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The Heart of Aces
The heart of aces is where an anomaly lives, where love’s definition takes a deviation from the common rules. These eleven stories dive into asexual relationships, where couples embrace differences, defy society’s expectations, and find romantic love. In this collection is a full spectrum of asexuality in all its classifications. From contemporary fiction to fantasy, from heteroromantic to homoromantic, join these unique characters on their journey to finding the person that speaks to their hearts.
206 pages, Paperback
First published July 14, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
July 17, 2012
This book that I highly anticipated the release of. Romantic literature is not only something I enjoy, but I think is a great venue to explore different types of inter-personal relationships and the fact that so few "alternative" lifestyles and sexualities get the spotlight in this genre is a travesty.
In Heart of Aces each story features an asexual character within a romantic context, which is an ingenious way of showing the spectrum of sexual aspects of asexuality which is often misunderstood to have none.
Given that the theme of this book is one of a highly unknown and misunderstood sexuality, I thought that most of the book would be hard to approach as simply stories of romance, but that isn't the fact at all. The stories within this book are, at their core, classic romantic tales of longing/union, hurt/comfort, and love conquering all.
I recommend this book to those who finally want accurate depictions of asexuality and to those who simply love great love stories.
In Heart of Aces each story features an asexual character within a romantic context, which is an ingenious way of showing the spectrum of sexual aspects of asexuality which is often misunderstood to have none.
Given that the theme of this book is one of a highly unknown and misunderstood sexuality, I thought that most of the book would be hard to approach as simply stories of romance, but that isn't the fact at all. The stories within this book are, at their core, classic romantic tales of longing/union, hurt/comfort, and love conquering all.
I recommend this book to those who finally want accurate depictions of asexuality and to those who simply love great love stories.
October 4, 2016
The Heart of Aces is a collection that’s almost more interesting/important to me because of the theme than because of anything about the actual stories within. Asexual representation is a big thing to me, because for a long time I was all kinds of confused about why I wasn’t interested in other people the way my peers were, why I didn’t want the same things in a relationship, etc. The only times I did come across it were in stories about trauma, and then it was something to be got over; not something that you can just accept. And that’s the nice things about the stories here. Each one of them accepts asexuality as a valid way of living a life that can still be whole and fulfilling, and even shared with a romantic partner. Sometimes you have to compromise or go out on a limb, sometimes things don’t match up quite as well as you’d hope, but all the same, these stories say it’s possible.
(And oh, my relief that I don’t think a single character in these stories calls not wanting sex “unnatural”, or anything like that. Look, I don’t feel naturally feel physical attraction — if anything, if I did, that would be unnatural for me, even if it might maybe be achievable with drugs or something. It’s just not the way I’m built, and that’s okay.)
The stories in the collection are a little shaky; one of them I just found plain unreadable, while others were very basic. There are a couple of sweet ones in there, though. I do wish that there was a bit more representation across the board — a cisgendered, straight, asexual couple would be great to see, or stretching the definition of ace a bit, an aromantic character — but there is one story with a trans character (albeit the POV character takes a while to switch pronouns correctly), and a realistic range of what the characters in the stories are interested in. I wouldn’t really recommend the stories, except that there’s so little out there that’s tailored for asexual people. If you feel like you really need to see something that does touch on that, you might enjoy picking up The Heart of Aces.
Originally posted here.
(And oh, my relief that I don’t think a single character in these stories calls not wanting sex “unnatural”, or anything like that. Look, I don’t feel naturally feel physical attraction — if anything, if I did, that would be unnatural for me, even if it might maybe be achievable with drugs or something. It’s just not the way I’m built, and that’s okay.)
The stories in the collection are a little shaky; one of them I just found plain unreadable, while others were very basic. There are a couple of sweet ones in there, though. I do wish that there was a bit more representation across the board — a cisgendered, straight, asexual couple would be great to see, or stretching the definition of ace a bit, an aromantic character — but there is one story with a trans character (albeit the POV character takes a while to switch pronouns correctly), and a realistic range of what the characters in the stories are interested in. I wouldn’t really recommend the stories, except that there’s so little out there that’s tailored for asexual people. If you feel like you really need to see something that does touch on that, you might enjoy picking up The Heart of Aces.
