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67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Right up there with Carrie's Story & Story of O, June 2, 2009
This review is from: As She's Told (Paperback)
I've read at least 50 bdsm books in the past couple years, and Anneke Jacob's As She's Told is not your typical cheeseball faux-bdsm stroke book. This book is the REAL DEAL.
This book is about the relationship between Anders and Maia, two people in the Toronto bdsm scene. Anders wants total control, to own his woman completely, human chattel...Maia desperately wants to be owned and controlled and told what to do. Neither one wants games, they want total permanent power exchange, with no room for choices or the word "no." The pair find a perfect match in one another, and so begins a fascinating and incredibly erotic love story. Ms. Jacob skillfully leads Anders & Maia (and the reader) along a continuum from the heady beginnings of new love, to the deepening of the relationship, with all the risk and new explorations, to...well...the complete and utter submission of Maia as Anders' slave.
But what makes this better than 98% of the Master/slave bdsm erotica out there, is that Maia and Anders truly share a love relationship...she never wavers in her desperate desire to please him, she revels in the (sometimes cringeworthy) things he does to her, and for his part, he never compromises her well-being or safety, in fact, the care he takes of her while more or less breaking her down into an animal is absolutely breathtaking (and totally sexy. I am absolutely in love with Anders! Femsubs, prepare to lose your heart to him if you read this book!!)
Aside from the great story, the great characters, the ridiculously hot sex, the insidiously evil-sexy punishments Anders comes up with, the fascinating development of what becomes quite a hard-core M/s relationship...aside from ALL THAT, this book is also exquisitely written. This is not like those other books that sound like they were written by someone with a third grade education or some perv sitting in a prison somewhere. Ms. Jacob obviously knows her way around the art of writing, so there's no distraction of bad writing and awful punctuation to draw you away from the story as it unfolds.
I just can't recommend this highly enough. If you want true, enthralling, realistic, and envelope-pushing bdsm erotica that is written exceedingly well, get this book. It deserves a place among the great hallmarks of the genre...the Story of O... Carrie's Story and Safe Word...if you loved those, this one is even better!!
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From The Triskelion Society's review pages, June 5, 2009
This review is from: As She's Told (Paperback)
Calling "As She's Told" erotica is almost an insult to Anders and Maia, the two main subjects of this novel, as we look in as their dynamic is established and evolves. More a BDSM "coming of age" story than erotica, Anneke Jacob seems to be documenting the slave fantasy through the eyes of a realist while keeping things dramatic enough to keep the reader involved.
With an easy to read writing style, the book moves along at a fast pace (I read 134 pages in one sitting without realizing it) without sacrificing anything of substance. At over 400 pages, "As She's Told" ensures the reader has a full plate but after the first chapter you find yourself relating to the references and experiences; so much so that no matter your proclivities you see parts of yourself in the characters.
As for the story itself; you will be hard pressed to find a form of play or derivative of roles not addressed. We see Maia go from living a fantasy entirely in her head to experiencing the reality of those thoughts. Her journey becomes your journey, as does Anders'.
Anneke Jacob puts you in the minds of her main characters throughout the novel. Back and forth in nearly every predicament, the reader gets insight into the how's and why's of the details. Doubts and triumphs; anxiety and achievement; apprehension and milestones, the full gambit of possibilities seem to unfold as we see Anders and his slave work to a place they are meant to be.
Is it a reality? Is it simply fantasy? It seems to me that this novel comes across as fiction simply because it is contained to 400+ pages between covers, without those bonds holding the story back we might encounter Anders driving his truck in Toronto or encounter Maia in a flowing dress.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A compelling fantasy, June 10, 2010
This review is from: As She's Told (Paperback)
I found this book to be a fantastic, compelling read. It is well written and well crafted. The premise of the book is a big "what if." The female character has had a lifelong need, a sexual compulsion, to feel controlled, to give up her will to another. The male character's need is just the opposite and complementary. At their first, more or less chance, meeting, their personalities spark. For the first time in their lives, they have found someone whom they can love and at the same time fulfill their lives' obsessions.
To call their desire to engage in what is sometimes called a total power exchange (but not by them since the whole idea is not an exchange, but rather a surrender) a fantasy is to belittle their total commitment to their agreement. The whole point for both characters is that the relationship be real and not some `scene' or parlor game.
Maia, the female character undergoes a total objectification and dehumanization. The man, Anders, assumes control over all of her exterior and interior life. He tells her that his goal is to have her feelings and conscious thoughts to be entirely of his creation. Maia undergoes severe corporal punishment and intense disciplines, including whippings, restraints, sensory deprivation. She fears and abhors the pain she suffers and does her best, through complete and total obedience, to avoid it. But Anders' will to dominate is so strong, his demands so meticulous, that it is impossible to comply, giving Anders the justification to inflict the punishments that he so much desires to impose. Not that he needs it, for he does not hesitate to inflict any hardship on Maia that will give him pleasure. Maia's joy is not in her suffering per se, but in submitting to her master's will and fulfilling her duty to give pleasure to her master in any, and I mean any, way that he desires.
The novel poses some interesting questions. Maia insists that she is a feminist, at least in the sense that she does not subscribe to the rights of males generally to dominate and rule women. She says that she has agreed to be dominated, but only by one man. She struggles with her `vanilla' mores, what society has taught her that she should want, against the actualization of her obsession and the sexual thrill she gets from her submission and shame at her humiliations. Anders worries that he be deemed no more than an abuser by society. I would guess that everyone who has indulged in bdsm, either on a personal level or in a rich fantasy life, has been confronted by the question of how society in general, their friends, their family, their coworkers, would react "if they only knew". Most would find abhorrent an actual act of violence committed against a person in anger and without consent. Slavery is something that in the real world is bad. And yet many people relish the fantasy of it. Maia and Anders struggle with these issues too, keeping their relationship secret from all but a very close group of friends.
As She's Told is a love story. But that love is based on the partner's ability to create and/or live in a world that allows both of them to satisfy their most basic cravings. In the real world, I doubt that anyone could undergo the extremes that Maia suffers without permanent psychological and physical damage. And anyone with the compulsion to control and objectify another to the extreme that Anders does to Maia would be deemed as bordering on psychotic. But that is the point. Maia and Anders are not real. They are the written fulfillment of a fantasy of the author's, a `what if' carried to its ultimate and natural conclusion.
If you can withstand the explicit depictions of cruelty, you will be taken on a journey into a world that you know not of. How many of us can claim, as Maia and Anders can, that we have found total fulfillment in life, that our partners suit us to a `T'? Think of the enrichment to your life if that could be found. That is what Maia and Anders have achieved for themselves.
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