O Non-Fiction

Rants, scene write ups, reviews, basically everything that isn’t erotica.

My Daily Life, Pride and Search Hits on My Awesome Femdom Blog!

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Self referential Saturday time. After the phenomenal fun I have with amateur investigative reporting, this is a much more quiet weekend, among many reasons because I have a sinus infection. What have I been up to? Well, most recently I just put banana bread in the oven. Drool subs.

I’m increasingly losing patience with my job. Despite my blog hits growing, obviously this is not ever going to pay off as anything other than a labour of love (I played around with adding a “call it anything but tribute!” tip jar, but I’m still undecided.) I’d really like something that was a better work environment as far as people culture- the work itself would be okay if I had better instructions. So there’s that.

On the other hand on the blogging front… I get really proud to get hits like “femmedomme society site legit” (hint, no) and “easy-going femdom” (preen!). “Feminist femdom stories” is another good one, although I am slightly suspicious this is about female supremacy fantasies of irate radfems castrating. But since getting the sitemaps thing sorted out, Google’s webmaster tools inform me that things are actually getting indexed. Hurrah for my femdom blog being read!

Mind you, you can’t win ’em all. I’m still going on strong for versions of “Vampire Rape Porn”, but I also have attracted “horny women with animals”. I don’t own any animals, nor have I ever wanted to fuck one. I suppose that happens when you write about sexuality including sex research into female animals people are going to get confused.

I’m also having a hell of a time finding porn to review. I mean I can find a lot of stuff I clearly don’t like. On the femdom erotica front, it’s not hard to find Wicked Wanda stories or amateur products. My challenge is that I want to write a review of something *good*. I don’t want to be the blog that you go to to hear the creative dreams of others be trashed. Suggestions?

Review: Femme Fatale: Slave To My Nature Series by Robert India

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This is one of those ebooks being heavily pushed on Twitter as #femdom. To be precise Femme Fatale: Slave to My Nature has some femdom scenes in it. There are not, however, any Femme Fatales and this is a book. I didn’t like it but not because it was badly written, but because it did nada for me and my kinks.  Robert India put together something that is just dandy, if any of these things are your idea of fun:

Switching, being snarky about other people’s sexuality, high heels, M/m and mmf threesomes. And being super happy hot people living the sweet poly lux life.

As far as femdoms, though (or femme fatales), there’s Houseguest, his poly girlfriend, who he switches with, and a the female half of a couple the protagonist (also called Robert) has a threesome with and then berates for being too kinky for him. Every woman wears expensive high heels, much to the the delight of our hero. Robert does play up the “slave to my nature” bit, but precisely speaking that’s a desire to worship shoes and fuck pretty women. This is a story about a guy who thinks with his little head almost exclusively.

I think the protagonist spends as much time dom-ing men as he does submitting. One of the reasons why this book didn’t work for me on a personal level is that while Houseguest was cast as a distinct character with a will of her own, the finale scene was him topping her plus their bonus lover. If if could describe this any way I think it would be “the story of how a poly switch couple became a triad”. Clearly these people are very happy- score one for Robert India on that front.

But generally the femdom was put in a very controlled context- the protagonist puts himself in voluntary orgasm denial and Houseguest lightly teases him. The protagonist gets a demonstration that he’s not into masochism from Houseguest. He goes through with a threesome with a more S&M oriented couple, and rather than doing a pre-scene negotiation, storms off when he doesn’t like the direction their kinks went. I don’t really ever get the sense that Robert respects anyone in this story, except grudgingly, Houseguest.

This is another place where I was left scratching my head in puzzlement- basically we have femdom scenarios where the guy is at best ambiguously intrigued about them unless it’s things he very much wants. since there’s nothing inherently submissive about a shoe fetish or having your girlfriend have a will of her own, I was disinterested. Being on the receiving end of this a lot, via my inbox, it wasn’t something that pushed my buttons.