Originally posted here.
October 9, 2016
Heart of Aces came out in 2012. I think that's important to keep in mind? While Aven has existed since 2001, the first Asexual Awareness Week was in 2011. It doesn't seem like so long ago, but just a few years ago, when frantically searching for books with confirmed ace characters for me to review or discuss in my queer lit mag, Heart of Aces was one of the only books out there, or at least the only one that was very, very clearly about asexual characters and easy to find. People always brought it up when I asked about ace characters. It was such a Big Deal at that time? So while I have criticisms, it's definitely with a hefty dose of "I recognize that this was an important book, the first real collection of strictly ace stories available as a unit, on amazon, easily accessible to a lot of people."
So. Let's dive in.
This collection focuses on asexual couples and how they navigate their relationships while being asexual. Many of the pieces are not stories so much as short scenes or examples of how asexual couples can be together. In that, it can be less focused on being entertaining or a good story, and winds up being a bit preachy at time, or having couples talk awkwardly about their established relationship dynamics in the middle of an otherwise normal scene. In that way, it becomes sometimes about "look at the asexuals, how they Do Things!" which is a bit... eugh. There is some sex in this book, as - guess what! - many asexuals have sex. But it is not graphic or explicit.
The writing ranges from very literary fic, to very easy to read, to overdone purple prose. There's a great variety of talent here, and unfortunately there are numerous typos and editing errors.
Out of the Dead Land is a great story about two older queer men meeting and starting a relationship. It's well-written, a bit richer in prose than I'm used to, and set in England. It was one of the most memorable and one of my favorites. (Top 3!)
Aphrodite Hour centers some of the harassment a woman - especially an asexual woman - experiences in urban nightlife. It also shows two queer women meeting and beginning a relationship. I felt this one a little heavy handed.
Stuck in Possibilities is so much tell rather than show, it is extremely boring to read. It centers the awfulness and othering an asexual person can experience from their allosexual partner. It also kind of... forces a connection between the protagonist and her trans male roommate at the ending, instead of letting the two develop chemistry and a relationship. It's very awkward and badly done.
An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk Into a Bar is a scene of two men in bed. One is asexual, the other very much not. It's one of the pieces that is written to prove a point or communicate something rather than tell a story. And it shows how a sexual relationship can work between two people when one doesn't have any interest in sex themselves.
True Emotions centers two women, both asexual, and struggling with it - and their own smalltime fame -in one way or another. They meet each other, though, and their asexuality and fame both are understood by someone else. It's an interesting story, and I think it's definitely worth a read, though it's not my favorite. It's as if because they are both asexual, they are immediately INTO EACH OTHER. And just. Ehhh.
Thanksgiving Dinner isn't a story. It's a scene of a found family enjoying Thanksgiving, from the eyes of their pet bird. The bird flies around, describing stuff, and one thing he describes is a nonbinary asexual who is looking at their found family with happiness. Like, this description is probably half as long as the story itself. Lol.
Shades of Gray (A) might be one of my favorites. It is a conversation between two friends and roommates, one of whom is on the asexual spectrum and trying to tell his friend that he wants to sleep with him by sort of awkwardly rambling about how his definition of his own sexuality is evolving. It stands solid as an actual story while still communicating an important facet of ace life - that your identity can change overtime and there is no shame in that. (In the story, he goes from IDing as gray-ace to demisexual) ... Another top 3 pick :)
Paradoxical Perfection takes up nearly 1/3 of the book, it's so long, and is DROWNING in its own purple prose, I couldn't finish it. Oh man it was awful.
Sketch is a short little scene of an asexual woman drawing her naked girlfriend in bed. The only ace content here is the artist thanks her gf for not trying to have sex with her. Which just strikes me as really weird, especially the way it sits in the story. Like not forcing her boundaries is something to repeatedly thank someone for. Idk. I had weird feelings about it.
