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erin_oriordan_is_reading_again's review
5.0
We see the words "fairy tale," and we automatically think of a frivolous, fluffy piece of fantasy. Scratch the surface, however, and we learn the fairy tale contains all the stuff our dreams and nightmares are made of, all the stuff of life: birth, death, love, lust, starvation, humiliation, triumph, victory and defeat. Like our cherished religious mythologies, fairy tales tell us who we are at our very centers and what we might need...or secretly desire. It's only appropriate, then, that fairy tales grow up with us, and make the transition to our adult bedtime stories.
Cleis Press seems to be particularly talented in this field. First Cleis brought us Mitzi Szereto's 'In Sleeping Beauty's Bed,' a fun collection of naughty fairy tales set in a faraway land of a long time ago. 'Fairy Tale Lust' is something different. Yes, some of the tales are set in a faraway land of long, long ago, but there are also contemporary tales so realistically told they might be happening next door, right now.
It's nearly impossible to pick a favorite from among this seductive collection of folkloric fantasies. "How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back" is as beguiling as a siren. "Three Times" is breathtaking. "The Return" is a special kind of verbal enchantment, as is editor Kristina Wright's "In the Dark Woods," a modern-day morality play that plays out on a mattress. Cute comes into this fairy tale collection: see, for example, Jeremy Edwards' twist on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. More often than not, though, cute is merely an enticing cover for the hidden well of deep, dark human fantasy.
Cleis Press seems to be particularly talented in this field. First Cleis brought us Mitzi Szereto's 'In Sleeping Beauty's Bed,' a fun collection of naughty fairy tales set in a faraway land of a long time ago. 'Fairy Tale Lust' is something different. Yes, some of the tales are set in a faraway land of long, long ago, but there are also contemporary tales so realistically told they might be happening next door, right now.
It's nearly impossible to pick a favorite from among this seductive collection of folkloric fantasies. "How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back" is as beguiling as a siren. "Three Times" is breathtaking. "The Return" is a special kind of verbal enchantment, as is editor Kristina Wright's "In the Dark Woods," a modern-day morality play that plays out on a mattress. Cute comes into this fairy tale collection: see, for example, Jeremy Edwards' twist on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. More often than not, though, cute is merely an enticing cover for the hidden well of deep, dark human fantasy.
katealily's review
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.75
sjg's review
1.0
I only finished the first tale and got halfway through the second when I had to stop to preserve my sanity. So this review is solely based on the first two tales "The Obedient Wife" and "How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back".
"The Obedient Wife"
I had never heard the word quim (a British slang term for vagina) and this short tale used it enough times that I wish I never became aware of it.
"Pleasure your nubbin," he growled.
The most ridiculous sentence I've ever read made even more ridiculous because it was meant to be arousing.
"How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back"
It's set in modern times but it's supposed to be a fairy tale, so that was confusing.
They open a sushi restaurant and apparently, Philip is so sexually deviant he can't do anything without making it sexual, hence, this sentence:
"The food though... it'll be daring, sexy."
And she can't even have normal conversation with him without everything he says being somehow arousing. He says "Sushi" and her panties hit the floor. Oh, but only with his permission, ofc.
In this tale, we have another writer who found a word/s and fell in love with it so much so that it's mentioned in every other sentence: come and cock.
I hate the word cock. It is not sexy. It's usage immediately makes the story juvenile-y pornographic and immature, like a 17 year old trying to sound grown up and sexy. It just doesn't work for me.
Also, by the fifth time you mention how much a character comes, you've lost me. I get it, she's so sensitive, the AC turning on will have her writhing on the floor in ecstasy. You don't need to tell me 3 times in one sentence.
If you like 50 Shades you'll love these stories. Unfortunately.
"The Obedient Wife"
I had never heard the word quim (a British slang term for vagina) and this short tale used it enough times that I wish I never became aware of it.
"Pleasure your nubbin," he growled.
The most ridiculous sentence I've ever read made even more ridiculous because it was meant to be arousing.
"How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back"
It's set in modern times but it's supposed to be a fairy tale, so that was confusing.
They open a sushi restaurant and apparently, Philip is so sexually deviant he can't do anything without making it sexual, hence, this sentence:
"The food though... it'll be daring, sexy."
And she can't even have normal conversation with him without everything he says being somehow arousing. He says "Sushi" and her panties hit the floor. Oh, but only with his permission, ofc.
In this tale, we have another writer who found a word/s and fell in love with it so much so that it's mentioned in every other sentence: come and cock.
I hate the word cock. It is not sexy. It's usage immediately makes the story juvenile-y pornographic and immature, like a 17 year old trying to sound grown up and sexy. It just doesn't work for me.
