April 20, 2014

Review: Telling Tales by Charlotte Stein

Not surprisingly, this is another excellent book by Charlotte Stein. Although it is really just a very slightly different take on a familiar Stein characters, it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Four old friends spend a month doing up a house - a spurious excuse to get them together for sexy times. Allie (first person narrator) has had a crush on Wade (compulsory dickhead) ever since College. Her friend Kitty is a good time girl, up for anything. Then there is Cameron, gorgeous repressed, submissive Cam, who has been in love with Allie for as long as Allie has been with Wade.

The revealing of all these secrets is through the telling and reading of deliciously filthy stories. Allie quickly realises that Wade is not for her and that Cameron is willing, eager, to do absolutely everything that Allie wants. It's total wish fulfilment. And utterly hot.

Obviously with four characters stuck in a big empty house, there is plenty of combinations. But the story sticks closely to Allie and Cameron, and the other two (especially Kitty, who isn't really much of a character in and of herself) are just there as a foil to Allie and Cameron. To be the other characters in their stories (sort of meta - stories in stories).

I love that Allie revels in her new found power. The things that Cameron wants - a sort of cuckolding, for him to be the slave, to be her and Kitty's toything, for her to take control,  - they turn her on. And frankly, most of it turns me on too. It skirts near M/f crappiness, but somehow it all seems like part of the relationship between Cam and Allie.

Anyhow, I sincerely enjoyed this. I give it a B+.


March 10, 2014

Femdom Round up of Indeterminate Length...

It's been rather a long time since my last post. I seem to have lost my inclination for blogging somewhat and didn't think that anyone would notice. People who did notice - hello! Thank you for getting in touch - I will do my best to be in contact soon!

I can't even say that I haven't been reading. I have. I finally got around to reading Holding the Cards by Joey Hill. I'd been putting it off, because unusually for Joey Hill, the reviews weren't that great. The reviews were right. This isn't that great. I might get around to a full review of it at some point. But given that at this stage, that would probably involve re-reading it, I might well not. Suffice to say that the plot was wishy-washy and the whole premise needed a lot of suspension of disbelief that the characters weren't strongly enough drawn to hold together.

I think that my current block on blogging is partly due to trying to read Taste, An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story by Beth Taylor. I wanted to like this, I really did. It came recommended. I wanted to at least read enough of it to be able to review it fairly. But it's still on my kindle, unread, because I found it literally unreadable. It's told primarily though email correspondence (a style which was fun in the 90s and seems to have unfortunately been brought back by FSOG). That wasn't the main problem though - it was the immediate past / immediate future / present tense story telling (I can't be bothered to really establish which is which - please educate me in the comments if you so wish) which was unbearable for me. Usually books tell stories in the past tense ("she went to the shops"); this told actions as they happened ("she goes to the shops"). Conventions are there because it makes it easy for the consumer. I couldn't see any reason for defying the convention and I didn't enjoy the change. It didn't help that the plot (as far as I got with it) seemed to be entirely made up of two brothers emailing each other and the conflict was going to be that one was a male sub. Really. WTF is it his brother's business, and aren't there better conflicts to have, anyway, than "OMG you're into F/m BDSM".

I've recently been enjoying the Magnus pack series by Shelly Laurenston. Not femdom really, she writes paranormal romance with heroines who are totally psychopathic and men who like them as truly gun wielding and insane as they are. The sex is a bit vanilla and M/f, but the heroines are pretty demanding and give as good as they get. The characters are great, even if the world building is a bit "eh, I'll ignore that, because laws of physics clearly don't apply here"... One reviewer said that you would enjoy one of the books if you liked heroines coarse and mannish. I bought it.


Other stuff that sounds promising is Love Enraptured by Jodi Redford. The blurb says:
"This book contains male groveling, the occasional blindfold and feather tickler, wicked sex magic, and a fae thief who isn’t afraid to wear ass-less chaps when the job calls for it."
That is probably good enough incentive to induce me to buy it.

As for publishers etc., you might like to hear about the awkwardly named Fanny Press. Classy. They have a selection of interesting looking tagged books, including hot wife, cuckold and dominatrix. Nothing labelled femdom though.

I also found time for watching the cult classic, The Princess Bride. I now can quote: "Inconceivable," with the best of them. The film though was... well.... Look, it was terrible. It was kind of hilariously terrible. I argued that it was so bad, it was good, as I did enjoy it even as I rolled my eyes and cringed all the way through. My sub was not impressed at all though. I agree that the bit at the beginning when he says "As you wish," is nice. But I rather thought that the whole thing went down-hill from there. Don't lynch me.

One last thing. Go and check out http://critiquemydickpic.tumblr.com/ It's fun for women and a valuable educational resource for me. And read what the author of the tumblr says she has learned about male insecurities and dicks. It's great. The whole thing is just awesome.