Five Lies ends tragically for no good narrative reason. It covers the life of an asexual man through his relationships and how they affect and influence those relationships. And then his boyfriend dies. So. You know. Eff that.
Good PR - hands down my absolutely favorite in this book. It's a love story, a m/m romance beautifully written, where one of the two guys is asexual. It's a part of him, and a part of his story, but it's not *about* asexuality, which is something I really wanted from a lot of the other pieces in this book and didn't get. I would recommend this story to anyone interested in m/m love stories, because. Just. Oh man. I had so many feelings. Clearly the crowning glory of my top 3 list.
Overall - a tad preachy, a tad heavyhanded, and largely about men. There are few gems here, and the book may be comforting to a baby ace who is trying to visualize what a relationship might look like for them. I wish it had a more thorough editor.
So. Let's dive in.
This collection focuses on asexual couples and how they navigate their relationships while being asexual. Many of the pieces are not stories so much as short scenes or examples of how asexual couples can be together. In that, it can be less focused on being entertaining or a good story, and winds up being a bit preachy at time, or having couples talk awkwardly about their established relationship dynamics in the middle of an otherwise normal scene. In that way, it becomes sometimes about "look at the asexuals, how they Do Things!" which is a bit... eugh. There is some sex in this book, as - guess what! - many asexuals have sex. But it is not graphic or explicit.
The writing ranges from very literary fic, to very easy to read, to overdone purple prose. There's a great variety of talent here, and unfortunately there are numerous typos and editing errors.
Out of the Dead Land is a great story about two older queer men meeting and starting a relationship. It's well-written, a bit richer in prose than I'm used to, and set in England. It was one of the most memorable and one of my favorites. (Top 3!)
Aphrodite Hour centers some of the harassment a woman - especially an asexual woman - experiences in urban nightlife. It also shows two queer women meeting and beginning a relationship. I felt this one a little heavy handed.
Stuck in Possibilities is so much tell rather than show, it is extremely boring to read. It centers the awfulness and othering an asexual person can experience from their allosexual partner. It also kind of... forces a connection between the protagonist and her trans male roommate at the ending, instead of letting the two develop chemistry and a relationship. It's very awkward and badly done.
An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk Into a Bar is a scene of two men in bed. One is asexual, the other very much not. It's one of the pieces that is written to prove a point or communicate something rather than tell a story. And it shows how a sexual relationship can work between two people when one doesn't have any interest in sex themselves.
True Emotions centers two women, both asexual, and struggling with it - and their own smalltime fame -in one way or another. They meet each other, though, and their asexuality and fame both are understood by someone else. It's an interesting story, and I think it's definitely worth a read, though it's not my favorite. It's as if because they are both asexual, they are immediately INTO EACH OTHER. And just. Ehhh.
Thanksgiving Dinner isn't a story. It's a scene of a found family enjoying Thanksgiving, from the eyes of their pet bird. The bird flies around, describing stuff, and one thing he describes is a nonbinary asexual who is looking at their found family with happiness. Like, this description is probably half as long as the story itself. Lol.
Shades of Gray (A) might be one of my favorites. It is a conversation between two friends and roommates, one of whom is on the asexual spectrum and trying to tell his friend that he wants to sleep with him by sort of awkwardly rambling about how his definition of his own sexuality is evolving. It stands solid as an actual story while still communicating an important facet of ace life - that your identity can change overtime and there is no shame in that. (In the story, he goes from IDing as gray-ace to demisexual) ... Another top 3 pick :)
Paradoxical Perfection takes up nearly 1/3 of the book, it's so long, and is DROWNING in its own purple prose, I couldn't finish it. Oh man it was awful.
Sketch is a short little scene of an asexual woman drawing her naked girlfriend in bed. The only ace content here is the artist thanks her gf for not trying to have sex with her. Which just strikes me as really weird, especially the way it sits in the story. Like not forcing her boundaries is something to repeatedly thank someone for. Idk. I had weird feelings about it.
