StarDust Press, $4.48
Fantasy Erotica, 2007
Isabelle Rose has more smutty fairy tales to offer, because I suppose the first volume had people asking for more.
Red and Wolf is, as you may have guessed, is based on Little Red Riding Hood. Our heroine Red Wallace dreams of playing with herself in the woods because… I don’t know, maybe her bedroom is too boring for this kind of exciting moments. At any rate, after a mind-bogglingly obvious “see heroine play with herself in a dream because this is a very, very, very sexy story” moment, she wakes up to be told by her mother to bring some food to Red’s grandmother. She encounters William Wolf, a shape-shifting wolf who molests our heroine and causes her to go “Oh, oh, oh!” She has no idea that he intends to eat her once he’s done shagging her. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Hunter is hunting for William Wolf. Oh, and the grandmother, who used to cavort with three porridge-loving bears, is getting impatient waiting for her food to arrive.
Despite the fact that the characters in this story are in serious need of names that don’t make me snort, this is a perversely enjoyable tale full of cartoonish gore. There are some suspenseful moments, such as whether the Wolf will eat Red while he’s shagging her – I’m hoping that he does since she’s such an annoying dumb bunny – but on the whole there are some tongue-in-cheek moments here that work. I love that scene where William has just buried a dead body and as he leans against the shovel, he looks at Red and realizes that she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. The timing is impeccable – I don’t know whether to chuckle or take my hat off to Ms Rose.
Beautiful Passion is Beauty and the Beast given Ms Rose’s own twist on the familiar folk tale. Our heroine, Linda, starts the day by asking her sisters’ boyfriends to have sex with her – two at once, although please be polite and stand in line (and don’t tell the sisters, of course). Like the previous story, this particular gratuitous sex scene has me rolling up my eyes because it’s so clearly inserted to titillate me that I would have just said thanks but no thanks. The story is really more interesting when the author is just going with the flow instead of trying too hard to turn her story into a hardcore pornographic showcase.
At any rate, the story takes a familiar turn if you know the fairy tale – Linda’s father takes shelter in the Beast’s magnificent home but enrages the Beast when he tries to pluck a rose to take home to Linda. Hey, Ms Rose, where’s the gratuitous pornographic scene where the Beast decides to punish the naughty father by doing the nasty on the father’s rear end? I guess that is too hardcore for a wholesome fairy tale. At any rate, Linda moves in with the Beast in exchange for her father’s life, but since everyone who is reading this story knows by now that Linda is a naughty little nymphomaniac, there isn’t much bestiality-tinged sexual tension to be had here. See what I mean about trying too hard? If Ms Rose hasn’t inserted that silly threesome scene earlier on, she could have built up some tension from Linda’s sexual awakening and made this story more interesting.
However, this story is interesting in its own right because Linda in the Beast’s home is a beguiling combination of a seductress, a woman tempted despite herself, and an unexpectedly compassionate heroine who sees something in the Beast that is worthy of her softer emotions. The relationship between the Beast and Linda is unexpectedly tender and romantic as much as it is filled with heavy breathing and rumpy-pumpy. Maybe it’s just me, but I actually find myself shedding a tear at the end because somehow the Beast and Linda have gotten under my skin without me realizing how fond I’ve become of them.
Finally, Lover’s Ball. This one is Ms Rose’s pornographic take on Cinderella, or to be more accurate, the movie Ever After. Marie, our heroine, is bullied by her stepsisters and is treated like a slave by her stepmother. She decides to run away and sneaks off to the home of the only living relative that is kind to her, Aunt Milicent, where she will stay awhile until she decides what she will do next. She bumps into Prince Charles William the Third – I’m pretty sure he’s not that Prince William – who sleeps with her after realizing that she’s a runaway. Of course, this is not a creepy situation of a man taking advantage of a runaway girl because it is Horse Sh-, er, True Love. The Prince is in need of wife, the King and Queen throw a ball, and Aunt Milicent plays the fairy godmother. You know the story, I’m sure.
This one is easily the least interesting story of the three because it doesn’t have any of the author’s unique spin on the familiar fairy tales. It’s just some story trying too hard to be a feminist Cinderella tale (in other words, the movie Ever After) with sexually explicit scenes. However, the last paragraph of this story is really nicely done.
My impression after reading the first volume and even so after Naughty Fairy Tales Volume 2 is that if Ms Rose will put her effort and time into it, she could have turned this rather half-baked collection of stories into something really dark and erotic, kind of like Robin McKinley meets Skinemax. The stories in this collection have occasional glimmers of very good ideas and concepts and I sometimes imagine that I am getting a peek into the fiendish workings of the author’s mind… but just a peek, alas. If the author can find a way to insert erotic aspects into her story without coming off like a child who delights in saying naughty things that her parents frowned on because her parents are away and no one can stop her now, if she will actually take the effort to create something longer and more substantial in the next volume, I can’t wait to take a look at it.
