LIBERATOR DREAMS

Review By Nova

Ellis Ward - "Provisional Surrender." (A/B) It's obvious from the first paragraph that you're in the hands of a thoroughly reliable slash writer, capable of delivering a story with an elegant structure and a definite point. Ward starts with the conventional bargain between Avon and Blake - "just sex, nothing more" - and then goes on to explore and reverse the bargain. In a sense, you could call "Provisional Surrender" a PWP, given that all the action takes place in Avon's bed, but every physical move that the characters make reflects some aspect of their changing relationship. The language seemed a bit formal and polysyllabic at times but that's probably intentional, since Ward is telling the story through Avon's point of view.

Cami - "Tender Memories." (G/Ta) An unusual but unlikely B7 slash story where Tarrant goes to a pleasure house, while studying at the Federation Space Academy, and is initiated into the joys of sex by Gan. The idea of Gan as the "whore with a heart of gold", touched by Tarrant's innocence, stretched my suspension of disbelief too far and the writing wasn't detailed or inventive enough to overcome the credibility gap.

Cami and Tasha - "Unending Nightmare". (A/B, D/Ta) A novella-length story which starts from the postulate that Avon and Blake have been captured and sentenced to a Federation Research Base where they are genetically altered into sime and gen, alien species drawn from Jacqueline Lichtenberg's s.f. novels. The sime develop superhuman abilities but become dependant on selyn, a chemical that they extract from the gen, which means that as simes, Avon and Tarrant have to overcome a combination of guilt and resentment about feeding from their gen partners, Blake and Dayna. I can see why Cami and Tasha were attracted to the sime/gen premise - it's an effective metaphor for some of the central conflicts between Avon and Blake - and they do a good job of dovetailing the developments in the sime/gen relationships with an ongoing adventure story. But even so, I suspect the novella is too long to hold readers who aren't already familiar with Lichtenberg's universe.

Contents

Ellis Ward, "Provisional Surrender" (A/B)
Cami, "Tender Memories" (G/Ta)
Cami and Tasha, "Unending Nightmare" (A/B)

Art:

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Last updated on 17th of December 2000.