I’ve got a couple of take always here about the marketing too. I don’t think #switch sells as well, despite the absurdity that I know more people with switchy tendencies than people who would never even dabble in that direction. This is not fair to Robert India.

The book is at its strongest when it’s doing the gay stuff, and with one real quasi-cuckolding exception (during Robert’s self instigated experiment with chastity), if you like a bossy dude fucking dudes, that might be worth spending the $1 Canadian that the amazon.ca edition costs.
Category:  Ebook
Rating: o~o (2/5)
How I got it: Bought it
TL;DR: Perfectly fine writing, missed my kinks and hit a few personal bête noires as far as its treatment of femdom. This really should be filed under “M/m” and “switch” to do it justice.

Me & My Sexual Assaults

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Under Canadian law I’ve actually been sexually assaulted several times.

1) In middle school, a male peer decided my ass provided too great a temptation and held onto and forcibly humped me. I reacted by bursting into tears and never really understood why I wanted to make it a secret until becoming an adult.

2) My ass again provided too much temptation to my deranged grandmother. Groped. I generally see this as part of her ickiness.

3) And again, while bending to look at a counter of pastries. Difficult because stealth gropes can be brushed off as an accident. The worst part was having the conviction that I had been groped by no proof other than feeling it.

4) At a college dance, I say hello to a stranger, who proceeded to grab my ass. I forcibly remove his hand and get told “Don’t be an asshole!”

5) In the scene, a well known rope top decided that since in his demonstration of pressure points that since none of the other ones worked on me, he’d demonstrate on my nipple. He teaches an anti-rape class. I was… not happy. This was one of several incidents.

6) A male in the scene, as part of a hug, put a hand on my ass, justifying it that I’d been at a nude beach with him. Hand removed. Stammering self justifications from a man who was a literal peer of my father.

7) While on the metro, I smiled at a young man with  a passing resemblance to my gentleman. He proceeded to bump his crotch against me.

Rape victim, no. Nobody has ever forcibly penetrated me. I don’t like the term “survivor” either, which is supposed to make me feel empowered, but ends up making it feel like a bigger deal than it was, as my life was never threatened. It had an impact on me. I was victimized repeatedly by people who could not respect my bodily autonomy. But I never was torn or bled. It just… is tiring.

Up until very recently I didn’t see it as more than frustrating human social interactions, an assault the way that poking is an assault that you are unlikely to get a conviction on. It was actually weirdly embarrassing when I finally looked up what was against the law in Canada, to realize that I was actually sitting on a pile of legal violations. Like when you discover that the person you thought hated you had your back all along. And yet I feel, for some reason, like if I tell people this was sexual assault it’ll somehow be used as proof of how unreasonable I am for not wanting to get my body touched in a sexual fashion.

If I had a purpose in talking about this it is because the fact that I feel I should keep it to myself if the biggest stain these assaults have. Seriously, if people walked on my feet deliberately I’d be twittering that shit in rant caps. But it’s taken me this long to actually, at 27, say “Hi, I’m Pearl and these are the ways people sexually assaulted me.”

Hi, I’m Pearl. I’m legally a sexual assault victim.

Hi, I’m Pearl. Men and one woman has touched my body sexually, without my consent.

Hi, I’m Pearl. I can’t enjoy my buttocks as much as I’d like because other people treated it like collective property.

Hi, I’m Pearl. I have so little trust in society that I brushed off twisting my nipple as a “miscommunication” and took for granted he should have thought he had consent.

Hi, I’m Pearl. I don’t smile at strange men anymore as easily because I can’t tell when one is going to rub up against me.

Hi, I’m Pearl. And a part of me thinks that by writing this people won’t take me and my feelings seriously.

Hi, I’m Pearl. I know damn well I’m not alone.

 

Review: Taste by Beth Taylor

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It’s actually hard to give a good effort a bad review. I think Beth Taylor didn’t excactly rob me for $3.01, and I wouldn’t be gauche enough to demand a refund. However, I just couldn’t get into Taste: An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story by Beth Taylor,  mostly because of the writing style.

