By Maggie Nash (Guest Blogger) Whenever my writing isn’t going well and I’m wondering what the heck I’m doing, I like to re read this story below. I w...
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These days romance rules the publishing world. Romance is the fastest growing segment of the industry. Every day, it seems, a new romance e-publisher opens calls for submissions, hoping to cash in on the romance bonanza. I just read (I'm writing this...more
These days romance rules the publishing world. Romance is the fastest growing segment of the industry. Every day, it seems, a new romance e-publisher opens calls for submissions, hoping to cash in on the romance bonanza. I just read (I'm writing this review in May) that Amazon.com has announced their very own romance imprint.
The romance genre has diversified and matured, admitting explicit sex, kink, GLBT characters, ménage and more. It has become far less stereotyped and constrained than it was even a decade ago. However, one firm requirement remains, written more or less in stone. All romance must have a happy ending. The protagonists must overcome the obstacles that separate them and have at least some prospect of a delightful future in each other's arms.
Of course, in the real world, relationships aren't necessarily like that. Furthermore, erotic intensity isn't necessarily linked to that sort of happy connection. Freaky Fountain's outstanding volume Bad Romance explores love affairs that would make the average romance author throw up her hands and run away screaming.
The contributors to this collection aren't afraid to explore the darkest aspects of desire. They break taboos left and right. The book includes incest (both consensual and non-consensual), rape, physical abuse, humiliation, drugs, cutting and castration, as well as more conventional BDSM scenarios. It's not for the faint of heart. I do not believe that the authors were aiming at shock for its own sake, though. As suggested by the sub-title, these stories actually do focus on the relationships between the characters. The relationships may be painful, twisted, frustrating, even deadly, yet they still fulfill some need. The characters know they should walk away, but they don't. Lust, and sometimes love, overwhelms reason and they find a kind of release in spite of all the darkness.
Practically every story in the collection is exceptional in both conception and execution. Jeanette Grey opens the book with the amazing “Bleeding Red”, the story of a painter and his former model, how they devour and destroy each other but cannot let go:
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There's the sound of glass on the pavement, the ground littered with tiny shards. I can still see them on the back of my eyelids as they close, and then instead of ice, there's heat. Groaning into a kiss I know will only hurt me, I stare into blackness and taste hot skin. I feel tongue and teeth, and I bite down on his bottom lip, exulting at the tang of copper salt.
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More subtle, but equally devastating, is Chris Guthries “Three Days in Summer”. It begins with a woman begging for a man's attention and ends with her discarding him. Over the course of the story, the power shifts, as the woman satisfies her yearning to be abused and the man becomes dependent on her submission.
“Maleficent” by Lydia Nyx is probably the most depraved tale in the collection and yet one of the most arousing, in spite of its violence and copious bodily fluids of every sort. The story is a compelling reversal of the vampire-meets-soulmate trope so popular in normal romance. Homicide detective Darius is seduced by an infinitely cruel and kinky dancer in club. In Jordan's presence, under his tutelage, Darius discovers how savage and perverted he can be. The bloody finale is horrible yet compellingly erotic.
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Jordan dropped to his knees in front of him. A dull blue light shone down from somewhere up above – blue, like they were under water, drowning. The light gleamed on Jordan's hair and filled his freakish eyes...The light glinted on the silver rings Jordan wore – a skull, a cross, a jagged winged dragon. He watched Jordan's tongue slide around the head of his cock, the tip hard and pointed under the ridge, the flat caressing the rest, then all of it sliding past his lips, into the molten recess of his mouth. All sensations were amplified almost to the point of pain.
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Not every story in Bad Romance reeks of this sort of drama and evil. Some, like Anya Wassenberg's “The Affair” and S.L. Johnson's “Love Letters” focus on the banal but very real pain of attraction in the face of incompatibility – the way we sometimes seek out exactly the wrong person. “Sam and Jessie” by Ben Murray is a funny tale of two lovers who fight constantly despite their mutual affection and lust, each striving for the upper hand. It remains humorous even when the real nature of their relationship is revealed. Maxine Marsh's “Coma” portrays a “relationship” between a bereaved doctor and a woman who is immobilized but retains some level of consciousness – a truly extreme case of being unable to communicate with one's lover. Ryder Collins' “Her Heart is a Screen Door, Too” is a strange, almost poetic description of a woman who is always victimized yet remains open to love:
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These are the things that Homegirl remembers from that night; these are not the only things that happened and some of them may not have even happened because Homegirl's been so drunk she's hallucinated from the drink like Toulouse-motherfucking-Latrec at least twice before that night. So it's possible that some of it's all made up.
