CHROMA

Review: X by JD Glass

X
JD Glass

Published by Bold Strokes Books

Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson


X is a modern cyber-thriller from the massively talented author JD Glass. Expert coder Charli Riven is at the top of her game. Known as CharliX to the elite techie community, she’s a fiercely intelligent woman who heads a technology team that ensures financial transactions worth billions are securely handled. She’s also a passionate surfer, riding the waves in her spare time. She takes her sexual pleasure where she wants it, whether it be from her colleague Anna or a young man she picks up at a party. Charli and Anna’s liaison grows more serious with each sexual encounter they have. But their burgeoning love affair is disrupted when ChariX’s system is infiltrated by John, a man with an ingenious plot to steal a large amount of money. Someone in Charli’s team has betrayed her causing suspicion to abound. Anna is on a secret mission which could create an irreparable rift in her relationship with emotionally-guarded Charli. When Charli herself is kidnapped, John’s sinister motives come to light showing that he’s not simply after financial gain, but is aiming to instil a whole new world order.

JD Glass has written a clever tense story which tests the boundaries of trust for two high-flying women that develop a unique emotional and sexual bond. Memos and online conversations are interspersed with the story adding a realistic dimension to the text. There’s a sufficient amount of technical detail to make this tale seem very probable – without being too techie to alienate readers who might not understand the language. Glass writes about sexual scenes incredibly well. She manages to be graphic, emotional and erotic without slipping into the blatantly pornographic. As she did so well in her wonderful coming of age novel Punk Like Me, sexual encounters are a process of discovery for the participants where learning about each others’ bodies forms a tighter emotional bond and helps them achieve a greater amount of pleasure. X is a very entertaining read and I’m excited to see what this multi-talented author produces next.


Eric Karl Anderson is author of the novel Enough and has published work in various publications such as The Ontario Review, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Blithe House Quarterly and the anthologies From Boys to Men and Between Men 2.

Labels: Review

posted by Eric Anderson @ 4:59 PM