Also, by the fifth time you mention how much a character comes, you've lost me. I get it, she's so sensitive, the AC turning on will have her writhing on the floor in ecstasy. You don't need to tell me 3 times in one sentence.
If you like 50 Shades you'll love these stories. Unfortunately.
michellereadatrix's review
5.0
Nice, little more literary, erotica anthology. Particularly enjoyed: Sleep Tight by Janine Ashbless, Her Hair is a Net, Woven by Shanna Germain, and Frosted Glass by Aurelia T. Evans
xterminal's review
4.0
Kristina Wright (ed.), Fairy Tale Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women (Cleis Press, 2010)
What exactly is there to say about a book called Fairy Tale Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women that the title doesn't already tell you? Well, I guess that question kind of answers itself, if you've been an Internet user long enough to remember the early, wild-west days of the alt.sex.stories.* family of newsgroups. There's a lot of bad, bad erotica, and porn masquerading as erotica, floating around out there. The job of a good editor is to ensure that what you're getting between the covers of a book, or delivered to your e-reader, weeds out the crap and gives you the quality. I've been a Cleis Press fan since I first found out about them, but Kristina Wright's a new name to me. Would she be as good as the rest of the stable at finding and publishing the highest-quality erotica to be found out there?
Short answer: yep. I should qualify this by saying that I'm already an established fan of the current mythpunk movement (Sonya Taaffe, Jeannelle Ferreira, all those other folks who seem to have centered on Prime Books and have taken Angela Carter and Wendy Walker as demigods/muses), which sparked the current retelling-of-fairy-tales craze, so there wasn't much here I wasn't prepared for vis-a-vis the thematic and structural content; if you're not familiar with that particular subgenre, drop in on a few books of the more mainstream stuff before digging in here. (But not too mainstream, and please for the love of god avoid Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and other such mashups; go for Taaffe's Singing Innocence and Experience and Bill Willingham's Fables series of graphic novels and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and work upwards from there.) You'll have a firmer foundation, if you'll pardon the pun, for such delicacies as Andrea Dale's “How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back” or Louisa Harte's “Ellie and the Shoemaker”, which cleave pretty closely to their historical antecedents. Then it'll be time to branch out into the stories where there's more of a whisper of the original instead of a shout. You know those dishes on Iron Chef America where some hoity-toity chef pipes some smoke under a dome and when you open it, you get that scent, but the actual dish is something entirely different? Yeah, like Carol Hassler's “Gingerbread Man”, my favorite story in the collection.
Do I even need to tell you the sex is sublime? Of course I don't.
Recommended. Get yourself a copy of this pronto. ****
What exactly is there to say about a book called Fairy Tale Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women that the title doesn't already tell you? Well, I guess that question kind of answers itself, if you've been an Internet user long enough to remember the early, wild-west days of the alt.sex.stories.* family of newsgroups. There's a lot of bad, bad erotica, and porn masquerading as erotica, floating around out there. The job of a good editor is to ensure that what you're getting between the covers of a book, or delivered to your e-reader, weeds out the crap and gives you the quality. I've been a Cleis Press fan since I first found out about them, but Kristina Wright's a new name to me. Would she be as good as the rest of the stable at finding and publishing the highest-quality erotica to be found out there?
Short answer: yep. I should qualify this by saying that I'm already an established fan of the current mythpunk movement (Sonya Taaffe, Jeannelle Ferreira, all those other folks who seem to have centered on Prime Books and have taken Angela Carter and Wendy Walker as demigods/muses), which sparked the current retelling-of-fairy-tales craze, so there wasn't much here I wasn't prepared for vis-a-vis the thematic and structural content; if you're not familiar with that particular subgenre, drop in on a few books of the more mainstream stuff before digging in here. (But not too mainstream, and please for the love of god avoid Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and other such mashups; go for Taaffe's Singing Innocence and Experience and Bill Willingham's Fables series of graphic novels and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and work upwards from there.) You'll have a firmer foundation, if you'll pardon the pun, for such delicacies as Andrea Dale's “How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back” or Louisa Harte's “Ellie and the Shoemaker”, which cleave pretty closely to their historical antecedents. Then it'll be time to branch out into the stories where there's more of a whisper of the original instead of a shout. You know those dishes on Iron Chef America where some hoity-toity chef pipes some smoke under a dome and when you open it, you get that scent, but the actual dish is something entirely different? Yeah, like Carol Hassler's “Gingerbread Man”, my favorite story in the collection.
Do I even need to tell you the sex is sublime? Of course I don't.
Recommended. Get yourself a copy of this pronto. ****
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