a swirling floral design halfway between William Morris and Georgia O'Keefe, with gold lettering embossed on the spine and thick, smooth pages, the book is heavy enough to secure my teetering pile of manuscripts, but not, of course, too heavy to read in bed. It comes in a slip box decorated with the same pattern, with a bold X carved out of the front so that silk shows through.

It's a tasteful and beautiful volume.  It's not, in Seneca's words, a “one-night stand book.” Susie Bright and Chronicle Books were brave to publish it now, at the hefty price of $35, at a moment when the world is reeling from compounded financial catastrophes. On the other hand, for that price you get forty stories, three-hundred-sixty plus pages. Less than a dollar per story. And rest assured, nearly every one is more than worth the cost.

X is a rich collection culled from Ms. Bright's illustrious decade and a half as editor of the Best American Erotica series. Aside from its impressive size and elegant presentation, it is notable for the uniformly high quality of the writing and for the diversity of themes and styles.

Michael Dorsey's “Milk” offers the dreamy eroticism of a young Russian man confronted with the essence of femininity.  Anne Tourney's astonishingly perverse “Full Metal Corset” explores the irresistible beauty of pain. “Slow Dance on the Fault Line,” by Donald Rawley, takes a stroll through a night-time carny world in which the ugliest man may be the one to fulfill your true desires. Matthew Addison's gentle fable “Wish Girls” is a meditation on the pitfalls of fantasy.

The book includes raw encounters with strangers (Paula Bomer's “On the Road with Sonia”) and    couples' games on the edge (“Yes” by Donna George Story and “Red Light, Green Light” by Shanna Germain). There's tear-inducing romance (“Valentine's Day in Jail” by Susan Musgrave), irony (Robert Olen Butler's “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot”), humor (“Gifts from Santa” by Tsaurah Litzky and “Loved It and Set it Free” by Lisa Montanarelli) and gory horror (Vicki Hendricks' “Must Bite”).

A few of these stories have happy endings, but most conclude ambiguously, some even tragically.  Many offer life lessons.  In Susannah Indigo's “Ratatouille,” a man learns that if he tries to hold on to his perfect lover, he'll lose her.  In “God's Gift” by Salome Wilde, a horny rock-and-roll idol known as a womanizer is reincarnated as a vibrator. “Inspiration” by Eric Albert is an exceptionally raunchy fantasy spun by a man at the request of his partner who is on her deathbed.

I spent more than two weeks reading this book. This was not a consume-it-and-throw-it-away collection.  I couldn't tackle more than two or three stories at a sitting.  I wanted to savor each one, not rush on to the next.

My one complaint about this book is that, despite its stylistic diversity, it is overwhelmingly heterosexual.  Among forty tales, there are only two or three with lesbian themes or activities, and no gay male erotica at all, aside from Carol Queen's rowdy reminiscences of a Mexican bathhouse.  Clearly, as an editor, Ms. Bright has the final decision on what to include.  However, the slip box boasts “If there's only room for one book on your bedside table, this should be it.”  I don't think that it is fair to suggest that this book represents the full range and richness of literary erotica available today. This is Ms. Bright's selection, and it presumably reflects her tastes.  Other editors (including yours truly) might have made different choices.

Overall, however, X: The Erotic Treasury succeeds admirably in its objectives, offering a double helping of stories that are both sexy and thought provoking.  The volume would make a wonderful birthday or anniversary gift.