Like a Veil: Erotic Tales Of The Arabian Nights

Edited by Michelle Labbé and Cecilia Tan

Book Review by Lisabet Sarai

Like a Veil, a new erotic collection from Circlet Press, takes its inspiration (loosely) from the tales of Shahrazade. The book presents four pleasingly diverse stories unified by their use of Arabian or Middle Eastern settings and/or exotic magic that recalls the atmosphere of harem girl's narrations.

"Her Way" by Anya Levin gives us a contemporary heroine, an archeologist who journeys into the desert seeking a lost city fabled for its beauty and its ability to enchant. Her two male colleagues are motivated by the craving for power and prestige. The unnamed narrator, though, is drawn by desire – the burning desire to experience a world she has read about in the ancient stories:

"A world where to love someone – physically, emotionally – was not just acceptable, or possible once the intricacies of social obligation and connection had been fulfilled, but something that was celebrated. And the rich detail of the stories... I controlled a shiver and swallowed hard, wondering. What if they were only stories?"

Improbably, the trio meets a lovely woman, in a tent in the heart of the sands where no human should be. She tests each of them, but finds only the narrator worthy of the legendary city and its glories.

"Blue-eyed Djinn" by Angela Goldsberry is most faithful to the traditional Thousand Nights milieu, featuring as it does a wise beggar, a handsome and noble sultan, and a seductive djinn complete with bottle. The djinn has much to teach the sultan, about faith and about pleasure. Although she gives him a single night (as much as she gives anyone), that night's dalliance changes him forever.

"Catch and Release" by Sunny Moraine might seem out of place in this anthology, set as it is in a future world where space travel is common place. However, Ms. Moraine's hero, Suleiman the Fisherman, hails from Baghdad and he has the desert in his blood. Indeed, the reaches of space where he plies his trade as a scavenger of interplanetary junk are a new sort of desert. He retrieves an item that turns out to be the prison of an irresistible being rather like a genie. She grants him unearthly pleasure as well as what is, in some sense, his heart's desire.

"The Eater of Stories" by Sophie Deri-Bowen rounds out the quartet of tales, taking us back to an oasis market town at a desert crossroads. In Ela, a pair of young male lovers learn the true value of stories. Trading his stories for wealth, one of the couple loses his sight and nearly his life. Only the tales of his patient beloved can restore him, and even then, not completely.

Like a Veil is short but luscious as a ripe date. All four stories are deliciously erotic, and the diversity of their orientations is refreshing as a desert spring. The tales hover, carpet-like, balanced between magic and realism, reminding the reader that sometimes imagination offers the greatest source of truth.

Lisabet Sarai
October 2010

Like a Veil: Erotic Tales Of The Arabian Nights
(Circlet Press, August 2010; ISBN B004089E0U)
Available at:  Amazon (Kindle Edition)| Amazon UK (Kindle Edition)

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© 2010 Lisabet Sarai. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

About the Reviewer: More than a decade ago LISABET SARAI experienced a seredipitous fusion of her love of writing and her fascination with sex. Since then she has published six erotic novels including the BDSM classic RAW SILK, two short story collections, several novellas, and many individual stories in both print and ebook anthologies. She has also edited two multi-author print collections and is now the editor for the single-author charitable erotica series Coming Together Presents.  Lisabet also reviews erotica and romance books for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association and Erotica Revealed.  Lisabet lives in Southeast Asia with her husband and felines. She believes that imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
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