It's possible, but I know it's not made up.
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One feature of this anthology that I particularly enjoyed were the “afterwards”. Each story is followed by the author's bio, plus some comments on the genesis of the stories. I found some of these almost as fascinating as the tales themselves.
Bad Romance will not be to everyone's tastes. It will offend some readers, not only because of the extreme scenarios it portrays but also because it most definitely does not qualify as “sex-positive” erotica. I'm not really comfortable myself writing the sort of violent, dystopic tales featured in this collection. Actually, I feel a bit guilty that I enjoyed the book so much. But I couldn't help it. Bad Romance is both outrageously hot and a literary treat.(less)
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Fantastic has several meanings. In the context of Cecilia Tan's new anthology, the word refers to fiction which has elements of the supernatural or the futuristic. At the same time, “fantastic” also serves as a superlative, a synonym to “wonderful”,...more
Fantastic has several meanings. In the context of Cecilia Tan's new anthology, the word refers to fiction which has elements of the supernatural or the futuristic. At the same time, “fantastic” also serves as a superlative, a synonym to “wonderful”, “exceptional” or (in today's parlance) “awesome”. I have no hesitation in using the word in its second sense to describe this collection. Cecilia Tan and Circlet have winnowed down a set of more than five hundred submissions to present eighteen of the best erotic science fiction and fantasy stories that I, at least, have read in a long time.
This anthology is noteworthy both for its originality and its diversity. The tales range from
Arinn Dembo's exquisitely lyrical “Monsoon” to Thomas Roche's hilarious satire, “The Night the New Hog Croaked, Or the Lascivious Dr. Blonde: A Romance”. Kal Cobalt's “The Lift” is pure cyberpunk, set in a world in which the lines between human and machine have become tragically blurred. “The Caretaker”, by Fauna Sara, offers a deliciously traditional fantasy world inhabited by unicorns and their virgins. “The Bridge”, Connie Wilkins' contribution, gives us a war-scarred veteran who encounters the mythical Green Man, while in Catherine Lundoff's “Twilight” presents a sassy, modern half-vampire who meets her match in the sexy descendant of a legendary vampire slayer.
Several of the stories contemplate the distance, or lack thereof, between man and animal. In Robert Knippenberg's “And What Rough Beasts”, a faddish treatment that allows humans to become part animal results in the gradual disappearance of homo sapiens. Jason Rubis' enigmatic and disturbing “Circe House” considers transformation from human to animal, from male to female and back, as a sort of extreme fetish.
Any contemporary volume of erotica is likely to include some BDSM, and this collection is no exception. However, in the hands of these Circlet authors, the themes of surrender as a gateway to freedom, pain as a precursor to pleasure, become newly exciting. Corbie Petulengro's “The Harrowing” concerns an evil sorceress who exacts a ransom of sexual servitude from a brave female warrior, teaching her young slave how to accept her craving for submission and suffering. “Marked”, by Cody Nelson, one of my favorite stories in a book full of candidates, presents an odd plague that confers heightened sensuality and sensitivity upon its sufferers while at the same time condemning them to horrible pain if they touch each other.
“Zach forcefully unclenched his teeth and slowed his shallow breathing. He rubbed his aching cock against the mattress and felt its steady throbbing. He moved his hips rhythically under Brendan's hand. He let the pain wash through him, felt its circuit flow from point of contact to point of contact, butt to belly to breast to arm to hand. He felt the electric pricks and tingles and bites. And he relaxed his mind and invited the pain in.
Something changed then. The pain didn't go away and didn't abate, not one bit. But it was no longer something to be feared and shunned. It was searing and gorgeous and wonderful, and Zack found his body racked with laughing sobs at the joy of it.”
