Review - The Rules by Gale Stanley
The Rules
by Gale Stanley
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Volume 1 of Scenes from the Underground
Posted in Book Reviews on April 11, 2026
Wil is an experienced Dom looking for that one special submissive that he can call his own. He’s tired of doing scenes with subs that he doesn’t connect with. It’s hard since the city’s ultra conservative police chief has shut down all the clubs. The only places still open are invite-only, super-secret places that move around. What Wil doesn’t know is that the remaining clubs are run by the corrupt police chief, and they make up for a chronic shortage of subs by entrapping homeless young men and forcing them to choose between jail or providing sexual services. Aiden is one of those young men coerced into being a sub in the club. When Wil spots Aiden, he is convinced the young man is “the one” but getting him away from the clutches of the police chief will prove a lot harder than he thinks.
The Scenes from the Underground series are a set of very loosely connected novelette-length stories. The common thread is the setting in a big city where a very corrupt police department runs the underground gay sex scene, from BDSM clubs to a porn studio. The “scenes” part of the series title is very apt, since the stories consist of just one or two scenes without much of background to the characters or what happens to them.
The narration switches between Wil and Aiden, but we don’t get to know either characters very well. Wil seems to be the typical dream Dom you find in many of these stories. He just wants to find a submissive he can take care of and make fly. Wil does seem to become obsessed with Aiden rather quickly, but it’s not completely unbelievable.
We get less from Aiden’s point of view, but that may just as well, since he clearly gets abused before Wil is able to rescue him. What we do learn early in the story is that Aiden apparently had a life before a run of bad luck landed him on the streets. One of the big limitations of such a short book is that we don’t get to find out if Aiden, with Wil’s help, is able to reclaim any of his old life.
“The Rules” is available from Smashwords.