A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles
Dec. 24th, 2016 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsA Seditious Affair
4/5. Historical M/M. He is a radical bookseller and pamphleteer, he is a wealthy and conservative Home Office investigator. They have friends in common and meet regularly for sex with power dynamics. No strings. Totally.
Okay, this book does two impressive things. One, it has sex scenes that are, wait for it, actually hot. I do not tell a lie. That is, it turns out, not contractually prohibited in commercial M/M. And even more astonishing, this book has BDSM that is actually hot! Mostly because Charles is smart enough to know the hot is all in the psychology of the thing, and not in the set dressing. This book is just so unapologetically kinky, it's amazing. At one point they dirty talk each other through a fantasy sorta prostitution play scenario involving a stranger, and when they're done there's no "but of course we would never do that" and "of course not" but instead "yeah, that might be fun." Imagine! A book about kink that isn't ashamed of itself!
Second, this book is attempting to do a thing where it plays the consensual power games in the bedroom against the non-consensual power games that constitute the rigid class structure of the time. I actually don't think this is successful, as a literary tactic, but. This book is doing a thing! With, like, nuance and complexity! My bar is pretty low here, but imagine an M/M historical that does that.
4/5. Historical M/M. He is a radical bookseller and pamphleteer, he is a wealthy and conservative Home Office investigator. They have friends in common and meet regularly for sex with power dynamics. No strings. Totally.
Okay, this book does two impressive things. One, it has sex scenes that are, wait for it, actually hot. I do not tell a lie. That is, it turns out, not contractually prohibited in commercial M/M. And even more astonishing, this book has BDSM that is actually hot! Mostly because Charles is smart enough to know the hot is all in the psychology of the thing, and not in the set dressing. This book is just so unapologetically kinky, it's amazing. At one point they dirty talk each other through a fantasy sorta prostitution play scenario involving a stranger, and when they're done there's no "but of course we would never do that" and "of course not" but instead "yeah, that might be fun." Imagine! A book about kink that isn't ashamed of itself!
Second, this book is attempting to do a thing where it plays the consensual power games in the bedroom against the non-consensual power games that constitute the rigid class structure of the time. I actually don't think this is successful, as a literary tactic, but. This book is doing a thing! With, like, nuance and complexity! My bar is pretty low here, but imagine an M/M historical that does that.