Straight Guys: Gay Erotic Fantasies - book discontinued by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Recalcitrantem

I'd never heard of any of the authors included in this anthology before. They all have some amount of experience writing erotica. That was obvious while reading.

Each story in this book was well-written. I'm a stickler for grammar, and bad spelling can turn me off really quickly, but I only saw one error in the whole book. Some of the stories use slang that I found a bit offputting: piss slit was probably the worst of them. Also, if sweaty balls turn you off? There are three or four stories that feature them.

The pacing of the stories was a little jarring. They took places in different time periods, and shifted between retro and current quickly. I think I would have preferred them to be chronological. Over the course of three stories, we go from World War II in Europe to a story that might be current but doesn't have any indicators to age it that takes place in a boarding house, to the early 90s slums of Cleveland, Ohio.

Nonconsent/reluctance is generally not a problem for me - I like it - but there are a few cases in this book of what I'd call rape, except that the recipient came back for more. There is one story that involves watersports, and several that feature "poppers," a recreational drug.

After a single reading, the book is in good shape. The binding is solid, there are no formatting errors, and the font size is appropriate and easy to read.

I'm not sure I had a favorite story in this anthology. I liked the writing in the first story, "Family Affair," the best. I liked "Redneck Revision" for its BDSM flavor - until the watersports. Each story had its pros and cons.

My least favorite was "On a Plane," the last story in the book. The author painstakingly wrote everything, especially dialogue, in the accent his characters spoke in. It barely worked for Mark Twain - for erotica, it was just distracting.

A few of the stories had just the barest hint of plots, while a couple others took a little too long to get to the point - no pun intended.