Jack L. Pyke's Blog: Brief Encounters, page 12
January 2, 2013
Going for Diversity
I hard, hard story: a mother driven to murdering her kids. *Shivers*
Medea by Euripides
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is hard tale to read, especially from a parent's pov. However, no matter how far Medea travelled into isolation and muderous intent, I still had huge sympathy for her.
View all my reviews
Medea by EuripidesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is hard tale to read, especially from a parent's pov. However, no matter how far Medea travelled into isolation and muderous intent, I still had huge sympathy for her.
View all my reviews
Always thought I was slow....
Seems I can put reviews in my blog *chuckles*. Boy, have I got some catching up to do.
Deliver Us by Lynn Kelling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Okay, where to start without resulting to my initial response, which would probably get a few raised brows from anyone reading this (spoiler: there were a few swear words, a lot of shifting to adjust the heat under my collar, and a lot “phew, they’re doing what?”).
Hands up, I have to admit, Deliver Us touched on a few taboos. Ones that I’d not come across before. That’s a strange place to start a review, with a list of likes and unknowns, but it becomes important when you put it in context with characters, plot, and pace.
The two leads in this, Darrek and Gabe, especially because of their histories, they needed an explosive sexual creativity when they were together, that ability to just let go and experience, as life in general had forced them to close down in their own ways. It seems they needed that extreme level of intensity to allow each other the ability to trust when it then came to going beyond the physical.
Darrek is your sensitive straight, who having being left by his ex lover is given a number to a BDSM club. Fully expecting to explore a female D/s relationship, something he has nibbled at in the past, complications over the forms he signs puts Derek under the experienced hands of Gabe, a male Dom with just the right touch to throw Darrek’s world into a heated rush of sensation overload, submission, and the even more dangerous possibility of being Gabe’s lover.
As Dom and sub, Gabe and Darrek seem the most unlikeliest pair to cross paths, let alone become lovers. We have Darrek, the lonely lovable giant who stumbles away from a shattered relationship into the BDSM scene and a gay love life in general. There’s a will and determinism to try everything, to find his body’s limits and test whether he can push through them, all underwritten by his growing feelings for Gabe that seem to give him the drive for pushing his mind and body.
Then there’s Gabe. His troubled history has taken him into the role of a Dom, one who only ever touches, never allows to touch, and who also comes with one hell of a protective group of Doms who get just as aggressive with anyone threatening to touch Gabe (a protectiveness that I loved seeing play out).
It seems a relationship that’s doomed to fail, either through Darrek’s and Gabe’s destructive histories, the intensity of a D/s relationship, or the protectiveness of friends. It’s certainly one relationship I was skeptical to in the beginning, the whole straight to gay/vanilla to SUB seeming a wide gap to fill.
Yet it’s that understanding you reach with both parties, how you can see Gabe seeming to find a certain level of security in knowing Darrek stumbled into the gay BDSM scene, that there’s an innocence to how Darrek breaks down the barrier to Gabe that Gabe forced around himself a teen. Darrek wouldn’t have had the same reaction with any other Dom; Gabe would have just gone through the motions given any other sub. It had to be Gade; it had to be Darrek for this to work.
But, on a level of kink beyond the taboo, I loved this relationship from a language pov too. It was intriguing to see Gabe and Darrek live the D/s lifestyle, but have a narrative prose that showed equal dynamics. Equal weight is given to Darrek and Gabe in and outside of a scene, so both work together, neither really claiming linguistic dominance, and it’s that subtlety that helped cement their relationship, for me anyway.
And a lot of that is why it has taken me so long to read this novel. There were so many things going at so many levels, I had to back away, force myself to pull out at certain points for fear of sensory overload. Not a bad thing at all. In fact, I had to go buy a hard copy for my… collection.
Definitely a keeper, and one I’ll be reading again.
View all my reviews
I've also rated this on my website:
http://www.jacklpyke.com/#!review-del...
Deliver Us by Lynn KellingMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Okay, where to start without resulting to my initial response, which would probably get a few raised brows from anyone reading this (spoiler: there were a few swear words, a lot of shifting to adjust the heat under my collar, and a lot “phew, they’re doing what?”).
Hands up, I have to admit, Deliver Us touched on a few taboos. Ones that I’d not come across before. That’s a strange place to start a review, with a list of likes and unknowns, but it becomes important when you put it in context with characters, plot, and pace.
