Review: Untamed by Anna Cowan

A cross-dressing Duke hero. That alone had my interest before anything else was said over at Dear Author. This book defies gender stereotypes in many, many ways and has genuinely interesting characters, who grow throughout the story. It's a tough read in places, for various different reasons but it's still one of the most original books I've read in a long time. And the heroine is awesome.

Kit is in London with her sister Lydia, who is having an affair with the Duke of Darlington. Lydia's husband is furious. Kit realises that she needs to save their marriage, by calling the Duke off Lydia. The price he extracts for this favor is that Kit take him back to her county home. What she doesn't realize, is that he will turn up as a woman. What he doesn't realize is that her home isn't just not fit for a Duke, they are outright in poverty. That's the beginning, but a whole lot of other things are going on.

What I love about this book is that the heroine, Kit, really is the heroine. I mean that in the sense that she's the one that saves the day, in every way. Kit must be described as strong about a dozen times and its justified. She does 'traditionally' male things. She goes out and chops wood in the rain while Jude looks on; she swears; she competently manges the family finances. Jude on the other hand lounges around, pouts, and causes more problems when he tries to help than if he'd just left well alone. Kit shoves Jude up against walls and won't take any crap. I understand that some people found Kit rather unsympathetic, or unrealistic. I didn't at all. I was with her every step of the way. She made tough calls but I felt that she had grit and integrity.

The other female characters are also good. More strong, well rounded women who are distinct and human, rather than wallpaper in dresses behind the main characters. Kit's family play a big role in this book and Sophie (Kit's mother) and her sister Lydia are both characters that at various times you are repulsed and endeared to. This, along with the portrayal of Jude, gives a

Jude is a bit of an arsehole. He's morally dubious, and not just in a vague, 'Oh he's a rake' kind of way. We seem him do things, including things to Kit, which are highly questionable. On the other hand, there is an awareness of his arse-holery in the book. It's not ignored, or passed off as him being an alpha-male. So although I was occasionally uncomfortable, actually I didn't mind, because I thought that Kit could manage him. He was brought pretty low and she was always portrayed as strong. He was quite gender queer, passing himself off as a woman (Lady Rose) for much of the book and was quite effeminate even as a man. I didn't quite understand his 'dark side', which was a meaner, slightly dominant version of himself. It felt a bit like shoe-horning a bit of male dominance in for effect, but there was very little of it and Kit usually pulled him up on his bullshit quickly.

The weakest part of this book is definitely the historical aspect. It seems to be set in a sort of regency-esque world, but it's never at all clear when (I think this is deliberate). It would have been better set later, maybe late Victorian, as some of the things that the women do in this book (particularly Kit, but also Lady Marmotte) are so anachronistic for the regency style setting, it makes them a little difficult to believe.

Another problem is some things that are made a big deal of and then dropped. Threads are left hanging. Jude's name takes practically a whole chapter for Kit to get out of him, but then it seems that everyone else knows it, which rather ruins the feeling that Kit is being given something special in permission to call him by it. It's never clear what Jude's motivation is to start doing a lot of things and that makes the ending slightly hollow. Hints early on that Jude is almost bankrupt actually turn out that he has money (or enough money anyhow). Kit's brother is an anonymous but successful author, but nothing is made of this, and it's not clear where the money he earns really goes. And there are plenty more things like this. For nit-pickers like me, this gapiness is frustrating.

Some I'm sure will be uncomfortable or disbelieving about a hero who cross dresses. Personally I think it's eminently believable - the male/female false dichotomy has always been evident to me. Women being passed off as men is so ubiquitous though, this seems like very fair turn-about. But if you disagree, it needs some suspension of disbelief.

The beginning is slow but persevere, it quickly becomes compulsive. At some points it makes you laugh, (Jude's pig, Porkie, is awesome). Other times, it deals bluntly then delicately with issues like rape, domestic violence and child abuse. Not only that, it skims lightly over homophobia (a bit too lightly really), greed, gambling, etc. Between this, and the strong personalities of the characters, along with some political plot lines, there's a lot going on.

TL;DR: A gender stereotype and trope breaking book with a heroine you'll want to team Domme with/have Dominate you. A deliciously androgynous hero, who she has to sort out. A difficult book with some plot problems, it's held up totally by the originality of the concept and the portrayal of the characters.

Overall, it's a difficult book to grade. It's emotional and gripping, but the protagonists are fairly messed up, so the HEA hard fought. I do believe in the HEA though, and I think that both Jude and Kit, as well as Lydia and James, deserve it. There's an acknowledgement that life isn't easy though, and that there will be arguments and tough times. I like that. Although there is heat, attraction and sex, it isn't primarily erotic. There are some gaping plot holes, but it gets away with it because it's so character driven. Though not really femdom, it features female protagonists who are strong, sometimes sadistic, belligerent and control their men. I'm conflicted. I didn't always enjoy this book but it is outstanding - it stands out. Overall, a B perhaps?


