Celestial Reviews 207 - August 13, 1997
Note: We have a short issue this week. I was gone to a family
reunion, where nothing of an incestuous or sexual nature took
place. Except my husband suggested that one irritating relative
perform a probably impossible sexual activity on himself.
However, I don't think being instructed to go fuck oneself
qualifies as interesting material for this newsgroup
Second note: Thanks to the many guest reviewers who made this
issue possible.
Final note: Remember: even though someone else may be posting my
reviews for me, my e-mail address is still Celeste801@aol.com.
- Celeste
"The Old One" by the Real Megillah (geriatric romance)
10, 9, 9
"The Love Boat" by Ann Douglas (ff romance) 9, 10, 10
"Advanced Biology Lab" by Linda Loring (mechanical sex)
9, 9, 9
"Kittens Inspiration" by Kitten (writer's block) 5, 4, 4
Guest Reviews:
"Aunt Peg's Visit" by BillyG (teen romance with older aunt)
10, 10, 10
"The Pool Girl" by Unknown Author (ff swimming pool sex)
8, 9, 9
"The Act" by Shvk Brar (bland sexual activity) 7, -, 3
"Prize Pig" by Cobalt Jade (medieval femdom) 10, 10, 10
"The Photograph" by JYM (poignant teen pregnancy)
10, 10, 10
"Wedding Gift" by Seurat (mild bdsm) 10, 10, 10
"Bacchanalia" by T.J. MacAllister (revenge) 10, 9, 10
Reposted Reviews:
* "Lab Partners" by WithSue (very hot, gentle threesome)
10, 10, 10
"The Old One" by the Real Megillah {posted by (Hawk Richards)
(heminway@epix.net) for the actual author}. The 35-year-old
married man is doing research at a home for the elderly for a book
he is writing. He finds himself attracted to a woman more than
twice his age, and he discovers that she is a very adept lover.
He begins to think of his possibilities with other elderly women
who live in this harem.
This plot doesn't quite ring true, but it's still a good story.
Ratings for "The Old One"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
"The Love Boat" by Ann Douglas (anndouglas@aol.com). This is NOT
a parody of the American sitcom - which was pronounced "The
Loooooove Boat," with a lovey-dovey cutesy intonation that's
impossible to duplicate without sound. No, this is a simple story
about two woman who go together for a vacation {i.e., holiday for
Brits} on a cruise ship that has been chartered for all lesbians -
except for their naive little selves. Let's see - Ann Douglas,
non-lesbians in a lesbian atmosphere - I wonder what will happen!
Well, as you may have guessed, both women begin to wonder what it
would be like to make love to another woman, and pretty soon they
become involved in sapphic delights. However, this is not a
purely lesbian story. While the women are clarifying their sexual
identity, there are numerous flashbacks to their prior
heterosexual escapades, and the mf snapshots are just about as hot
as the ff scenes.
A grammatical note: A female person with light colored hair is a
blonde. However, her hair itself is blond. That is, the "e" is
properly added to the word "blonde" only when it is a noun meaning
"a blonde person" or when it directly modifies an entire blonde
person, not just a part of her body. So my blonde friend has a
blond pussy. Well, not really; it's brown. But if she were a
real blonde, her hair would be blond not blonde. Lots of people
spell these words differently, but the way I have sescribed is the
way it's supposed to be. Men are usually blonds - without the "e."
However, in this story we had an anomalously bearded blonde
bartender.
This story had more grammatical errors than most of Ann's recent
stories, but it was still a delightfully romantic and sexy story.
Ratings for "The Love Boat"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
"Advanced Biology Lab" by Linda Loring (Red Dragon repost). When
I saw this title, I thought I had already reviewed this story; but
when I checked my records, I discovered that I was thinking of a
WithSue story entitled "Lab Partners." The latter story has
nothing to do with a sexy lab technician being masturbated to
orgasm by one of those mechanical arms with which lab technicians
handle untouchable substances. This one does. And when the
narrator comes back to the lab late at night he finds this buxom
lady (known by her colleagues as the "Ice Queen") naked and
enraptured in the "arms" of the lab equipment. As fate would have
it, the lab is equipped with video cameras that cover every inch
of the lab and can record for posterity anything that might happen
in the room. The way the Ice Queen is going at it, the
seismometer in the next county might also record these events.
