Carnal Machines - book discontinued by Cleis Press Inc. - review by tim1724

Carnal Machines is a collection of short stories edited by D. L. King. It contains stories by a number of different authors: Janine Ashbless, Kathleen Bradean, Delilah Devlin, Kannan Feng, Jay Lawrence, Renee Michaels, Teresa Noelle Roberts, Lisabet Sarai, Elizabeth Schechter, Tracey Shellito, Elias A. St. James, Essemoh Teepee, and Poe von Page.

This is a collection of steampunk erotica. For those not familiar with the term, steampunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction (i.e., fantasy/science fiction) which is set in a time period in which steam power is still used (most often Victorian England, but not always). Sometimes it has fairly realistic technology from that era, but often it has somewhat fanciful extrapolations of what might have been.

The stories in Carnal Machines vary somewhat in setting, type of technology, etc., but they all fit into the steampunk category. Each of them features the use of some sort of device used in a sexual setting (e.g. a clockwork vibrator or steam-powered fucking machine).

Anyone who enjoys reading steampunk will obviously enjoy seeing how erotica can use the genre's ideas, but so will anyone who likes reading stories about the use of sex toys. The stories are quite varied, with masturbation, oral sex, vaginal intercourse, anal sex, and some BDSM. Most stories feature heterosexual couples, but a few feature gay or lesbian pairings.

The cover features a rather attractive woman in leather with goggles covering the upper part of her face. While your hands will likely cover the title and subtitle (Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica) on the front, the back has a fairly prominent mention of "Full Power Erotica" which may be quite noticeable to others if you're reading this on the subway. But as long as you're not embarrassed by that, you should be find reading this in public, as there's no nudity or other objectionable content on the covers.

The inside of the book is laid out in a rather plain, no-nonsense manner with a fairly large, easy-to-read font that makes it easy to enjoy this book. There are no illustrations, just 198 pages of engaging text.

This book is printed in trade paperback format, with typical paper quality and binding for that format. If you treat it well, it should last through multiple readings with no problems at all.

I read most of this book during a long airplane flight and found that it made the flight much more pleasant. As a result I had a raging hard-on throughout much of the flight, but I was in a window seat with my girlfriend next to me, so that was fine.

I enjoyed all the stories, but in the future I'd probably read it in smaller doses, as a number of the stories contain similar ideas. Each of the stories is well written and engaging (not to mention arousing) and the editor did a great job of spreading out those stories which feature similar subject matter, so adjacent stories aren't too similar to one another.