Review: Exploring Limits by Nicki Bennett and Ariel Tachna

I like m/m/m books and I've read and really liked a number of stories by this pair of authors. It's a shame then, that Exploring Limits was such a dull and disappointing read.

Part of my reasons why I found this a dull read was that the book is essentially page after page of sex with very little plot at all. In fact, the book follows the same pattern over and over again. The story begins with two gay English actors, Kit and Devon, admiring another actor, an American, Jonathan. They decide to club together to seduce the straight man. This proves remarkably easy and they have sex; this is followed by more sex; a misunderstanding during sex which is sorted out, then more sex; a visit to a sex shop and more sex; some inappropriate groping on set, followed by more sex; they get tested and have more sex. The end. Now, there are times when I like books with lots of sex in them but I found this book had a number of other problems which meant that the sex scenes were just not holding my interest at all.

My main problem stemmed from the way that the authors had chosen to structure their book. The story is told in the alternate viewpoints of each of the three men. The narrative switched frequently between the characters so that sometimes there was only a paragraph spent in each character's head. I found this very irritating at first as I kept losing track of whose head I was in and had to read back over the paragraph to orientate myself. In some ways I can understand why the authors did this. After all, the main complaint about m/m/m books is that it's difficult to get an understanding of how all the characters are feeling during a scene. Unfortunately, in the case of this book it made the narrative very choppy and stilted and meant that the writing didn't flow very well. The authors also had a tendency to try and show the same action as seen from the point of view of each character. An example of this is from the first sex scene where the simple act of one character removing the trousers of another character is stretched out over three paragraphs and shown from three points of view. This made the action very slow moving and, at times, quite tedious to read.

Another aspect of the book which kept pulling me out of the action was that some of the sexual positions in the book were physically impossible. There were several occasions where I was brought up short because I just couldn't picture how the scene was taking place. For example, there was one scene where one man was laid on top of another man, kissing him and the third man leaned in to give the man on the bottom a blow job. Unless the third man had a very thin head, then this just would not have been possible. Each time this happened I was brought out of the scene as I tried to work out what was happening. I'm the sort of reader who likes a certain amount of realism in my sex scenes and a few times I was sceptical that some of the sexual acrobatics I read in this book could ever have taken place in real life.

One final disappointment was that, because the book is so focused on sex, there was very little in terms of character development, motivation or even just basic information. I finished the book knowing almost as little about the three men as I had at the start. The men are defined only by their nationality, their vague age or their hair colour, with only the character of Kit being given any fleshing out at all, and even then it's only slight. This led to me seeing the men in only the blandest, colourless way and as a result it made it very difficult for me to care very much about them, their situation or their relationship at all. This doesn't mean the characters weren't attractive or nice, they were; just that they had little or no substance to them.

If you are the sort of reader who likes a lot of sex in their m/m books and aren't too bothered about a decent plot or character development, then this book should appeal to you. Aside from some of the physically impossible positioning that I mentioned above, the sex scenes are varied and well structured. I also got the sense that the trio were moving away from a relationship based purely on lust and starting to have an emotional connection, so there was some romantic feelings in and amongst all the sex scenes.

Overall, I'm afraid I can't recommend this book, which gets a grade of 'Poor', for all the reasons I have given in this review. I must admit that I am very disappointed as all the books and stories that I've read from this pair have been winners for me. Just not this one, unfortunately.

Buy this book HERE.