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xterminal's review
3.0
No editor listed, Naughty Bits 2: An Anthology of Short Erotic Fiction (Spice, 2010)
First things first.
Dear Spice Books,
The fact that I am holding a book in my hands means that I should be able to put a name to it. Not the name of any of the authors listed as having contributed to the book, but the name (or names) of those who read the submissions, collected them into a book-length manuscript, had final approval, etc. We normally call those folks “editors”. Any book like this has an editor. Please credit that person on future editions so those of us reading the book know to whom to refer when we want to comment on the overall quality of the stories there. Thank you.
Now that that's out of the way, the first thing you should know about this collection is that, whether this was broadcast to the participants previous to the call for submissions or not, the overarching theme of this volume is BDSM. That would have been nice to know from the description on Vine, and I don't see it anywhere in what can be found on the product page (with the caveat that I didn't read the reviews, as I try not to do before writing my own most of the time), so I'm putting it right up front for those who would find such material distasteful or, worse, triggering. That said, there are certainly various levels of dominance and submission, and the authors are all over the map with it, from Portia da Costa's bare-bottomed spanking to Megan Hart's sexy spies, where the notion of “dominance” is a natural outgrowth of the hero's occupation. (I would also like to thank Megan Hart and Saskia Walker for bringing the love for the IT guy, though I certainly don't look like their heroes, and few of my co-workers look like their heroines...) As with pretty much everything else literary, I tend to prefer the subtle to the obvious, and so making an exception for the Portia da Costa story, because Portia da Costa could write the phone book and I'd read it, the farther I got in this book, the more I appreciated it. (I should mention that Da Costa's story is the first in the book; Hart's and Walker's are second-last and last, respectively, and Walker's is the mildest, from the BDSM perspective.)
As is usually the case with anthologies, the quality of the stories is somewhat varied, and to be honest, what you're going to like and what you're not is pretty much solely based on taste. You may find Portia da Costa insufferable (you poor soul). So me telling you what's awesome in here is kind of like me telling you red velvet cake is better than coconut cream pie; some of you will agree, some of you won't. All I can do is tell you this: unless you have a vested interest in not reading it because of the subject matter, even the “worst” stories in here (define worst however you'd like) are of a high enough quality that I'd encourage you to check it out and figure out which authors you'd like to read more of on down the road.
(Hint: one of them will be Portia.) ***
First things first.
Dear Spice Books,
The fact that I am holding a book in my hands means that I should be able to put a name to it. Not the name of any of the authors listed as having contributed to the book, but the name (or names) of those who read the submissions, collected them into a book-length manuscript, had final approval, etc. We normally call those folks “editors”. Any book like this has an editor. Please credit that person on future editions so those of us reading the book know to whom to refer when we want to comment on the overall quality of the stories there. Thank you.
Now that that's out of the way, the first thing you should know about this collection is that, whether this was broadcast to the participants previous to the call for submissions or not, the overarching theme of this volume is BDSM. That would have been nice to know from the description on Vine, and I don't see it anywhere in what can be found on the product page (with the caveat that I didn't read the reviews, as I try not to do before writing my own most of the time), so I'm putting it right up front for those who would find such material distasteful or, worse, triggering. That said, there are certainly various levels of dominance and submission, and the authors are all over the map with it, from Portia da Costa's bare-bottomed spanking to Megan Hart's sexy spies, where the notion of “dominance” is a natural outgrowth of the hero's occupation. (I would also like to thank Megan Hart and Saskia Walker for bringing the love for the IT guy, though I certainly don't look like their heroes, and few of my co-workers look like their heroines...) As with pretty much everything else literary, I tend to prefer the subtle to the obvious, and so making an exception for the Portia da Costa story, because Portia da Costa could write the phone book and I'd read it, the farther I got in this book, the more I appreciated it. (I should mention that Da Costa's story is the first in the book; Hart's and Walker's are second-last and last, respectively, and Walker's is the mildest, from the BDSM perspective.)
As is usually the case with anthologies, the quality of the stories is somewhat varied, and to be honest, what you're going to like and what you're not is pretty much solely based on taste. You may find Portia da Costa insufferable (you poor soul). So me telling you what's awesome in here is kind of like me telling you red velvet cake is better than coconut cream pie; some of you will agree, some of you won't. All I can do is tell you this: unless you have a vested interest in not reading it because of the subject matter, even the “worst” stories in here (define worst however you'd like) are of a high enough quality that I'd encourage you to check it out and figure out which authors you'd like to read more of on down the road.
(Hint: one of them will be Portia.) ***
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