In the end, Zack is cured – only to realize that he still wants the lust and the pain that he has left behind.
There are many more wonderful stories in this volume. “Music from My Bones”, by Anya Levin, explores a different kind of submission, in which a woman allows her body to be played as an instrument in a performance of sexual ecstasy. Jean Roberta's “Smoke” entertains the notion that Lucifer was a woman, with all the attendant implications. “Nocturnal Emissions”, by Joe Nobel, is a delightfully sensual chronicle of an elderly Christian priest in the sixteenth century who comes face to face with the old gods and his own suppressed carnal desires.
“The Gantlet”, by B. Lynch Black, offers a parable about the dangers of too much control, set in a classic sci-fi dystopia. Renee M. Charles' “Opening the Veins of Jade” gives us oriental magic and feminine power. Argus Marks' “Copperhead Renaissance” is a creepily erotic picture of mutual addiction. “Venus Rising”, by Diane Kepler, takes us into the familiar territory of android sex toys, but adds an ironic twist. Last, but hardly least, Carolyn and Steve Vakesh offer the clever, funny “Capture, Courting and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Aggression”, part of the dissertation research of a young dragon sociobiologist. (“We are educated, politically correct dragons. We do not eat humans anymore.”)
Normally when I review anthologies, I don't mention every story. Usually there are at least one or two that are better left in the dark. Often I want to allow the readers to discover some of the tales on their own. In the case of this collection, every author deserves a mention, for all of the tales are exceptional for their craft as well as their creativity.
Best Fantastic Erotica is, indeed, fantastic. I'm hardly surprised, since every Circlet anthology that I have read or reviewed deserves the superlative. For Cecilia Tan, every Circlet Press book is a personal labor of love. It shows.(less)
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When space pirate Gilthen Ahn kidnaps noblewoman Teralis Meta-Wing Ortasnay d'Olzon, he has something devious in mind. Not ransom. Not rape. Gil wants Tera d'Olzon to teach him how to dance.
His ship mortgaged to the hilt, Gil needs money, more money...more
When space pirate Gilthen Ahn kidnaps noblewoman Teralis Meta-Wing Ortasnay d'Olzon, he has something devious in mind. Not ransom. Not rape. Gil wants Tera d'Olzon to teach him how to dance.
His ship mortgaged to the hilt, Gil needs money, more money than he's likely to make in his position as leader of the Darck Banks pirate cartel. His only hope is to marry a wealthy member of Tera's own class. Gil is handsome, intelligent and strong, but in order to put this plan into action, he needs to learn how to be a gentleman, and Tera, reclusive member of one of the most powerful gentry clans, seems just the person to serve as his tutor.
Tera isn't exactly a law-abiding citizen of the oppressive Republic herself. When Gil snags her, she's piloting a stolen ship carrying an item of advanced technology she managed to liberate from one of the Republic's secret labs. She grudgingly agrees to assist in Gil's scheme in return for her freedom—not just from the pirates but from the constraints imposed by her family.
Daily lessons in etiquette put Gil and Tera in close proximity. Although neither fully trusts the other, they can't deny their mutual attraction. Tera tries to pass Gil off as her illegitimate half-brother at a lavish gentry soirée, and he valiantly attempts to seduce heiress Fikora Craven, but Fikora correctly intuits that his heart lies elsewhere. Fortunately, Fikora has secrets of her own, and reaches a mutually-satisfactory accommodation with the pirate and his beloved Tera.
I loved this space-age retelling of the Pygmalion myth—“My Fair Lady” in reverse. The characters are vivid and appealing—sharp, rebellious, sneaky and a bit unpredictable. Gil's and Tera's verbal sparring reminded me of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, while their erotic connection is intense, believable, and as satisfying as any reader could want. My only complaint is that the book, at about 100 pages, is too short. Minor characters such as the female pirate Commander Wonn, Gil's grizzled lieutenant Kotase and Fikora, are as rich and fascinating as the protagonists, but we see too little of them. I'd like to know more about Gil's and Tera's world, the Republic and its gentry masters. If Ms. Augustin feels so inspired, I think there's ample material here for a series.