Anyway, the narrator seizes - er - manual control of the
equipment. For the rest of the details, you'll have to read the
story yourself.
Ratings for "Advanced Biology Lab"
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
"Kittens Inspiration" by Kitten (Listed as "Leon" as a Red Dragon
repost). Leon is a writer who needs inspiration for his next
story. So Kitten hauls her ass up to his cottage and into his
pool and copulates with him. Then presumably Kitten left, and
Leon wrote his story, and Kitten wrote this little ditty. I
suppose that's why Leon gets the big bucks for being the writer in
the family.
Ratings for "Kittens Inspiration"
Athena (technical quality): 5
Venus (plot & character): 4
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 4
"Aunt Peg's Visit" by BillyG (hayden@mindless.com). Guest review
by Michael K. Smith.
I don't believe I've seen a story by this author before, but I
hope he keeps writing and posting. This is definitely one hot
story! And, though the author doesn't say, it seems to be the
first part of a longer work (I hope).
The protagonist -- whose name, oddly enough, is Billy -- goes to
the San Francisco airport with his divorced mother to pick up her
sister, come to stay for the summer. (My first thought was,
"Obvious setup.") Peg is ten years younger but similar in
appearance, . . . which is nice, since Billy has had the secret
hots for Mom for several years. And Mom has to go back to work
right away, so Billy promises to look after Peg ("Don't call me
'Aunt,' please. I don't want to be all grown up"), whose first
wish is to try out the genuine California hot tub. But first, Peg
wants to have a little talk. About frank conversation and the
effects on her nephew of her taste for nude sunbathing. He's
willing but warns her that he just might acquire an erection.
(Yeah -- as if!)
Let's just say I was already feeling the effects myself before
aunt and nephew ever reached the hot tub deck. The author has a
talent for word pictures and literate description, and about the
only "bad" words you'll run into are a few "pussies" and one
"cunt." I take this as the mark of a budding erotician, not just
another porn-scribbler. It is indeed a setup, but it's also a lot
closer to believable than most -- which, for me, makes the story a
good deal sexier.
Gotta pick a nit or two somewhere, though (the Reviewers Guild
rules demand it). Oh, yeah: "Billy" changes inexplicably to "Bob"
at one point, and the author has a tendency to forget the closing
quotes in dialogue passages. And I found one misspelling. Nothing
that a bit more line-editing wouldn't have caught. When I taught
history, I was not known as an easy grader, but I give this one
straight 10s. And I'll certainly be watching for the next
installment!
Ratings for "Aunt Peg's Visit"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Michael K. Smith (appeal to reviewer): 10
"The Pool Girl" by Unknown Author. Guest review by BluePencil.
If you read alt.sex.stories long enough, you start to develop a
set of mental filters for stories. These can be personal - "I
know NetNaziInBlackLeather _always_ writes romantic stories with
SM and rubber chickens", genre - "I am _so tired_ of pedophilic
midget lesbian nun stories" - or stylistic.
True confession time here, kids: it's the stylistic problems that
_really_ keep me from enjoying a story. Speling and grammar
errors are something up with which I will not put. You encounter
a story written entirely in the second person and you shake your
head and skip it. Like any other corpus, the body of a story
should end up in a plot.
But what _really_ irritates me are unnecessary (and improbably)
exact descriptions of the participants. This has lots of
variants: the LARGER/ STRANGER THAN LIFE school, where the men and
women have measurements more appropriate to horses and dairy cows;
the smaller than life school, much favored by the authors of
husband humiliation stories; and, most common of all, the Sports
Trivia school, where being told a woman is tall and blond or a man
short and dark is never enough - "John Henry, a 5'4", 130 lb
brunette of Welsh/Egyptian ancestry, absent-mindedly stroked his
8" long, 3" diameter cock."