By the way, I've never quite established whether the character on the front of the book is supposed to be Kit or Jude. Kit is supposed to be blond-ish, (I think). So I think it's Jude - and that is hot.

Review: Still by Ann Mayburn

Concept: A military macho-guy has PTSD has a major crush on the untouchable military Doctor that he worked with in Afghanistan. When they meet again, she tells him that she's into the being the D bit of a D/s and BDSM relationship, but he's not sure. When he hits a particular low, including alcohol and a knife, and being arrested, he gets in touch. A gritty set up, no doubt. Michelle makes it clear that it's her way or nothing and Wyatt agrees. As a premise, this 'strong guy needs to submit to a strong woman' thing actually is one of my favorites (I always think of this pic). Perhaps my excitement and high expectations were a problem in this case, but I couldn't help feeling that this wasn't quite what I signed up for.

An ex-marine, Wyatt's PTSD has escalated back in Texas into alcohol abuse, suicidal tendencies and a lack of doing anything productive in his life. He winds up agreeing to stay with Michelle for a month and to obey her, to see how it turns out. The reader is filled in quite early on about how the two met when in service and generally I'm pretty okay with this book up until the point that they're at Michelle's house and I feel like the big issue of Wyatt's PTSD and possible alcoholism is forgotten in favor of Michelle's poor rich girl 'bad things happened in the past and so she can't trust or love or have sex in the present' story line. This I guess I could deal with, but there were other big problems that I just couldn't ignore in this book.

The first issue for me was that I didn't feel that there was any consistency in the characterization of either of the main characters. I feel like the book starts off with a woman who says that her first and main interest sexually is being a Domme, and a man who has never been involved with BDSM, but who slightly against what he thought was his usual inclinations is turned on by it and likes her enough to give it a go. But it's almost as if there are another set of characters, Jekyll and Hyde style, who keep seeping through. And you can probably guess what they are, right? Yep. It's the TSTL heroine who really wants a man to spank, protect, belittle and tell her what to do. And the alphahole who must take/fuck/possess/own/spank/blah his woman so that he can feel like a real man TM. For instance, the constant refrain in Wyatt's head (much of the book is in his third person pov) is that he wants to fuck her, he wants to spank her, he wants to come. Whenever she's in charge, he's plotting to subvert her. The rest of the time, she lets him take charge. I wouldn't mind this if there was some self reflection on this paradox, but there isn't. I think that the challenge of submitting, for a man who is used to being in charge, is a really interesting problem. But there's no feeling of that tension here, there's just 'I want to fuck her into the ground' and 'oh, when she talks about doing things to me, I get hard'.

Michelle's character is no less malleable. Part of that is that it's too much tell and not enough show. We're told that Michelle has only cried like, three times in the last ten years, but since we see all three of those crying incidents, the show (rather than the tell) of the book has her crying all the time. Now, I know that she needs to be vulnerable (because I'm beginning to understand that vulnerable=feminine and relate-able to many readers, though not me), but I think we could have seen Michelle being strong because she realizes that Wyatt needs her to be strong, and not fall apart over something that happened ten years ago when he needs her. There's more of the same though. Michelle's nickname in the military was the "Ice Queen" and yet, Wyatt describes her as "humble, kind" when she was in the forces. Those are not the sort of qualities that gain a woman the nickname "Ice Queen". This gave me the uneasy feeling of not knowing the characters very well, which makes it difficult. I think that part of the fun of a book is thinking, 'oh, she's going to be pissed when she finds out about that... ' or similar. When a character doesn't react in character, or is inconsistent with their description of themselves, it's disconcerting.

Related to the characterization problem was a stack load of gender crap. Particularly, gender generalizations which are at best annoying and at worst insulting to both genders. Gems like:

One thing she’d learned about men, submissive, Dominant, or just plain vanilla, they liked to be needed. It was hard coded in their DNA to protect and defend.

Can't wait until we find the gene for the need to protect and defend. Do you think they'll find it in dogs too?

"You give a man one good, toe-curling, I-rocked-your-fucking-world blow job and he’ll never leave you."

Damn, all this time I thought that couples stayed together because of mutual love and respect. If only I'd known that all it took was a proper blow job.

"Do you really think any man will truly understand any woman?"

I'm so bored by that discussion. As if same gender couples understand each other any better. Now, just one more eye rolling moment for:

He kept checking the clock, bemused at how he was the one waiting for his woman to come home from work, and not the other way around.

Right, because women who stay at home are just waiting around for their partners to come home. Not cleaning/child care/educating/life maintenance/cooking, or anything like that. It doesn't help that Suki and James, Michelle's BDSM friends, are the cook/housekeeper and the groundsman respectively. They're F/m, in fact, rather more convincingly that Wyatt and Michelle are, but why do they have such gender stereotyped jobs?