Meanwhile, if you like intelligent, sharp-tongued heroines and gorgeous bad boy heroes, I highly recommend A Pirate's Passion.(less)
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Accidental Slave opens in a dungeon. A Dom named Gary ferociously whips a bound and gagged submissive while ruminating on his anger towards his boss Elizabeth. He transfers that rage to his flogging, continuing to lash at the slave even after she exe...more
Accidental Slave opens in a dungeon. A Dom named Gary ferociously whips a bound and gagged submissive while ruminating on his anger towards his boss Elizabeth. He transfers that rage to his flogging, continuing to lash at the slave even after she executes the gesture they've agreed upon as a signal for him to stop. He even calls the poor woman Elizabeth.
I'll be honest. I nearly stopped reading right there. The scene set all my red lights flashing. If I had not committed myself to reviewing the book, I probably would have tossed it out, assuming (incorrectly) that this was an example of the kind of crude non-consensual smut that gets some people off.
As it turns out, that would have been a huge mistake. In fact, Claire Thompson's novel revolves around the sort of ethical, tender and romantic D/s relationship that pushes all my buttons. The individual introduced in this first scene is the villain in Ms. Thompson's saga. Passed up for a promotion to vice-president when his company decides to hire the eminently qualified Elizabeth Martin, Gary Dobbins plans a devious revenge on the woman he sees as his nemesis. Accompanying her to a company-sponsored charity function, he spikes her drink with a date rape drug and leads her to a BDSM club, where he offers her for sale at a slave auction. Handsome, wealthy dominant Cole Pearson purchases twenty-four hours of play with the gorgeous brunette, only to have her pass out on him when he gets her home.
From this point, the book focuses mostly on the relationship between Elizabeth and Cole. They are irresistibly attracted to one another, but Cole wants more than just sex or even love. He seeks a true D/s partnership with a woman who is as serious and committed to exploring the boundaries of power exchange as he is. His first marriage fell apart because he couldn't be honest about his real needs. He is determined that this is not going to happen again.
Ambitious, intelligent, and work-obsessed, Elizabeth initially seems like an unlikely submissive. However, Cole sparks her curiosity with his talk, and his demonstrations of the seductive nature of erotic power. Gradually Cole leads her deeper into submission, to the point where she agrees to spend two weeks (her long delayed vacation time) in 24/7 slave training. This is a make-or-break experiment for both protagonists. Although Cole has the typical confidence of a Dom, he really doesn't know if Elizabeth is capable of the sort of surrender he requires.
The book includes a subplot in which the evil Gary attempts to blackmail and disgrace Elizabeth, while she and Cole struggle to unmask his deceptions. For the most part, however, Ms. Thompson is concerned with the growing attraction and trust between Elizabeth and Cole. Elizabeth's work is a serious obstacle to their deepening bond. She uses it as a shield to keep Cole from getting too close, as an excuse for lateness and even disobedience. Cole's patience is tested again and again, but unlike Gary he understands that anger has no place when punishing a slave.
Accidental Slave is smoothly written and professionally edited. And of course it involves my personal favorite erotic scenario: initiation of a new submissive by a caring yet authoritative dominant. By the time I reached the chapters detailing Elizabeth's training (which are relatively hard-core BDSM, not merely a few bonds and spanks), the book was pushing my buttons and influencing my dreams.
Somehow, however, I found the end of the book less satisfying. As the two week training period nears its end, Elizabeth's resistance has melted away. She has been transformed into the willing and skillful slave of whom Cole has dreamed. The two look forward to an idyllic future together. In short, the book concludes with a happily-ever-after (except for Gary, who is subjected to a particularly appropriate revenge).
In trying to analyze why this conclusion felt like a let-down, I came up with two theories. First, it was too easy. Elizabeth is not going to abandon her work, and there are bound to be conflicts with her relationship, committed as she is. Second, although the book includes many climaxes with a lower case 'c', there is no real Climax, no single transcendent interaction that pushes the D/s connection to a higher level. A collaring, a branding, some ritual in which Cole seriously took possession of Elizabeth, would have helped. After the emotional intensity of the earlier parts of the book, the ending was surprisingly bland.
