Celestial Reviews 238 - November 29, 1997

CONTEST TIME!  We haven't had a Celestial Writing Contest in a long 
time.  So I am announcing a Celestial Christmas Story Contest.  The only 
rule is that your entry has to be a new story about Christmas or a 
related holiday theme.  I'll interpret this seasonal theme loosely - a 
Druid orgy at Stonehenge during the winter solstice or group sex at 
half-time at the Rose Bowl would qualify.  Entries can be posted as they 
are written, and I'll review them as soon as I receive them.  Winners 
will be announced on or around January 1.

Final note: Remember: even though someone else may be posting my reviews 
for me, my e-mail address is still Celeste801@aol.com.

- Celeste

      "Pushing the Envelope" by Jordan Shelbourne (sexual nostalgia)
            10, 10, 10
      "Fireman's Carnival" by Kathy B. (sex in public) 10, 10, 10
      "La Kajira" by Carol Parsons (sex slavery) 7, 4, 4
      "My Boyfriend's Back" by losgud (ff sex & threesome) 10, 9, 9
      "My Education" by bebrack (family sex) 10, 10, 5

Guest Reviews: 

      "Building Bridges" by Nick (relationships & control) 7.5, 8.5, 6
      "Jake" by Unknown Author (sexual cliches) 7, 3, 4
      "The Stepford Wives" by Rhett Dreams (mind control) 10, 10, 10
      "For the Love of Amy" by Unknown Author (enigmatic sex) 
            8, 6, 5
      "Witch Hunt" by Pus E. Cat (bdsm) 10, 7, 8
      "Daydreaming" by Suki (bdsm) 8, 7, 6

Reposted Reviews:

    * "Citation" by Unknown Author (pleasurable police bondage)
            8, 9.5, 9
    * "Elly" by Friar Dave (attitude adjustment) 9.5, 9, 9

* = Repost of previous review (because the story has recently been
      reposted)

"Pushing the Envelope" by Jordan Shelbourne (Reposted by who@why.not).  
The businessman's client has had too much to drink at a strip club, and 
so the businessman drives him home, but only under condition that they 
not disclose to his wife where they have been.  The client's wife turns 
out to be a former bedmate of the businessman - back from the wild, 
hippie days of their young adulthood.  The businessman has a rule 
(seriously) against humping the wives of clients, but this setting is 
pretty tempting.  Read it to find out what happens.

I wrote the above paragraph as a review of what I later realized was the 
first chapter in a series of stories with an as-yet undetermined number 
of episodes.  The author is a genuinely good writer, and the 
installments (three so far) continue to be interesting, imaginative, and 
often sexy.  I'll try to post another review when the series is 
finished.

Ratings for "Pushing the Envelope"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"Fireman's Carnival" by Kathy B. (kathybxx@aol.com).  The narrator has 
volunteered to work at a pie-throwing booth at one of those fund-raising 
carnivals for an animal shelter.  After she flirts with some male 
customers for a while, it's her turn to stick her head through the 
curtain and serve as the target.  Since her head is restrained by a 
drawstring, she can do little except grin and bear it when she is 
surprised by her husband's hands first fondling her ass and then fucking 
her from behind.  In fact, her husband is more industrious and more 
eager to rise to the occasion than usual.  If you think about this setup 
for a little while, you can probably guess the surprise ending.  This is 
a good story.

Ratings for "Fireman's Carnival"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10

"La Kajira" by Carol Parsons (myescape@voyager.net).  The narrator 
describes herself as a kajira, which in somebody's language is a pet 
name for a slave.  America used to have slaves, but then somebody passed 
a law against that sort of thing.  But that was bad slavery.  This story 
is about good slavery - love, honor, and obedience -things that the Boys 
Scouts would approve of.  We are informed that slavery can also be 
bondage and whippings, but that is "the next level" - presumably after 
the kajira has been cleansed by love, honor, and obedience and is ready 
to seek authentic personal fulfillment.

Anyway, our narrator longs for the Strength and Protection she will 
receive from her Master, whose primary characteristics are muscles, a 
hard cock, and Nice Pants.  The Master fucks his little slave during 
this story, but I was so distracted by the nonsensical master-slave 
nomenclature that I enjoyed it very little.