The wtfery didn't stop there though. I'm not going to go though it all, but there are all sorts of 'huh?' moments. Scents everywhere, dog and horse sub-plots for no discernible reason, disappearing/reappearing pants, gold allergy questions (seriously, no-one is allergic to gold. It's basically inert.) - I could go on, but I'll spare you all but one rant. Wyatt bites through her pants.

Using his free hand, he held up the soaked crotch of her pants and bit a small hole into the cloth.

What has he got, like razor teeth? We're told that she wears white cotton panties, so I guess it means those, but even so, no-one can bite through cotton. Unless he's a dog or something. Even then, I don't think it's possible. Unless he has razor-vampire teeth. But the next moment he's biting her clit, which given that his teeth are capable of going through fabric, sounds mighty painful to me. She seems to enjoy it, so I guess she's a masochist. Wouldn't she need stitches though?

Talking of which, there's a big deal made out of the Dommes not being sadists in this book.

Michelle giggled, allowing Yuki to draw her away from her dark thoughts. “You are such a sadist.”
“Much to James’ relief, my tastes don’t run in that direction.”

I don't understand this, because I really think that men make such perfect masochists - a big strong man taking pain for/from a woman is so incredibly hot. Men are big and strong and it's a matter of macho pride to take whatever is dished out in a fight/sport etc., why not in bed? And you can't have a masochist without a sadist - they go together. Why is masochism okay, but sadism not? Especially for women, that always seems to be the case. A dominant man who likes to whip his sub is just a dom. A dominant woman who likes to inflict pain is a "man hating, ball crushing".... blah, etc. Similarly, there is a double standard that is alive and well in this book about BDSM training. I've almost never seen a book where a male dom has done submissive training. But as usual, Michelle bottomed as 'training' and refers to the Dom who trained her when she 'messes up' by forgetting to give Wyatt a safe word (he hasn't needed one, doesn't in the whole book actually) and says that her trainer would have whipped her for that. Needless to say, she doesn't whip Wyatt for any of his many transgressions. Wyatt does make an effort to reflect that he was wrong in his initial thoughts, but really...:

His earlier ignorant views about all Dominatrices being man hating, ball crushing, sadistic bitches couldn’t be further from the truth if Michelle and Yuki were any example of what a Mistress was truly like. Everything she did to him, with him, was for their mutual pleasure and never once had he felt abused. If anything he felt cherished in a weird way.

Why is it weird? REALLY?! And lots of subs like a bit of consensual 'abuse.' But then Wyatt has an attitude towards BDSM that I'm not keen on full stop. He calls it "fucked up" or berates himself for being turned on by it. If the (change of) sentiment was part of his character development, I think perhaps a more nuanced exploration of his head might have been helpful - beyond 'that's so kinky - no, yes, next thing'. This is partly I think a consequence of the setting (small town America / Texas), so I think it's a given that the opinions of the characters are a bit closed. It's just not my thing.

Having said all that, in between there are some good bits. Sexy oral sex bits. A nice spanking. Nothing too kinky to be honest. When Michelle is getting her dom on, it's fun. And the initial set up of Michelle and Wyatt was great - I could see how they worked together and why they needed each other. The characters wibbled from about the point that they got to Michelle's ranch, but until then I was enjoying it a lot.

***Small spoilers***
But as the book progressed, I just began to feel constantly uncomfortable - either because I wasn't sure what version of their personalities the characters were going to be or because of the gender and BDSM stereotypes and braindumps. Most of all though, I was deeply troubled that Wyatt's (suspected) alcoholism and PTSD was not being addressed. Especially the alcohol. When the alcohol issue was addressed, I didn't feel that there was much sensitivity about how alcoholism is an illness. Michelle's reactions to Wyatt were very emotive, but then she was portrayed as over-reacting and that she should have trusted Wyatt. I know that a sit-down rational conversation is highly frowned upon in romancelandia, but this really did warrant one. Similarly, I really felt that it takes more than a stroke on the back and a guard dog to deal with PTSD. Clearly the series is going to explore Wyatt's problems more (or I hope it is) and I hope that part (not the whole of course) of that will be how submission can help him, kind of integrate the plots together a bit. Dogs too of course.

At the beginning of the book, Michelle took on the role of Wyatt's carer, but ended up being a bit pathetic and indulging in her own woes. Wyatt signed up to be her submissive but only ever seemed to want to dominate her (and she's not averse to the idea).
***End spoilers***

TL;DR
A brilliant premise, executed in a cookie cutter M/f gender stereotyped way.  Really, a book that takes on so much (PTSD, femdom, BDSM, small-town America) and struggles to tie together the different elements.

It's really admirable that this book is pushing at the boundaries of what is considered erotica/femdom/BDSM. Moving beyond 'femdom is bitches in leather' and towards 'femdom can be just what a strong female character and an alpha male character need' is good. It's progress. But this is part of a vanguard of these sorts of books and so there are inevitable tensions and problems. I think we'll see more like this, hopefully from this author and others, which will get better every time.

