Obligatory Disclaimer:

This review is taken from Celestial Reviews by Celeste (Celeste801@aol.com).
The review was written independently of consultation with the author and
does not imply collaboration.

                                       *  

"Reckless" (Parts I, II and III) by David Lawrence. Review by Mark
Aster

I don't generally like long sex stories.  It's hard to keep the sex
integrated into the rest of the story for that long, and all too often the
sex feels artificial, or the rest of the story gets tedious, or the sex
itself gets repetitive and obvious.  The two best ways to avoid these
problems are to make the sex an important part of the story, but keep the
sex scenes rare and high- impact (as in Rivers' recent "Journey to the
East"), or to string together a variety of sex scenes in a
generally-enjoyable story.  David Lawrence seems to be quite capable of the
latter, if the first three parts of his novel-in-progress are any
indication. It reminds me somewhat of the "Trinity Trilogy" (or even that
"Allens" thing) with a somewhat sluttier atmosphere.

Three main characters (so far!): a slutty 18-year-old, and two adults from
her school.  MF, FF, some voyeurism, some spanking, a little bd.  Lots of
dirty talk and the usual sort of taunting.  But what makes reading this
enjoyable, at least for me, is that the characters seem to be ENJOYING it. 
All too often dirty talk in sex stories seems to reflect a lack of respect,
and even a positive contempt, between the characters; that's an instant
turn-off for me. In this story, the characters are doing it because it's
fun, and it feels sexy, not because it satisfies some deep dark pathological
need to hurt or to be hurt.  I can see these characters (in fact I'd like
very much to see them!) lying around after a hot sex session, talking and
laughing about the wild things they thought of to call each other this time.

A few typos ("once again came again"), a few misplaced apostrophes
("Theirs'"), a little trouble thinking of new descriptions for the
characters ("the lewd school employee" probably would have read better as
just "Pam"). And one oddity that I've done myself: the slutty teen is named
"Kristy Whitman".  Now it's possible that it will turn out later in the
novel that she grows up to be the governor of New Jersey, but if not, the
coincidence of names is just a distraction!  (The first draft of my "Black
Oak" had a kid in it named "Randy Quaid", which is apparently the name of
some actor or something; a friend who read an early draft (Hi, Mat!) pointed
that out to me.) These celebrity names have a way of getting lodged in our
heads, and jumping out when we're trying to think of a random character
name...

But anyway, a nice start to what could be a very nice novel.  Nothing
amazing in the literary sense, but that's not what this author's after! 
 Lots of nice hot sex, and highly recommended for those who like to
see people who basically like each other doing things that make everyone
involved feel really, really good.

Some numbers, keeping in mind that I'm a pretty hard grader:

Ratings for "Reckless"
Athena: 8 (above average, some typos and cliches)
Venus: 9 (hot sex)
Mark: 10 (I really liked it)



[Comments by David:  I don't disagree with either this review or the
numbers.  I'll note that from here on out, I'm going to be spending far more
time proofreading everything I do before posting it.  I'm glad Mark liked it
-- many, many people have, based on the feedback I'm getting.  On the 
Whitman thing:  The name just popped up in my mind.  Now I know where from.
I think Kristy deserves a career in politics.  She's already had enough
practice screwing people to quality abundantly.]