The author says that she I writes erotic fantasy for pleasure and for a 
living.  Coulda fooled me.  She even offers you a phone number to call - 
credit card in hand - to get more stories like this one.  Save your 
money.

Ratings for "La Kajira"
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): 4
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 4

"My Boyfriend's Back" by losgud (lushgod@hotnomail.com).  Ah, the 
ambiguity of the apostrophe.... Denise's boyfriend has gone on a 
business trip to Iowa, leaving her alone with her hot pussy on a weekend 
in New York.  So her friend Kimbra, who has just broken up with her own 
boyfriend, comes over to drink wine and watch movies.  They are 
surprised to find that one of the movies is an ff porn flick, and that 
gives them ideas; and since they're both horny as hell, they're off to 
the races.

They both discover that they still respect each other in the morning; 
and so they continue to stimulate each other intensely until the 
boyfriend arrives home unexpectedly.  But that's the point of the title 
of the story - first the two ladies go at it madly BEHIND his back, and 
then they go at it with him ON his back.  And you thought the title had 
something to do with a 60's song!

The sex is hot, and the descriptions are vivid.  This is a very good 
story, if what you're interested in is a sexual romp.

Ratings for "My Boyfriend's Back"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9

"My Education" by bebrack (T4425@aol.com).  The basic premise of this 
story is that the family that fucks together sucks together - er, stays 
together and reaches adult maturity, I guess.  Steve's Dad has passed 
away, and so his Mom has to give Steve his sex education; and she 
believes in a more direct method than can be supplied by books.  Then 
they both educate little Susie.

This is a well written story. The only low rating I gave it was for 
appeal to reviewer.  I HAVE read childhood incest stories to which I 
have given 10s for appeal to me, but those gave some sort of rationale 
for the psychological and emotional elements of the story.  This one 
just assumes that everyone knows that it would be really neat if the 
kids could fuck with Mom.  It makes no attempt to appeal to readers that 
do not already share that assumption, and so it sort of missed its 
target with me.

Ratings for "My Education"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 5

"Building Bridges - (The "Unexpurgated Version")" by Nick 
(Nick@cassandra.demon.co.uk).  Guest review by Morgan Preece.

Hmm. First of all, this is an incomplete story; secondly, it's a revised 
version of an earlier post. The author discusses the reactions to the 
first version in the header and expresses a hope that criticisms have 
been answered in this version.

I did not read the earlier version so I have no real idea as to whether 
the original, um, complaints (?) have been addressed.

No matter.

Thirdly, this is an incomplete story with a "to be continued" at the 
end.

Well, you can only count two strikes on foul balls. <grin>

This is an interesting story dealing with complicated human beings. I'm 
not sure it should be considered a sex story so much as a story with sex 
scenes. In fact the sex seemed almost perfunctory, obligatory for the 
market, y'know. Kind of like a horse opera turned into space opera by 
adding spaceships and ray guns.

Since it is incomplete, I can't be sure of any of the plot points, but 
it seems the story is about status, control, love, violence and sex and 
the complex relations between those concepts among office workers. 

The violence is mild but the threat is there, some people will be turned 
off by this. I was not turned off by the violence because, frankly the 
story never lit any fires for me in the first place.

There is a certain charm to the narrative. A real storyteller's voice 
peaks through what looks like overthought prose. A few grammatical 
lapses can be forgiven, but the style seems remote at times for such hot 
topics.

For various reasons I did not enjoy this story but I did find it 
interesting. I will read the next chapter; so keep writing, Nick.

Ratings for "Building Bridges"
Athena (technical quality): 7.5 ( Phrasing often distances the 
      action from the reader and occasional clumsy word choice 
      hints at second-guessing  the storyteller. Minus 1 for a 
      clumsy set-up for the "to be continued." Plus 1/2 because I
      think the story is better than a 7, considering the average of 
      writing on the net.)
Venus (plot & character): 8.5 (Plot is complex, characters more so,
      human, inexplicable and unpredictable. Minus 1/2 for hiding the
      motives for some actions in an unposted second part.)
Morgan (appeal to reviewer): 6 (I know I'm supposed to be aroused 
      by the description of the sex acts but I am not. Sorry, maybe 
      it's just me.)