C+

Review: Beyond Temptation by Lisette Ashton

The tag line is: there's only so much frustration a girl can take. I couldn't agree more.

I was attracted to Beyond Temptation as I'd had a good experience with femdom labelled books from the publisher, Mischief (aka Harper Collins). The period look of the cover suggested to me that it was set in 1930s, or similar. Actually it's mainly set in present day Scotland. Bit of a let down. Anyhow, the plot.

There are several plot lines that come (alright, cum) together at Manor. This means quite a lot of switching around of third person pov and it made it difficult to keep track of. There are also about six million characters and they have a lot of sex. With so many characters, it was difficult to get to the point of really feeling for any of them. Or understanding them.

The story also tried to pack in a fair amount of convoluted plot. It was a bit overwhelming. Half the interest in the plot (as opposed to the erotica) is driven by a ex-lover of Amelia and Yale, who is she who must not be named (SWMNBN) so that it can create suspense in the plot. It would work if it wasn't pretty obvious who SWMNBN was. The other bit of plot is Robyn and Harold, owners of an art magazine - Art (good name eh?!). Harold says that he's fed up with their open marriage and issues Robyn with an ultimatum - stop fucking other men, or he'll divorce her. Since Harold sounds like an prat, I'm never quite clear why she would actually want to stay married to him. Harold certainly doesn't - he actually wants to marry his secretary Sheridan, who is a rebellious but virginal pain in the ass.

Robyn goes to blah manor to get some space. She's followed by Yale and his devotees, who barge in and create erotic chaos. Robyn is trying to be faithful, but Yale won't back off. There's combinations of nearly all the characters in some sort of clinch, at some point. Some of the sex is good, some of it is so-so, other bits are bordering on rapetastic. There's certainly very dubious consent where Robyn/Dominic/Yale/Amelia are concerned.

The leading women in the book are actually quite interesting characters. Sheridan is totally immoral, using and manipulating men and women alike. She's smart, but makes stupid impulsive decisions, which are not really in character. Robyn is okay at first, teasing the men she wants and demanding what she likes. Amelia is good too, a sadistic Domme who takes out her pain on others.

However, they all are totally spineless when it comes to erotic artist Yale.  They worship at the mighty wang of Yale. They let him do whatever he wants and he's unreasonable and dictatorial. To complete strangers. This Alphahole behavior spoils the whole book for me. He's a complete asshole. I guess a lot of people love that arrogant artist trope, but it's really a turn off for me.

The other problem for me is that the motivations for the people in this novel are paper thin - they rely on most characters being really dumb and overly emotional. Pretty much irrational. Yale is supposed to love the Manor sooooo much. It's never clear why. He's in love with Angelica but still totally hung up about SWMNBN. Angelica was SWMNBN's submissive and is possibly still in love with her and is also in love with Yale. She's a dominant to the two submissives, but for Yale's mighty wang, she's submissive. The two submissives are just foils to show that Angelica isn't a 'real' domme, she's just mean and bossy (or something, they don't like to take orders from her) unlike Yale who is a real Dom TM.

I enjoyed the bits where Amelia was domming, but otherwise the pervasive mighty dickhead that was Yale and Yale worshiping was rather dull and frustrating. I wanted more Amelia. It's a short novel and there's not much space for character development, there's quite a lot of contrived plot sooo many characters.

In summary, there's lots going on. If you like complicated menage with super horny people all round, with convoluted plots and machinations then this might be for you. I found it very frustrating - I never understood enough about any of the characters to see what motivated them (beyond sex, obviously) and it skipped around between all the characters so much, I never really engaged with it. Except to shout at Yale. Arrogant rapey dickhead. I wanted Amelia to put him in his place, but she turned out as idiotic as the rest of them.

It sort of classes as femdom as Amelia is dominant most of the time and when the female characters aren't around Yale, they're pretty strong. But as a whole, there was much too much of Yale (did I mention that I didn't like him?) and male dominance with an undertone of rape for this to be particularly enjoyable.

C.

Femdom-ish Books Round-up: February/March/April 2013

This edition of the round up is a sort of bonus, condensed version, because my pesky offline life has been in the way recently. Normal-ish service will may be resumed soon.

Femdom releases I've seen this month recently since last time I did a round up include For Her Pleasure by new-ish author Kyoko Church. This is a romp of a story from a submissive male's pov, with stacks of humiliation. My review is here.

Under her Thumb is an anthology edited by D.L. King. This was a March release and features many familiar names, including the the blogosphere's own Her Majesty's Plaything.

In terms of publishers, my attention was drawn (by a commenter I think) to Circlet Press. Their tag line is: The Intersection of Erotica and Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Futurism. There is a lot of BDSM and a good amount of that seems to be F/m or F/m/m/M or M/F/f/m/trans or - well, you get the idea. I suspect that you can expect quite a lot of sexy, extreme craziness, so if that's what rolls you then you should head over. There isn't any sort of helpful sorting system on their website, so unfortunately you have to read through all the blurbs.


