Making Love by Aidan WayneMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
*I received this book from NetGalley and Riptide in return for a fair review.*
mini-review
Point the first: Sometime after midnight I turned my phone on yesterday and noticed that my request to read this short story had been accepted. I wanted a little something to read for a few moments before turning in for the night, so figured I’d read at least (most?) the first chapter. Needless to say, I read the entire thing in one ‘sitting’ (what, I was actually reclining on my bed, but whatever, ‘one reclining’ just looks odd).
This is the third work put out under this name, and the third work I've read. The other two are MM romances, while this one is FF (and mixes a bisexual (heavily leaning towards females) with an asexual ((view spoiler)).
Of note: story involves a woman from an aromatic species that occasionally produces romantically inclined individuals (referring here to the succubus in the story, Leeta) - main character, though is a female cupid named Carla. Who loves love, but is herself something approaching asexual.
Story: Carla works for an organization that attempts to generate love, with the ultimate goal of love matches. Bah. I mean true love matches. She has been steadily attempting to better herself - she's a great shot but isn't very good with Chemistry part.
One day, after a performance evaluation, Carla overhears a conversation between the receptionist (her friend, if that’s important to know) and a strange creature from a species she hadn’t had contact with before. Turns out that it is a Succubus and she’s there to try to set up a meeting with ‘Angel’ (Carla’s boss at Aphrodite Agency). Except Tristan (the receptionist) won’t even contemplate such a request and forcefully demands that the succubus leave. Immediately. Or he will call security.
Carla overhears this conversation and is confused. The Succubus wants a true love match; isn’t that what Aphrodite Agency does? And so, Carla decides to see if Leeta, the Succubus, would be willing for her, Carla, to try to help her ‘off-the-books’.
Review
It's December 30 2016, so I can reveal my review now.
I believe I read something somewhere, maybe in the ‘about the author’ section at the end of the story, but wherever – that the author enjoys character stories. Especially if they are minorities. Well, the first story I read by them, ‘Loud and Clear’, involved a cab driver who had trouble reading (due to dyslexia), matching up with a businessman with an extreme form of speech impediment (trouble speaking except in specific situations) – ‘Counterbalance’ also went that ‘minority through disability’ route for one character – John the disfigured man, and though the ‘minority through minority’ route for the man he was matched up with in the story set in Canada – a man from China.
This time we leave behind MM romance, and move to FF romance. With a bisexual character who has dark skin and is from a mostly aromantic species with horns and a tail, hooking up with a rather chubby woman with wings who may or may not actually be asexual.
This leads immediately into one of the few problems I had with the story. It was a fantasy that had a layer missing from the reader. As in, where the heck is this occurring? Some far off land that is unconnected to humans? Well, no, humans are part of this story. In a dimension one step away from the human one but is still adjacent? On the same plain as humans on Earth (the horned, tailed demon walking around, and the chubby winged woman literally flying around visibly (which I mention because she can turn herself tiny and invisible) kind of removes this from ‘on the same plain’ – at least in the sense that people can see them and do not react . . . shocked by them)?
I did get a good sense of being in a small town type atmosphere (though, for all I know, this was supposed to be overlaying, say, Beijing), but I still had that issue of where exactly all of this is supposed to be taking place. Also – added into that layer of confusion – Carla helps Leeta go on some dates, two of whom actually get names, none of whom have their species mentioned. Were they human? Some unknown as yet unnamed species? For ‘reasons’, they weren’t likely to be succubi (re: aromantic for the most part species) or cupids (based on how neither of the women who got names were mentioned to have wings).
Moving past that, which was actually easier to do than I’m letting on – and you get the story itself. There is a high likelihood that I need to reread this at some point when I’m not keeping myself awake to do so, to read, but beside that specific point – I rather loved the two main characters in the story (though everything is really from Carla’s perspective). I just loved the personalities on display. Carla is bubbly, chubby – loves to eat (and has no self-loathing body images); Leeta is ‘lovely’ – she is a succubus after all, but has an abrasive blunt personality (I’d say ‘she is a demon’ after all, but I’m not actually sure if succubi are demons in this specific story universe; I do like how she tempers it, though, while on her quest to find ‘true love’, and in her interactions with Carla).
This is what would be call a slightly disjointed from reality, short and sweet story.
I do need to mention another story, though, that this one here reminds me of. Oddly enough, that story also involved an asexual and a bisexual (both women), and also involved a succubus. Though in that story, the main character is the succubus, and the succubus is the asexual (well, Abigail had been human, died, and was assigned to be a succubus – which she found quite confusing because, asexual; of note: asexual and aromantic are not the same thing – in case anyone was confused by all my mentions of terms earlier (aromantic is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others; while an asexual is a person who experiences little or no sexual attraction to others; a person can be both aromantic and asexual, romantic and asexual, or aromantic and sexual). Also, oddly enough, the other main character is also a dark skinned bisexual (though in ‘Welcome to Your Afterlife’, this individual is a banshee; while here in ‘Making Love’, the bisexual dark skinned woman is a succubus).
To a large extent there are only superficial similarities to the two stories. I more mention it not because of the bisexual/asexual/etc. part, but because I wanted to offer it up as an example of a story that had a rather good ‘location’ vibe to it. I felt like I knew where ‘everything’ was located. I knew where I was, I mean. A version of the afterlife that has access to the ‘mortal plain’ (well, need access for the succubi and the like to go into it to feed and stuff (the 'earthly plain' was up some stairs from 'the afterlife').
Bah, I do not know why I’m going on and on about that other story – it’s not exactly going to lead people to this one here, I think it is possible that I’m the only one who actually loved that other one. Hopefully people will try and love this one. Because I did. I do not like being the oddball. :( hehe
Rating: 4.55
December 12 2016 & lightly edited December 30 2016
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