So, you’re an American woman of Indian and Scottish descent. You’re “the decade’s greatest metal artist” (?!), and you’ve just inherited an island — “Dun Isle” — in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.
What do you do?
If you’re the heroine of this short story, within the span of two paragraphs, you find yourself attempting to light a fire on “a deserted bit of rock” in the middle of a rainstorm while arguing with an angry kilt wearing dragon over which one of you actually owns the “isle”.
I’m kidding.
He wasn’t actually in dragon form when they argued. The hero, Robert Dunyveg, antisocial and happy to have lived in his castle, completely alone, for centuries, has two modes: “slightly angry”, signaled by throwing his kilt over his shoulder, and “very angry”, signaled by throwing the heroine over his shoulder. Dragon-mode, only for advanced players, is best left to your imagination, save for this cryptic line: “even dragons had needs.” The only productive non-sexual action Robert takes in the course of the story is to pick up trash on the shoreline while muttering curses at “tourists and their water bottles, plastic bags, and whatnot.” The 21st century has clearly not been kind to dragon men on remote Scottish islands.
It turns out that our heroine, Ellen Kildonan, has some “otherworldy” blood herself, and sex with the dragon man brings it out, by which I mean specifically that it (a) makes her “vulva water like a leaky faucet”, and (b) causes flames to leap free of the hearth and swarm around “like pissed off fireflies”. It is hard for Ellen to accept these magical truths, because “Truth be told, unless she had a sketch and her welding rod in her hand, her imagination sucked.” Taking another kind of rod in hand helps immeasurably as the story progresses.
Probably the most interesting thing about this story, to me, was the metaphysics. For example, why does Robert have the weight advantage of a dragon even when in man shape? And he has a unique take on mind body dualism: “the truth of what could share the same space with a conscious mind and yet remain hidden would drive a sane person insane.”
I downloaded this Spice Brief last night when I realized that today is the day I am supposed to post my review of a fantasy for Avid Book Reader’s TBR Challenge. I haven’t had much luck with fantasy themed Spice Briefs. I think it’s hard to create a fantasy setting and have the requisite amount of sex in such a short space and not have it all sound kind of silly (the sex in this one was pretty tame and euphemistic compared to others I have read). Although not required by the submission guidelines, the Spice Briefs I have read try to invest the relationships with, if not an HEA, a pretty deep emotional connection. That just seems to me to be a tall order for a short read.
Still, there was a kind of straightforwardness and ambition in the author’s voice that I liked, and I think I may enjoy reading one of her longer works.