Oops! Sorry about that. I was frothing a bit. Ahem. As I was
saying before I sidetracked myself, I have a number of filters I
use to decide whether I will bother to read a story. Most of the
time, it works, too - when I ignore the warning signs, I only
rarely am pleasantly surprised.
_The Pool Girl_ surprised me.
When Celeste passed this story my way, I didn't expect much. The
language, though reasonably grammatical, was sometimes labored.
The first part of the story suffered from typos. And the author
has a mild case of the dread Sports Trivia affliction. If I
hadn't committed to reviewing the story, I would have quit
reading. I'm glad I didn't.
Despite its (mild) flaws, this is a good story. A woman on the
rebound from a tomcat husband finds solace with young woman from
the pool service, on the rebound from a tomcat boyfriend. The
story develops believably, the sex is hot, and the
characterization works. Not a great story, but a good one with
the promise of better to come; I found myself wishing that the
author had a more memorable nom du net than
an229873@anon.penet.fi, so that I would have a better chance of
finding more of his/her stories. Recommended.
Athena (technical quality): 8
Venus (plot and character): 9
BluePencil (appeal to reviewer): 9
"The Act" by Shvk Brar (shvkbrar@aol.com). Guest review by
Tooshoes.
"The Act" has a cast of two generic characters: "He" and "She".
No introductions are necessary. The plot is correspondingly
uncomplicated. He and She undress each other, engage in foreplay,
and have sex until the thrilling climax.
This really isn't a sex story at all. It is simply a description
of the "act" of making love, with very little style or creativity.
The Act occurs in the bedroom -- that's all we know of the
setting. It might take place in the past or the future, in America
or China. All 2722 words are focused on a simple objective -- to
describe a single act of lovemaking from beginning to end.
And that is all the author, Shvk Brar, intended. Perhaps he wanted
to show the act of loving making in it's purest form, as a sacred
ritual, without connecting it with any sense of meaning or
purpose. Or maybe he grew tired of reading so many erotic stories
where a plot was simply tacked onto the main event, and decided to
skip all the secondary stuff.
But rituals are meaningless when divorced from the people who
perform them. Sex has no magic if the spells are not cast just
right.
The Act has two things going for it: the writing is fluid, and the
descriptions are precise. But the act in question might have been
"eating a McDonald's hamburger" for all the excitement it
generated.
Ratings for "The Act"
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): Irrelevant
Tooshoes (appeal to reviewer): 3
"Prize Pig" by Cobalt Jade (Cobaltjade@aol.com). Guest review by
Sven the Elder.
Let me quote a description from Cobalt Jade's story intro :
'"Prize Pig" is the second installment of a series of stories
about the sexual adventures of two brothers in Washington State.
The first was "Dad's Going to KILL Us!" which was posted on ASS,
ASSM and ASSB back in mid-April'
She goes on to say that the stories stand alone - and I agree - so
there is no need to read the other first. Having read and enjoyed
the first installment I was looking forward to the second and was
not disappointed. The best description is that of a family weekend
away from the ordinary hum-drum of modern life. In short, the
story is about participation in a Mediaeval weekend, complete with
saucy wenches and adventures. Having never been to such a
gathering, I can only guess at the authenticity of the goings-on,
but have to say that I have now started looking up the timetables
for such events in my locale in Merrie Englande.
The sex is hot and believable, the scene setting good, the femdom
hilarious - perhaps that remark is unkind, but it amused me. The
story is enjoyable and well rounded, the hormones of the brothers
spraying out their ears. One or two of the scenes might have been
expanded - mother and father's particularly - but otherwise a
well-rounded tale. I noted with interest the ending, with the
hooks nicely left in place for the youngest member of the family
to join in at a later date.
Cobalt is right, you don't have to have read "Dad's Going to KILL
Us!" first; but since I had done so, the characters of the boys
fell together nicely. My previous knowledge improved my
understanding and enjoyment of "Prize Pig."
"Pardon - Oh the Pig?" "Ah well you'll just have to read it to
find out, won't you!"
Ratings for 'Prize Pig'
Technical quality: 10
Plot & character: 10
Sven (appeal to reviewer): 11 (I can't? - Oh! All right then 10)
<sulk!>
"The Photograph" by JYM (GJ@SPRYNET.COM). Guest review by Mark
Aster.