Five Lies ends tragically for no good narrative reason. It covers the life of an asexual man through his relationships and how they affect and influence those relationships. And then his boyfriend dies. So. You know. Eff that.
Good PR - hands down my absolutely favorite in this book. It's a love story, a m/m romance beautifully written, where one of the two guys is asexual. It's a part of him, and a part of his story, but it's not *about* asexuality, which is something I really wanted from a lot of the other pieces in this book and didn't get. I would recommend this story to anyone interested in m/m love stories, because. Just. Oh man. I had so many feelings. Clearly the crowning glory of my top 3 list.
Overall - a tad preachy, a tad heavyhanded, and largely about men. There are few gems here, and the book may be comforting to a baby ace who is trying to visualize what a relationship might look like for them. I wish it had a more thorough editor.
August 14, 2016
I am annoyed. Not only is this the most shoddily edited print book I've ever come across, I've just learned that it contains at least one P2P fanfic. I did not know this when I purchased it, and I did not know this when I reviewed it. I hate P2P fanfic with a fiery passion. That said, I went to the effort of writing this very long and detailed review, so I'm keeping it up.
Here are the P2P details:
Andrea R. Blackwell's "An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk Into a Bar" was originally round_robin's Sherlock fanfic of the same title. Here's the link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/402827
You have got to be kidding me. You couldn't even bring yourself to write a brand-new, original short story? If I learn that any of the other stories in this anthology are P2P fanfic, I'll include the details for those, too.
My review, otherwise unchanged, is below.
------------------------------
I was super-excited when I heard this anthology was going to be coming out, because I wanted to see what asexual romance stories would be like. Then I realized that this was the same publisher that put out Accessible Love Stories , which I had heard had terrible editing and contained stories that didn't always qualify as romance. I crossed my fingers and hoped that this anthology would be better.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Typos, incorrect word usage, homophone misspellings, and formatting errors were everywhere. Several of the stories could have used a good deal of polishing prior to being published. There were a few good stories, several so-so stories, and a few really awful stories.
Still, this is one of less than a handful of published works I know of that explicitly tackle asexual relationships. The only other examples I know of are Kate Aaron's Lost Realm series and some Sherlock fanfics. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who wasn't actively seeking out asexual romance, but it has a few decent stories for those who are.
[A note on the cover: While I like that it's eye-catching, I do think it was a terrible choice for this anthology. It manages to feel both sexual and sterile at the same time.]
“Out of the Dead Land” by A.J. Hall
This story deals with two men who are the only audience members in a theater showing Gone with the Wind. After the movie, they get to talking and become close enough for both of them to consider doing more than just talking. However, one man is asexual, and one man is not.
This was one of the better stories in this anthology, but it took me a lot of work to get my bearings. I think it's because of something Hall notes at the end of the story, that Philip tends to think in quotations. There were sentences that didn't quite make sense in context, but I don't have the background to be able to say whether or not they were quotations.
Things became clearer and easier to follow once Philip and Kevin, the main characters, started talking. I felt that their relationship moved a little too quickly, no matter how well they got along (they only just met!), and Kevin was way more reasonable and understanding than I would have expected someone to be, faced with Philip's reaction. It would have been less jarring for Philip to have sought Kevin out instead.
Also, this is a personal preference of mine, but I like short stories to have a plot. This one didn't, not really. Guy meets guy, they talk, things don't work out for a moment, and then they do. That was pretty much it.
“Aphrodite Hour” by Sarah Sinnaeve
Rita, a radio talk show host, is being accosted by a guy who's trying to get her to agree to sex she doesn't want. She's saved by Maddie. She and Maddie get along well, really well, but Rita is nervous at the thought that Maddie, too, might end up expecting more than she's willing and able to give.
I raised an eyebrow at how freely Rita referred to her asexuality. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but Rita was a special case: she was the host of a radio talk show focusing on relationship advice. There was no indication that she was open about her asexuality on the air, and, considering that the vast majority of people are sexual, I would think that news of her asexuality could potentially hurt her career – would people be as willing to ask an openly asexual person for relationship advice? She didn't worry about this even once during the whole story, though.