I debated for a long time how to rate this book. Starting the book with the villain's scene was, I think, a mistake on Ms. Thompson's part. Readers with tastes similar to mine will be turned off and not continue. Ending the book with a ho-hum HEA also detracts from what, overall, is an arousing and competently written BDSM tale. However, I ultimately recognized that very few erotic books manage to engage my personal fantasies the way Accidental Slave managed to do for much of its length. For this accomplishment, the book deserves a thumbs-up.(less)
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In 1926, Sara Newsome, daughter of a black British physician and his high-society white wife, journeys to glitzy, bustling Harlem to make silent films. Sara doesn't merely want to act, however; she wants to produce and direct her own movies, movies a...more
In 1926, Sara Newsome, daughter of a black British physician and his high-society white wife, journeys to glitzy, bustling Harlem to make silent films. Sara doesn't merely want to act, however; she wants to produce and direct her own movies, movies about love, life and sex aimed at a black audience. She has the gift of revealing the sensual truth even in a feigned sexual encounter. Furthermore, she's not afraid to break the rules and expose the naked flesh and raw emotion of actual couplings - working both in front of, and behind the camera. Struggling against economic and social constraints, Sara nevertheless assembles a small, dedicated band of talented black actors, writers, directors and technicians, and founds Sapphire Films in a flat upstairs from a hardware store on 125th Street. The company make blue movies with a difference: plot, intelligence, emotion, fantasies that nevertheless speak directly to their audience.
A Darker Shade of Blue follows Sara's life and career through roaring twenties New York, with its speakeasies and rent parties, to Hollywood during the Depression, though the Second World War and into the repressive Fifties. Sara's beauty, wit, creative genius and unfettered spirit draw both men and women. Her lovers include Gil, her director, collaborator and creative rival; alcoholic playboy Benjamin Austen, whose cynical humor hides his deeper feelings; and the charismatic, ambitious and radical Paul Robeson. She faces challenges from bigoted politicians and empty-headed studio executives, as well as from the people she cares for. She is lionized and abandoned, achieves notoriety as well as some genuine artistic regard, but is eventually ousted by the directors of the studio she founded, and left to begin again.
This book is a genuine historical novel, but does not completely fit my definition of erotica. Although it includes multiple graphic sex scenes between Sara and her various partners, as well as a few matings in front of the camera, sex is not a primary motivator of the narrative. In fact, the sex could be removed or at least muted to the PG-13 level without impacting the story significantly.
This is not necessarily a complaint. The tale of Sara's odyssey from porn extra to cultural icon is engrossing in its own right. Furthermore, the sex is not gratuitous; it does help develop Sara's character and those of her companions. It's also generally enjoyable, hot and sweet, slightly naughty without dark edges.
I suppose that ultimately, the category to which one assigns a book does not matter. The real test is whether the work leaves you satisfied or disappointed. Although I enjoyed A Darker Shade of Blue while I was reading it, in retrospect I was aware of its weaknesses.
It's obvious that Ms. Campion engaged in significant amounts of research in preparation for writing this book. She dwells on historical details such as the advances in movie-making technology and the social structure of 1920's Harlem. Somehow, though, she did not manage to bring history alive, at least not for me. (This is, of course, an extremely difficult feat to accomplish.) Her New Yorkers feel more like tourists than denizens. The book spans nearly five decades, but I didn't have a strong sense of the changes those decades brought - changes in mood and world-view. Every now and again, an anachronism was jarring enough to completely pull me out of the scene. For example, I'm fairly sure that no woman in the twenties would gush over a man's "abs" and "pecs".
My other disappointment relates to the character of Sara, and is more idiosyncratic. She is a believable character, an admirable character - but ultimately, despite all her carnal encounters, she struck me as cold. The book covers much of her life, and during that life she experiences many lovers, but little love. She feels affection, respect, lust, even jealousy. However, there is no great love in her life, no relationship that even begins to mean more to her than her ambitions and artistic vision. I'm undoubtedly being influenced by the conventions of the romance genre. However, without that romantic spark, I felt that her life, full as it was of adventure, innovation, and achievement, was somehow empty.