Grade for a hypothetical class in writing for ASS would be a "C+" and
a "Finish This!" scribbled in the margin.

"Jake" by Unknown Author (Reposted by Bookman Archives).  Guest review 
by DG.

This story brought home to me how much the quality of the stories on 
{ass} and {assm} has improved over the past few years.  These days there 
is a wide variety of creative, well-written stories to choose from; and 
an old-style formula clunker like this one seems downright out of date.  
"Jake" is a reposted story with no author's name, and I don't know when 
it was written.  But it is a perfect example of the stereotypical, 
cookie-cutter sex story that used to dominate the newsgroups, the sort 
of fare that no doubt makes up the bulk of the 50,000 stories on those 
infamous compilation CDs.  Instead of outlining the plot, I'll just list 
a few of the many clicheed assumptions made in this story:

It's a always a good idea to make a pass at your friends wife, even if 
you don't actually like her that much. 
   
Even if a woman refuses your initial advances, keep at it and eventually 
her body will respond.  After all, a woman's sexuality is too powerful 
for her rational mind to resist.

Don't worry about getting caught - if your friend shows up, he'll get a 
kick out of it and want to join in.  The more the merrier!

The best thing about having a ten inch "monster cock" is that women 
can't resist the challenge of trying to take it up the ass. 

This isn't a terrible story, it just doesn't have much going for it.  
The sex is hot and explicit, but the dialogue is forced and wooden and 
the characters don't behave realistically, which made it difficult for 
me to get into it.  I don't recommend this story, because there is so 
much better stuff available.

Ratings for "Jake"
Athena (technical quality): 7  
Venus (plot & character): 3
DG (appeal to reviewer): 4

"The Stepford Wives" by Rhett Dreams (reposted by somogy1@hotmail.com) 
Guest review by Piper

Funny.  I've learned more about classical literature from reading "smut" 
in ass than I did all through school, university, and the many years of 
normal reading since.  That's probably because my interests lie in other 
genres, like scifi, fantasy, comic books, and the like.  This means I 
have absolutely no bias when (and no basis for) comparing this story 
with the original.  Having said that, I think that Rhett's version is 
probably not as literary as the original, but it is probably much hotter 
and more titillating.  

If you've never read the book or seen the movie (there is a movie, isn't 
there?), there is something strange going on in the town of Stepford, 
Kansas.  Something very strange.  All of the women are perfect.  Not 
physically perfect, of course, but perfectly made up, perfectly dressed, 
perfectly mannered, and perfectly wonderful wives and mothers.  Too 
perfect.  Scary perfect.  There's a reason for this perfection.  He's 
called Dr. Richard Poulson -- aka Joseph Mengele, Jr.

He's controlling their minds, using drugs.  But if you think this might 
be a normal run-of-the-mill mind control story, you would be wrong.  Dr. 
Poulson has much greater ambitions than a small town like Stepford could 
ever contain.  Who else is in on this plot?  Just about every male 
resident of the town, of course.  When will his ambitions break loose?  
Soon.  Very soon.

Into this cauldron of depravity comes a couple of strangers and their 
little girl.  These are normal, every day people.  The doctor, in order 
to protect his dirty secrets, must incorporate these newcomers into his 
web.  The husband must be seduced and compromised.  The wife must be 
processed.  All without their knowledge, of course.  He orders his 
minions to see to it.  When they try, complications arise.

I liked this story.  There are plenty of plot twists.  There are genuine 
bad guys and good guys.  There is evil aplenty.  There is tons of sex of 
all types and varieties and degrees of heat.  Being a MC story, 
naturally a fair bit of it occurs without one or more of the 
participants' informed consent.  Sometimes it occurs without their 
knowledge.  Sometimes it involves whips and chains and crops and the 
like.  Definitely not for the faint of heart, but definitely interesting 
and engrossing.

There are a couple of things that bothered me.  One was the need for a 
final, thorough, proofreading.  I hate getting deeply involved in a 
story, only to be thrown out of my carefully built up mental world by a 
wordsmithing problem.  Another was the ending.  I don't know how closely 
this story mirrors the original, but the ending was a little hokey.  
Minor hokey, but hokey none the less.  Maybe that's just me and my non-
literary judgementalism.  I'm sure there will be lots of folks who will 
enjoy the ending.