I was uncomfortable with the way she thought about her encounter with the guy in the beginning of the story in relation to her asexuality. The way he was behaving, I wouldn't have faulted a sexual woman for saying, “Get lost, jerk.” However, there's a part where Rita's thoughts implied that her primary reason for refusing the guy was her asexuality. What would she have told a caller on her show? “You should sleep with him, because you don't mind sex and he expects to have sex with you”?
This, like the first story, is one of several that features a budding relationship between a sexual person and an asexual person, but no attempt is made to show how that might work – it's very much a HFN ending, with Maddie willing to try to make a relationship with an asexual person work but not really sure if it will.
“Stuck in Possibilities” by Flavia Napoleoni
This story covers a long period of time, from Ingrid's childhood to adulthood. When she was younger, she essentially fell in love with her best friend, who, unfortunately, didn't understand or want the kind of relationship she wanted. He broke her heart, but she eventually met and fell for another asexual person. However, events occurred that caused her feelings for her childhood friend to bubble up again.
I got the impression that asexual relationships in this story were something like very intense friendships, to the exclusion of almost everything else. It didn't feel quite healthy. My biggest problem with this story, though, was that I didn't really like any of the characters. Ingrid, in particular, grated on my nerves. In attempting to describe herself, she managed to be pretty insulting – for example, she was not a “silly romance reader, waiting for the love of her life while drooling on Harlequin books” (31). My rage, it was great. She also claimed that she didn't daydream, and yet her description of what she did do (she liked to imagine what-ifs) sounded an awful lot like daydreaming. She was a pretty interesting character, but her snobbishness made it really difficult to like her.
I felt sorry for Tom, for getting stuck with Ingrid. I think the story was meant to end in a bittersweet but uplifting way, but for me it was kind of a downer. Although it had romantic relationships, I did not consider this story a romance. It had the feel of something that was trying to be lit fic.
One thing of note: I think this may be the first time I've reviewed something with a prominent transsexual character.
“An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk into a Bar” by Andrea R. Blackwell
Greg is hypersexual, while Jamie is asexual. Jamie doesn't seem to mind giving Greg blow jobs, but Greg thinks it's not fair that he's always on the receiving end of any of their sexual activities.
As you may have guessed from my description of this story, there is sex. On-page sex. I was actually pretty surprised, and readers who seek this collection out specifically for asexual relationships that don't go beyond kissing and cuddling will probably not enjoy this story. I appreciated it as one of the few stories that explained how a relationship between a sexual person and an asexual person might work. This is, of course, only one possibility, but it was still interesting.
Unfortunately, this felt more like an extended and somewhat graphic explanation of how such a relationship might work than an actual story. Jamie's explanations to Greg felt like they could have been culled from an AVEN forum post, and the author revealed so little of what the characters were like outside of the bedroom (literally, just their jobs) that she might as well not have bothered. At least it was clearly written, and the joke at the end made me laugh a little.
“True Emotions” by Rai Scodras
Rose, an albino model, meets Imogen, a member of a “lesbian band” (this gave me eye twitches, since Rose seemed to be equating “all-women” with “lesbian”). Although Rose keeps Imogen at a distance at first, used to people only seeing her as a famous model, she eventually thaws.
This was another story that didn't have much of a plot beyond “girl meets girl.” It was at least fairly clearly written, and I liked the detail about Imogen's rosary, which she used to keep track of the amount of time she's been sober. Rose seems to be an albino entirely on an aesthetic level, though, with no mentions of any real-life considerations. For example, she didn't seem to worry at all about sun exposure when she went back outside without her hat.
This is another story in which the main character was surprisingly open about her asexuality. The very same day Rose learns that she's probably an asexual, she's shouting it out for all the world to hear. I also thought her relationship with Imogen progressed awfully fast – she'd only known her for a few hours, and yet she had no qualms about announcing a relationship with her to the paparazzi.
