Sage Vivant and M.Christian have a knack for picking great anthology themes. Metaphorical rather than concrete, their themes support a wide range of interpretations by authors, yet still connect these disparate visions into a satisfying whole. The stories in their new collection, AMAZONS: SEXY TALES OF STRONG WOMEN, are linked by the common thread of women exhibiting strength and power. The women in question are as different as you could imagine: gutsy competitors in male-dominated sports, midget strippers, stern schoolteachers, fierce warriors, seductive and dangerous femmes fatale, cave girls, circus performers — even daring, outrageous authors of erotica! The strengths that they exhibit are sometimes physical, but just as often psychological, emotional, even moral. In fact, the best stories in this anthology are the ones that feature the unlikely heroines, the women whose power you might not even notice, at first glance.
One story in this mold is Kathleen Bradean’s intense “Blue Girl”, in which the owner of a sex shop in a frighteningly familiar world of religious fanaticism is entrapped by a beautiful undercover cop and suffers the consequences. “The Spear of Janice Kienan”, by Chris Bridges, features a harried New York editor, browbeaten by her boss and the world, who makes contact with her inner warrior. In Madeline de Chambrey’s “The Bearded Lady”, “before political correctness and the Internet and PETA Xboxes, back when awe wasn’t commonplace and thrills cost more than a dime a dozen…”, a star circus performer loses her pride, her hair and her breast to cancer, only to be reborn in newly heroic guise. Helena Morgenstern, Hannah Strom-Martin’s protagonist in the crisp and funny story “Sex with Ducks”, is a mild-mannered, love-sick author who finally decides it’s time to take what she wants from the philandering object of her affections.
The more obvious Amazons are equally engaging. Rodeo star Lynette, in C.B. Potts’ “Bullbitch 8.0”, rides the bulls and her manager/girlfriend with the same single-minded glee. In Catherine Lundoff’s “The Hands of a Princess”, battle-scarred Commander Agnes the Bloody demonstrates her obedience to her sovereign lady and reaps the rewards. The nameless beauty who disposes of unfaithful husbands in B.J. Franklin’s “The Lady-killer” is simultaneously cold as ice and burning with lust as she seduces her victim. Then there is Sharna, the girl from Pellucidar in Jason Rubis’ tale of the same name, a fierce jungle princess ripped from another dimension into our own by the machinations of a geeky NYU professor raised on a steady diet of Boris Vallejo and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Perhaps the collection’s most unusual strong woman is Linda the inflatable sex doll in Felix Baron’s creepy story “Fully Functional”. Second place goes to Vivian VaVoom, the midget dominatrix in M. Christian’s story “Amazon”. Finally, in “Legend”, Sage Vivant gives us the eternal optimist Priscilla who despite every setback never stops promoting herself as the diva of cutting edge erotica. One can only hope that there’s no more than a tiny grain of truth in this satirical tour-de-force.
The collection includes a few stories too distant from the theme for me, at least, to make the connection. Overall, though, this is an entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking book, spiced with plenty of sex, but offering quite a bit more. The production, by the Avalon’s more up-market imprint Thunder’s Mouth Press, is exceptional. Each story is prefaced with a quote from a strong woman of our own or earlier times: Mae West, Bette Davis, Molly Ivans, Bella Abzug, Dianne Feinstein, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mary Wolstencroft Shelley. The quotes frame and elevate the stories to something more than smut. One of my favorites, which could stand as an epigram for the whole collection, comes from Roseanne Barr:
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.
Amazons: Tall Tales of Strong Women by Sage Vivant & M. Christian
(Thunder’s Mouth Press; ISBN 1560257601)
Available at: Amazon.com / Amazon UK / Amazon CA
© 2006 Lisabet Sarai. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.