The two leads in this, Darrek and Gabe, especially because of their histories, they needed an explosive sexual creativity when they were together, that ability to just let go and experience, as life in general had forced them to close down in their own ways. It seems they needed that extreme level of intensity to allow each other the ability to trust when it then came to going beyond the physical.
Darrek is your sensitive straight, who having being left by his ex lover is given a number to a BDSM club. Fully expecting to explore a female D/s relationship, something he has nibbled at in the past, complications over the forms he signs puts Derek under the experienced hands of Gabe, a male Dom with just the right touch to throw Darrek’s world into a heated rush of sensation overload, submission, and the even more dangerous possibility of being Gabe’s lover.
As Dom and sub, Gabe and Darrek seem the most unlikeliest pair to cross paths, let alone become lovers. We have Darrek, the lonely lovable giant who stumbles away from a shattered relationship into the BDSM scene and a gay love life in general. There’s a will and determinism to try everything, to find his body’s limits and test whether he can push through them, all underwritten by his growing feelings for Gabe that seem to give him the drive for pushing his mind and body.
Then there’s Gabe. His troubled history has taken him into the role of a Dom, one who only ever touches, never allows to touch, and who also comes with one hell of a protective group of Doms who get just as aggressive with anyone threatening to touch Gabe (a protectiveness that I loved seeing play out).
It seems a relationship that’s doomed to fail, either through Darrek’s and Gabe’s destructive histories, the intensity of a D/s relationship, or the protectiveness of friends. It’s certainly one relationship I was skeptical to in the beginning, the whole straight to gay/vanilla to SUB seeming a wide gap to fill.
Yet it’s that understanding you reach with both parties, how you can see Gabe seeming to find a certain level of security in knowing Darrek stumbled into the gay BDSM scene, that there’s an innocence to how Darrek breaks down the barrier to Gabe that Gabe forced around himself a teen. Darrek wouldn’t have had the same reaction with any other Dom; Gabe would have just gone through the motions given any other sub. It had to be Gade; it had to be Darrek for this to work.
But, on a level of kink beyond the taboo, I loved this relationship from a language pov too. It was intriguing to see Gabe and Darrek live the D/s lifestyle, but have a narrative prose that showed equal dynamics. Equal weight is given to Darrek and Gabe in and outside of a scene, so both work together, neither really claiming linguistic dominance, and it’s that subtlety that helped cement their relationship, for me anyway.
And a lot of that is why it has taken me so long to read this novel. There were so many things going at so many levels, I had to back away, force myself to pull out at certain points for fear of sensory overload. Not a bad thing at all. In fact, I had to go buy a hard copy for my… collection.
Definitely a keeper, and one I’ll be reading again.
View all my reviews
I've also rated this on my website:
http://www.jacklpyke.com/#!review-del...
December 21, 2012
Festive Spirits
Needing to be lost in fighting the rolls'n'rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, it's a little hard to beleive that the first week of Don't... and its release has flown by.
Away from wanting to thank the goodreads members who have added, taken the time to rate, or marked to read my work, it's been good just getting back into the community and catching up with people.
One of my favourite authors is well into a sequel (only bugged him once about it, I swear), and some newer talent out there has managed to up the notch on the pleasure screws when it comes to getting me to keep turning pages. And I've also caught up with a few classics I'd read a few years back.
The usual concerns over Don't's... release have always been there, niggling, but I've learned that the best remedy for that is just to read and write more.
Well, and purely because it's Christmas, of course, maybe also the ocassional glass of Glenfiddich to welcome the winter nights.
Wishing eveyone here a merry christmas.
Away from wanting to thank the goodreads members who have added, taken the time to rate, or marked to read my work, it's been good just getting back into the community and catching up with people.
One of my favourite authors is well into a sequel (only bugged him once about it, I swear), and some newer talent out there has managed to up the notch on the pleasure screws when it comes to getting me to keep turning pages. And I've also caught up with a few classics I'd read a few years back.
The usual concerns over Don't's... release have always been there, niggling, but I've learned that the best remedy for that is just to read and write more.
Well, and purely because it's Christmas, of course, maybe also the ocassional glass of Glenfiddich to welcome the winter nights.
Wishing eveyone here a merry christmas.
