I enjoyed this short story, a mixture of fantasy and erotica. Kaya meets Heiki at the forbidden lake and is introduced to pleasures she could never have imagined. She sees that there is more to life than the restrictive existence she has know . It was well written and very sexually inventive.
I was given this ARC by Netgalley and Less than Three Press in return for an honest review.

<i>*I received this book from Less Than Three Press and Netgalley in return for a fair review.*</i>

I really have no idea how to rate this short story. I'm not just saying that, tis true - no clue how to rate this weird wacky story. I picked it up because this is one of the few times I've actually spotted an author I've read before on Netgalley (as in, I'd read the author previously to seeing anything by them on NetGalley and I rarely see authors on there who I have read before). And, a plus, it was lesbian fiction by this author who I'd only ever read MF fiction by. Both erotica (this story here and the book I'd read).

Slight problem encountered initially. Forget about the squid part (just briefly forget). The main character? Acted super naive and I felt very uncomfortable. Like I was witnessing someone around 11 to 13 finding that their body . . . felt certain things if touched in certain ways. Why? Because that's literally how the character acted. Like a little girl who had never touched herself before and had never even thought of doing anything remotely like that - before this story here. Sure, somewhere along the way the reader learns that the character is '19 cycles', but what the bloody hell does that mean? I think I'm supposed to take that to mean 19 years but . . . I'm not sure I can - I mean, it seems vaguely more likely to mean months (but but, she can't be 19 months! - let me remind people that there is a weresquid in this story as well, stuff).

Truth be told - the only way I was able to get through this story without gagging when each new wacky thing turned up was to think of this weird situation like an episode of Stargate I'd seen once. There the team arrived and found a thriving civilization that lived in a village. But they stuck to that village and were forbidden to go beyond it's borders (like here in this story - the girl, along with the others, were forbidden to go beyond the borders of the village; I realize that there are other stories that have 'forbidden borders', but I've mostly not seen them so . . . ). This thriving society, on the television show episode, were quite promiscious and happy. Kind of dim-witted but meh. Then at a certain moment (I forget if a bell rang, or if the sun just moved into a certain position) and everyone fell over asleep (everyone including Jack O'Neill, the only SG-1 person who ate food). Well, turns out that everyone there only lived a year and aged rapidly. So I saw this story here in that light, had to. I'd have run screaming in the other direction otherwise. This way I can take '19 cycles' to mean roughly 19 human years (even if maybe she really did mean 19 months).

Right, so. Young woman, naked, is drawn to explore the border area. Especially towards a 'forbidden zone' which happens to have a lake. While there she clears out an area near the lake and begins to masturbate, like, you know, you do when you wander into a forbidden zone. Then a woman appears and . . . stuff.

Okay, like I said, I was already feeling vaguely icky about the super naive young woman dyanmic. Now we have literal 'monster sex' scenes and I'm back to 'how the fuck do I rate this story'? No, seriously, monster sex. Mind, it was, at first, completely different than I had expected (<spoiler>I did know that there was a weresquid involved in this story, and I did know - from a review I think,
that some of the action resembled 'tentacle sex' - not exactly something I wished to read but whatever. What I didn't expect was for the first bit of squid/human sex to involve the human .
. . pleasuring the squid. I mean . . . eww.</spoiler>).

Short story. Not much to it. Kind of depressing, actually, when I thought about it. Here we have a curious exploring type young woman and . . . <spoiler>she spends the next 500 'cycles' swimming around a lake as a squid. Instead of, you know, continuing with her curious nature, there's no real advancement here. Just 'playing with myself is fun'. to 'playing with myself with another is fun'. To 'playing with a squid is fun . . . playing with another squid while a squid is fun . . . it's kind of lonely now . . . oh! someone has finally come to the lake! I'll watch them masturbate!' What a life, eh? Entirely obsessed with masturbation. And basically nothing else. And oh, right, this was no where close to being anything like a Romance story, and the whole super naive young woman who might be way too young angle plus all that squid stuff, took the sex out of the erotic column. Just . . . words. Others are better at wording what I mean correctly. Sadly. Bluntly: I do not find children or their actions erotic, nor do I find sex with squids, or between squids to be erotic. Even if sex is involved.</spoiler>

Rating: .... no rating.

April 15 2017

Ok first let me say that the 2 star rating isn't because this story is necessarily bad, it just turned out that it wasn't for me. It was an interesting idea and well written, but I found myself skimming through a lot of it. The sex scenes were pretty repetitive and even though I think they were <i>supposed</i> to be [it's kind of a 'comes full circle' type story], I still just skimmed most of them after the first one. Also I thought it was just going to be like standard mermaid lesbians [yay!], but then the mermaid turns out to be some squid thing instead and I just wasn't looking for tentacle sex right now [also they have sex while she is like ...fully a squid and I'm just like #no]. But if those are things that you like then by all means you should check this out.