Customer Reviews

Domina : The Sextopians

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was really looking forward to this book. Having read Different Loving several years ago, frankly I expected much more from this author.

First, the main male character is made out to be a wimpy, drifting, whiny idiot. Now how much credit is that giving male submissives? Most of the other "slaves" in this book had stories in their past relating something that made them "damaged". How about showing someone with a healthy past who enjoys S/M for the sheer fun and eroticism of it?

and of course when he gets to the fantasy castle, he's forced to make a decision based on very little knowledge, and is immediately plunged into the heaviest of S/M lifestyles. Give me a break! How about negotiation and informed consent? What about a healthy, communicative relationship instead of one that borders on the emotionally abusive?

I thought this just reinforced negative stereotypes that already abound, of the submissive or "bottom" in a BDSM relationship being someone weak, unwilling to stand on their own, and using the Top as a crutch.

the ending also left me cold. It made me sad for all of us who have to live with this portrayal of a kink that we practice in a healthy and loving way.

Incidentally, Gloria Braeme's NONfiction is still highly recommended - she deals with various kinks in a sensitive and non-judgemental manner. But I wish she'd stick to nonfiction.

this is the "real thing," with real characters i could identify with. the scenes were so hot i couldn't believe a woman could see that far into a man's mind. She really goes deep inside the mind of Arden (malesub who is the main character). i identified with him totally. as i read i felt like She was looking into my soul with a magnifying glass. i never read a D/s book before where feelings were explored in so much detail. i humbly thank Her for that. i read it all in one sitting. i plan to read it again and again. maybe this way i won't make the same mistakes thas Arden makes. i learned something from it.

Chilling and arousing are but two of the words which describe Gloria Brame's latest book. I found myself inside the mind of Arden McLane. I also imagined being in his cage... naked and exposed. Somehow the author portrays a painstakingly real portrait of a diversely bizarre group of people living in luxurious slavery. One grasps the images of nakedness, helplessness, suffering, pain, and bondage.... and yet feels strangely envious of the people making up this collage of perversion. For they are living large. They have all found their place. They have created their own reality and are living life with no apologies. In support of these themes the author uses shocking images and events to invite her readers into a strange household headed by the beautiful and intelligent Domina. Her group of willing and happy slaves submit to treatment which probably offend the sensibilities of middle america. But then middle America probably wouldn't understand the pleasu! res of being bound to a flying cross.... or the freedom of belonging to HER. As for me, reading this book made me wish I could serve the woman who could come up with such intense fantasies! My heart never stopped pounding the whole way through.

This is an outrageous, subversive, magical-mystery-tour of a book, utterly compelling and wonderfully unpredictable. From the first sentence author Gloria Brame draws the reader deep within her world--and in my own case, kept me there until the sky brightened with dawn and I had to stumble weary and unshaven to work. I literally could not put it down.

It is impossible to describe this book in terms of comparable works. There are none. If pressed, I might say that this is what de Sade might have written if he had a sense of humor, or call it Anne Rice with edge. This is not fair to either of those authors, nor to Gloria Brame. Hers is a unique voice, at once clean and uncluttered while possessed of a poet's depth. The story itself is so gripping that on a first reading one speeds by much that he will later return to savor. I have been back twice now; I still haven't struck bottom.

And another thing: this book is flat-out sexy. Most erotic novels are, frankly, pretty boring, text that one skims in search of that elusive sentence or two that might afford a brief titillation. Domina is the mother-lode. Not only is there something here for everyone, it seems to me that there's everything here for anyone.

I pray for a sequel.

A very cold and unreadable book by an author who should know better. None of the characters are likable and you don't care what happens to them which violates the first rule of writing: Make your readers care about your characters.

The first chapter sets the bar very low in style and characterization and the rest of the following chapters don't clear the hurdle set. Too many of the characters ruin the clumsy story line and obscure whatever mood that is trying to be created. The flow of the book is erratic and fails to envelope the reader in the world it has created. A good editor would have spotted this and sent it back for another rewrite. One does shudder to think that this book was actually rewritten a couple of times and is not the first draft of the novel. Apparently the erotica market is devoid of editors or filled with third rate ones who are only interested in the quick buck.

Only the most desperate bdsm fantasist or sychophant will appreciate this novel. It isn't very erotic and often times it is dull. If I was a first time reader of this type of subject, I would never read the genre again. Fortunately there are better writers whose works elevate the genre. If Ms Brame wishes to inflict more pain on readers, she should go ahead with her plans to produce a sequel.

The first chapter sets things up very well and then drags for about 100 pages after that....did not care about most of the chracters...then the last fifty or so pages...wonderfull insight into emotions of the players involved. My only complaint is the male lead really has the deck stacked against him....a sequel would be nice....with a strong editor to help the author use those strong feelings she has access to.

Wretched would be the best word to describe this sad shot at a novel by the overrated author of "Different Loving". That book, incidentally, garnered its readership by providing a playpen for a bunch of suburban fools who aren't nearly as transgressive, important, or sexually adventurous as they like to think -- but most of the readers, who are equally confused about the difference between what's available and what's possible, ate it up with a spoon. Like they'll also eat up this immensely silly product. Like so much other "erotica" published today, it suffers under the weight of that nine-hundred-pound cross, Politics. The great twin beasts of "justification" and "self-discovery" run rampant through every page of this monolitically foolish fiction. Those who came here looking for a disposable one-handed read will no doubt find my comments eminently disposable, but then again, so's this book. You've seen it before, you'll see it again.

It's incredibly annoying. Just once I'd like to see a book about someone who is sold into slavery, raped, tortured, branded, used, humiliated, and thrown away ... and DOESN'T learn a damned thing about themselves from it.

How much?

There seems to be a little bit of everything here for everyone into or curious about BDSM. But forget about the sexually graphic content; you like it or you don't. What of this work as literature or cultural commentary? If you knew the liberating non-fiction works of Ms Brame previously, you like I might have expected some sort of literary manifesto from this author. Instead it was just a long, sometimes tediously titillating narrative of what goes on in such places, albeit an ideal one, with unrelenting rudeness towards the pathetic anti-hero as the central focus. The ending was surprising, or more properly, unexpected, because it didn't really arise organically out of the groundwork laid out by the novel. I was troubled by the lack of ethics implied by the final resolution. [...] I must be listed among the clueless as well, because I found nothing liberating about this novel.

Thank you Dr Brame for such a wonderful novel!

I found the book "Domina" for be very erotic, and highly intense. This was one book I picked up and couldn't put down until I finished reading it, more than once, I might add.

I am so forward to the sequel and learning even more from your all of your writings.

I have been and will continue to recommend your novel and your many other works.

Many thanks to you, Dr. Brame!!