Book Review

It came to my mind that now that I have read TWO (!) whole non-fiction books on slaving and Master/slave relationships I can compare them.

The first one was SlaveCraft, by a grateful slave with Guy Baldwin. 

The second was Living M/s; A Book For Masters, Slaves and Their Relationships by Dan and Dawn Williams.

I have to say that when I first read SlaveCraft I was quite taken with it.   It is very much about men.  The grateful slave (author) is a man. His Masters are men.   And obviously I'm not a man, but the attitudes and desires of the author are still things with which I very much identified.    He uses little stories and a gentle humor to get across feelings and situations which I can tell are very deeply imbedded in his identity.   It is the kind of book where I will finish reading a page and then just go back and read it again for the pure evocativeness of the language.  

  The chapter on humility was the most difficult for me to get into as a practice the first time I read it.  He does all sorts of things that

1.  I would never think of 
2.  If I did do them, my Master would think it was weird/annoying and tell me to quit.

However, the second time I read it I found that I had fallen into some of the less "out there" habits for reinforcing humility on my own.  My Master had never commanded it, but it just naturally crept up on me, one small change or small decision at a time.

His book is much more about the feelings a slave may be facing and that may be interferring with surrender.  It also has quite a bit of a poetic/spiritual feel.   This is not just a game to play, it is a calling for him.

The second book, Living M/s...,  I found much more nuts and bolts- here is how you write a contract/deal with triggers in a slave/ this is what International Leather contests are all about.    Because it was more based on things that either my Master has already dealt with and decided, such as limits/safewords/contracts, or things that don't even slightly apply to our lives, I did not find it very useful or interesting.  

It deals with the same sort of questions that you can read about 20 times a week on Fetlife, and most of the answers they give are not the ones that apply to Master and me. 

So anyway, Living M/s is not a bad book if you need basics on "What is this and how do I get started?"   For me, it was redundant.

SlaveCraft may not exactly apply to my physical life and situation in every respect, but for me it was more useful in the mental part of being a slave.