Just published in April is Still by Ann Mayburn. This is book one of three and I'm pretty excited about the idea of femdom series. So much to look forward to! Also - check out the cover with the man tied up with blue rope. <le sigh> I like the trend towards tied up men or women's high heels on the covers of femdom books.  I know that neither is exactly breaking any paradigms, but imho they're more suggestive of a being aimed at female audience compared to women in pvc/leather corsets with whips, which always seem to me to be aimed at submissive men.

It's not a book, but head over to submissive guy comics on tumblr and check out Femdom cartoons. They're cute, touching, hilarious and true reflections on BDSM and F/m. I am totally obsessed by them already. Why are you still here? Go!

Review: For Her Pleasure by Kyoko Church

There is a lot to love about this book. It's difficult to find well done humiliation fantasy and Church makes bold decisions in this book and makes them work. Despite the title though, this is more 'humiliation is a hot game for her amusement' than 'surrender is a gift for her pleasure'.

Colin sees Mistress at a sexual harassment in the workplace meeting (irony applied with a spade, yes?) and she has that psychic knowledge that some Dominant women (in fantasy) have and knows that he's a horny little submissive. Joan wastes no time in having him confess to his most mortifying secret: he's a premature ejaculator. Deliciously embarrassing scene after scene follows. This book doesn't skimp on the humiliation. Joan heaps it on. Knickers, denial (no chastity device though <sad face>), teasing, public revealing acts. All of that, and it's a lot of horny submissive fun. It's written first person from Colin (Sub Peter)'s perspective, which gives the embarrassment quite a nice immediate feeling.

But.... Ah, you knew there was a but coming right? (Puns aside...)  There are a couple of things that didn't work for me, which are the kind of thing that I think some people will find difficult. As ever though, these are spoilers.

***Spoilers***
Colin has a wife, Anne, whom he loves. And although his relationship with Joan doesn't involve penetrative sex, Anne is realistically furious and hurt when she finds out. So... I'm not keen on cheating as a scenario, but plus points for not belittling it and having Anne immediately join in like some sort of Femdom fantasy automaton. The way the story develops from here is interesting, but again doesn't shy away from controversy. Anne teams up with Joan - they both care for Colin and Anne seems genuinely interested in saving their marriage. But when Colin walks in on Joan and Anne, he thinks that they're ganging up against him rather than teaming up for him, so runs off and calls Joan's best friend. He goes over to her place and comes over all 'rah and manly', beginning to fuck her over the sofa. He begins to cry (I suppose that this is supposed to indicate that he really is submissive <rolls eyes>).

Joan is understandably upset, but somehow, Colin seems to be such a wonderful person and submissive, she gives him another chance. So we skip to the epilogue, and Anne and Joan have been successfully team dominating Colin and he's a happy submissive puppy. If only it ended there. For me, this next bit was a WTF moment. All the way through, there have been bits in italics from a female perspective. First it seems as if they are Joan, then Anne. They don't really add much to the story, so I didn't pay much attention to them. In the epilogue, they come to fruition. It's Joan's best friend who is obsessed with Colin and thinks that Joan and Anne are forcing him to be submissive. So she turns up at Joan's with a gun - as you do - to 'free' him. Anyhow, it turns out okay, except that Anne didn't know that Colin had (attempted to have) sex with her, and is pretty pissed. So the book finishes with Joan assuring Colin that Anne will come round. So there's no HFN and I'm not sure he deserves one.
***End spoilers***

So in summary: The plot is eye rollingly silly and not for those who are looking for any integrity in their male submissive. Neither of those things are unique to this story, so I know I sound like a broken record. Apologies. The sexy humiliation is uber fun. So, yeh, overall there's a lot to like in this book. I think it's a B-. That grade that says, there's really good bits. But depending on what presses your 'Oh for fuck sake' buttons, there might also be things that you're not going to like.

Review: Vampire Meltdown by Storm Savage

You know those heroines who manifest their feisty independence and strength by refusing all reasonable offers of help, running away from safety into dangerous situations, unnecessarily endangering herself and others and chafing against the possessive men she desperately wants to submit to? Yep. Zoe is one of those. Combine this with an incoherent, inconsistent, undeveloped but somehow very convoluted plot and Zoe's possessive Biker Club 'mates' and I'm sure it won't surprise you that I didn't enjoy this much.

We meet Zoe when she's lost her memory and is stripping for a living. She doesn't know her name, have an address, or any money, and she's been on the run for a couple of weeks, but minor issues like that apparently don't matter to strip clubs. (Really? they'd get closed down pretty quickly were that the case. But then, it's about to get more crazy, so I shouldn't be complaining.) She doesn't know what is going on, is having hallucinations, and the reader doesn't know much more than she does. The hallucinations happen is snippets while she's grinding away to the music and everyone is absolutely crazy about her. She's a vampire Mary Sue.

