Simonds – A F/F romance that involves naughty nipple play with knitting needles. It’s cute, a little more on the lighter side. Safeword by Delphine Dryden – Best friends to lovers story, or should I say, a best friends to “paddle my ass as my lover” story. Very dark.Įach Step Sublime by Bettie Sharpe – DNF this one. The ending is very abrupt…but I liked it. Their fighting leads to a very intense sexual encounter. Didn’t like this one, skipped most of it.Ĭaged by J.K Coi – A woman meets a man who has been transformed into a werewolf to fight him to learn to be a better agent. The Sybil by Jean Johnson – A warrior, emperor type story. I could have read 350 pages about these two. In this story she dresses in a 1950’s housewife fashion, and whips him. Her story features a dominatrix and a former marine who submits himself. And she is the one author that has a story on both the Agony side and Ecstasy side. Transfixed/Transformed by Anne Calhoun – One of the main reasons I picked up this anthology is because I wanted to read a story by Anne Calhoun (Liberating Lacey is a favorite of mine!). I decided to give my brief thoughts on each one. ![]() But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them. The Agony/Ecstasy anthology is made up of “11 stories of agonizing pleasure and 10 stories of exquisite pain.” I was hesitant to read this, because I’m not huge on anthologies to begin with and I thought 21 very short stories would not be for me. If you're brave enough to step outside the romance genre Jane is associated with, this is a great collection of erotica. The strongest entries far outweigh the weakest ones, leaving the lasting impression of a satisfying read. It's diverse in theme, sexual orientation and culture and packs enough emotion to keep it from being a volume of forgettable stroke fiction. If you're in the market for quick and dirty erotic short stories, Agony/Ecstasy is a quality offering. Isn't that really the best you can hope for in an anthology? For every bad story there were two okay ones and one great one. Yes, "Wetwire" was derivative Neuromancer fanfic, the dialog-free "Taken" a boring Indian captive story and "The Wooden Pony" a phoned-in maledom BDSM cliche, but they didn't manage to spoil the bunch. "Bruised Ego" and "Overtaken" took two different takes on boxer/fighter heroes, managing to show both sides of the same coin. "Into the Red" was an imaginative futuristic gladiator tale with some of the hottest emotion in the anthology. "Caged" breathed new life into the tired werewolf theme and left me begging for more. The raw desire and emotion of "Shameless," the pulse-quickening suspense of "Rescue Me" and the convention-bucking "Safeword" seemed better than a mere three star read. Somehow that just didn't match my perception of the anthology as a whole. If I added up my grades for the stories to find the mathematical average, the book comes in at a three. Rest assured that none of the stories are downers, but if you're a romance reader you might not know what to make of the stories with fully ambiguous endings. Most have at least a thread of romance to them, but only a few had an HEA. Definitely erotica, not romance, but not all BDSM themed. So, to begin with, it's like most anthologies: some great stories, some terrible ones, and a bunch of ok ones. So I'd suppose my job as a reviewer is to try explain if they succeeded or not. The authors' goals were to entertain, not enlighten. Since this is a genre collection, rather than a literary one, there's not a ton to talk about thematically. ![]() When you're working with stories that are a mere 20 pages in length, how do you review them without giving away all the details? When the anthology is one of numerous short stories, rather than a handful of novellas, the task grows even more difficult. Of all the reviews I write, anthologies are the hardest nut to crack.
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