index


Message-ID: <38073asstr$1030864205@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Peaches and Cream  <peachescreamreviews@yahoo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} Peaches and Cream Reviews: #30
Date: Sun,  1 Sep 2002 03:10:05 -0400
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.d
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

Hi! We're Peaches & Cream. We're just two ordinary Joes who like
reading and romance. Recently, there was a Summer Solstice Romance
Festival on ASSM, and it caught our attention. We started discussing
the stories and our reviews were born. Our format is simple: one of us
starts the review, the other chimes in, and then the starter finishes
it off. Because this is all about romance, we'll be scoring with 0-5
kisses. We're changing our format to include more than one story per
issue. There is a website devoted to the festival where you can find
all the stories we will review. 

http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Rui_Favorites/www/RomFest

***

Peaches & Cream Reviews: #30

Love is too young to know what conscience is.
-William Shakespeare 

Stories to be reviewed:

The Question by Rev. Cotton Mather
The Tale of Mato Tipilia (Bear's Lodge) by PleaseCain
When Angels Meet Angels by Crimson Dragon
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Question by the Rev Cotton Mather
(rom)
http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2002/36985

***

Cream:

Chris and Dale meet, fall in love at first sight, and get married.

Not quite halfway into this story I figured out pretty much where it
was going, what it was about--at least I was pretty sure, and it
turned out I was right, more or less.  The trouble is that the
question (my question) pretty much derailed me from considering the
author's ostensible question: Do YOU believe in love at first sight?
In the end I had to reconsider my attitudes and my views in view of my
reaction to the story, my behavior while reading it, and my feelings
at the end, so in one sense the story was successful.   But in another
sense, from that halfway point all the way through the end and
including my contemplation of it, I didn't really enjoy the story very
much.  I think it was reasonably well done--maybe a little sexless for
my taste.

3.5 kisses

***

Peaches:

I liked the idea of the question, and it made my ask myself, do I
believe in love at first sight? But my biggest question after reading
this story was--is this supposed to sway my opinion that love at first
sight does happen? The problem is, there's just so little emotion that
I can't even be sure that Chris and Dale are in love. They talked a
lot, had sex, and later got married. This is one of the problems with
stories that tell you instead of show you what's going on. There's no
passion. 

It would have been a really nice achievement if the author had managed
to prove that all that matters is love by story's end. Give me
passion! Or give me pastrami on rye so I could enjoy this story as
much as I wanted to, from the beginning, when the question was asked.

2.9 kisses

***

Cream:

In a way this story reminds me of one of those story problems you get
in grade school math.  If Billie bakes a cherry pie and her boyfriend
Rex comes over after football practice with the rest of the Trojan
backfield ...  We read through the whole story problem waiting for the
question to come.  Sometimes we're even tempted to skip ahead.   I
remember on some of those tests we only got credit if we showed our
work.   If this were a conventional story, that would be good advice
for Cotton Mather.  Show your work.

***

Peaches: 2.9 kisses
Cream: 3.5 kisses
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Tale of Mato Tipilia (Bear's Lodge) by PleaseCain
(MF mast rom)
http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2002/36987

***

Cream:

It should have been a match made in heaven: Big Bear, mighty hunter,
but old and magnificently lonely; and Walks With Sunshine, the
beautiful young daughter of a Lakota chief, so starved for love she
trusts her life to a prayer and a stone and flings herself stone-like
into the river.  Big Bear manages to rescue the princess without
revealing himself, and the princess attributes her salvation to an
amulet she had found and to the warrior it signified.  She implores
her prince to show himself:

>The girl cocked her head this way and that, flirting with 
>her hidden hero, blinking her eyes over her shoulders as her 
>fingers disappeared in her fertile delta.  She wriggled 
>over her bent wrist, while her other hand reached past her 
>hip and her fingertips caressed her other secret place.  
>She swooned and threw back her head.  Mewling like 
>the she-wolf, she staggered onto her back against 
>the sunbaked earth.  The supple legs parted and her hand 
>danced in the garden like a butterfly.  Her hips rose to the 
>sky, and her cries carried on the wind like a blessing on 
>Big Bear and all his fellow creatures.

Moved by this display of passion, Big Bear is tempted to reveal
himself, yet he remains hidden.  Can modesty be a tragic flaw?  The
next day Big Bear returns to the private spot along the river only to
find Walks With Sunshine fucking his nemesis, Hill Eagle, a young Crow
brave.