Anyhow, Zoe has two biker club stalkers who are after her mates who are so worried about her, they're hanging around on their bikes, not looking for her in obvious places like her old stomping grounds, which is co-incidentally, where she is. Zoe discovers a mobile phone in her pocket (after like, two weeks?) and calls someone, who alerts Brooker and Rider. She leads them on a bit of dance around different locations, whilst leaving corpses of couple of 'evil' men who look at her wrong for them to clean up so she doesn't get arrested. Zoe acquires a puppy so that we know that she's a nice person.

I didn't notice that this book is Book 7 in a series, and I'm guessing that if you like this sort of thing and have read books 1-6 then the plot would be much more comprehensible. As it was, I never understood what happened to Zoe that caused her to lose her memory. When her memory does begin to come back, it's in awkward 'bits', interspersed with her asking convenient questions to fill in the reader about the other characters (very late in the story). We learn that Rider is a soul healer and Brooker is psychic. And they go about magically healing Zoe.

The problem for me as ever is that the description of this book sounded like it was going to be Zoe kicking ass in the free world, proud and happy as a vampire that kicks patriarchal butt. Actually, although she is 'queen' (small q) of the vampire biker club clan, she's nothing more than a scared figure head. She magically bestows gifts with her special blood, but doesn't actively do anything. Consequently, she's a wet blanket. Why the twin (oh yes, they're twins, forgot to say that) are so keen to get back 'their woman' (I lost count how many times Zoe was 'our woman' or some variant), I just don't know.

Between being completely lost with what was going on with the plot, all the soul healing stuff, the purple prose, the perfect(ly) silly heroine and the absolute good/evil dicotamy, for me, this was a D. That said, clearly for lots of other people the whole biker club vampire thing is like cat nip. This just was much more light and fluffy and Harlequin Presents crossed with bikers and vampires than I was expecting. I was looking for gritty and female power, and I got a girl kitten mewing helplessly and being picked up by a guy with a motorbike.

Femdom Books on Sale!!!

Great femdom books on Sale! We love books on sale!

Control by Charlotte Stien is just $0.99

Seriously, at this price, I can't imagine how you can afford not to buy this book. I gave it an A-. 

Venus in Furs by by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch is $free

This is a classic novel, so there will always be free copies of it around. Reputedly it's femdom. I've not gotten around to reading it yet, so if you get to it before me drop in a comment saying what you thought of it. 

Natural Law by Joey Hill is $5.49

I don't think this is actually a sale, but it's a reasonable price for this book and it is essential femdom reading. I gave it an A. 

For any Brits in the audience: 

Control by Charlotte Stien is £free!

Go and get it now. I gave it an A-. 

Power Play by Charlotte Stien is £0.49

I gave this a B+ and it's probably the femdom book of 2012 as far as I'm concerned. 

Red Grow the Roses by Janine Ashbless is £free!

I haven't read this, though I heard it's quite pain intense. Again, it's labelled as femdom by Mischief books. 

Beyond Temptation by Lisette Ashton is £0.49

Another Mischief title labelled as femdom. I'll be reviewing this, so I'll let you know about it. 

Book Misdescriptions - why is female agency over emaphasized in blurbs?

I read a lot of samples. I read samples of books that look like they might be femdom. I read samples of books where the blurb suggests that they might have a really awesome strong heroine who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to ask for it. Much of the time (most?) I'm wrong. The book or novella might sound promising, but it usually becomes quickly obvious that it's not even subtle femdom.

The disjoint between the book description and the actual book is not unusual, I know. Romances are famous for having titles/covers/descriptions which bear no resemblance to the story inside, especially in the lines of Greek billionaires and virgins. But let's look at an example, because I think the disparity is more important here than the normal hair color and ethnicity mistakes that are typical in romance novels/descriptions. There are plenty of books which say they have strong heroines, but she's actually weak and TSTL. But this also happens in BDSM books - women are represented in the blurb as being more dominant than they are in the book. For instance, here is the description for The Breaker's Concubine by Ann Mayburn:

Prince Devnar of Jensia is goaded into raiding the wrong space ship, springing a trap that captures him for use as a Royal pleasure slave, a Concubine, on Kyrimia. He vows to do everything he can to escape and keep from forming a psychic bond with his captors that would render him absolutely and totally in love. This proves difficult to do when  the female Breaker assigned to turn him into a Concubine, Melania, is the epitome of his perfect woman.

Melania has been raised and trained to help reluctant and abused Novices to break through their personal blocks and attain the ultimate prize of becoming a Concubine. When she is given Devnar to train, she finds herself in danger of doing the forbidden and falling in love with her Novice. This angry, scarred, and utterly seductive male tests her self-control like no other.

Devnar and Melania find themselves at the heart of a galaxy wide political battle that will test a love that they must not acknowledge, and cannot live without, to its very limits.

