Review Tuesday: Bound by the Blood by Cecilia Tan -- #BDSM #EroticRomance #ReviewTuesday

Bound by the Blood by Cecilia Tan

Flingass Productions, 2026

Sex is magic. I won’t be able to start this way in my Amazon review or I’ll be censored, but on my own blog I can speak the truth, a truth I’ve known personally for as long as I can remember. Of course I’m not talking about the reflexive, bored, scratching-an-itch type of sex, but the kind where there’s a genuine bond between you and your partner, where you open yourself emotionally as well as physically. It might start as a conjunction of bodies but soon you understand that the physical is just a conduit. Intense pleasure can blast you out of your body, pushing you beyond the limits of the of the mundane into a realm where the ordinary rules don’t necessarily apply. Barriers can dissolve. You may find yourself hearing your partner’s thoughts or experiencing their sensations as if they were your own. You may discover you have powers you never imagined – for instance, the power to intuit your lover’s deepest desires and to make them manifest. This is the kind of sex that can change you, or even change the world.

The erotic dynamics in a serious and sincere BDSM relationship have a special potential to expand beyond the physical realm, because the trust and connection often go deeper than in vanilla scenarios. Indeed, a scene may be extremely arousing without there being any explicitly sexual acts involved. Power lies at the heard of BDSM. This is not just jargon. The submissive surrenders their body and their will; the dominant wields the offered power to support and satisfy both participants in the D/s dance. And in some scenes, things happen—things that can’t be completely explained by a mechanistic view of the universe. The first time I submitted to my master, I saw his fantasies of domination, as clearly as if he’d been narrating them to me out loud. Our discussions afterward confirmed my visions; I wasn’t just imagining things.

At its heart, Bound by the Blood is an exploration and exposition of this truth. When Mira and Clive meet at a kink club, neither can quite believe the immediate connection they feel to one another. Even in their first encounter (an extremely erotic punishment scene), there’s evidence of their perfect reciprocity.

Through Clive, Mira becomes involved with the quirky, fractious members of the Circle of Light, a (possibly) ancient secret organization of sex magic practitioners. The Circle is engaged in an ongoing struggle with their nemesis, the Partisans of Fire. Though the members are loathe at first to trust her, she proves unexpectedly adept at their rituals. Her apparently unbreakable psychic bond with Clive enhances her capabilities but means that in every crisis she has more to lose. Meanwhile, both she and Clive harbor deeply-buried secrets that warp their power in unexpected ways. Both will need to face their pain and admit their vulnerability and guilt before they can fully commit to one another.

Bound by the Blood might be called an erotic fantasy. In my view, it’s fantasy at several levels, some of which work better than others.

The core and anchor of the book is the incredibly arousing bond that exists between Mira and Clive. Clive offers himself completely to Mira, body and spirit. He literally gives her his life. If she decrees that he must perish, he’s willing.

Cecilia Tan does an amazing job conveying the seductive intensity of this connection, from both the dominant’s and the submissive’s perspectives. (The latter is particularly impressive since Mira, the dominant, is the POV character throughout the novel.)

We devotees of power exchange love to fantasize about perfection: perfect devotion, perfect surrender, perfect control. This is the ultimate desire. I suspect that this sort of total connection is in fact a fantasy that can never be achieved. We all have limits, much as we might wish we did not. We all can be selfish. No one can fully banish fear or anger. While you’re reading Bound in the Blood, though, the author convinces you it’s possible and manages to convey the intoxicating, yes, magical, experience of a perfect bond.

The novel offers fantasy at another level as well, in its explications of the Circle of Light and the Partisans of Fire, with their histories, rituals and conflicts. Indeed the book is subtitled: “An Urban Fantasy BDSM Romantic Suspense”. (That’s a bit of a heavy burden for one novel to bear.)

I had some problems with this aspect of the fantasy. Although I loved the characters of Jair, Kish, Roland and Niko (as well as Barrow, a fascinating villain), the plot felt somewhat incoherent. There’s a lot of running around from one place to another, rescuing people; quite a few intriguing rituals; and a whole series of sanctuaries, where a new hide-out conveniently becomes available when the current one is compromised. I kept forgetting what constituted the current crisis and what was really at stake. This is partly because the Circle of Light members repeatedly vanish from the narrative for many chapters at a time while Mira becomes deeply involved with Clive, Barrow, or both.

Ultimately, I had the feeling that Cecilia Tan was a bit torn between writing an intense BDSM romance and writing an urban fantasy. I can understand the problem. The gorgeous eroticism of Mira’s and Clive’s connection could serve as a significant distraction from the plot.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Bound in the Blood. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series in the hope that the goals of the Circle become more clear. There’s also the question of what will happen between Mira and Clive. When you have a perfect dom-sub bond, then what?

I’m sure Cecilia Tan will have an intriguing answer to that question.