Like that Spark, Erotic Stories of New Relationships edited by Marcy Harris

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This anthology is mostly a collection of sci-fic/futuristic story, with some shade of fantasy, especially in the first story. The New Relationships in the title refer to the new “type” of combination you can decline, and it’s not only referred to gay or lesbian story, but more to a future when gender identity will be a real thin definition, since being male or female will be only a characteristic, like being tall or having blue eyes.

Most of the stories have an erotic development, and more or less, lean more on the lesbian gender/genre, actually only the last story by Josephine Myles is a M/M romance story. Due to this, most of the stories focused on the need, almost thirst, of those women to find a gentle love, opposed to what they have always suffered from men. Loving a woman give them the security to find a real soul mate on the other side; plus give them strength, like having the chance to access some primordial and powerful knowledge.

These women are strong willed and independent, and they don’t need a man to feel strong, but they need love, and apparently only another woman is able to give them that. On a strange game of contraposition, the only M/M story is about two men who find pleasure in giving up the power to someone else.

Even if the setting is futuristic/fantasy, it’s not overloaded with details, sometime you realize the story is not contemporary only from little words or details, something that in few brushes give you the perception of future, or something far from today. Mostly the focus is the relationship between the two main characters and as I said, they are erotic stories, so there is also a lot of sex, but in a way, it has always a meaning more them “simply” sex, like through sex they are affirming something, their power and independency.

Content:
Clear Sight in the Double-Full Moon Night by Shawn Erin (F/F, Transgender)
A Balefire Chronicles Short Story: Poisonous Passions by Cynthia Gael (M/F)
A Last Goodbye by Roxanne Rhoads (F/F)
ToyGirls of the Personal Genome by Giselle Renarde (F/F, Transgender)
The Shock of The New by D. Mark Alderton (F/F, Transgender)
Navigator by Kathleen Tudor (F/F)
Passive Resistance by Josephine Myles (M/M)

http://www.circlet.com/?page_id=3

Amazon Kindle: Like That Spark: Erotic Tales of New Relationships

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle

Comments

[josephine-myles.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reviewing this, Elisa!

I'm really happy to read your positive opinions as this was the first anthology I'd ever had a story in. I'm so glad you enjoyed reading it :D

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

You are welcome; it was a different experience for me, since I usually don't read lesbian fic, and so your story was the more "familiar" to me.

[josephine-myles.livejournal.com]

I don't normally read lesbian fic either, so I was surprised to find so many in the finished anthology. Still, at least it meant mine stood out as being a bit different from the others!