Review: Above the Dungeon by SM Johnson

Title: Above the Dungeon

Author: SM Johnson

Rating: 5 Scorching Stars

Genre: Gay, BDSM

This has to be 5 stars from me. I’ve read some dark things lately (Herbert/Barker) and this immediately offered something deliciously lighter: something that could pull me back from the dread and compulsion of picking up a dark reads. I kept coming back to this novel with just a real easy sigh, and it’s been such a long time since I’ve found a novel that’s made me feel so at ease.

I loved the 1^st v 3^rd switch in pov between Dare and Jeff. The arrangement not only gave both sides of the relationship “argument” here, but also characterised Roman beautifully. And it all played havoc with my loyalties. I hated Roman, even though I should have been hating Jeff; then I was growling at the possible ménage scenario that neither of them obviously wanted. Then I was loving the possible manage scenario because some of the BDSM sex scenes were just so damn hot. And then – stage door opens to allow Dare into the mix.

Jeff, he’s your one-hundred percent sub, but with a twist: always looking for something else -- not someone, just the thrill of something else. I actually loved Jeff. All his insecurities, his selfishness, but mostly how his own selfishness, aided by Roman’s pure patience and understanding, was his own undoing: his Dom gave him everything he wanted, and loved him enough to supply Jeff with everything Jeff thought he wanted. That was something really special to see from Roman, and from a Dom. So when Dare comes into the mix, you can see the possibility of a real threat, and all of Jeff’s insecurities come into play again.

Dare. He’s your typical pretty(ish) rich boy running away from marriage. You could bring in “trope” 

here, but Dare, he was a surprise, and one I’m not quite sure where he leaves me feeling in the end. He gets drawn willingly to Roman -- and into Roman’s world -- but, and this is part that helped define him in his own right away from trope characters, he pulls himself away from Roman’s world in a bid to retain individual identity. And it’s this that left me a little ‘hmmm’ towards the end. I’d seen Dare getting drawn in body and soul, then when Dare saw Jeff in the 24/7 state, all that heat almost flat-lined. It left a very strange state, but one I can understand. Some people don’t take one-hundred percent to the sub life. So it was good to see that play out and see Dare try to find his comfort levels, and then acknowledge his comfort levels, especially when it came to Roman.

Roman… Mmmmm. The more I think about him, the more I’d like to pull him from the pages and do wicked things to him. I loved how he kept showing his pure commitment to Jeff, even through his fascination with Dare. The tables turned on Jeff again, going from thinking he needed more, to learning Roman maybe was all he needed, to seeing someone else catch Roman’s eye. The whole constantly shifting arrangements made for a whole snake-pit for disaster, but Roman kept coming into his pure Dom roll, showing Jeff how much he loves him, bringing out the best in Dare, so that by the end, there’s a strange part-time sub v full-time sub acceptance with the relationship. I expected Dare to go his own way with how cool he became, or at least find someone else and keep coming back to Roman, so the ending did surprise me a little.

 
But overall, a fantastic read, and I’m damn sure I’ll picking up the next installment to this.


Link to author's Amazon.co.uk page.

Review: Deliver Us by Lynn Kelling

Title: Deliver Us

Author: Lynn Kelling

Rating 5 scorchers

Genre: BDSM, Gay, Erotic Romance.

(Discliamer: I wrote this review before Ms Kelling and I had spoken and agreed to our merged-world projects.)

Okay, where to start without resulting to my initial response, which would probably get a few raised brows from anyone reading this (spoiler: there were a few swear words, a lot of shifting to adjust the heat under my collar, and a lot “phew, they’re doing what?”).

 

Hands up, I have to admit, Deliver Us touched on a few taboos. Ones that I’d not come across before. That’s a strange place to start a review, with a list of likes and unknowns, but it becomes important  when you put it in context with characters, plot, and pace.

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The two leads in this, Darrek and Gabe, especially because of their histories, they needed an explosive sexual creativity when they were together, that ability to just let go and experience, as life in general had forced them to close down in their own ways. They needed that extreme level of intensity to allow each other the ability to trust when it then came to going beyond the physical.  

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Darrek is your sensitive straight, who having being left by his ex lover is given a number to a BDSM club. Fully expecting to explore a female D/s relationship, something he has nibbled at in the past, complications over the forms he signs puts Derek under the experienced hands of Gabe, a male Dom with just the right touch to throw Darrek’s world into a heated rush of sensation overload, submission, and the even more dangerous possibility of being Gabe’s lover.

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As Dom and sub, Gabe and Darrek seem the most unlikeliest pair to meet, let alone become lovers. We have Darrek, the lonely lovable giant who stumbles away from a shattered relationship into the BDSM scene and a gay love life in general. There’s a will and determinism to try everything, to find his body’s limits and test whether he can push through them, all underwritten by his growing feelings for Gabe that seem to give him the drive for pushing his mind and body.

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Then there’s Gabe.  His troubled history has taken him into the role of a Dom, one who only ever touches, never allows to touch, and who also comes with one hell of a protective group of Doms who get just as aggressive with anyone threatening to touch Gabe (a protectiveness that I loved seeing play out).

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It seems a relationship that’s doomed to fail, either through Darrek’s and Gabe’s destructive histories, the intensity of a D/s relationship, or the protectiveness of friends. It’s certainly one relationship I was skeptical to in the beginning, the whole straight to gay/vanilla to SUB seeming a wide gap to fill.

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Yet  it’s that understanding you reach with both parties, how you can see Gabe seeming to find a certain level of  security in knowing Darrek stumbled into the gay BDSM scene, that there’s an innocence to how Darrek breaks down the barrier to Gabe that Gabe forced around himself a teen. You come to see that Darrek wouldn’t have had the same reaction with any other Dom, and that Gabe would have just gone through the motions given any other sub. It had to be Gade; it had to be Darrek for this to work.

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But, on a level of kink beyond the taboo, I loved this relationship from a language pov too. It was intriguing to see Gabe and Darrek live the D/s lifestyle, but have a narrative prose that showed equal dynamics. Equal weight is given to Darrek and Gabe in and outside of a scene, so both work together, neither really claiming linguistic dominance, and it’s that subtlety that helped cement their relationship, for me anyway.

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And a lot of that is why it has taken me so long to read this novel. There were so many things going at so many levels, I had to back away, force myself to pull out at certain points for fear of sensory overload.  Not a bad thing at all. In fact, I had to go buy a hard copy for my… collection.

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This one is a definitely a keeper and one I’ll be reading again