BDSM anthologies are a peculiar beast. On the one hand, the purity of the aesthetic itself is such that sex is neither a prerequisite or a necessity. And on the other, any writer who did not point his/her pen in the direction of pain, punishment and orgasm (denied or otherwise) probably wouldn't retain many readers. It's a dilemma that dates, of course, back to DeSade - generally if not always accurately regarded as the father of the modern BDSM discipline, and which is only amplified by every subsequent novel or anthology.

Editor Alison Tyler acknowledges that her first exposure to written BDSM came via The Story of O, and she is by no means alone in that. As late as the early 2000s, Pauline Reage's groundbreaking saga of one woman's absorption into the lifestyle was being handed around college campuses as something we all "had to read," and it is only with the success, this year, of 50 Shades of Grey that it has had any true competition. At least in terms of preaching to the unconverted.

Yet the half century that divides those two high-water marks has seen any number of similarly themed titles hit the stores, with this collection dating from 2006 and itself being just one more in a long line of supplicants.

Where it stands out from the crowd, however, is in the sheer intensity of the writing. To return to my original observation, yes - it is concerned with the sexuality of the situation; and, of course, the more extreme that sexuality can be portrayed, the closer the reader can get to the emotions. But it is in the treatment of those emotions that the best of the book truly excels, as we skip over the inevitable recurrence of the usual cliches ("I know what you need," says the masterful male) and involve ourselves instead in those moments where the writer touches something deeper.

That, after all, was the beauty of O and that, I am hearing from so many friends, is what involves them in Shades of Grey; personally, the whole saga left me colder than cold, but friends whose reading tastes I respect have all taken elements from the book as lessons they may want to learn in real life, and the fact that all are what the seasoned practitioner would describe as "vanilla" should not be held against them. Let's face it, we were all vanilla until we realized what that odd little scratching at the back of our libidos really meant.

I'm not going to analyze the stories within. Twenty-two of them waltz with all the themes that you would automatically expect, and maybe a few that will surprise you. But it is what lies beneath those themes that truly motivates Slave To Love; that, and a glimpse into the soul of the writer, and not just the whipped or clipped flesh of the story's protagonist.

This book knows what you need....