What happens next is the stuff of myths, legends, epic histories, and
travel brochures, natural, divine, and human. Big Bear, according to
our guide, never does quite come to grips with what went wrong.  For
that matter, neither do I, though I have about as many inklings as
there are stars. A marvel.  Don't miss this one.

4.8 kisses

***

Peaches:

If I'm not mistaken, Devil's Tower is in South Dakota, and this is a
lovely, sexy version of the Lakota legend. The adult version of a
childhood story whereby Lakota girls were saved from being eaten by
bears by Fallen Star. 

Telling the story from the POV of the bear is ingenious. It fits
perfectly for an Indian legend where animals and earth are revered. 

The story is filled with vivid imagery:

>Big Bear poked his nose through the weeping branches heavy 
>with leaves that would float in autumn like a million golden 
>teardrops on the current.

>Beside the fire, two bodies danced in the urgency of 
>procreation.  Two naked bodies joined as one, writhing and 
>panting in their ecstasy.  One, on the ground, flexed in muscular 
>exertion.  One, on its haunches, tossed its blue-black hair 
>sparkling with an infinity of tiny rainbows.

And this exquisite telling of masturbation:

>She wriggled over her bent wrist, while her other hand 
>reached past her hip and her fingertips caressed her other 
>secret place.  She swooned and threw back her head.  
>Mewling like the she-wolf, she staggered onto her back 
>against the sunbaked earth.  The supple legs parted and her 
>hand danced in the garden like a butterfly.  Her hips rose 
>to the sky, and her cries carried on the wind like a blessing 
>on Big Bear and all his fellow creatures.

I could cite more, but I'd end up citing the whole story. Find the
rest on your own. It's really the stuff that legends are made of.

4.8 kisses

***

Cream:

I should quote the passage on masturbation again.  Good stuff is habit
forming!  Actually this is the kind of story one wants to read over
and over. Lots of good stories don't have that quality.

***

Peaches: 4.8 kisses
Cream: 4.8 kisses
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Angels Meet Angels by Crimson Dragon
(FF, rom, beach)
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Crimson_Dragon/www/short_stories/stories/when-angels-meet-angels.txt

***

Peaches:

Alison is at the Portal--a bar where people and names and songs all
tug at her memory. She goes home to sleep, and there in her dreams,
Alison crosses the real Portal of the story. The ethereal place where
Crimson Dragon is the director and the hostess. Alison is transported
to a beach that is specifically designed for passion, but only until
the summer solstice. On the beach, Alison is reunited with someone
from another adventure, and her memory is restored.

This story relies heavily on a previous story called, "Inverness" by
the same author. It's not imperative that you read "Inverness" first,
but you may like to. I had mixed feelings while reading "When Angels
Meet Angels." I felt 'out of the loop' having not read "Inverness" and
yet, at the same time, I felt like Alison must have felt--I knew it
existed but just couldn't remember it. It's a creative tactic and
speaks of the author's talent.

Speaking of the author's talent, there's a real talent for creating a
dreamy quality. You feel like you're floating from page to page. It's
perfect for the type of story that is being told.

My one nagging observation would be the slowness at the beginning 
and the heavily repeated phrases: seems like, seeming to, and almost
as if. Because this story transports us to 'another world' things can
just *be* they don't have to seem like...

4.2 kisses

***

Cream:

The main pleasure of this story is the sustained mood. Soft, gentle,
diaphanous. Reading it is like floating in a tropical lagoon under a
midnight moon.  There is the promise of ecstasy in the air, but for
now, just drift with the gentle waves.

In the end, though, the story was too soft. It is always with some
trepidation that I begin longer stories, but I enjoyed it more than I
thought I would. Still, it didn't really take me where I wanted to go.
I neither shared nor saw the ecstasy.  Maybe that was my fault, or
maybe this story made me too greedy, and then it taught me a lesson.
The Dragon didn't pick me.

3.75 kisses

***

Peaches:

I think the underlying tale is really the best story here. The idea
that the Dragon comes to you at night and whisks you away to exotic
locales where you can lose yourself in your favorite fantasy and
explore the things you've always wanted free from guilt. 

Some people enjoy longer stories, and it isn't that I don't, but I
certainly think I might miss a lot of good stories that are long
because the beginnings are sluggish, and I don't have the inclination
to go on. 

Writers don't save all the good stuff for the sex scenes, work on
those beginnings so that every reader is still around when the good
stuff finally happens.

***

Peaches: 4.2 kisses
Cream: 3.75 kisses

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> |
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html>  Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}|
|Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org>      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+