“Seductress” Erotic Reading Book Review

“Seductress“, a new Cleis Press erotica anthology edited by D. L. King, has the tagline “Erotic Tales of Immortal Desire”. Instead of being about the general “vampire” craze of the moment, though, Seductress is all based around the demon “succubus”. 205 pages long with 21 various short stories, “Seductress” is a collection of sexual adventures of a modern succubus. The cover isn’t quite as explicit as usual Cleis Press covers, but if reading in public, you’ll still want to be careful to cover it up.

So, what is a succubus? It’s a female demon believed to have sex with men in order to drain his life essense. Historically, the idea of a succubus’s intentions and everything else has varied, and just like history, the authors of the book tend to have slightly varying ideas of a succubus (but most are uniform in their design of the succubus gaining life essense from intercourse). Historically, as I chose to read about the idea of a succubus, it, like history tends to do, seems to have been the “idea” that a woman could seduce and damage a man and because she may have been a “demon”, it wasn’t his fault. Luckily, this erotica book tends to stay away from any of the gender issues that surrounded the issue, and it purely focuses on the sexual pleasure that the succubus achieves through intercourse.

I really like exactly where D. L. King chose to take this book. Not only do we get a “hint” of a type of vampirism, but we also get strong and dominant women. While you know each story will include a Seductress, it doesn’t get old, and each one of the plotlines seems to take the idea of the Seductress into a different direction. For example, would you have thought about a succubus using a phone app to complete her life-draining ritual? What about the internet? It’s amazing the ways that the authors found to keep all of the stories interesting and unique while each one does contain that female, dominant succubus aspect to it at the same time.

I think I might be a bit partial to the idea of a dominant female, but I really did enjoy this book. I like the fact that it portrays the females as getting exactly what they want – even if, on the “outside”, it may look as if the females are only there to fulfill the men’s fantasies. I like the way that the authors did that as, usually, succubus “demons” are just demons who need sexual energy to exist, and to do that, they usually fulfill male fantasies in both act and appearance to get the energy that they need.

Something that is worth mentioning is that the dominance of the female may not be quite as intense as expected. The female succubus is usually the one seducing and leading the scene, but there isn’t much domination or more extreme forms of power exchange. The succubus normally just uses her powers of seduction to be the one “in charge”, but it doesn’t lead to too much of a power indifference in the sex scenes.

The fact that “Seductress” manages to have such fantastic stories AND keep the plotlines interesting is very impressive to me. Most of the stories are actually modern and set in the current age instead of being set back in the times of magic and wizardry. The book is well-edited, and all of the stories are quality. Each story does have some plot to it, but the stories are mostly focused on getting straight to the sex. Because of the fact that these are succubus-type stories, do be prepared for a couple of stories where the male participant does die after sex is complete (there’s no sexual relations with any of the undead, though!)

With that in mind, here’s some of my favorite stories from the book:
“Zach’s Last Ride” by Sasha Bukova: A thrill-seeking motocross rider finds that the jumps just aren’t giving him the high he wants anymore. After a sexy and mysterious woman meets him one night, he’s going to find that he’s going to have the best sexual experience of his life.

“Star-Crossed” by Evan Mora: What would happen if the Romeo and Juliet story if Juliet happend to be a succubus – and Romeo a vampire? This amusing and sexy story explores what happens when the happy couple must have sexual energy from anyone aside from each other.

“Succubus, Inc.” by Elizabeth Brookes: In this short story, you follow a strong woman who happens to run a phone sex company. The only catch is that it’s a company full of succubi! When a client doesn’t have the money to pay for the bill he’s run up, they make a deal that will have him used up again and again…

“Phone Hex” by Elizabeth Thorne: Well, it turns out that males are a bit too lazy to even both with learning the magic required to summon a succubus. But the succubi are hungry, so when one of them comes up with the idea to make an easy-access phone app, you’ll get to follow the team of succubi as they fulfill their appetite and men’s desires.

The book “Seductress“, while it doesn’t beat my new-found love of the Cleis Press book “Thrones of Desire”, is still a fantastic release. The plots are unique and the sex is still hot. It’s an erotica book that finds a new way of putting a female in charge and keeping the action sexy and arousing at the same time. Thanks to Cleis Press for providing “Seductress” for my review.

The Erotic Reading Review is a regular column written by Kayla. This column brings you reviews over erotica, instructional, and other types of sex-related books.