He’s on Top is the companion volume to She’s on Top.
Another fantastic anthology from Rachel Kramer Bussel, He’s on Top is a collection of sizzling erotic stories that puts the focus on masterful men and the wanton women who bend beneath their will.
As Rachel is quick to point out in her introduction, He’s on Top is not about bullying and cruelty. These stories concentrate on the marrying of minds between those women who want to surrender and the manly men who take control.
Mike Kimera, “Christmas with Suzy and Mary,” shows a perfect example of the way male domination can be consensual, intellectual and still remain powerfully erotic. Not all the characters in Mike’s story know what they want, but they’re enjoying the journey more than most. With “In Control,” M Christian narrates a tale that blossoms from a chatroom fantasy and flourishes into a harsh physical reality. Chris’s story lets a dominant male discover who really has the upper hand in their relationship. And, in “Schoolgirl and Angel,” Thomas S Roche reveals that even when a dominant man doubts his own abilities, he can always rely on the help of a submissive woman who knows her own mind.
But it’s not just male authors in this collection. The female contributors prove they are equally capable of holding their own when it comes to relating tales of masterful men holding domain over willing women.
Donna George Storey, “Yes,” gets inside the male mentality with a tale that borders on being a stream of consciousness. Donna knows how to narrate and “Yes”shows she can present a male fantasy with intense credibility. In “Brianna’s Fire”Amanda Earl explores the lengths that a violinist needs to endure to prove herself adequate for an authoritative maestro. With “Incurable Romantic,” Lisabet Sarai introduces us to a master who is the slave to his own desires. And, in “The Sun Is an Ordinary Star,” Shanna Germain produces a fantastic tale that is erotic, intelligent, hard-hitting and compassionate.
The thing that I most admired about this volume was the skill shown by the writers involved. Writing scenes of male domination and female submission is a difficult trick to pull off. The dangers of advocating misogyny in some form or another are inherent with every command the protagonist makes. In our current PC climate, any author who shows a man wielding power over a woman, and the woman enjoying that submission, runs the risk of being labelled clueless, sexist, bigoted or worse. Yet those issues are cleverly avoided in this volume as Rachel has included stories from intelligent authors who are sensitive to the motivations of the top and bottom in these exciting, erotic escapades.
More intelligent than most, but just as erotic because of that, He’s on Top is for every man who like his woman beneath him, and for every woman who knows where she wants her man.
He’s on Top edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
(Cleis Press; February 28, 2007; ISBN-10: 1573442704)
Available at Amazon.com / Amazon UK
© 2007 Ashley Lister. All rights reserved.
