Celestial Reviews 236 - November 22, 1997

Note:  Sorry this is late.  I had a cold the last few days; but thanks 
to the guest reviewers, you get a full issue anyway!

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

- Celeste

      "Julie's Itch" by Unknown Author (anal sex) 7, 7, 7

 Guest Reviews: 

      "Purchasing Yumi" by Scooter Liebowitz (purchasing a girlfriend)
      "Curse of Love" by H.D. Meister (ghostly sex) 9, 9, 9
      "Pussy Cats" by Candy Kane (ff cheerleader sex) 9.5, 8, 9
      "Cabin Fever" by LM 1 (blowjob & romance) 7, 8, 8
      "Spelunkers" by Day Dreamer (incest) 9, 10, 10
      "After Hours" by Unknown Author (non-consensual ff sex) 
            8, 7.5, 8
      "Star Trek (TNG) Shadows" by Dimitri (sci fi sex) 10, 10, 10

"Julie's Itch" by Unknown Author. Julie is a 15-year-old Catholic 
schoolgirl, a 5'8" brunette with small perky breasts, a tight little ass 
and a sexual appetite that never seems to stop and with a tingling in 
her bum. We know nothing about the guy. He may be Julie's boyfriend, the 
local rugby star, her little brother, her father, or the parish priest; 
but he fucks her in the ass and then in her mouth, and she loves every 
minute of it, while she talks dirty.

Ratings for "Julie's Itch"
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): 7
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 7

"Purchasing Yumi" by Scooter Liebowitz (scooterLie@aol.com). Guest 
review by Jake Stonebender.

I always get the weird stuff....

This story is about a "overweight, slightly balding widower in his mid 
40's" who buys a Japanese girl from a door-to-door salesman.

Well, not quite... but you get the idea.

His friend Ky, "pronounced Key", contacts a slightly shady, underworld 
looking guy named Hu, who brings over a selection of Orientals (can we 
still call them that?) for him to choose from.

> Ky and I sat at the dining room table playing Gin while waiting
> for the delivery.  It was about 8:20 p.m. on a Friday night, and 
> "they" were overdue. 

As you can see, the writing style isn't bad, but as one of Celeste's 
proofreaders as well, I think this story could have benefited from my 
other talent first.

> I met Ky, a Cambodian who escaped the Kamir Rouge in the 70's in

I believe that's spelled "Khmer"... and that's the level of technical 
writing the story lives up to.  The _writing_ it self actually isn't 
half bad, but the word choice leaves something to be desired.  Now that 
I'm done totally destroying this writer's self-image, let me say that 
the  story's not half bad.  It's warm, and witty, and fuzzy in all the 
right places, and wouldn't make a half bad short.  It's more of a 
character study, there's little conflict, but the sex is decently 
written... although I'm writing this review from work, and had to 
content myself with a mild erection.

Overall, not a bad first; certainly better than I could write, and I 
hope both to see more from Scooter, and that he's not a one trick pony.

"Curse of Love" by H.D. Meister (dez187lm@hotmail.com).  Guest review by 
Kim.

Hey, a ghost love story. Sounds good to me...

The tale begins with the arrival of the dark and sexy Kedra to room 330 
of Flynn Hall, her new residence while at college. On arrival she is met 
by Jackie the resident assistant.

Jackie warns her against falling asleep in her room as it's cursed. 
Apparently four years earlier a man had killed himself there when he was 
spurned by his promiscuous lover.

Naturally Kedra ignores this sound advice and promptly goes to bed and 
to sleep. Her dreams are filled with a cloud of swirling, erm, cloud. 
The cloud has the ability to morph into various shapes and textures and 
seems intent on pleasuring Kedra to distraction, again and again.

Not unnaturally Kedra greets the morning somewhat worse for wear. Barely 
able to walk she manages to investigate the sad past of room 330. It 
turns out that Jackie knows a lot more than she is telling. Filled with 
remorse, Jackie decides to take Kedra's place and sleep another night in 
room 330.

And in the best traditions of Ghost stories I'll say no more, suffice to 
say it's a bittersweet ending, and like all good horror franchises 
leaves the door firmly open for a slew of sequels.

Well, was it any good? The first word that springs to mind is 
intriguing. Despite some quite graphic imagery it's not remotely 
arousing, least not to me at any rate. I know only too well how near 
impossible it is to mix sad regret with raunchy sex.

Also, at times, the writing is almost experimental in its style and 
delivery. This makes for difficult reading sometimes, but I think it 
helps rather than hinders. So, an ambitious attempt at an unusual 
subject; sex, death, love and redemption. I liked it. A lot. But don't 
go looking for any fiddling under the desk with this one. 