Very early on the heroine thinks about how she likes to relax by being submissive and the book continues along these lines. But the cover, with the hero in a collar, cuffs and submissive pose does nothing to dispel the notion gathered from the blurb that this is essentially a book about a man submitting to a woman, rather than vice versa. I think that this is essentially the same issue as the strong heroine one - it's an over-representation of female agency (in this case dominance rather than strength and intelligence) in the description.  

This is a philosophical as well as a practical problem. In a practical sense, it's frustrating that books I think I will enjoy turn out not to be what they were represented as. But philosophically, I think there is a wider problem: blurbs represent women as being strong, in control and having agency, but the book itself frequently has a weak, silly TSTL girl. I think there are several potential reasons for this.

• Readers want strong women, but authors haven't gotten with the program yet, and so the publishers represent the heroine as being different from how she really is.
• Readers think that they want strong female characters, but actually like stupid and or submissive female characters. 
• The publisher and author genuinely believe that women behaving stupidly and or submissively is a strong heroine. 

The difference between the first reason and the second is how satisfied readers are with the book after they have read it. This is a difficult thing to judge. Instinctively, reviews seem like a good way to assess readers satisfaction. But, as I've already said, I read an lot of samples and decide that the book is not for me. I don't write reviews of these books, so my annoyance at the disjoint between book description and content isn't represented on review sites etc.

It's also possible that readers want their heroines to be idiots and 'strong' or 'feisty' is a shorthand for that, rather like 'virgin' is shorthand for 'nice'. Worse still is the idea that maybe people genuinely believe that in a woman, TSTL = strong. The really worrying thing to me is the idea that this disjoint could be propagating the idea that heroines who are TSTL are actually strong and independent.

I really hope that publishers and authors will realize that book descriptions really matter - and that books described as having strong heroines can actually have strong heroines.

What have been your experiences with book misdescriptions? Why do you think that female agency is over emphasized in book descriptions and under delivered in the book itself?

Femdom-ish Book Review Round-up January 2013

As ever, there's a bit of news, some new potential reads and plenty of questions this month to welcome in 2013.

The closest thing to a potential new femdom release I've seen this month is Vampire Meltdown by Storm Savage. The heroine sounds quite promising: She likes wielding power over men—teasing them—killing them. Having said that though, I've got a post brewing about the problem of books that look like promising femdom but quickly reveal themselves to be the normal rubbish.

I've had a comment asking why I haven't reviewed any books by Carmenica Diaz. The short answer is that I didn't know about her. Billed as Elegant Femdom Fiction, there are a mix of novellas and short stories. From reading the blurbs, most seem to centre around a male submissive asking his vanilla wife to dominate him and her miraculously turning into the Dominatrix of his dreams. It's not a trope I'm that keen on and neither am I particularly tempted by the prices ($9 for 22k words is rather a lot imho). However, I think that some readers of this blog might be interested, so if anyone reads any of her stuff please do drop me a line and say what you thought of it.

I've also been asked for a recommendation for some romantic femdom porn - the movie sort. I generally prefer my porn written and so this isn't really my specialist subject. Perhaps you have some ideas?

Over on the legendary Girls Rule, Subs Drool tumblr, Mistress Maria reveals her impecable taste in books. She recommends a couple of books I've rated as A s here, as well as Cassandra French’s Finishing School for Boys: A Novel by Eric Garcia.

What was your Christmas reading? Have you found any great new books in the new year?



***Update***

Over at DearAuthor, Jane has reviewed Vanilla on Top by C.J. Ellison. It sounds like as ever, a promising premise turns out to be male-dom/vanilla dressed as femdom. Pity. It's a nice cover. In fact, it's another perfect example of cover and book description misrepresentation that I discussed in my last blog post.

Review: The Sweetest Revenge by Dawn Halliday

We have all read wonderful stories about the handsome rakes and dashing scoundrels; the debauched dukes, the wicked earls, and the roguish viscounts. In these stories, the mad, bad aristocrats find the woman who ultimately tames them, who turns them into a monogamous man, a loving husband and father.
I have always wondered, though, what happened to all those women who came before that woman who tamed him? What happened to those poor souls he debauched and ruined? How did they survive the scandal? How did they go on after the rake left them behind?
This is the story of three women in that exact situation—three women who’ve been the victims of one rake who has compromised them all. These three women have decided that enough is enough, and while they can’t take on society, perhaps—just perhaps—they can change one man. This is the story of his reformation.

The author's prelude, along with a man tied up on the cover, made me pretty excited about this book. An original concept and so obvious. The whole thing of promiscuous men being glamourized, this one woman being 'different' and all the women of his past just melt away has always bothered me. And who could resist this?:

This book does not shirk away from the dark consequences of a dissolute rake’s behavior. It contains rough language and erotic situations. You’ve been warned.

The biggest strength of this book is the concept - original, it had me wondering how things were going to sort themselves out. Telling you about the plot though requires some spoilers.

