Best Bondage Erotica 2 - erotic fiction by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Rod

Review for Best Bondage Erotica 2, edited by Alison Tyler

One of the things that I liked about this anthology was the wide variety of stories. There were stories about gay men, lesbian women, experienced players at play parties and new practitioners to BDSM experimenting with the lifestyle. The stories touch on, to varying extents, edge play, voyeurism and exhibitionism, power play dynamics, effects of corsets/latex, ownership, cock and ball torture, and daddy play, to name but a few. The list of authors certainly demonstrates an experienced group.

One of my issues with anthology erotica is that some stories tend to have a long lead-up and take a while to get to the point... the sexiness. These stories were well chosen to avoid that particular can of worms, although I accept that this might be more of a male preference than not. These erotic tales all flow very nicely from start to finish. Another of my issues with written erotica is the frequent lack of grammar and spelling. To be honest, that completely drives me up the wall and tends to ruin the experience for me. Again, this anthology had no troubles in this area. All of the writers are clearly highly competent word smiths and the book is very well edited by Alison Tyler.

Girls in the Hood by Jolie du Pré was particularly interesting since it dealt well with body images. It was impressive to read about larger people having kinky sex. Elaine Miller's tale called Be a Good Sport was also a fascinating read by describing an awkward and intensely frustrating situationally kinky session with a domme that is fueled by competing egos and animosity. Miller's vivid descriptions of the torment of the domme's “victims” kept my attention with her brilliant “linked” torture scene.

The Divan by N.T. Morley is a delightful Victorian turn-about story based around a special chair with a surprise ending. I wish I had one of those chairs as it gave me ideas! Greg Wharton wrote Cropped, a very intense, but regrettably short story about Tony and Shane sharing some cock and ball torture with creative bondage that had me very glad to be a top (mostly). Wharton included some particularly evocative descriptions of sub space.

My one quibble was that many of the stories seemed to deal with the character's first encounters in the worlds of bondage and sadism/masochism or stories from the beginners perspective. That isn't a fault as such, just my own preference that I am less interested in “coming of age to kink” stories. I do think that the beginner story is a good story type to start the book with.