Ratings for "Curse of Love"
Athena (technical quality): 9 (Not easy reading at times)
Venus (plot & character): 9 (Seems a touch confused and confusing)
Kim (appeal to reviewer): 9 (Intriguing, but zero eroticism)

"Pussy Cats" by Candy Kane (GQKZ45C@prodigy.com). Guest review by Piper.

"Pussy Cats" is the unofficial name for the high school cheerleading  
squad.  Nominally, they are called that because the school's football  
team is called the "Wild Cats".  The girls on the squad call themselves 
pussy cats for another reason entirely.

Alicia is the new girl on the squad.  She joined halfway through the 
football season.  Right after her first practice, Kim, the head 
cheerleader, invited her and four other girls to her house for a 
sleepover.  Since Kim's parents are going to be away for the night, 
basically, anything goes.  After two half-sacks of beer, a few joints, 
and a hot lezzie video to get things loosened up, Alicia finds out why 
they really call themselves the Pussy Cats.

Plot?  Character development?  I've already covered pretty much the 
whole plot already, and the girls aren't much more than Barbie-doll 
cutouts, but that doesn't matter much.

Technical problems?  Aside from a couple of wrong words, my only quibble 
is that this came directly from a word processor, with fancy ASCII 
characters stuck in place of apostrophes and dashes.  Not really the 
author's fault, but annoying none the less.

Sex?  That's what this story is all about.  Hot pairs and group sex 
between and among all six girls.  This might be Alicia's first gay 
encounter, but she takes to it like a duck to water.  Everything is new 
and wonderful and makes her feel fantastic.  If you like all-girl 
scenes, this is right up your alley.  If you're looking for an involved 
plot, complex emotion, or vivid characters, move on.

Ratings for "Pussy Cats"
      Technical merit    9.5
      Plot and character 8
      Appeal to reviewer 9

Cabin Fever - by LM 1 (RNRH85C@prodigy.com).  Guest Review by M1ke Hunt.

Lisa and Jeremy have an argument - and it's all her fault. That figures, 
because it's *his* story. Anyway, he needs to have some space, so he 
goes to his parent's boat and climbs down into the tiny little cabin. 
Because Lisa knows the argument was her fault, and because she knows he 
needs some space, she follows him there and climbs into the tiny little 
cabin too. A blowjob and a fuck ensue, but to preserve the suspense, I 
won't tell you which party does what with what part of the party of the 
other part.

It's a nice little story, but the writer fashions his words too 
formally, which I found off-putting for its stiffness. "'Hello Lisa,' I 
stated." Sorry, but nobody "states" hello to their girlfriend. "I do not 
know..." would read more smoothly simply as "I don't know..." and I 
could give a dozen other stylistic examples which made the read more a 
drive down a potholed lane than a superhighway. Add a few minor spelling 
errors and the occasional unparagraphed paragraph, and you have a piece 
in need of some minor rework.

Still, it's a nice description of a blowjob, and some morning if you 
find yourself in desperate need of a fellatio and fuck tale, this one 
would do. The author lists it as "M/F, romance and love", but that just 
goes to show you you can't put all your trust in those fucking little 
story codes, can you? 

Ratings for "Cabin Fever"
Athena (technical quality): 7
Venus (plot & character): 8 
Mikeus (appeal to reviewer): 8

"Spelunkers: A Story of Incestuous Love" by Day Dreamer.  Guest review 
by BluePencil.

Incest stories are fairly common in the alt.sex hierarchy.   The come in 
several sub-genres: the young (but horny) teens who teach each other; 
the young (but horny) teens who seduce their parents; the parents who 
seduce their innocent (but horny) children . . . do we see a pattern 
here?  Most of the stories involve young teens with no inhibitions and 
the libido of a lust-crazed mink.

Far less common are the stories where the principals are older, 
reasonably mature, and somewhat believable.  It's hard to take the 14 
year old who seduces his sister, mother, aunt, and 5 teenage cousins 
seriously, after all.  Even given a 14-year-old's recuperative powers 
have you ever thought about the chafing problems?  And the scheduling?  
Not to mention what all the calories he's burning up - imagine what 
it'll do to his family's food bill.

Despite the qualms the title gave me, I'm glad I continued reading; 
_Spelunkers_ is one of the rare gems of the genre, a believable story 
with realistic characters, plotting, and consequences.

Though Jim has (guiltily) lusted after his sister Bonnie for years, 
they've both reached college age with no more than the usual brother-
sister relationship.  But at a family reunion, she talks him into 
exploring a nearby cave.  What follows is a good illustration of the 
reason that cave explorers should take, at the very least, two 
flashlights with them.  Or a blanket.  Though the story grows naturally 
from this starting point, there are a few minor twists along the way.