I tried, and I thought about not reviewing it at all. Maybe I simply didn’t give the characters a chance? It focuses on the love lives of a bunch of upper class British people with titles. It’s supposed to be about duty, but the duty element doesn’t really leap out while people are having impassioned email spats about their sexual desires and are supposed to be over educated and leading jet set lives.

Taste probably got off to a bad start by using the format of an email discussion, at least for me, I feel like I’m reading a chat log of someone’s RPG and I’m not really feeling it. I couldn’t make myself care about any of the characters or take their problems seriously. Here’s an excerpt of what I mean:

As he continues to lightly rub each of her feet, he glances over to see that smile of hers as she Skypes with her eldest brother – then smiles automatically in response, almost against his will, given his mood.

[Steph]: He’s watching The Masters wrap up.

[James]: Ask him if he’s finally gaining some sporting affection for Australia. If not, he should do!

[Steph, still smiling]: He’s in a quiet mood, Jamesy; not a great time for a piss-take, but when he finally tells me what’s on his mind, I’ll surely tease him afterwards for you.

[James]: Goodgood. Must dash, can’t wait to see you next week, it’s been too long.

Taylor, Beth (2013-05-05). Taste: An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story (Kindle Locations 455-464). . Kindle Edition.

Maybe some of the challenge was also that people were written as reacting to Steph’s random dominance, but I had no reason to find her as entrancing as the rest of the characters seemed to. Purely as a study of inter personal relationships and maudlin concepts, it’s not *that* bad. But while I wouldn’t burn this book, I wouldn’t advise you to buy it either. This is not “Twilight” bad, this is in the realm of being bad enough to be ignored but not bad enough to be fair or kind to pick on it.

Category: Short Ebook
Rating: o (1/5)
How I got it: Bought it
TL;DR: Overly creative formatting and characters I couldn’t get into. Scenarios had hints of being hot, but it needs more than a few sexy ideas to be worth it.

Queen Hatshepsut’s Strapon, “Penis Envy”, Penetration & Me

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Note false beard of regal powerI like my strapon harness. It’s made out of sporty materials so I can just run it through the washing machine, and the O-ring system gives me a great ability to adapt. Putting stuff into people’s orifices is fun. I like penetrating people and pegging them.

Of course, because I’m also unable to have sex without over thinking things, I’m going to discuss the inherent baggage that comes with strapping one on, especially as a femdom.

If you are a female dominant, you’d have to be living in a box to not notice that wearing a fake penis is part of the stuff people automatically associate with you. Practically, a strapon is only one of the many ways you can stuff and stimulate a hole, but like a lady hyena, if you’re the top mammal, you seem to get a phallus. This association is so strong that guys into getting done up the ass routinely mislabel themselves as submissive. Much like male heterosexual transvestites also get wrongly filed under the submissive label (because panties and cross dressing as a woman are shameful, don’tcha know?) every femdom gets the joy of routinely reminding dudes that being pegged is only as submissive as they want to make it.

Of course, linguistically and socioculturally, people who like stuff in their bits deal with the fact that penetration is also generally associated with power. “Cocksucker!” is not generally used as a term of respect. There is also the problematic habit of characterizing the female reproductive system as, rather than being an internal but no less valid set of equipment, as being an absence of penis. Thankfully, the concept of “Penis envy” is generally discredited as being something that Freud got a bit carried away with (and is as probable as “womb envy” in men) but as much as the old guy got things insultingly wrong much of the time, he was correct in the way that guys and the cultural narrative they control seem to make power revolve around penises.

This, incidentally, also comes up in some of the chastity play and SPH, where again, the potency of the penis in the relationship gets to be a stand in for the potency of the dude that you are so lovingly debasing. Although this is not the rule, for example if you are showing the commitment to orgasm denial that uses topical lidocaine to numb the guy out before fucking, you’re probably not saying something about the actual equipment.