I must admit that I loved the ending of the book. It's the early seventies, the era of anti-war protests and black power. Sara and Gil are invited to address a Film Studies class at Columbia University, to discuss their early silent work. They screen one of Sara's first films, one which broke taboos by showing Sara and Gil actually making love. The scene has as much impact on this audience of hip young people as it did when it was first released, shattering their presumptions and exciting their senses. The reader remembers the chapter, early on, when this scene was created, and smiles with the sense of completion.
A Darker Shade of Blue is an original and quite ambitious novel that explores little known corners of black American history. While it is not without flaws, it is different enough to be worth reading.(less)
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Having two devoted lovers is every woman's fantasy. In her Lust Bites story All or Nothing, Jessica Jarman brings that fantasy to life.
Shannon and Nate have been married for a year when Nate's closest friend Zac returns from an overseas military post...more
Having two devoted lovers is every woman's fantasy. In her Lust Bites story All or Nothing, Jessica Jarman brings that fantasy to life.
Shannon and Nate have been married for a year when Nate's closest friend Zac returns from an overseas military posting. Nate offers temporary housing to Zac while his friend looks for work. Shannon knows that Nate and Zac used to cruise together, picking up and sharing women, but those times are over, or so she believes. When Zac comes on to her, Shannon is torn between her desire for the dark, enigmatic ex-soldier and her loyalty to Nate.
Before long, however, Nate has made it clear both he and his old buddy would relish the chance to take Shannon to bed with them. What begins as a sexual fling turns into something more serious, as Shannon comes to realize she loves Zac as well as her husband.
All or Nothing vividly portrays Shannon's roller coaster emotions as she tries to reconcile lust and responsibility. I completely identified with her reactions to Zac's insistent teasing. Zac arouses her but the last thing she wants is to hurt her beloved spouse. The initial scene is intense and utterly believable, as Shannon fights her instincts, all the while wanting to surrender to Zac. Ms. Jarman brings her fantasy scenario into the real world by introducing misunderstandings and jealousy into the triangle. Meanwhile, the sex scenes more than earn the book's rating as "melting".
All or Nothing is a convincing and satisfying ménage tale that will leave you panting. My own husband would undoubtedly recommend it. Within fifteen minutes of finishing the story, I jumped him!(less)
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Hallelujah! That was my cry after reading the first two stories in Cecilia Tan's single-author collection WHITE FLAMES. Needless to say, my husband, reading in bed next to me, was a bit startled. When I explained, though, he understood completely.
Wit...more
Hallelujah! That was my cry after reading the first two stories in Cecilia Tan's single-author collection WHITE FLAMES. Needless to say, my husband, reading in bed next to me, was a bit startled. When I explained, though, he understood completely.
With review commitments to several venues, regular crits for colleagues, plus a personal predeliction for erotica, I probably read a dozen erotic short stories a month. Most of these stories are adequate: reasonably well-written, moderately engaging, mildly arousing. Rarely do I encounter stories that I consider exceptional, stories that excite me in a literary rather than a physical sense.
What does it take for me to be excited by a story? Each case varies, but I look for an original premise, a unique voice, unconventional characters, and most of all, a treatment of sex more as an emotional or spiritual adventure than as a conjunction of body parts.
I'm delighted to report that, by my definition, many of the tales in Cecilia Tan's collection are exceptional.
Ms. Tan has a reputation for "speculative erotica", erotic fantasy and science fiction. It's easy to be original, one might argue, when one can build one's own worlds and write one's own rules. Yet almost half of the stories in WHITE DREAMS are contemporary erotica, with barely a whiff of fantasy.
Among my favorites is "Just Tell Me the Rules". A woman who is saving her virginity for marriage sends her housemate/fiance off on a business trip, only to have his best friend arrive at her door, a challenge to what she thought she wanted. Another delight is "Always", a down-to-earth tale of a loving threesome that begins with
a scene all too familiar from my days in New England:
"A raw spring day in Somerville, me in galoshes and a pair of my father's old painting pant with a snow shovel, cursing and trying to lift a cinderblock-sized (and -weighted) chunk of wet packed snow off
the walkway of our three-decker."
