For the first of our reviews, I have chosen theMaster/Slave anthology edited by NT Morley. A collection of 60 short stories, the book is broken up into two distinct sections of 30 stories each: Master - 30 Spanking Tales from the Top and Slave - 30 Stinging Tales from the Bottom.

Some of the titles that caught my eye were; The First Time She Kneels and Instructors Fee in the Master set & I Should Not Want This and Time for a Spanking in the Slave set. Since I have seen a few of the authors in person (Cecelia Tan & Midori) I thought the book would be worth at least a read.

My copy of Master/Slave was published by Penguin books under the ISBN 0-425-20269-0, however the 2 sections had previously been published by the Venus Book Club as independent volumes. Bound together as a flip book, you can switch from the beginning of the Master volume to the Slave volume by flipping the book top to bottom - a style which brought a smile to my face as I remembered some old favourite Sci-Fi books from my late teens. The nice thing about this arrangement is that you can just grab the book & flip to the volume you want without trying to find the middle of the book.

The stories in the Master volume run in length from 2 to 17 pages and they run the gamut of the genre from "Discovering the wife's dirty secret' in Joey's First Spanking to a more hardcore "You're mine & I'm taking you" in In The Belly. The common thread in all of the Master stories is the act of surrender as told from the Dominant point of view. While there are some fairly graphic scenes of sex, teasing, and other DS play, the main focus of the stories is the submission of the target of the storytellers attention.

On the flip side, the Slave volume has stories running from 3 to 16 pages in length. The stories run from the neophyte tale of having your diary read & your fantasies fulfilled in All Tied Down through the short The Ring in which a young woman's *censored* ring is her constant reminder of her master's ownership of her body & soul. One of the edgiest is Midori's I Should Not Want This which includes a bit of knife play between a high powered attorney and her Master. Again the dominant theme is submission, this time told from the perspective of the one submitting.

Overall, I found the quality of the writing to be a bit above average. The length of the stories is very suitable for setting the tone for an evening - short enough to be read while waiting for your partner to crawl into bed, but not so short that the writing appears rushed.
Rating:

• Length: Good 60 short stories & ~ 400 pages
• Quality: Good Solid writing & editing, the paper & the binding are well done.
• Price: Good $13 US - on sale at Amazon for $10US