Anyway, be that as it may, it means that there’s two reasons to jam something in someone’s holes: it feels good (or bad in the right way) and for fun with symbols. I generally fall somewhere in the middle in this sort of spectrum- but I also have to admit something…

Fucking someone with a strapon is actually really hard work, and no matter how you slice it: you’re putting a non-nerve ending having artificial extension of yourself in someone for primarily psychological effect. On a physical front, It is considerably less effort to fuck someone by hand, or even, honestly, kneel down and blow the guy. Now I happen to like fellatio- I’ll never be one of those doms who never fucks. But even if you get him to ride you, if you’re on the bottom this may get uncomfortable (oomf, oomf, oomf!, quoth your dom from below, as a typically heavier male impales himself repeatedly). I really like fucking my partners this way, but it’s one of the least stereotypically “dominant” and self focused tricks in my sexual repertoire, and to be frank, since I see nothing inherently humiliating in being penetrated, this will always be an act of love.

Seriously. Wanna know what strapon sex feels like, mechanically? Try jamming a slightly soft peg into a well lubed, elastic hole hidden in two cushions, when you can’t feel the end of the peg, and you are steering with your pelvis.

Pegging is also weird because it is very much something that exists in the heterosexual space. Actually for that matter so does Futa, since a lot of the examples I’ve seen are either real transgendered people, to whom the penis does not trump their femininity- the labeling being chicks with dicks, not dudes with tits, even though the possession of other typically female characteristics like breasts in no way automatically marks that person as woman, or illustrations and photoshops of women with penises. (No really, even if you deny transgender as a thing, gynecomastia most certainly is a real phenomena).  It is the thing that the lady who likes the dude does to the dude. It is most certainly not the thing that the dude who likes the dude is using as a surrogate replacement for in the lady, except in those rare edge cases that exist to derail arguments.

So with the dildo-in-harness thing, strapping one on exists in a weird zone of being a penis for the people who are otherwise categorically not penis havers, and does not trump gender. It’s very much important that I am a woman penetrating a man for the psychological impact, though bizarrely, when a guy straps something on it goes in the opposite direction as being an adequacy insult.

Mind you fucking someone raw is still pretty hot. And if I temporarily had a real penis I would probably use it on someone.

But you know that the number one impulse strapping one on gives me?

Wibbly, wibbly, wibbly.

Review: Control by Charlotte Stein

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The new cover of Control, by Charlotte Stein, is a rare example of a femdom book designed to appeal to a woman and which also does not get hung up on the idea of making her into a pro or head mistress or some such. It’s fun, it’s light and it even has a wee little bit of romance. And a very mundane setting down to the fixtures and baked pasta dish (surprisingly memorable in the way that you remember those little details when you fall in love) and a submissive male lead I could actually see myself wanting to fuck. That, in a world of pornography that goes out of its way to sell male subs as walking creep farms or eunuchs, is a very rewarding achievement in its own right.

The protagonist, an owner/operator of a naughty book store “Wicked Words”, has her choice between Submissive Gabe and Dominant Andy. Meeting both men as potential workers in her shop, she sets about shagging Andy seven ways to Sunday while sexually teasing Gabe non-stop.

Suspend practicalities- Madison, our heroine, lives in a world where this much fucking is normal. It’s porn, so it can be excused with the jerky start when she falls into bed with Andy at first meeting- I imagine if anyone in this universe ordered a pizza it would come with extra sausage.

I will say that Dominant Andy did nothing for me. I generally like my subs with an aggressive, self assured streak, but i he had been the only sales point of the book I would have put it down. As it stands, I got thorough the scenes he was in by skimming or irritably muttering under my breath: “Go away, Andy!” I can’t tell if the writing was not as strong or if it just wasn’t my fetish.