A very short but very lovely story. No sex happens on stage, but
the story is very much about sex, and love, and bodies, and
hearts. And about how beautiful a pregnant 16-year-old can be,
naked and shy in front of the camera. And how something beautiful
can be utterly tragic also.
It takes some daring to make a story this short, and to post a
story with no actual fucking to a.s.s.*. The author of this one
has that daring, and enough talent to pull it off. I recommend
this story highly; don't be put off by what I've said so far even
if you're just looking for sex stories. The Photograph is highly
erotic, as well as all those other things. The ending, while
maybe a tad obvious, is effective and moving. A couple of
misspellings, awkward phrases, and an odd capitalization might
cost it a point for technical perfection, but it deserves at least
solid tens in them other categories. A keeper.
Ratings for "The Photograph" {Added by Celeste}
"Wedding Gift" by Seurat (#1 Twilight Zone series)
(dantedibby@aol.com). Guest review by Wherryman.
I had already read Wedding Gift when Celeste sent it for review,
but I was pleased to have an excuse for another look at it. The
story is in the form of a series of telephone calls between Tony
and Bill.
Tony now works at the Twilight Zone, an erotic clothing and
accessory store, and has sent a wedding gift to Bill and Eileen.
In the first call Bill is thanking Tony for the present but is
wondering about the condition - that one package should be opened
each week for six weeks.
Tony seems put out by the way Bill is crowing - about his marriage
and about the good sex the first package precipitated -
understandable when we learn that Bill stole Eileen from Tony
_and_ got him sacked from his previous job. Why would Tony be so
magnanimous?
The following calls chart the progress of the relationship between
the newly-weds and we begin to appreciate Tony's plan.
I am not a fan of the 'conversation' style of story telling.
There is a fantasy series that is done entirely in that style -
like reading a play with no stage directions. This story though
is well crafted and is short enough and engaging enough to more
than make up for my initial misgivings about the style. Make sure
you download this story.
I have since read more from the Twilight Zone series - all have a
mild sub/dom theme - and the standard is consistently high.
Sub/dom is not one of my favourite genres - but if it's your cup
of tea, or if you just like well written stories, keep a look out
for them.
Ratings for "Wedding Gift":
Technical merit 10
Plot & character 10
Appeal to reviewer 8
"Bacchanalia" by T.J. MacAllister (Red Dragon repost). Guest
review by Purple Shade.
Dyan Thomas was a bastard and proud of it. His motto -- fuck `em
and leave `em. So it wasn't surprising when Sheila Severson
became just one more notch in his bedpost. Just a nameless body
to masturbate into and get his rocks off. One more forgettable
broad.
Unfortunately for Dyan, he didn't know how dangerous a game he was
actually playing or the consequences of constantly thinking with
the wrong head.
While I would've liked to have seen more of a story development
given an interesting premise, this still remains a good if too
short tale. A gentle reminder in keeping with the motto of "Those
who live by the sword, die by the sword."
Ratings for "Bacchanalia" {added by Celeste}
Technical merit 10
Plot & character 9
Appeal to reviewer 10
* "Lab Partners" by WithSue. Sue was kind enough to send me a
copy of this story before she reposted it. When I saw it posted
this morning, I was upset, because I hadn't finished it yet. So I
dug into the rest of the 24 pages (11,188 words, according to my
word count) and was late for breakfast. It was as good as Sue
humbly said it would be. (Now I have to put this out of my mind
and concentrate on summer school.)
The deal here is that Sue loves fantasies and in real life
encourages other authors to respond to her fantasies by finishing
or adapting her stories. A few paragraphs into the story, I
realized that Sue herself was the lab partner working with the two
guys. The buildup took a while; but even our anti-Jane-Austen
critic would enjoy the result, I think. (I'd really like to know
his opinion of this one.) This has to be one of the longest
orgasms in a.s.s. history; and I stayed glued to the screen for
every minute of it. This may be a chick story - but what a chick!
Ratings for "Lab Partners"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10