Three wronged women from Lord Leothaid's past kidnap him: Isabelle, Anna and Susan. Isabelle was Leo's young love, but after he writes her an explicit letter which is intercepted she is ruined and exiled. He didn't come for her. Anna's ruin is more recent; Leo slept with her then ran away when he realized that she was a virgin. She was shunned by her family and ended up as prostitute. Susan was ruined in a different way; she was emotionally destroyed. A widow, Susan and Leo took up together and she began to fall for him. Leo squashed her hopes cruelly and consequently Susan doesn't believe in love or men. Susan is angry at Leo's treatment of all three women, as well as all the other women he's discarded.

So they kidnap him, to give him some uncomfortable treatment to go with the uncomfortable truths. Revenge, in other words. Susan orchestrates his physical discomfort - a cold cellar, bread and water, her beefy french lover to beat him up. Anna's revenge is humiliation. She brings him almost to orgasm then leaves him tied up with his pants around his ankles and frustratingly aroused. (Fun! Hot! Yay!) Isabelle's main role is to be the timid wet blanket. Okay, actually, I think the idea is that she provides emotional torment. But she does this completely passively - she touches his foot gently and he is inexplicably set afire and remembers his first love, now dead, who broke his heart so thoroughly that he became a complete bastard. Can you see what is going to happen? Oh yes.... Poor Leo. He thought that his 'Belle' was dead, but everyone lied and conspired to keep them apart. This is frankly improbable.

The main romance is Belle and Leo's convoluted route back together. Realizing that Leo knows who Belle is and is besotted, Susan plans the perfect revenge: Belle will seduce and desert Leo, breaking his heart like his has done to so many others. Without this inspiration, I'm not quite sure whether Susan's cold floors and progressive feminist reading and Anna's increasingly kind sexual torture would work. Well, not the way they were doing it. I think a lot more could have been made of Susan and Anna's revenge. Instead, the focus is on Leo's desperation to see Belle and the unravelling of the past relationships of the protagonists.

There are also some sub-plot romances for Anna and Susan. Poor old Susan has no character or plot development at all. She begins widowed, with a lover and a cynical attitude towards love and marriage and ends exactly the same. Susan is pretty sane although her advice to the other two women is rather questionable. Anna on the other hand seems remarkably unharmed by her traumatic year as a prostitute and falls immediately into the arms of Lord Archer, a rakish compatriot of Leo. Susan goes to all the trouble of giving Anna a new, respectable identity, only for Anna to throw it all away by becoming a mistress. Susan is annoyed and points out that Lord Archer is no better than Lord Leothaid. But Anna acts like an impetuous child, insisting that she is 'healed' and wants Lord Archer. The mind boggles.

The other sub-plot is the rivalry between Mr. Sutherland and Lord Leothaid. They compete over women, and that ends up including Isabelle. Mr. Sutherland is set up as the villan who led Leo astray and then tries to steal away his first love. Susan encourages Isabelle to become Mr. Sutherland's mistress (I'm not sure about the wisdom of this advice) and when Leo doesn't come for her, Isabelle gives in. Now is the time for even bigger spoilers than I have already told. Look away now if you don't want to know.

***Spoilers***
It's the end of the book, Susan and Anna consider Leo 'cured' of his misogynistic and unacceptable behavior. Leo has been searching for Isabelle and begs Susan and Anna to tell him where she is. Susan throws his own words back at him:

"Go find a whore, then. That'll satisfy. All women have the same basic parts, after all, don't they, my lord?"
Anger rose within him, an instinctual response. She mocked Belle, said she was no better than any common harlot.

That doesn't sound to me like a man who has gained any respect for the situation that women find themselves in when men take advantage of them. By throwing back his own words at him, Susan doesn't (imo) suggest that Isabelle is a 'common harlot', but that every woman deserves more respect than Leo previously gave them. It seems to me that far from having any change of opinion or sense of remorse over his treatment of women, Leo is still an idiot.

It doesn't get any better. Leo arrives at Mr. Sutherland's house, just in the nick of time to stop Isabelle and he consummating their relationship. And he's furious. They fight over her and she stands there wringing her hands like the object girl that she is.
***End Spoilers***

The problem for me is that this isn't truly a story of redemption or reformation, as Leo is still a dick. It isn't an effective story of revenge either. This book takes a revolutionary premise and then tries to execute it in a standard cookie-cutter romance novel way. It's a pity, because even without the amount of kinkiness that tying up a Lord in your basement invites, this is nearly inspired. The emphasis is just too much on the rather boring and sappy Isabelle. I think I would have liked to see her show some gumption and run off with Mr. Sutherland, but no such luck. She lurrrves Leo and so he gets much better ending than he deserves. Nobody really gets the revenge on Leo; not Mr. Sutherland, Isabelle, Susan or Anna. Everyone except Mr. Sutherland ends the book pretty happy and I think that is supposed to represent that they have forgiven him his misdeeds and moved on. Personally, I think the victims of rakes deserve rather more revenge, sweet or not, than these characters got. This book suggests at, but doesn't deliver, what a rake really deserves in terms of punishment and redemption.

C