Tasting Him - erotic fiction by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Kayla

Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories is a book of erotica edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. This is the compliment book to "Tasting Her". All of the stories focus on oral sex performed on a phallic object. This book has 184 pages separated into 23 unique stories. The book is a soft cover book published by Cleis press. It's about the average size of any sort of paperback, and the pages are of all the same quality of most Cleis Press books.

When I introduced the book, I said "phallic objects" instead of penises. This is because this book isn't only contained to oral sex given to a male's penis. In some of the chapters, a woman dons a strap-on and we get to read about her boyfriend giving her dildo oral. However, the book itself is focused on giving oral sex to phallic objects (mostly penises) while the mention of having sex itself is very minimal. I think there's only a couple stories with any mention of the act of intercourse in them.

The stories vary in length. Some of them go up to 8 to 10 pages while others are only four or five pages long. It really depends on the story itself. For the most part, though, all of the stories captured my attention enough to want to keep reading. The stories are varied in character selection, location, and writing style too. I never really felt like all of the stories were the same - even though you knew where every story was going to end up.

I think that was the biggest complaint I had with the book. I knew every story was going to end with oral sex on him and then he would cum. While the authors did do a good job with varying up the situations, it still took a lot of the surprise and fun away from it because I knew where the story was going. It was like knowing the ending of a mystery novel before I started reading it. It's a good read, and enjoyable, but it just takes that "spark" out of the reading itself. Still great stories, but it's just the biggest complaint I had.

While there was only one story that I disliked enough to be completely bored with it, I actually found that one of the other stories just made me smile. It was a story written by Alison Tyler entitled "Prego". She comes into the kitchen, mid-dinner-party, to check on her husband cooking the spaghetti and finds him penis-deep in their last jar of Prego spaghetti sauce. It was well-written, funny, and actually sexy - believe it or not.

Another one of the stories, by Shanna Germain entitled "Sculpted", actually talks about how a couple used a penis-cloning kit to make a copy of his penis and then the female strapped it on and gave the guy his first oral experience.

This isn't to say that it's only heterosexual couples in this book. While the majority is heterosexuals, there were a couple stories that were written from a gay male point of view. There's a couple mentions of transgendered, but I don't remember there being a transgendered person in any of the stories.

For the most part, the book was extremely enjoyable to read. I'm not usually a fan of reading about oral sex, but the authors in this book did it in a way that made is a fun read. The stories included all had their own parts that made them stand out. Many of the stories use lots of dirty words to help encourage the action, and all of the women in this book actually love to give their guys a blow job - it's written in the text as well and shown by the choice of words. None of the women in this book treat giving oral sex like a chore - it's always treated like a great, fun way to take control and pleasure their guy. It actually was a nice, refreshing way to look at oral sex compared to the norm.

Overall, I'd recommend this book. It was sexy to read, had a variety of stories, and kept the length of the stories to where I could read just one in a ten minute span if I was short on time. The only complaint I have is that I always knew the ending - which is no fault of this book. It always happens when you write a book on a specific act or thing.

Breakdown of a couple of the first stories. I'd go into more detail, but 23 is a lot of stories! This is only a couple. There are actually 23 stories. This is just to give you a good idea of what to expect:

+Gloss by Rachel Kramer Bussel - M/F. A girl goes into a bar with the sole purpose of finding a "target" for her oral fascination
+A Treatise on Human Nature by Robert Peregrine - M/F. A girl goes home with a bisexual man to take a lesson in giving head as good as the guys do.
+Confession of a Sweet Cocksucker by Tish Anderson - M/F. A woman visits a local sex shop and has a flash back to the last time her guy mixed BDSM with blow jobs.
+This Just In by Heidi Champa - M/F. After nights of masturbating to her boyfriend while watching him on the news, she finally gets a chance to be under his news desk.
+Blessed Benediction by Radclyffe - M(F?)/M. A girl's partner is brought into a discussion where the girl shows all of her femme girlfriends how to give the best blow job.
+How I Learned to Give Good Head by Amanda Earl - M/F. She meets a guy online and decides to take it to real-life to have her first blow job lesson.
+Without Eyes by Terri Pray - M/F. A woman gets snippy with her Dominant husband, and he uses BDSM toys and some head as punishment.

The book still looks like a book. The pages are still where they started, and none of the pages are yellowing either. I honestly can't say that I'm really all that fond of this book, though. Out of all of my erotica book collections, I probably regard this one as the most unfulfilling and not fun to read. So I'd consider this probably the weakest book in my collection.

It could be just me because it turns out reading about blowjobs was pretty boring, but I prefer my other erotica books.