Grade: D+

Ugh, I hate writing reviews for short stories as I always have a hard time finding things to say. Give me a 400 paged book any time. At least there would be a lot for me to tear into. As short as this is–14 pages–I find that I’m more likely to pick on the little things like dialogue tags. Good god, the dialogue tags! There are so many of them. Observe: “he commented,” “he beamed,” “she laughed,” “I explained,” “he pontificated,” “he pleaded”. Sometimes there are two or three of them in one paragraph! Oddly enough, it’s an eye-opener for me. A good friend who edits my work tells me I too use too many dialogue tags, so now I watch for them like a hawk. I’m a lot more aware of them now, where as before, I used to ignore them. Thanks, Good Friend! Well, enough about me. [By Golly, Tim’s right! I do try to make everything about me!] This short story is more in the vein of Shirley Jackson (if she wrote for Penthouse Letters) with a dash of Harold Robbins [written by a fifteen year old girl trying to sound like a grown-up] than an erotic romance. Actually, it’s a straight up erotica. The sex is hot enough, though it took a little too long to get there (and it’s only 14 pages), and I found myself rolling my eyes on more than one occasion, mostly because of the cheesy dialogue or the overwrought prose. It would have been lurid and scandalous if it were written in the 80’s, I’m sure, especially since there is a dated feel to it. Honestly, I was picturing the characters walking around in my head with heavy-duty shoulder pads and overly teased bangs, carrying around fluted glasses of sham-pag-nee. Ironically, this short story’s one saving grace is its very own cheese factor and luckily for the author, I have a high tolerance for cheese.
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Grade: C+

A lot of writers who receive a bad grade from me claim that I just didn’t understand what they were trying to do with their stories, never mind that their books aren’t even worth the used toilet paper that they’re written on. Well, I can say this for L.E. Bryce. If she wants, she can tell people that I didn’t understand her ebook and she’d be telling the truth. I really didn’t get this thing. Sure, I know that it’s about a nineteen year old boy worrying about losing his youthful good looks and that his lover–who’s old enough to be his father–will turn him out as soon as he becomes a “man.” Yeah, I got that. I also understand that that story is just a frame for another story, which is about a beautiful concubine named Sikku, a man extremely fond of pearls, who loses the only man that could probably make him happy because he couldn’t leave the sea, which is where he supposedly came from. I think. The thread that connects the two of them is a string of black pearls, which is gifted to them by their respective protectors. Or something. I don’t know. This little ebook is only 21 pages, but it gets a little too big for its britches. It just has too much going on at the same time, which the author tries to valiantly contain within the word count. Oddly enough, this little 21-paged ebook had a wields a heftier weight about it than any of the 400-paged pieces of crap that I’ve read lately.
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Grade: B-

You know what this short story (28 pages) reminded me of? That movie Waxwork starring Zack Galligan. It’s about a group of teenagers who explore a House of Wax museum and each of them die a horrible death (except for Zach Galligan, who plays the hero with something to prove and Deborah Foreman who plays the virgin who secretly harbors sadomasochism fantasies). This film should not ever be confused with the awful House of Wax, which stars “actors” that may as well have been made of wax. In Waxwork, the wax figures are modeled after famous horror film and literature characters and are posed in their “natural atmosphere”. Every time someone touches one of the figures, they “cross over” into the creature’s world and if they die there, they become wax figures themselves. Anyway, Erotique reminds me of that movie because the heroine in this short story inherits a sex shop that features ancient sex toys that are possessed; like if you touch a dildo owned by Cleopatra, you will get a psychic image of Cleopatra sticking that dildo into Julius Caesar’s ass. Or something. I know what you’re thinking. Another story about a sexually-retarded heroine inheriting a sex shop and learning to explore her own sexuality, right? Nope. What’s great about this story is that the heroine isn’t a neurotic, frigid schoolmarm type that wouldn’t know the business end of a dildo if it smacked her in the face. Heh. Dildo is a funny word.
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