“Thanksgiving Dinner” by Madeline Bridgen
This wasn't really a story. I don't even know what to say about it, and I'm not sure what its point was. Also, the bit from the POV of the bird was just bizarre.
“Shades of Gray (A)” by Chelsey Brinson
Matt is gay; David is asexual. Matt has been in love with David for a while but hasn't said anything about it. David suddenly starts telling Matt that he thinks he might not be asexual after all – he thinks he may be demisexual, a person who does not experience sexual attraction without a strong emotional connection. Matt is horrified, sure that this means he's lost David to someone else.
I have a feeling that the author's primary writing experience is fanfic, because the writing in this story felt like quite a few fanfics I've read: first person present tense, with pages and pages of writing that could have been edited down. I put up with this sort of thing in fanfic, because I read for the characters and situations. David and Matt just weren't interesting enough for me to give the writing a pass.
This entire story is a single conversation about David's asexuality. David basically gives Matt a lecture on the difference between asexuals, greysexuals, and demisexuals, and there are even mentions of the Kinsey scale. Who talks like this? Anyway, it took Matt pages longer to figure out what David was saying than it should have – he wasn't very bright.
All in all, this story felt a bit like Sexuality for Dummies.
“Paradoxical Perfection” by Mursheda Ahad
Rhydian and Felix meet and instantly connect. They understand each other on a level neither one has ever experienced before. Things are going well, until Rhydian falls ill with something that only Felix seems to be able to help with.
This was an absolute slog to get through. The writing was extremely awkward, and nothing about it seemed natural. An example: “The sudden emancipation of music, so enchanting, prevented him from actually questioning where its source of dispersion was to be found” (105). If you can believe it, this was contemporary-set – not an attempt at a historical. Even the dialogue was like this. The result was an unnecessarily long and sometimes difficult to follow story. It needed a complete clarity rewrite.
I couldn't take either of the characters seriously – Rhydian, in particular, seemed really stuck up. The best I could say is that they were definitely suited for each other. That said, their relationship took a disturbing turn that wasn't ever properly dealt with. Just, “He only did this terrible thing to me because he loved me so!” Ugh.
“Sketch” by Stephanie Charvat
Erin is sketching Heather, who is naked but for a sheet. Later, it's revealed that Erin and Heather are a couple: Erin is asexual and Heather is sexual.
Like many of the stories in this anthology, there is no plot. Erin is happy to have found Heather, who doesn't mind that Erin isn't interested in having sex. After slogging through the previous story, this story's clear writing was a relief. However, it's nothing more than a moment in time. It's a “meh” story that benefited from being placed after an awful one.
“Five Lies” by Kari Woodrow
This story is composed of five moments in Joseph's life: realizing that he's not interested in having sex with his girlfriend; learning about asexuality; telling his ex-girlfriend that he's asexual; dating his best friend and being unable to tell him that he's asexual; and lying to his brother about his feelings of regret.
This story was written in present tense, which I'm not that fond of. Also, it is definitely not a romance - the ending is a downer. I thought it was decently written, but it was a very good example of why I hesitate to call this a romance anthology.
“Good PR” by Esther Day
Ben has always been an irresponsible party animal, and his mother, Evelyn, is tired of it. She figures that, if he gets married, he'll settle down and become someone who might be able to one day take over her multi-billion dollar company. James and Ben are both shocked when she decides the two of them would be perfect for each other. James worries that Ben wouldn't want to be married to an asexual guy like him, and Ben worries that James doesn't want to be married to anyone, period.
This was one of the book's longer stories, and I worried that the longer length would just mean more suffering on my part. Happily, that was not the case. This is by far my favorite story in the whole book. It's also one of the few I feel confident referring to as a romance.
