Ladies’ Night

In a grim, urban future, Dr. Helena Jewel is the Chief Sociologist of New Washington, her main function is to monitor the behavior of the masses of citizens in order to prevent riots. Needing to keep current with new popular trends, Dr. Jewel attends Ladies’ Night at the cage-fights, a form of entertainment that pits convicts against each other in a life-and-death struggle. At Ladies’ Night, only women are admitted to the audience, and one lucky woman gets the ... services ... of the winning convict for a week. This is only a research trip for Dr. Jewel, yet somehow she ends up winning convict Brandt De Vos, the convicted killer of her predecessor in office. What is she to do with him for a whole week?

I enjoyed this story and recommend this to other readers as an excellent short science fiction novel, although the erotic scenes comprise about three-quarters of the entire word count. In spite of this seeming imbalance, the romance is motivated by, and woven into the SF story with perfect seamlessness so that this story really feels like SF. The plot is surprising and effectively conveys the author’s vision of a possible future for our society.

Dr. Jewel and Convict De Vos are both very strong characters, with clearly delineated motivations for their behavior. At the beginning of the story, I did not expect to like either one of them. However, as the story unfolds, each character slowly reveals more of her or his inner landscape and, by the end of the story I was very engaged in what happened to them. This sort of character development is a positive measure of the author’s writing skill. The sex scenes in this story are extremely hot and graphic, and emotionally intense! Very hot stuff! The scenes contain masturbation, voyeurism, oral and anal sex, and bondage. This is a great story for those who like their SF and erotica combined.

Reviewed by: Jean