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The stories range from under to 1,000 words to 100,000, with the emphasis on longer and multipart works. Most are set in science fiction or fantasy worlds, or altered realities that are set off enough from this one to accommodate the concept of legalized slavery or cloned sex toys. A sampling from the first three issues reveals many excellent gems from authors who have been busy honing their craft in this very specialized niche; all of them know the type of material they're producing and how to wring out its jollies. Heather Elizabeth Peterson has produced the outstanding jewel in "Debt Price," the story of a young terrorist in a medieval world of lords and peasants who is sentenced for his crime to a brutal form of sex slavery at the hands of his victims... and his eventual redemption when he is freed by the brother of one of them. The story is one of tallying one's karmic debts and paying them off; it also explores the justification for extreme punishment and why it may or may not work, and the relative nature of guilt and innocence. Slash more in its subject matter than its sex scenes (which are brutal and not really played as erotica, skirting sensationalism without quite falling in) it's a very dense, fascinating read, well worth by itself the $10 price tag, at least for someone of my tastes. Also excellent was Francesca's "Lynn" which was typical of the longer pieces on the site. The tale of an unemployed architect and the genetically engineered sex slave he rescues out of pity, it was set in a mythical Kafkaesque European state that's a socialist cautionary tale come true. This piece was not so much slash as playing with slashy themes -- the architect was not some swooning feyboy but a real 20th century man concerned with his image of maleness; he alternates between contempt and compassion for the slave, who is again more three-dimensional than he first appears. This novel was very long, dense, and lovely, and all the more impressive because the author's native language is Swedish and not English. Among the others, Madame Hydra's "Black Feathers" was a amusing twist on the typical cliched yaoi plot: instead of a some lord capturing a fey, angelic being for sexual use and abusing him, we have a fey, angelic being who captures a prince, and controls him sexually, for reasons of revenge, with the aid of feathers from his wings. (I won't give away more of the plot than that.) "Pathfinder" by Rushlight also went against cliche by having its young protagonist, who's periodically kidnapped and abused because of the psychic gift he has, to be rebellious and resourceful in handling his predicament rather crying buckets like a lot of other yaoi leads seem to do, or moping around resigned to their fate. The latter story also managed to be a fast- moving SF adventure tale -- I could almost imagine it as a movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Keanu Reeves in certain roles -- and a touching emotional drama as well. Intensity of a different sort exists in Remy's "Expulsion." In the near or not-so-near future slavery is once again legal and poor Joran, once the pampered son of a wealthy businessman, is thrust kicking and screaming into it through a legal loophole when his father dies. Most of the story is taken up with his descent into domestic-servant hell, where he's abused by the kitchen staff and the household staff in a "Gosford Park" role-reversal scenario gone terribly awry. Though gripping in a Russian-gulag way it seemed less unified than the others, without the initial character and background setup that would make it a fully rounded story and not a thematic exploration. Overall, though, the writing quality of all the stories here was excellent, and if some were pointless or weak, they were balanced out by the strengths of the others. The layout of the 'zine was professionally done in Adobe Acrobat, the editing light to leave the authors' voices intact. Some of stories featured pictures in the anime/yaoi vein, but as I am not a visual reader (I have a hard time getting into graphic novels, for example, though I will happily read comic fanfic) they didn't add anything to the experience for me. When it comes to nude males, I tend to like more realistic art; I also have the vision of male beauty that is Mr. Cyrrh to look at whenever I want, so yaoi art doesn't really yank my crank, in other words, though anime lovers should enjoy it. All in all, highly recommended if you want to read some good stories in the original slash vein.
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