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"When Summer Comes" by Hawk Richards (zipless fuck). Leanna: 8, 5, 5
"When Summer Comes" by Hawk Richards (HawkRds@aol.com). Guest review by Leanna. {This review means only my opinion, and _NOTHING MORE_. } My major beef with this story is that it was unoriginal. The theme has been done before, extensively, in alt.sex.stories. The plot is this: a young, virile stud working for the summer before he has to go back to school. He turns into a peeping tom. She spots him watching one day, and. :) So that right there is the plot score. I haven't been doing reviews for Celeste too long, but I think that the only stories that deserve a '10' in the Venus aisle are the ones that did something truly unique with their storylines and/or were especially masterful in creating believable characters. But, as far as stories go, it wasn't too badly written. The pacing of the story was a little bit off, and there were a couple of grammatical errors, but nothing horrible. That explains the Athena score. And last but not least, appeal to me. Well, it didn't appeal to me that greatly. There was nothing outstanding about this story. To be fair to the author, in case Hawk Richards is wondering exactly where it went wrong -- is perhaps the generalization that all rich, seclusive bitches are incredibly beautiful, sexual dominatrixes. It could be nice for a quick stroke for you, but it didn't work for me. Everyone is different, though -- revel in it! But, I do have to give this story some credit. I don't think this is what the author intended, but I think it does well to show the rudiments of casual sex -- the zipless fuck. Nobody expects anything past the moment out of each other, and sometimes, they aren't even concerned about anything beyond their own pleasure. Ratings for "When Summer Comes" Athena (technical quality): 8 Venus (plot and characterization): 5 LeAnna (appeal to reviewer): 5 Review of "One Woman's Fantasy Fulfilled" by Beerfellow (ek972@cleveland.freenet.edu) (Reposted by John Dark). Guest review by Crimson Dragon. Imagine, if you will, a one-night stand. But not a regular one. One where you haven't seen the other partner. And your first view of your partner will be a view of your naked bodies softly touching. Intriguing? Or exceptionally scary? Perhaps a mixture? This story explores this one-night stand, and the attendant emotions. This is not your average one-night stand, but I'm not really sure I want to get into all the sexual details for risk of ruining the story. What it does have is a brush with deeper emotions - more so than your average wham-bam one-night stand. This is planned, and accepted by both partners. This is a tender story of lovemaking told in an unusual way. A word of warning. It took me a while to get into this story. There really wasn't any "hook" to grab my attention, and without story codes, I had no idea what to expect. But after the initial awkwardness, I found I got used to the style and was able to read a little more fluidly. The most distinctive stylistic element to this story was that it was written in first person from two people's perspectives. We get the woman's point of view, and the man's - both presented in first person. I'm not quite sure if that was distracting, or whether it was an effective technique. I'll let you as readers decide that for yourselves. I thought it was rather unique, and the fact that I'm not slamming it probably means that it worked, to my great surprise. It kind of felt like I was watching a documentary, though ... we all know the type ... where it flips between eye witness accounts from different perspectives. The author does a decent job of differentiating the personas in a variety of ways. The technique is not as confusing as it might have been with less care. From a grammatical standpoint, there were a very few problems. Unfortunately for this author, the very first "sentence" was the classic grammatical problem of an incomplete sentence. And it wasn't intentional. That didn't bode well for the story, normally I'd put it down right away assuming the worst, but I'm here to tell you that beyond a few dropped words, the English in the story wasn't terrible enough to detract from the story. In fact, I'm only giving it a 9 because it wasn't quite perfect. Not fair to put this story into the same category with some of the tens I've seen recently. It truly wasn't bad in this department, but it could use some improvement. I didn't notice any spelling problems. I also didn't take off marks for the double first person technique, just to be clear. The characters seemed real enough, the author did a reasonable job of developing them. There is an inherent difficulty, at least I find, in developing a character in a one-night stand/e-mail meeting in real life story. By the very nature, there is a tendency to miss a number of important facets to a person's personality. However, I think the author did a remarkably good job of developing his characters considering the limitations of the storyline. I had some trouble identifying with the characters, but that could have been just me. The characters had some traits that I personally found, um, undesirable, and that could cloud my judgment here. That doesn't mean that other readers would be bothered by the same traits, and it doesn't mean that the author did a bad job of characterisation. My only real complaint was the author's overuse of "stroke" type language to describe the sex. The story didn't seem to suit it. I guess I'm not one for clichés, and the like. On the other hand, the sex wasn't badly portrayed either. I just found that the descriptions jarred a little with the overall tone of the story. I thought this was a reasonably well-written fantasy. The sex was well described (if a little too described for my tastes). The characters seemed real enough. The technical skill of the author made it an enjoyable read after I managed to get into the story and resolve the different style of it. Lastly an explanation of the appeal mark below. This simply wasn't my type of story. It didn't push my buttons. That isn't the fault of the author this time. The sexual descriptions and my personal lack of identification with the characters explain the 7 below. This shouldn't be used to judge the story or indicate any particular lack on the part of the author. Many other readers, I'm sure, would have given this story a 9 or even a 10. Numbers without context mean little, especially in this case. Ratings for "One Woman's Fantasy Fulfilled": Athena (technical) : 9 Venus (character & plot) : 10 Crimson (appeal) : 7 |