I had mixed feelings about "The New Bottoming Book," so it was with somewhat reserved enthusiasm that I picked up its companion volume. I was heartened to discover that "The New Topping Book" included a chapter on full-time D/s, a subject dear to my heart which the authors had previously treated by turns with disdain and disregard.
Indeed, Easton and Hardy get off to a promising start here, as they discuss the appeal of topping, the rights and responsibilities of the top, and an exploration of the top persona(e). Unfortunately, the book loses steam about a quarter of the way through. After a brief, rather mystical digression in which the authors wax almost poetic about "intuition" - in fact, they freely admit that "much of this chapter will sound too New Age for words" to many readers - they get back to practical matters, but these chapters are bogged down in unnecessary elaboration and repetition. Easton and Hardy regularly take a page or two to say what could have been said perfectly well in a medium-length paragraph, and some subjects are discussed basically the same way in each of two or more chapters, with the later treatments of the topic adding little or nothing to the first.
The authors discuss how to find a partner and how to prepare for a scene. They describe the course of a scene and how to wrap it up, and they provide a basic introduction to the most common BDSM implements and activities. Although the presentation is somewhat tedious for the reasons mentioned above, these chapters are sprinkled with intriguing anecdotes and insights. A number of erotic "interludes" scattered throughout the book describe in detail scenes in which the authors and their friends have been involved; these demonstrate some of the variety among scenes and among tops themselves. It's clear from the chapter on lifestyle D/s that Easton and Hardy still don't quite "get" what it is and why people do it, but at least this time around they've made the attempt.
Unfortunately, the last few chapters of the book veer off course. The chapter on using BDSM to explore personal or cultural trauma is intriguing, if a bit New Age-y (again). In the next chapter, the authors discuss BDSM spirituality, and that's where they go completely off the deep end. It's not that there's nothing of value in what they have to say; a brief chapter on such an intensely personal subject is hardly going to capture every possible variety of experience. Still, in a book that takes such commendable, if sometimes overeager, pains to acknowledge diversity in the areas of gender, race, and sexual orientation, it's disconcerting to see the authors suddenly assume that their readers will share their personal spiritual views. Adherents of the Abrahamic religions (that's over half the people on this planet) will find little to nothing here that meshes with their traditions and worldview. The concepts of ritual, archetype, and even mystical "energy" resonate with me to some degree, personally and sexually as well as spiritually, so I was basically with the authors that far even if some of the specifics along the way left me cold - but when they started saying things like "Magic works," as if it were an indisputable fact, they lost me. (And the reference to Puritans being "convinced that God hated sex"? Wrong, wrong, WRONG. They believed sex was part of God's good creation, and although they considered it proper only within the context of monogamous heterosexual marriage, Puritan writers and preachers encouraged husbands and wives to "become one flesh" with joy, affection, and mutual delight.)
There are enough good things in this book to make it worthwhile reading for the novice top and a worthy addition to the BDSM library, but it probably shouldn't be the first thing you read, and certainly it shouldn't be the only.
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![The New Topping Book by [Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41+2iRt-CBL._SY346_.jpg)
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Jennifer
Approachable, well-written, but not perfect for everyone.
Reviewed in Canada on November 2, 2016