I never quite understood why Ben was the way he was, because Evelyn, his mother, seemed awesome and very astute. I also wondered how Ben and James came to share a home, well before Evelyn's “you two should get married!” idea. On the whole, though, I loved this story. Because Ben and James had been friends for a good chunk of their lives, I didn't get the feeling things were going too fast. I at first was annoyed that two men who supposedly knew each other so well suddenly couldn't seem to communicate, but I eventually realized it made sense. James was the one who usually forced Ben to communicate, and James was too twisted up over the impending marriage Evelyn had basically sprung on them to get Ben to talk to him like he normally did.
I really liked this story, which meant that the various typos and formatting errors really hurt. Even worse, there were new types of errors I hadn't seen before in this anthology: homophone misspellings, multiple instances of “James's s”, and more. This story left me with a smile on my face, but the editing issues did it a disservice.
Goodreads Rating Note: I averaged my grades for all the stories and came up with 2.5. I rounded down, rather than up, because my overall impression of the anthology was not very good.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
Here are the P2P details:
Andrea R. Blackwell's "An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk Into a Bar" was originally round_robin's Sherlock fanfic of the same title. Here's the link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/402827
You have got to be kidding me. You couldn't even bring yourself to write a brand-new, original short story? If I learn that any of the other stories in this anthology are P2P fanfic, I'll include the details for those, too.
My review, otherwise unchanged, is below.
------------------------------
I was super-excited when I heard this anthology was going to be coming out, because I wanted to see what asexual romance stories would be like. Then I realized that this was the same publisher that put out Accessible Love Stories , which I had heard had terrible editing and contained stories that didn't always qualify as romance. I crossed my fingers and hoped that this anthology would be better.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Typos, incorrect word usage, homophone misspellings, and formatting errors were everywhere. Several of the stories could have used a good deal of polishing prior to being published. There were a few good stories, several so-so stories, and a few really awful stories.
Still, this is one of less than a handful of published works I know of that explicitly tackle asexual relationships. The only other examples I know of are Kate Aaron's Lost Realm series and some Sherlock fanfics. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who wasn't actively seeking out asexual romance, but it has a few decent stories for those who are.
[A note on the cover: While I like that it's eye-catching, I do think it was a terrible choice for this anthology. It manages to feel both sexual and sterile at the same time.]
“Out of the Dead Land” by A.J. Hall
This story deals with two men who are the only audience members in a theater showing Gone with the Wind. After the movie, they get to talking and become close enough for both of them to consider doing more than just talking. However, one man is asexual, and one man is not.
This was one of the better stories in this anthology, but it took me a lot of work to get my bearings. I think it's because of something Hall notes at the end of the story, that Philip tends to think in quotations. There were sentences that didn't quite make sense in context, but I don't have the background to be able to say whether or not they were quotations.
Things became clearer and easier to follow once Philip and Kevin, the main characters, started talking. I felt that their relationship moved a little too quickly, no matter how well they got along (they only just met!), and Kevin was way more reasonable and understanding than I would have expected someone to be, faced with Philip's reaction. It would have been less jarring for Philip to have sought Kevin out instead.
Also, this is a personal preference of mine, but I like short stories to have a plot. This one didn't, not really. Guy meets guy, they talk, things don't work out for a moment, and then they do. That was pretty much it.
“Aphrodite Hour” by Sarah Sinnaeve
Rita, a radio talk show host, is being accosted by a guy who's trying to get her to agree to sex she doesn't want. She's saved by Maddie. She and Maddie get along well, really well, but Rita is nervous at the thought that Maddie, too, might end up expecting more than she's willing and able to give.
I raised an eyebrow at how freely Rita referred to her asexuality. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but Rita was a special case: she was the host of a radio talk show focusing on relationship advice. There was no indication that she was open about her asexuality on the air, and, considering that the vast majority of people are sexual, I would think that news of her asexuality could potentially hurt her career – would people be as willing to ask an openly asexual person for relationship advice? She didn't worry about this even once during the whole story, though.
I was uncomfortable with the way she thought about her encounter with the guy in the beginning of the story in relation to her asexuality. The way he was behaving, I wouldn't have faulted a sexual woman for saying, “Get lost, jerk.” However, there's a part where Rita's thoughts implied that her primary reason for refusing the guy was her asexuality. What would she have told a caller on her show? “You should sleep with him, because you don't mind sex and he expects to have sex with you”?