But Gabe was a fun male submissive lead with zingy chemistry. At times it touched on the idea that he was submissive because he was broken, which is not an idea I encourage, but on the balance it also made him a pleasant mix of fragile and tough, in a way that made my overly maternal dominant heart go pitter-pat. I had no trouble believing this half of the triad was bound for steamy fun.

It’s also a good example of femdom outside of femdom tropes- Madison is nobody’s leather wearing Mistress, nobody cracks a whip and the focus here is on D/s in a relatively normal (for porn land!) setting. If only Andy was given a smaller part, no matter how much he’d been assigned to be a sexual catalyst.

Category: Erotic romance
Rating: o~o~o~o (4/5)
How I got it: Bought it!
TL;DR: Bookseller Madison gets a choice between buttoned up sub Gabe and bad boy bossy type Andy. Logically, she  screws both of them until book’s end.

How Miss Pearl Ended Up In The Middle Of A Findom Circle Jerk

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If half the stuff strange male subs promised was true, I’d be an MP right now with a swimming pool full of money. Long term readers know, I’ve made no secret of my lack of faith in findom. As a dominant female I get a regular trickle of stupid offers, and these always come with strings, usually that they get a great deal of control on what the money involves and what you can spend it on. I feel similarly about the men who offer “free” service acts. And today was just another example of that.

Sometimes I hang out on the collarme video chat. It’s not a frequent habit because it generally involves a string of turning nice and not so nice men down, usually with very explicit requests. On the other hand, or about the same reason, the website is also a source of comedy gold.

So, this morning, I got a guy proposing that he wanted me to pimp him out as a cam sub and sexual thrall to other people. He would “suck cock” and then collect money from his humiliation to give to me. A brilliant scheme, right? As usual, I turned him down, with the usual explanation that life didn’t really work that way.

But, since he was persisting in telling me about how he wanted it to be an active benefit to me. I told hi he wanted to have a wank, but it seemed time to do an experiment. I told him if he was so serious, he should consider an alternative proposal.

Get a shitty, part time franchise job. Work it for a month and donate every penny to he earned to his local domestic violence shelter. No rewards, no sexy pics or teases. No cocks, no sissy humiliation just doing something difficult and dull, and no reward of me saying “I spent this on sexy shoes!!!” or “My hung boyfriend and I bought dinner with this!”

Of course, from first proposal, as much as he ell over himself to agree, he seemed unable to handle that the money would not go to me. I kept telling him, repeatedly, the deal was not about what he wanted, but about what I told him to do. And then he said fine and that he would do it. He’d go find a job. And I said, fairly, I’d be seriously impressed if he could actually pull that off. Maybe I was about to be proved wrong!

Two minutes later another guy is messaging me- he’ll give the guy a job. Sucking cock, of course! But he wants to give the money to me. No, I remind him, I don’t want the money. And then another guy got on board with this! Loads of strange sub men trying to give me money for sucking each other’s cocks!

The guys wanted to hire each other for sexual services, as long as they could keep pushing that they wanted the money to go to me. At this point the chat moderator told me to knock it off because they only want findom transactions to take place in private. Which was not my point, but my point had long since been discarded by any of the people, including the enterprising bloke who wanted 30 minutes alone with my feet.

But I was let feeling that my participation was completely unnecessary. After all, these guys didn’t need me to “humiliate” each other, didn’t care one bit about what I want or said. Apparently they needed my presence to kick off their little party, but once they got off and rolling, for all I know they’re still doing it.

Which gets to the crux of why I think findom is silly. I think there are a few “whales” that make it a worthwhile concept, but I’ve never actually encountered a findom who didn’t work her ass off as a fantasy fulfillment object to squeeze out every penny. There is, after all, no such thing as a free lunch.

Daily Femdom Life and My D/s Neighbour Couple & Cuckolding

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I’m house sitting. It’s a welcome vacation, for a person who likes to get a change of scenery from time to time. I tell people I like travel and they think I mean exotic locations and museums, and I have a passport stamped with a dozen far flung places.

