EBook Review: Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories

'Lo Peoples,

Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories
Edited by Cecelia Tan and Kelly Clark
Circlet Press, Inc
©2009

Disclosure: I received a free review PDF courtesy from the editor upon my own request.

Okay folks, get your bibs on. There's some literary treats ahead.

Some Anthologies deserve an extended metaphor. Allow me to regale you with such a gustatory conceit. Taste is a pretty basic matter for all of us, like that infamous three letter word.
Ya'll know it... s-e-x.

And not just vanilla sex, Peoples.

Bi-Sex.

Spicy, sweet, and titillating just like her Tangh-i-ness likes it.

Some anthologies provoke the equivalent of indigestion. Others get devoured and still others are savored. Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories belongs in the latter category. As a writer m'self, I appreciate well-crafted words. I relish the strong flavor of sex without offending the senses or the mind that digests the entire confection.

I don't envy the editors' task of sifting through many tales to find the three that were intended to give the reader a consummate experience. It's like going to the candy store and having to choose between a bag of gummi bears with their chewy, gelatin delicacy, or a bag of peppermint candies that heat up the inside of one's mouth a bit before the sugar rush fades, and lastly a bag of M&Ms® with their fleeting crunch and central chocolate. Yumminess abounds any way one decides to go.

I'll start, in reverse order, with the digestif: The Travesties by Giselle Renarde.

Next, on the palate, is Neil Hudson's Incubus, Succubus.

And the apértif would be The Dancer's War by N.K. Jemisin.

Enter Nurse Clinician Sebastian Savant and the object of his passion—an intersexed person—Cam/ille.
Throw in a mini-history of an invented slang terminology, a predatory researcher, cisgender bias, and the lover who vanished and gorge.

After feasting upon The Travesties, I want to start chanting the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup jingle.
Mentally review the jingle with me now. Something about twos and tastes in a single mouthful right? Got the picture of what that story holds for consenting adults?

Moving right along....

Ready for a slow boil that results in a saccharine implosion?

The nameless, first-person, male narrator of Incubus, Succubus feels set apart from his world. This is a sexual coming-of-age story with a twist. I should have recognized the hint of otherworldly from the first sampling, but I didn't. The rustic, folktale milleu enchanted me right out of guessing the outcome of narrator's quest for erotic awakening, but I'm certain other readers will manage to fight off candy-induced stupors.

I've already waxed rapturously about N.K. Jemisin and her hot men in a previous novel review. I felt honor-bound to begin with the succulent tales from Renarde and Hudson because of it. Last-mentioned The Dancer's War is never least in my book. Remember this is the story that opens the anthology. Meet two more toothsome delights, in the persons of the bantam Elan of the Weavers-of-the-Cloud and the strapping Ansheara of the Ketuyae. Our two virile goodies engage in a battle of wills that begins on a dance ground and ends with both men in a compromising position for the titillation of assembled women. Her Tangh-i-ness was left fiending for more...more...more.

All compliments to the chefs go to the three writers, naturally. I finished well satisfied. With the editors I'll leave a simple request: a companion volume featuring three, bisexual female protagonists and their sexcapades.

Peace,

Her Tangh-i-ness