Despite these minor flaws, I loved the story.  It's worth a read.  But 
be warned -- it's long.  410k long.  I don't know how many words that 
translates into, but it's a lot!  (I just got told it's around 75,000 
words by one of my lady friends.  Even she liked the story!)

Ratings for "The Stepford Wives"
      Technical merit    10
      Plot and character 10
      Appeal to reviewer 10

"For the Love of Amy" by Unknown Author (Reposted by Bookman Archives). 
Guest review by BillyG.

"For the Love of Amy" is one of those stories that tries to be 
mysterious but starts out sufficiently ill-defined as to be mildly 
irritating.  Chad, the protagonist, is given no more substance than some 
guy with a backpack who appears to show up in Amy's life after prolonged 
absences.  With a notable lack of any demonstrated meaningful 
relationship, they end up in the sack and screw.  Immediately after, 
Chad disappears from her life again for long and unexplained periods.

The plot, limited as it is, comes across as too contrived; for the 
reader is led to spend too much energy and time trying to figure out 
what's happening.  The sex scenes, largely formula and lack luster, are 
set against a back drop of irritating enigma.  The puzzle has a 
resolution that is delivered far too late for literary redemption.  
While the idea has merit, the structure of the story emerges as one that 
was intended solely to support the surprise to the detriment of the tale 
as well as the sex.  Once again, a good idea was lost in bad execution.

Ratings for "For the Love of Amy"
Athena (technical quality):  8 (moderately trite and hackneyed)
Venus (plot & character):    6 ( plot came close, but no cigar and
      no character)
BillyG (appeal to reviewer): 5 (mildly irritating story with 
      ho-hum sex)

"Witch Hunt" by Pus E. Cat (buckles8@aol.com). Guest Review by David 
Rills.

"Fun in Old New England" could be another title to this story written by 
Pus E. Cat. Elizabeth, the heroine in this ribald classic set in Salem, 
Massachusetts, in the seventeenth century awakens in a barn, sprawled in 
the straw, clothed in nothing but her corset and bloomers.

For those who like Puritan Pornography, Pus, in his opener, did a superb 
job setting the scene of what promises to be a well written story of 
bondage involving a sweet young thing and a bunch of dirty old men. 
Salem's ministers, obviously sexually frustrated, seize upon a somewhat 
naive girl's attempt to serenade a local Indian with her guitar as the 
pretext to burn another witch. As an added reward, they get to tie up 
the luscious young beauty in a sexually suggestive position.

The Bondage scene is technically well done in its description of 
Elizabeth being bound up in such fashion as to well display her comely 
breasts, prominent nipples and large ass. To add to the show, she is 
strapped across a horse which juggles her assets to full advantage.

I think the writing quality is excellent and this is a good start to a 
period piece. The author clearly took pains to make his story 
believable, and he clearly has read and researched the historical period 
prior to writing the story. I am looking forward to reading later 
chapters to see if he fulfills the promise of this beginning.
 
Ratings for "Witch Hunt"
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 7 (intriguing but too soon to tell)
David Rills (appeal to reviewer): 8 (good story, looking forward to
      more)

"Daydreaming" by Suki (suki@fish.com)  Review by Sven the Elder.

Well this is a short story - 396 words, and that includes three in the 
title.  Two people - one female, we never find out about the other - are 
in the middle of a conversation.  It is about being submissive, a 
subject I admit to finding little joy or pleasure in.  The main speaker 
manages to bring herself to orgasm by mental, verbal and digital 
stimulation. I regret to say that about sums up the 'plot'. Recent 
discussions to a.s.s.d have revolved around both length, short versus 
long and character development.  Well this review is 179 words long and 
in  something a little over twice that length character development is a 
tad difficult to say the least.

I was left unmoved by both the story and the malapropisms and silly 
spelling mistakes.  Please, please just run the spell checker or ask 
someone else to give it a quick check. 

Sorry - a brave attempt, sadly it just fails.

Ratings for  
Technical quality:  8
Plot & character:  7
Sven (appeal to reviewer):  6

* "Citation" by Unknown Author.  Guest review by Piper.