I mean I like hotels and mass transit, and airports and bus stations. And staying in the Cuckolds’ house. I talked about them before, I think, Professor Sub and his fiancée. They’re making the most of the waning summer, and seeing as we’re a close commute now, the male and sub half of the couple has given me custody of their apartment and cherished pet while they jetted off for three days holiday.

It’s nice, the normality of this. To care for their pet, and smirk at the subtext in the pictures in their hall. To come over in a bad mood and be plied with a Caesar, and break into an impromptu tutorial on face slapping. Single submissive men, life ain’t fair. My friend has two women slapping that smug look off his face.

I really am close friends a sissy cuckold and his hot wife. Although the cuckold part is being hampered, at least a little bit, by the teeny, weeny little detail that finding a “bull” is easier said than done.

They’re not the only couple with that problem in my life. The Mr Sub and Ballbuster are also looking for a bull and hitting the same wall- how do you find someone you feel safe and comfortable with, that you also feel attracted to, to make into a fuck buddy in a way that both parts of the couple can get off on it?

Strong keeps trying to encourage me to get laid for other reasons, and it again hits the same problem, although he doesn’t want me to cuckold him (or if he does he’s not admitting it) as much as a desire which borders on martyrdom to help me achieve sexual fulfillment.  There is a paucity of nice, respectful no strings men. Add that if you’re a dom woman you often don’t want the classic aggressive Bull anywhere near your bed, and you’re going to end up just like all those M/f couples looking for their unicorn-girl to finish their family.

But I guess this is also living the BDSM “lifestyle” at its best. So there’s that.

Why Feminism and BDSM Go Together Well

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Oh Noes, Feminisms! Red Alert!

Bra go poof!Say feminism, and 95% of your audience battens down their hatches like you said “hurricane”, or finds something else suddenly very, very interesting. Like the carpet, or their own shoes, or that urgent appointment they just remembered to alphabetically file all the food in their pantry. At least, as a femdom, I can be openly feminist and nobody bats an eye. Of course a significant number of people will confuse this with female supremacy, which is an entirely different thing. The relationship BDSM, as a whole, has with this philosophical approach is a bit more dubious.

Much of this is because BDSM is made up of people, and people have problems with feminism. In my mind part of the problem with feminism, is that it’s a really big tent with a couple of centuries of activism and writing under its belt. There is no central board of feminism, so pretty much anyone can do it, and say whatever they like. And like any big movement, it’s  going to be in a state of constant internal argument. It’s also part of the left, which means that like all forms of left-y ism, it occasionally shades into woo (the Goddess!) or becomes way too self flogging for popular consumption (freegan-vegan!), or the lingo of the current generation of activism  makes it impenetrable to the novice (check your cis-privilege!).

Before I launch into talking about the subject, it’s necessary to address a number of things- first of all Straw Feminists. If you’re not familiar with the philosophical ideas, it’s quite possible that you imagine a feminist to be an angry, ugly woman who seeks to do horrible things to men. This is one of the reasons why as a femdom nobody assumes I shouldn’t be feminist (at least the angry and sadistic part) which is depressing for other reasons. If your idea of feminism is about doing mean things to men, you are doing it wrong. 

Of course, some, if not most of the shit that feminism gets flung its way is the same old tired misogyny that makes women expressing themselves be subject to attacks so vile that they functionally justify feminism.  If you think feminists are all angry scolds, you are part of a proud tradition that dates to before women were permitted to own property or vote. And you don’t know what a feminist is.

Another thing you need to take into consideration is that feminism only exists within the bounds of the same culture that everything else does. Thus there are feminists that are porn hating prudes and feminist porn stars. There are feminists who are sexist, or transphobic, and feminists who love everyone equally. Any idea within feminism can be taken to extremes just like any other idea could.

