Customer Reviews

Menagerie: Stories of Passion and Dark Fantasy

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Kyle Stone has been called the finest author of gay male SM erotica working in the field today. This new collection of stories from the gay cult favorite covers a wide territory, showing us the many faces of desire. Searing hot or warm and tender, these stories leap off the page and do not let go!

From the boy next door to the alien hermaphrodite dancer with a secret taste for SM, this is a volume of extraordinary imagination.

Menagerie is a collection of short gay fantasy stories. It opens with the story of the title, Menagerie, about naked muscular young men kept caged by an alien race for their sexual entertainment. Working Late describes the antics of two young office workers who put on an erotic display for a voyeur in another office block. Something About the Light, centres on an erotic encounter in a cave with a many-tendrilled sea organism. Next is Touch Me, in which the object of a voyeur's passion turns into reality. The Messenger is an encounter between an older man and a mysterious boy in a boat. Adam and Steve, about a pick up that leads to a coffee shop with the stranger and in which a candle is put to imaginative use. After Chops and the Stiff, a mystery with a private investigator, comes The Pick Up, which is just that, and includes a pair of discarded dirty Jockey briefs. Provider is a tragic vampire tale. Watching is another story about a voyeur, but with an unusual twist. Following the very short Hot Stuff comes Aquamarine, an endearing fairytale like story about a prince from the depths of the seas, an androgynous merman like being, who falls in love with a human prince and does a deal to become a human; the human prince falls in love with him, but will it all end well? Master class, tells of a music student working at a garden nursery; he delivers a Ficus to a handsome and obviously wealthy man who seduces him; but will it turn out to be just another one night stand? The final story, Sexual Warrior, is an extract from the authors The Citadel.
This is an above average collection of erotic and fantasy stories; they vary in length, the shortest just two pages, the longest about 20 pages. Each is different and with the emphasis on the story, they make for a very imaginative and entertaining collection. However taking away the final story which already appears elsewhere, the book amounts to little more than 130 pages.

The stories in this book are exceptionally well written. I am amazed that Kyle Stone has maintained such a high level of good taste while writing what are essentially erotic tales. Each story is a micro-universe of beautiful words and of the joy (not the crassness) of homosexual desire. This book is eminently worth reading.

Stone does it again! Another magnificant collection of stories that takes us above and beyond. Sure to delight lovers of gay erotica.