The Annex Reviews, December 2002
12/27/02
A Happy New Year, all!
An American businesswoman in England gets on the train of the title to travel from Newcastle to London. While reflecting sourly on the condition of the British train system a female college student sits next to her. She's reading "Merlin" by Robert Nye, a historical novel renowned for its outlandish sex scenes (I guess the writer is the English equivalent of Gary Jennings.) The narrator's interest becomes prurient at that point, leading the fresh young thing into a frank discussion:
"Yes." Clearly she was a little uncertain how to go ahead. After
all she now knew that I knew.
"Some very interesting ideas," I continued. In terms of literary
technique? Or sexual possibilities? I hoped the ambiguity excited
her.
"Yes." She paused, realizing that, if this was to be a proper
conversation, monosyllables wouldn't do for very much longer.
The question was, did she want a proper conversation? "It isn't
quite what I expected."
"No. It's a long way from Tolkein or Harry Potter." She smiled.
She had a nice smile. A nice face. Not beautiful, like I said before,
but pretty in a pink and healthy sort of way. "Can't quite
imagine Bilbo Baggins getting up to some of those tricks."
"No. I'm not sure I'd want him to, either." My turn to laugh. The
girl had wit. "Bilbo Baggins the sex symbol - it's as likely as
Chekhov the Cheerful Chappie, isn't it?"
How wrong you are, mon cherie! Hobbits, as anyone who's into Lord of the Rings slash, are indeed very hot right now. Anyway, the narrator leads the discussion around to her own lesbian erotica (which she's been composing all the while on her laptop), and then a seduction in the train's toilet which involves some hot lesbian rimming, D/s, and pee games. The sex may not be to everyone's taste, but I found the preceding story was engaging and well written, as well as introducing me to a book I had previously overlooked at my local library.
LOTR slash may very hot in the fanfic community now, but it's not limited to males. With firm-chinned daring some writers are exploring the femslash aspect of Middle-Earth. It means doing a lot of personal invention, as Arwen, Eowyn, and Galadriel exchange nary a come-hither look onscreen or between the pages. In fact, I don't think any of them ever meet face-to-face in the movies or the books. But after seeing "The Two Towers" this holiday season I was inspired to explore the distaff side, and thusly came across this tale. A young Galadriel is feeling freaked out about her upcoming marriage to Celeborn, so she goes to Melian, one of the Maia (a god of Middle-Earth in human form) for advice. Melian is tempted by Galadriel's "contrast of innocence and wisdom, vulnerability and strength...an intriguing combination, which fascinated Melian and held her powerless before this young Elf- Maid" so, in good slash style, she seduces her. The two have sex, and the once-virginal Galadriel leaves satisfied with the lessons she has been taught. Aside from the (rather quick) resolution of Galadriel's jitters the story didn't have much of a plot. Like a lot of slash, it was written as a simple character-driven sexual encounter, and whether you're into it or depends on how much you like the fandom, and, more importantly, whether the author's interpretation of the characters syncs with yours. As a LOTR fan I thought it was charming, but too flowery for my taste; everything is resolved too neatly, and I didn't discover anything new about the characters.
This story was posted on the newsgroups two years ago. I found it in a search for petrification fetish stories. Alystin and Rhiannon are best friends, elf-style (which means lots of Dungeons & Dragons adventures and wanton sex between the two) but bite off more than they can chew when they are gang- raped by some orcs. While fleeing their assailers they blunder into the cave of a genteel, accommodating dragon who shelters and feeds them. But he expects to be repaid:
The dragon's tongue retreats momentarily, a happy noise coming
from deep inside the dragons chest, a pleasant sigh, "Relax, drow,
I learned long ago that elven women have a better delicacy than
just the mere taste of their flesh..."
As if this wasn't fantastic enough, the dragon then morphs himself Alystin's double, so there's twin sex, and then three-way twin sex, with double-headed dildoes, when the other elf recovers. This was one of those sword-swinging fantasy adventures writers like Anthony Pryor-Brown do so well, sexed-up gaming sessions with a liberal infusion of attitude from the old "Heavy Metal" graphic magazine (in Pryor's case, he has written some legitimate TSR gaming modules.) The sex was hot in a chicks-in-chainmail way, though the writing could use work -- the writer couldn't decide if the story was told in present or past tense, for example. But the sheer imagination and inventiveness made up for this, along with some great visual descriptions. Why else would dragons have such long tongues? This tale seems to be part of a series, so, if you like it, I recommend a Google search for the rest; according the author it also exists on the Naked Blades (www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Naked_Blades/www) and The Grey Archive (www.greyarchive.org/index.html) sites.
An older woman -- we're not sure exactly who she is, or where she is -- wakes up for the day, showers, and masturbates, reflecting on the present and past as so many people do. Later it's revealed who she is, and it's a shocker, though a nice one. I give the story an A for that ending line, which is hard to see coming. This writer still has problems with the stiffness of her prose ("Broad beams of sunshine filtered through the thick frames of the large bedroom window as the short haired brunette rolled over in her bed." -- one too many adjective-noun pairings, I think.) But the humanity she brings to her characters always shines through, and makes her work a worthy read.
Wonder Woman travels to the jungles of South America to save a tribe of women from an exploding volcano, unaware that it is all part of an elaborate plot to make her knocked-up and horny. Well, it's a Homer Vargas story, what else can we expect? The tongue-in-cheek adventure has the priggish Amazon princess gradually succumbing to the tribe's erotic rituals, from the orgies they lavish on each other to her impregnating impalement on a phallic stone. Later, when she returns to civilization she notices the changes:
Hee! I was going to review this story in the comic book sex theme review I did back in October, but ran into time limitations. On the re-read I found it more of a pregnancy-fetish tale featuring a superheroine, than a story about a superheroine who happens to get pregnant. The erotic and mind control aspects of pregnancy were handled well, but the story was more of a tale told to us, parable-style, by the writer, rather than one experienced by the main character. IMO the author did a better job on "Anniversary" (not reviewed) which had a similar theme, and more humor; it's available, as this one was, at The Grey Archive.
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