Vivid and concrete one moment, Ms. Tan can wax tender and raunchy the next:
"Morgan's hands travel up my thighs like they come out of a dream. It never occurs to me to stop her. Sex with Morgan is as easy and natural as saying yes to a bite of chocolate from the proffered bar of a friend. Before her fingers even reach the elastic edge of my panties I am already shifting my hips, already breathing deeper, already
thinking about the way her fingers will touch and tease me, how one slim finger will slide deep into me when I am wet, how good it feels to play with her hair on my belly, how much I want her. With Morgan, I always come."
Then there's "Baseball Fever", Ms. Tan's hilarious and highly explicit fantasy about a Yankee rookie for whom she has the hots: "This guy's got destiny. He fits right in with multi-ethic New York, too - half-black, half-white, cannily polite with the media but cocky as hell when he gets on the field." I'm not much of a sports fan, but when Tan brought Tiger Woods into the final scene of the fantasy, "just to make sure it's not 100% percent heterosexual", I laughed until my stomach hurt.
At first glance, one might dismiss "Halloween" as an instance of the overworked "girl meets dominant man of her dreams in a bar" genre. Tan brings new life to the old scenario, partly due to the kick-ass attitude of the world-weary Goth narrator. "The Hard Sell" is a tale of a modern woman longing to escape from the labels and slogans that society applies to everything and everyone around her - including the man who drives her into a frenzy.
Although WHITE FLAMES includes some excellent realistic pieces, I must admit that myth and magic lie at its heart. The middle hundred pages of the book are devoted to fantasy, starting with a stunningly erotic retelling of "The Little Mermaid" then flowering into more original tales. In "Bodies of Water", a team of archeologists discover an
ancient ship on the floor of the Mediterranean. The discovery transforms them, both literally and figuratively. "Dragon's Daughter" is a fascinating tale of a Chinese-American girl who learns that she's an immortal who can travel through time and space to anywhere Chinese culture dominates.
"This is the ignominy of the American educational system: that to speak the tongue of my ancestors I had to fight to be enrolled in a special college class and trudge to it every morning at 8:00. I didn't think I knew the words to explain what I was doing there, anyway... I had no words yet for worry or conflict or secret or dream."
Three amazing stories featuring the same characters - Stormclaw and The Lady in Black - conclude this section. Like so many characters in the today's wildly popular "paranormal" genre, Stormclaw and the Lady are "elementals" - creatures of wind and fire and earth. They are not just people with special powers, however. They are truly inhuman, incomprehensible to and uncomprehending of the mortals among whom they move. They are drawn to human passion, yet do not understand it.
These stories are lyrical and intense, strange and haunting.
"He flies. He flies over clouds as dark as his hair, his eyes, his mood, as he thinks about her. Stormclaw is the dragon of the wind, coiling his power like a cyclone, soaring over night sky, moving eastward like a front of incipient weather. He sees without eyes, senses without skin, when he is the wind, considers without thought, and loves without a heart."
Stormclaw haunts seedy bars, taunting the men who drink there, trying to remember what it is that he seeks.
"Stormclaw feels the first strike of the leather cat-o-nine cross his back like the first bite into a sour summer fruit, a rich and intense pleasure. He draws breath waiting for the next blow to fall, and as he exhales he feels Ravenhair's breath on his shoulder--they are like one animal, tensing and then letting go, and then gathering themselves again. Breathe in, tense for the strike, then let go as the pain rains down around you."
One of the delightful aspects of this collection is its inclusiveness. These stories embrace all orientations, without self-consciousness or politicizing. WHITE FLAMES offers FF, MM, FMF, and FFF tales, not to mention sexually-aware mermaids and robots. In Ms. Tan's worlds, desire is a universal force, not confined to any particular gender or even species.
The book ends with three science fiction tales, of which the best is "The Spark". What if the magical energy that seems to animate the gods and goddesses of rock and roll was a real, measurable force, that could be stoked, and shared -- and lost?
WHITE FLAMES includes a few stories that are hohum, but Ms. Tan hits the target far more often than she falls short. If you enjoy literary erotica that will make you wonder as often as it makes you sweat, I highly recommend this volume.(less)
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4.00 avg rating — 15 ratings
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published
2012
Lisabet Sarai said:
"One of my favorite books when I was in my twenties - I'm rereading it to see if it's as wonderful as I remember!
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