Review Tuesday: As She's Told by Anneke Jacob - #BDSM #Owned #ReviewTuesday

As She's Told by Anneke Jacob

Pink Flamingo Publications, 2008

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.

Review Tuesday: Woman of the Mountain by Angela Caperton (#reviewtuesday #erotica #spirituality)

Woman of the Mountain by Angela Caperton

Extasy Books, 2010

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 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 a 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.

Please note: This book won first prize for erotica in the prestigious EPIC ebook competition in 2007, when it was first released. So obviously not everyone agrees with me!

Review Tuesday: Five to Future (#sciencefiction #cats #politics)

 

Five to the Future: All New Novelettes of Tomorrow and Beyond

Edited by M.Christian

Digital Parchment Services 2017

Science fiction was one of my first literary loves. I remember borrowing Heinlein and Bradbury from our local library when I was only seven or eight. That love has endured into my sixties. Even though my “official” genre is erotica/erotic romance, probably twenty percent of what I read could be labeled scifi or speculative fiction.

Hence, I was thrilled when I learned that M.Christian had edited a brand new science fiction anthology. I cannot claim to be an unbiased reviewer; I adore his speculative stories, at least one of which (“State”) has a permanent place in my pantheon of the best short stories of all time.

Five to the Future offers a creative playground for a handful of acclaimed science fiction authors: Ernest Hogan, Emily Devenport, Cynthia Ward, Arthur Byron Cover, and Christian himself. In his foreword the editor notes that he gave only contributors a single instruction: write whatever story you want to write.

The results are impressive, thought-provoking, sometimes funny, and uniformly entertaining.

Ernest Hogan offers “Uno! … Dos! One-Two! Tres! Cuatro!”, a Latin-flavored riff heavily influenced by recent U.S. politics. His characters are the outcasts, outlaws, artists, and mystics who live in the Unsecure Zone of Metro Phoenix, some time in the not-so-distant future. Sexy Gonzomedia commentator Cha-cha Chavez is on assignment to bring back the truth (not alternative facts!) from beyond the Wall. In her quest she encounters the infamous low-rider Xolo Garcia, his jealous matador girl-friend Cihuachichi and a range of other characters who are keeping the fires of creativity and diversity burning despite the bombers flying overhead.

Extravagant imagination and tongue-in-cheek humor characterize this outrageous piece. There are more serious messages as well, but they’re delivered with such aplomb you might not notice.

Emily Devenport’s contribution “Queen of the Cats” was my favorite in the collection. Deeply emotional and more conventionally structured than the other tales, the story chronicles an invasion by a race of attractive aliens so shallow in their desires that you’ll wince at the familiarity. The narrator of this story loses her husband, who is disintegrated by an invader wanting the man’s clothing. She maintains her sanity and humanity by caring for the many cats left without owners after the advent of the extraterrestrials. The tale skirts the edge of apocalypse, but has a unexpectedly uplifting conclusion.

“Follow Your Dream” by Cynthia Ward is a delightful love-letter to Japanese super-hero anime. Don’t expect muscle-flexing wrestlers or sentient robots, though; every one of Ms. Ward’s in-your-face characters is female.

Arthur Byron Cover aptly titled his tale “Dreamweaver”; it has the bizarre logic of dreams. His contribution is a hallucinogenic mélange of shifting realities, grounded by a surprisingly affecting romance. I didn’t completely understand what this author was trying to accomplish, but his ferocious imagination and vivid imagery dazzled me. Like Ernest Hogan’s tale, this one includes quite a bit of humor, but it left me feeling a deliciously bittersweet melancholy.

“Written on Ribs” is the editor’s offering. The background for this story lies in the practice, during the Cold War, of smuggling Western music recordings into the Soviet Union by imprinting them on discarded X-rays. The piece is actually an assembly of mini-stories, each one inspired (I gather) by tales published during the Golden Age of science fiction magazines. I’m not sure how much I missed due to my unfamiliarity with these historic stories, but M.Christian’s vignettes about art, power and desire don’t seem to require this knowledge in order to have a profound impact. More than any of the other contributions in this volume, “Written on Ribs” shows a sort of disciplined craft that kindles deep admiration. In the final vignette, the author himself shows up as a character, effectively asking whether we writers are ever truly separate from our creations.

Certainly, it’s clear that the authors in Five to the Future all poured their souls into their stories. Each one shines with imagination and passion. One of the wonderful aspects of science fiction is that it imposes no limits. These authors have taken advantage of that freedom to produce a book that’s both entertaining and moving.