Jason Luke, $9.95, ISBN 978-1495472411
Contemporary Erotica, 2014
I was completely oblivious to the hype surrounding the release of Jason Luke’s debut effort Interview with a Master, and I confess that I bought this one mostly because I thought the cover was pretty. I know, I’m so shallow! On the bright side, this means I read this book without any preconceived expectations.
As you may deduce from the title, the premise of this story revolves around an interview with a Master. “America’s most elusive, notorious BDSM Master”, to be exact, and his name is Jonah Noble. He is very handsome, of course, and he is richer than Christian Grey and Bill Gates put together. Women throw themselves at him because, just like how he can tell… smell… or something… that a woman is begging to be his submissive at a glance, they can tell from their first salivating glance of him that he is the ultimate BDSM Master that would BD their SM all day, all night. Our journalist, Leticia, scores an interview with him, but Jonah knows right away that she is begging for it too. I think it’s because of her “cheap perfume” – maybe that is the signal women give out to him when they want him to put out to them.
Not that this is the story of a relationship between Jonah and Leticia. It is, but that’s only part of the story. Jonah would talk about his past relationships with various women as well, that shape him into the Pepé Le BDSM that he is today.
Yes, Jonah is basically a wish fulfillment character. The fact that he is written by a man gives the impression that he is a man’s wet dream of what he imagines himself to be to women everywhere, but actually, Jonah is definitely a female fantasy. While he is hot and he gets all the chicks he wants, he is, unlike most alpha males that I would expect to populate the whole Dom-whacks-sub market, very – and I do mean very – devoted to the woman’s sexual fulfillment. As he’d say, he doesn’t believe in dominating a woman into submission, he prefers to make them feel so weak in their knees that they revel in their fantasy of kneeling before him. His master plan in the bedroom is to make sure that his submissives get happy, if you know what I mean, at least once. While he has his own reasons to avoid emotional entanglements, he doesn’t dismiss the existence of finer feelings, and he actually falls for Leticia very easily.
Too easily, perhaps, as the superficial portrayal of emotions is one of the weakest aspects of this story and I have no idea why Jonah would find Leticia appealing and vice versa. Still, I can’t hold this against the author too much because this isn’t a romance novel. It’s an erotic BDSM tale from a male character’s point of view. That point of view plays very well to the fantasy of a domineering and authoritative lover who is, at the same time, utterly devoted to one’s pleasure. He’s the boss, but he doesn’t treat his submissives like toilet paper unworthy of his attention once he’s had his fun, a far cry from some of the heroes I’ve come across in many BDSM erotic romps. I have no idea how accurate or even “correct” Jonah’s attitude is as a Dom, but this particular version of a Dom is pretty appealing.
It’s not that this book is good, mind you. The narrative is… well, let’s just say that, sometimes, the author believes that his character is far more profound that he actually is.
I went to the kitchen, found a glass in a cupboard and filled it with tap water. As a rule I never drank the stuff. Fish have sex in water… think about that…
It’s amazing how such simple words, arranged in this particular order to form three sentences, can make me want to howl with laughter so much.
Still, the occasional dip into vapid valley and purple prose aside, this story does deliver the hot stuff. I’ve read hotter, but the erotic moments work well in this context, especially when coupled to Jonah’s appealing Dom traits.
Interview with a Master is not going to win any writing awards anytime soon, and it could be too pretentious for its own good, but still, it’s hot, entertaining, and the hero is surprisingly appealing. As far as guilty pleasures are concerned. this one’s alright.
