Games in the Dark

Title: Games in the Dark
Author: Various
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Genre: M/M BDSM Romance.
Length: 304 pages
Rating: 3.75 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

THE BLURB

Take a walk on the wild side with a serving of kink: restraints, blindfolds, spankings, threesomes, and more—just a taste of danger to whet your appetite. But these games are meant to do more than just tease. While these men are getting a thrill, they’re exploring their emotions, making peace with their wants and needs, and sometimes finding love along the way. Through that lens, we can see the truth: it takes trust to play fair. Come with us and play some games in the dark.

THE REVIEW

I’ve been trying to analyse why I didn’t enjoy this anthology as much as I thought I would.  It’s not the subject matter as I quite like light BDSM stories and this anthology certainly fit into that.  In the end I’ve come to conclusion that it was because all the stories fit a very similar pattern in terms of plot: Dom meets Sub; long BDSM sex scene; HEA/HFN.  After a while, no matter how well written and captivating the story, this pattern became a bit tiresome and I wish now that I hadn’t read each story one after the other and rather dipped into a story every so often, stretching it out over a few weeks rather than a couple of days because I think I would have got a lot more out of it then.

Unsurprisingly then, my favourite stories were those that broke away from the established pattern, even to a small degree.

The Perils of Tardiness and Telling Tall Tales by Sienna Bishop was my favourite out of the whole anthology.  It told the story of Emery who works at his uncle’s men’s clothes shop.  He’s been having some trouble with a delivery company because they keep turning up late.  On the day when Emery needs the clothes for an important launch the next day, the delivery man is two hours late.  There’s been a bit of connection between Emery and the hot delivery driver, Theo, and Emery decides that Theo needs to be taken in hand and punished for making him wait.

What I liked about this story was that the two men are just feeling their way around a D/s relationship and in fact it was more for fun than a serious dip into the ‘scene’.  The characterisation was well done with both characters rather surprised at what they’ve got themselves into, but you could also tell that this was the beginning of a relationship which would continue to work into the future.  The story stretches over a couple of weeks which again gave more credence to the happy ending and even the slight misunderstanding wasn’t enough to put an dampener on my enjoyment of the story.

Learning As We Go Along by Ellen Whitehall was an interesting story because it sort of turned the tables on what you would expect from a D/s relationship.  Jake and Matt live and work together but it isn’t until one of Jake’s friends tells him to “Wake the f**k up” that he realises that his room mate fancies him.  After indulging in lots of sex Jake notices that Matt doesn’t like to take charge in the bedroom and so he begins to experiment a bit.

Usually in stories such as this it is the dominant partner who’s all in control and the sub who’s the nervous one.  In this story Jake spends quite a lot of time panicking because he doesn’t think what they are doing is quite right.  I liked this, liked the fact that Jake has various phone calls with his more experienced friend, liked that the one doing all the worrying was the top for a change.  I also liked that throughout the story Jake is constantly feeling his way through the relationship.  Finally, and perhaps the best part of the story is that the two men actually talk to one another which added a whole realism to the characterisation.  Great stuff.

There were a couple of stories to which I had mixed feelings.  Remarkable Restraint by Devon Rhodes was one of those.  On one hand it’s a nice ‘friends to Lovers’ story about Chaz who has loved his best friend for years and his sudden realisation that Justin loves him and wants to introduce him to the BDSM lifestyle.  On the other hand I couldn’t understand how Justin managed to keep his bisexuality and, in particular, his affiliation with the ‘scene’ from someone who lived with him.  It just seemed a bit unrealistic.  However, the scenes where they came together were done very well and I did think the men worked well as a couple.

Another story which one the whole worked well, but I had some issue with was All Kinds of Attention by H.J. Brues.  On one hand I liked the pairing of the prickly and ill-used Troy with the gentle Tom who wanted to give him the attention he craved.  Yet I felt that there was such a lot of back story on Troy that the story was too short a format to fit all that in.  I was left with far too many questions about Troy which probably could have been answered if the story had been given space to grow beyond an initial meeting and a sex scene.  In the end I was disappointed with the missed opportunity to flesh out the characters better.

Honourable mentions need to go to Bent by DG Parker for its interesting use of opposing fantasy scenes to show a change in feelings of the main character; and The Cub by Edward von Behrer for it’s cheeky use of exhibitionism.

One story which left me disappointed was Maximum Exposure by Marguerite Labbe and Fae Sutherland.  One of the reasons I’d wanted to read this anthology was because I’d enjoyed their story so much in the Sindustry anthology and was keen to find out more about Sebastian and Angel.  In the end an excess of headhopping and lack of any progression in the characterisation made the story fall flat for me.

Taken as a set of stories, then this anthology is generally well written and entertaining.  Taken as a whole then there’s a lot of repetition of themes and ideas that did start to pale after a while.  Whilst I’d recommend Games in the Dark for those who like light BDSM stories, I’d suggest that you don’t read the whole anthology but take it in stages in order to get maximum enjoyment out of it.