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* "Old Friends" by D.A. Ignatius (romance & adventure)
9, 10, 10
* "Old Friends" by D.A. Ignatius (jash@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu). {Link: most complex story I have yet read in the DarkNites series. I see similarities between this story and the typical Dirty Dawg story. Since I am going to review the Dawg's "Lisa" next, I'll compare the two. Both stories center around a friendship or love relationship that has been incomplete or has gone bad in the past; and now the former lovers are thrown back together with a chance to set things right. A major difference is that Dirty Dawg views life more simply; when people screw up a relationship, they should simply realize what they were missing and be nice to each other - very nice to each other. The present story, on the other hand focuses on the struggles for power that are so often present to screw up relationships - and to make them really interesting. The story is full of ebb and flow - ying and yang - that shifts in rhythm with the events of the story or when the author creatively changes perspective. Taken in isolation, the present story has hotter sex. By that I mean that if you want to get your lover going, you could probably find a couple of paragraphs that you could read out loud until he/she would interrupt you by jumping your bones. But taken in its context, the Dawg's sex is pretty hot too. That is, you may not be able to find a short passage in "Lisa" that is equally amenable to bone jumping; but when I read the whole story I came away with a warm, wet, and wonderful feeling that helped make me and my husband about as happy as the quicker fix supplied by the present story. I don't want to overemphasize the importance of the power struggles in "Old Friends." There's much more to this story than power struggles. There's the focus on the difference between young love and mature love. There's the man's sudden realization of his own beauty when his beautiful lover finds him to be desirable. And there's much more. This story could have benefited from a final proofreading. The omitted apostrophes and missing articles are a minor annoyance - even grammar goddesses make petty mistakes. In one case, however, I was seriously confused by the verb tense. The author shifted into a flashback without making it clear to me that she had done so. Only after I had read several paragraphs did I say to myself, "Wait a minute! This has been a description of something that happened ten years earlier!" When I checked back, I discovered that the author was right: if I would have read more carefully, I would have caught the flashback. But this isn't a reading test to separate the Honors Students from the less inspired pupils; and so I think a simple shift in verb tense - in this case saying "She HAD BEEN wearing a maroon sundress...." instead of "She was wearing...." - would have made the timing crystal clear. There was no need for this confusion; this author is a brilliant writer. Had she simply made one more careful swing through this story, she would probably have noticed mistakes like these herself. Even better, she should capture an intelligent potential sex partner and make him proofread the story before she agrees to do to him some of the interesting things that transpire in this story. Ratings for "Old Friends" Athena (technical quality): 9 Venus (plot & character): 10 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10 |