On the other hand, I’m taking it for granted that if you are this many paragraphs into this blog post you are probably sex positive, probably pretty diversity friendly and you like lots of different kinds of people. If you don’t identify as a feminist you at least think equality is a good thing (unless you are secretly or not so secretly under the impression women should rule). If you’re not, please feel free to get nice and foamy in the comments. Additionally, I’m not going to address the “Not a feminist but…” thing in this post, but save that for another time.

But, onto how feminism gets treated in kink discourse!

Read more

Review: Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee

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The Silver Metal Lover is what I’d describe as stealth D/s. Tanith Lee was one of those writers that spoke to me when I didn’t quite have the vocabulary to describe what I wanted in a relationship. Her lyrical, often purple prose can border on hysterical at times, with everything having an impossible loveliness and an emotional weight of a ton of bricks. That was perfect fodder for a teenage girl weaned on fantasy and sci-fi, the kind who wants to have adventures and see beautiful things.

I got so wrapped up in this book I wept. I admit it can be sentimental and overwrought to the ponit of silly, but it’s one of my favourites.

And it’s a literal owner/property relationship story about an android programmed to be perfect for his owner, and a sixteen year old rich girl, Jane. Like many of her ilk, she needs to find herself and her sense of self worth, but this incarnation of the trope is relatively well done, with just the right note of cynical self awareness to tie it together.

When we meet our heroine she’s a trembly mess living in her mother’s shadow, on a future earth where technological progress has put much of the human race out of work and left everything poisonous. Jane’s got abominable idle rich friend, and lives in a cloud castle trying to do what she’s supposed to do according to her mother’s careful plans that even change the physical shape of her body, and wanting none of it.

But, seeing Silver, for the first time in her life she wants something. Initially repulsed and unable to explain where she’s terrified by the man machine that looks like a metal troubadour, in short order she conspires to acquire Silver and run away from home.

Silver is incapable of being anything other than perfect, an amazing lover, an artist, but also naturally pleasing in whatever capacity he’s needed. He is about as inherently submissive as you can get in that regard, not embodying the doormat ideal, but the compliance and service aspect.  his makes a good foil for Jane’s development- because he is compelled to be perfect for her, they embark on just the sort of relationship Jane needs to develop as the best possible person she can be, before they have to face the challenge of Silver’s existence as an artificial being.

I do think it did an interesting version of the standard plot of self-discovery-via-love. While waiting for a man to change your life is not necessarily the most healthy approach to life, the relationship depicted is an interesting use of the trope because Silver is not written like Aladdin-with-carpet showing her the world, but rather that the need to make a nest with Silver creates a place for her to do some developing and changing- and he manages to do something a lot of F/m fiction doesn’t seem to, which is make the need for each other feel mutual. and that’s part of the romance- although Silver gives everyone what they need, Jane finds a way to reach him as a person. The story, by presenting her with a perfect submissive, drives Jane to make the changes she needs to make in herself.

That’s actually something I don’t see much of- male doms can need to be “tamed”, but by and large the only taming that seems to happen to fictional female doms is death or dis-empowerment. Case in point, what keeps happening to Irene Adler.

I think the one criticism I might make is that initially it’s hard to spend long periods of time with Jane as a person because she’s so fragile and sad, but I think it’s part of what makes it a better example of dominant love- doms are not, for the most part, captains of industry or nobility. They have sad days and worry about things. This is very much a candi-floss book for the emotional. On the other hand it’s also what I’d describe of as the Twilight for the anti-Twilight but overly romantic girl.

So expect a heroine who waxes lyrical about how amazing her love is, expect that she will be derpy and feel alienated from her friends, but for once be relieved that the romance demands she learn to rule herself and her love and the ending cares about her being self actualized as a person.

Category: Sci-fi YA novel
Rating: o~o~o~o~o (5/5)
How I got it: Library
TL;DR: D/s without the fetish or the sadism, sweet and appropriate for a sensitive reader who doesn’t want to be submissive while they’re overcome with love.