In Simon Lowrie's world, men and women attract - and repel - like magnets, following a true North. Claire Kelsey is the sun around which her loyal, steadfast friend Tris revolves, but we know from the beginning that, while her gravitational pull is strong, Claire's trajectory is far out of his galaxy. She can't resist the appeal of another, a man who takes her places beyond herself, in and out of the bedroom. The problem is, Ms. Kelsey wants to have her cake and eat it, too—she wants her flirty, devoted friend and her powerful, commanding lover. Why can’t a girl have both? Claire finds herself torn between a man who worships her and a man worthy of her worship, and her journey toward a resolution pushes her to the boundaries of her resistance. If you are looking for whips, chains, collars and spreader bars, you may be a little disappointed. But if you find yourself magnetically drawn to stories about the natural dominance and submission between the masculine and feminine, you will have found cosmic bliss in Journey Round a Darker Sun. ( )

This book went into my dreams the first time I read it and has stayed there ever since. The menage a trois of Claire Paul and Tristan breaks every rule of erotic writing: nothing is graphic, nothing is spelled out. The dominant figure of Paul remains unknown and an enigma, as though he's up in the clouds. And that's the way I like him. Claire, the principal character and heroine, is not a natural sub who 'loves it really,' but an ordinary girl who gets swept up in Paul's vortex, ending up as abjectly submissive as any girl in fiction. To console herself and salvage her pride, she lords it over Tristan with a reflection of the same display of sexual magic and physical beauty that Paul uses to bewitch her. This is a book of misery and frustration and rejection, sides of the kink that are normally taboo. Only when Claire and Tristan finally accept their fate do they find the happiness most erotica would give them on the first page. ( )