Jay Wiseman is considered one of the big names in the BDSM and Fetish community. As he states repeatedly in his book, he has had extensive experience as an EMT and has carried that experience into his BDSM experiences and play. While he is knowledgeable about the subject matter he writes about, his work is rather dry and he tends to be repetitive. Having met him in person a few months back, his personality matches that of his writing. He is a rather dry and dull individual who really stresses safety in BDSM play in a negative way rather than positively. Personally, his writing is more of a turn off to the reader who is experience in BDSM play because, quite frankly, he does not provide a good presentation of what S/M truly is.

S/M 101 covers the basics of BDSM for those who may not be educated on the subject matter and are craving a bit more knowledge. The book is broken down into multiple sections, each touching on different topics that revolve around safe, sane, and consensual BDSM play. Wiseman delves into the more personal side of the scene, though, and provides a lot of his experiences and his life lessons to the reader. While that is a great touch and it makes S/M a bit more realistic to the reader, as the title indicates, it also is a downfall to the book. The fact that Wiseman harps quite a bit on his life, his experiences, and not really presenting the material from an unbiased standpoint can leave some readers frustrated and, like me, setting the book aside and not picking it up again to continue on for quite some time.

All of the above is accessible in this book if you can managed to get through the Introduction that is about twenty pages long. Wiseman tends to be a bit long winded and his introduction is a bit of a pain to work through. In all honesty, the Introductory portion of the book would not be so horrid if the author would have refrained from repeating himself again and again. There are eight instances where he repeats that he is an EMT, that he is trained in BDSM as well as the medical area, and harps on his life. He tends to go off onto tangents in his introduction as well that veer off of the beaten path, onto another path, and eventually gets back to the path he was originally on. It is hard to follow and, quite frankly, boring to even trudge through. If you can make it through the introduction, there is a wealth of knowledge available in the book, though as I said before the material is biased based on the author's likes, dislikes, and what he has experience in.

This book is definitely geared toward the novice crowd and, unlike the opinion of others, it is not a "how to" manual. To me, the SM 101 is more of a "don't do this, don't do that, and whatever you do, definitely don't do THAT" kind of presentation. I found no encouragement whatsoever to experience or explore BDSM play. To be quite honest, when I first read the book I was terrified to engage in any form of BDSM play as Wiseman seemed to portray the ugly, nasty side of BDSM that he has seen much more often in the book than the positive side.

The cover of the book is a rather traditional representation of S/M to the novice. I mean, really, who wouldn't get that this book covers the topics of BDSM and fetish play without a hand holding a crop? The black and white covering to the book is a bit dull, as is the content inside, though the content is broken up nicely into different sections based on topic. While the subject matter is broken into topics, the book does not flow from topic to topic. It is rather choppy to read through and, as Wiseman does in the introduction, the author tends to veer off of the beaten path, onto another, and back to the one he was on.

The cover speaks to me a bit as well. Wiseman tries to present BDSM in a black and white fashion, seemingly simplifying it for the reader. In all honesty, this is not an easy task and one that he did not achieve so well. BDSM is rather colorful and has many layers while this representation does not. Honestly, I did not enjoy this book for this reason as well as Wiseman's rather boring drawl and dragging on of topics and himself.

The book itself is a paperback, which makes it easy for travel, though I would proceed with caution when traveling with this book as the cover is not discreet in any fashion. The binding is secured with glue and the pages are firmly in place, so there is no fear of the pages falling out after a few reads. The pages are also firm and will not tear easily through multiple reads.

Being an experienced participant in BDSM and dynamic relationships, I really gained nothing from this book. I read it because I had heard how wonderful it was from multiple people. I was highly disappointed in this book and, to be honest, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It really provides no realistic introduction to anything despite the fact that he presents different subject material. The more I read, the more I realized that this book was more about him and his life experiences than anything else. He just happened to get published. I find more fulfillment out of reading unpublished authors and their experiences rather this writing of Jay Wiseman.