Even if you normally ignore this genre, I'd recommend reading this 
story.

Ratings for "Spelunkers"
Athena (technical quality):      9
Venus (plot and character):      10
BluePencil (appeal to reviewer): 10

"After Hours" by Unknown Author. Guest Review by  Morgan Preece.

Wow. I volunteered to be a guest reviewer and Celeste sent me a story 
almost immediately. This is harder than I thought.

First of all., did I enjoy this story? Well, yes. The sex is described 
well enough if a little cliched and the characters are believable by the 
standards common in net fiction. This is faint praise, I know; but there 
is a heck of a lot of stuff out there a lot more poorly written.

"After Hours" is the story of a non-consensual Lesbian sex act. True to 
the cliches of ASS, the victim takes real pleasure in the aggressor's 
attentions. There's a little suspense, a little bondage but no real 
damage done.

Reality should not intrude upon sex fantasy too severely. In ASS* the 
convention is to ignore such things as criminal charges and lawsuits.

I guess the word for this story is "conventional." By ASS standards, 
anyway.

Grade for a hypothetical class in writing for ASS would be a "B-" and an 
encouraging grin.

Ratings for "After Hours"

Athena (technical quality): 8 (Two or three misspellings, a few too many 
cliches but clear prose and the story keeps moving. Scene setting is 
good enough but could be better. Dialogue reads naturally, even the 
cliches. People do use cliches, that's what makes them cliches. I 
discounted a formatting problem in the copy Celeste sent me as being an 
artifact of the Email process.)

Venus (plot & character): 7.5 (Plot is OK for short form story but 
characters are from ASS stock company. I gave a half point back here 
because I did like the story.)

Morgan (appeal to reviewer): 8 (Well, I DID get aroused and not 
everything on the ng does that for me. <g> I had a bit of trouble here 
because the reviewer kept noticing the ng cliches while the reader said, 
so what?)

"Star Trek (TNG) Shadows" by Dimitri (dimitri@ihug.co.nz).  Guest review 
by Kim.

Wow! A story of such epic complexity and sweep it's almost alarming. The 
like of which I have never seen before on ASS.

Right up front I should warn all non-trekers they may as well skip both 
the story and my review, as neither will make much sense without a hard-
core appreciation of all things Star Trek.

It's a very long story, though I gather the author has written much 
longer ones set in and around the Trek universe. As I said before, the 
plotting is mind-bendingly ferocious in its complexity. For most of it 
the reader must read blindly on without much idea as to what the hell is 
really happening. But in Star Trek that doesn't matter, as you know, or 
at least hope, all will be explained at the end.

I shan't bother trying to give any proper explanation of the plot; 
suffice to say that alternate realities, holodecks, and sentient 
computer generated characters feature heavily.

Almost entirely incidentally to the plot, the various well known 
characters get to couple and strut their sexual selves, including the 
now, almost obligatory it seems, lesbian scene between Jadzia and Kira.

There are a couple of problems. The story seems to have fallen into its 
own time/space anomaly, as at one point the exact same paragraph appears 
twice a few pages apart; and worse, the author seems to like to ruin a 
sex scene with silly asides about alliteration. Also, this story must 
contain one of the cleanest rapes I can ever remember reading. At one 
point Tasha Yar is tied to a shower faucet, unconscious while Tom Riker 
(Will's transporter accident clone) proceeds to rape her with a bar of 
soap. Being clean doesn't make it any more palatable to read however.

The thing I can't forgive Dimitri for though, is having Captain Janeway 
sit down and cry at her predicament. Just not on Dimitri, Kathryn would 
*never* be so wussy. She'd be kicking butt better'n anyone!

Despite these nitpicks, I have to say I loved it. The sex was entirely 
unnecessary, but agreeable enough (aside from the pointless rape) the 
plotting brilliant, and the scope magnificent. As such I'd give it three 
tens without hesitation. Trekers, who don't mind their favorite 
characters getting involved with others sexually, will love the constant 
references to events in all the various Trek shows. I was only mildly 
disappointed that my second favorite Trek character, Q, didn't make at 
least a brief appearance.

However... I have to assume a good proportion of the readers are not so 
steeped in Star Trek as I am. Non-Trekers might rate it somewhat lower.

Ratings for "Star Trek (TNG) Shadows"
Athena (technical quality): 10 (A few typos and a repeating
      paragraph)
Venus (plot & character): 10(But uch complexity doesn't make for 
      easy reading)
Kim (appeal to reviewer): 10 (But not likely to win any converts to
       Star Trek)


