The Dare…To Try Bondage Book is a small, hand-held guide to bondage. I would definitely say this book should be named “Dare… To Try Rope Bondage” since this doesn’t really touch on any other types of bondage at all. The book is soft-cover, translated from French (but reads just fine in English.), and is filled with black-and-white pages. The book includes 83 pages which are split into 6 different chapters. This book was published in 2009 by Hunter House and is sold at Madame M.’s. It’s part of the “Dare….” book series that includes a series of different books on how to perform “kinky” sex acts. It was originally written by Axterdam and was translated by Yvonne K. Fulbright.
The front of this book shows the most adorable little drawing. It’s a picture of two little chibi-like characters. The girl is covered in bondage rope, and the guy is toting her away. The back shows some pretty big words like “bondage”. When you consider the fact that this also has tons of illustrations inside of the book, I’d recommend against taking this out in public if it can be avoided.
Basically, this little book just gives a lot of information about how to do rope bondage. I wouldn’t say that it’s a comprehensive guide because it really isn’t. It’s much too short to cover everything – especially when a vast majority of the book is illustrations. However, it provides a good basic overview about everything I’d find important for a couple who’s never tried rope bondage before.
The thing that might disappoint some readers is the fact that it’s called “Try Bondage”. This book really isn’t much of a “Bondage” book. Aside from like two pages, this entire 86 page book focuses on Rope Bondage and how to do things that have to do with Rope Bondage. In fact, those other two pages basically talk about how the author doesn’t prefer to use the other methods because rope is better.
Hah! And I finally got something to agree with me. In a lot of the books that I’ve read about Shibari and other types of rope bondage, they always recommend using Hemp or other fine-fiber ropes. Based on those recommendations, I went out and bought some of that expensive rope. While it holds well, we just have never really liked the texture much at all. We prefer our soft cotton so much more. This book actually says that you could go for the expensive Hemp if you want, but the cotton feels more luxurious and lends itself well to the floor-work bondage you will be doing. (So I win! Finally.)
So, while this book doesn’t really quite compare in content with other rope bondage books, it does seem to have its own strength. However, I’m a little unsure if this strength would lend itself well to beginners at bondage. The strength of the book is all of the illustrations. The illustrations are done amazingly and show a lot of good positions in the book. What I will say, though, is that the book doesn’t seem to do any sort of “step-by-step” learning. This means that it just shows you the finished product illlustration without much of the a lead-up to tell you how to do it. It gives me tons of great bondage ideas, but this would certainly not help a beginner when it came to doing some of these illustrations.
However, most of the information is beginner-oriented. The first couple chapters talk about why you’d want to do rope bondage and some of the safety concerns you should consider. It also talks about what rope you should pick and why as well as shows you, step-by-step, how to do some of the basic knots you need to know. It also shows you a few basic ties to restrain the wrists and ankles. After you have your basics, the book jumps right into some pretty good ties like a hog-tie, how to do a basic body-harness, as well as how to bind the breasts.
The instructions on how to do those things aren’t as thorough as I’d like. The illustrations are really easy to follow, but it also doesn’t have the nice captions and every step included. It has the basics, and you can easily pick your own knot to use, but it doesn’t give every way to tie the knot or captions – just a picture of what it’s doing plus arrows. However, it is really easy to follow. The chapter with the how-to to some ties is the biggest chunk of the book. After that, it talks about what you can do for aftercard, and after that, it just has some illustrations of finished positions along with a small, erotic paragraph giving a “scenario”. I enjoyed these final illustrations because they give some amazing inspiration for trying some bondage – I’d imagine they’d be good inspiration for newbies too. The book does actually give everything you’d need in the book to do these positions, but you’d have to piece it together step-by-step from the things you already learned – it doesn’t provide any how-to.
So this book as a whole? A pretty awesome book. I like it. While other books don’t include illustrations or just include a limited number of positions, this one includes good instructions for beginners but also will be helpful when you pass “beginner” because it includes tons of illustrations that you can have fun experimenting to try and get the end result. Again, I wouldn’t call this the most comprehensive guide out there, but for only being a one-hour read, I’d definitely recommend it to expand your rope bondage knowledge (or just to get started on it!). This adult toy store sells Dare… To Try Bondage as well as other BDSM & Fetish Books. Madame M.’s is offering a coupon code just for my readers. Add this book to your cart with $79 of merchandise, and you’ll receive Dare…To Try Bondage for free with the code “FREEDARE”. You’ll also get free priority shipping.