I think the premise of this story falls under the heading of "don't try 
this at home".  Any guy who flashes a female police officer in the 
expectation of receiving the same kind of treatment John gets from 
Officer Edwards deserves his just reward - booking, conviction, a police 
record as a sexual deviant, fine, probation, and possible jail time.  

Lucky for John, Kate Edwards isn't a normal cop, and she has a really 
well-developed sense of humor.  She gives him a chance to get out of the 
"public exposure" charge (or whatever it's called in your neck of the 
woods).  In her own words, "Until six tomorrow morning, you are going to 
be my slave.  If you do everything, EVERYTHING I tell you to do, and 
don't complain about anything...I'll be happy and you'll be free.  Fail 
to comply just once, or complain the slightest bit...and I book you as a 
pervert.  Deal?"  At this point, John is naked and secured both hand and 
foot to an empty bunk in an empty basement cell in an old, abandoned 
police building.  He agrees.

This story involves handcuffs, zap straps, whipped cream, a string of 
pleasure balls, a small vibrator, an abandoned but still functional 
police building, and a banana.  Officer Edwards just happened to have 
all of the above (except the building) in a bag in her patrol car (I 
wonder just what kind of "emergency" these things could be used for).  
Being the curious deviant I am, and having no personal experience in 
this area, I asked my two friends about the practicality of using a 
peeled banana.  After the laughter died down and they quit smirking at 
each other, I got the following advice:

    "Yeah, you can use a peeled banana.  It's better if you leave the 
    skin on, though," said one.

    "As long as you cut the rough bit off the end," said the other (they 
    spoke in turns, frequently interrupting one another).

    "Peeled, they're kinda fragile, so you gotta be real careful.  Bear 
    down too much, and you got banana puree."

    "That's messy.  But it's fun cleaning up."  (More laughs and 
     knowing glances passed between them.)

So now I know that bananas, peeled or not, are usable phallic 
substitutes.  The story gained a little credibility, although it still 
remained well out in the realm of fantasy.

Technically, this story has some problems.  Most of them, I believe, are 
due to the ravages of time.  The story has been around for a long time.  
It's been through the mill, bouncing around from BBS to archive, from 
system to system, from editor to word processor, and has suffered the 
odd wound.  While I did find one or two spelling errors, most of the 
problems come from small bits of missing prose.  Something, somewhere, 
pruned a few words here, the end of a sentence there, and the odd 
descriptive in between.

This is a pretty good story.  It doesn't quite fit into the femdom 
category because Officer Edwards doesn't abuse, mistreat, or humiliate 
her captive.  She merely teases him into having the best sex of his 
entire life.  The descriptions are hot.  The sex is hotter.  The ending 
is a foregone conclusion about a quarter of the way through.  An 
enjoyable fantasy for anyone who's had lustful thoughts about our women 
in blue.  

Ratings for "Citation"
   Technical merit    8
   Plot & character   9.5
   Appeal to reviewer 9

* "Elly" by Friar Dave.  {Note:  This is a good story, but this 
particular repost is very poorly formatted.  I would suggest 
looking for a better copy. - Celeste} This author is good at hot, 
sexy romance.  In this story the initial flirtation and first 
lovemaking are especially sexy.  Then things take a serious turn.  
Elly is beautiful - her tits are her nicest feature; but she has a 
severe emotional problem: she thinks she is a slut because she is 
multiorgasmic.  Our narrator gives her the Quick Cure, and Elly 
happily realizes that being a slut as she has defined it can be OK 
as long as she keeps it in perspective.  This is not Friar Dave's 
best story, but it's still very good!  The sexual descriptions are 
excellent, but the plot lacks complete integration.

A final comment.  The narrator says, "I explained to her that if 
you read for an hour a day, you read a couple of books a week. In 
thirty years, that's around three thousand books."  There's 
something wrong here.  That reasoning might apply to the kind of 
"books" you can buy from greeting card displays, but I seriously 
doubt that serious readers other than Evelyn Wood can read two 
good books in seven hours.  On a related note, however, I just 
realized that at the rate I'm going, in 30 years I will have read 
and reviewed 28,000 stories for this newsgroup.  Of course, by 
that time either my sex drive will have declined or I'll retire 
from teaching, and so I'll have the time.  And maybe I'll be able 
to read two books a week.

Ratings for "Elly"
Athena (technical quality): 9.5
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9

