This is a wild trip to the dark side of contemporary life, particularly life in an underground fringe culture of aspiring performance artists who might also work as doms or fetish photographers on the side. Call it Fetish Noir or an erotic satire, either way it's highly entertaining, a fast and enjoyable book, funny and raunchy. It has a realistic street-wise quality, lots of hip slang, and an edgy pulp-fiction vibe.

The book is narrated by Dolores, a young woman with some problems, but none like those of the true love and loss of her life, Serena Moon. In the beginning, both young ladies have borderline boyfriends or what might be called hetero relationships, but it soon becomes clear, while not admitting it to each other, that the central relationship is between the two.

As things go along, they get into more and more trouble together. Dolores and Serena have major substance abuse problems and relationship problems and career problems. This book's central narrative is about a desperate downward spiral, a slippery slope to oblivion.

All the characters are well drawn and interesting, though most of the men are portrayed as inconsequential and pathetic, providing a kind of comic relief or acting as foils for the two main female leads. And much of the book deals with this subculture of S/M, or more specifically D/s ... Dominas and submissives. If that kind of thing bothers you, stay clear of this book. There's a lot of it here.

Overall, this is a fun satire of American excess and tabloid youth culture. The key word here is dark and the book has a lot of profanity. For me, being a fan of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and books by Bukowski, the dark satiric quality made the book funny and more entertaining, but it's not for everyone.