Gwen Masters

Erotika: Bedtime Stories is a collection of very short pieces of erotic fiction from a variety of authors. It contains graphic sexual material and is definitely for adventuresome adults only.

Many of the stories in Erotika made me shrug. I need to feel a spark of genuine passion and character chemistry in a story in order to enjoy the heat of it. Unfortunately too many of these tidbits felt clinically constructed to fulfill one niche or another. I felt as though I was checking stories off of a list as I went: this is the foot fetish story; this is the exhibitionism story... I'm sure there are readers who will enjoy such an approach to an erotica anthology, but it doesn't really appeal to me.

Luckily the anthology was rescued by a handful of stories that did contain that passionate spark. In particular some of the later stories in the book jumped out at me, such as Gwen Masters's 'Ghosts of Virginia' and 'Dry Tinder' (both as much about emotion as they are about sex), Ralph Greco, Jr.'s 'The Fruits of Mark's Confession' (involving an unusual emotional and sexual triangle), and Cullen Dorn's 'The Professor' (an unusual and vaguely mythical story).

For a longer version of this review, visit Errant Dreams.… (mehr)