This, like the first story, is one of several that features a budding relationship between a sexual person and an asexual person, but no attempt is made to show how that might work – it's very much a HFN ending, with Maddie willing to try to make a relationship with an asexual person work but not really sure if it will.
“Stuck in Possibilities” by Flavia Napoleoni
This story covers a long period of time, from Ingrid's childhood to adulthood. When she was younger, she essentially fell in love with her best friend, who, unfortunately, didn't understand or want the kind of relationship she wanted. He broke her heart, but she eventually met and fell for another asexual person. However, events occurred that caused her feelings for her childhood friend to bubble up again.
I got the impression that asexual relationships in this story were something like very intense friendships, to the exclusion of almost everything else. It didn't feel quite healthy. My biggest problem with this story, though, was that I didn't really like any of the characters. Ingrid, in particular, grated on my nerves. In attempting to describe herself, she managed to be pretty insulting – for example, she was not a “silly romance reader, waiting for the love of her life while drooling on Harlequin books” (31). My rage, it was great. She also claimed that she didn't daydream, and yet her description of what she did do (she liked to imagine what-ifs) sounded an awful lot like daydreaming. She was a pretty interesting character, but her snobbishness made it really difficult to like her.
I felt sorry for Tom, for getting stuck with Ingrid. I think the story was meant to end in a bittersweet but uplifting way, but for me it was kind of a downer. Although it had romantic relationships, I did not consider this story a romance. It had the feel of something that was trying to be lit fic.
One thing of note: I think this may be the first time I've reviewed something with a prominent transsexual character.
“An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk into a Bar” by Andrea R. Blackwell
Greg is hypersexual, while Jamie is asexual. Jamie doesn't seem to mind giving Greg blow jobs, but Greg thinks it's not fair that he's always on the receiving end of any of their sexual activities.
As you may have guessed from my description of this story, there is sex. On-page sex. I was actually pretty surprised, and readers who seek this collection out specifically for asexual relationships that don't go beyond kissing and cuddling will probably not enjoy this story. I appreciated it as one of the few stories that explained how a relationship between a sexual person and an asexual person might work. This is, of course, only one possibility, but it was still interesting.
Unfortunately, this felt more like an extended and somewhat graphic explanation of how such a relationship might work than an actual story. Jamie's explanations to Greg felt like they could have been culled from an AVEN forum post, and the author revealed so little of what the characters were like outside of the bedroom (literally, just their jobs) that she might as well not have bothered. At least it was clearly written, and the joke at the end made me laugh a little.
“True Emotions” by Rai Scodras
Rose, an albino model, meets Imogen, a member of a “lesbian band” (this gave me eye twitches, since Rose seemed to be equating “all-women” with “lesbian”). Although Rose keeps Imogen at a distance at first, used to people only seeing her as a famous model, she eventually thaws.
This was another story that didn't have much of a plot beyond “girl meets girl.” It was at least fairly clearly written, and I liked the detail about Imogen's rosary, which she used to keep track of the amount of time she's been sober. Rose seems to be an albino entirely on an aesthetic level, though, with no mentions of any real-life considerations. For example, she didn't seem to worry at all about sun exposure when she went back outside without her hat.
This is another story in which the main character was surprisingly open about her asexuality. The very same day Rose learns that she's probably an asexual, she's shouting it out for all the world to hear. I also thought her relationship with Imogen progressed awfully fast – she'd only known her for a few hours, and yet she had no qualms about announcing a relationship with her to the paparazzi.
“Thanksgiving Dinner” by Madeline Bridgen
This wasn't really a story. I don't even know what to say about it, and I'm not sure what its point was. Also, the bit from the POV of the bird was just bizarre.
“Shades of Gray (A)” by Chelsey Brinson
Matt is gay; David is asexual. Matt has been in love with David for a while but hasn't said anything about it. David suddenly starts telling Matt that he thinks he might not be asexual after all – he thinks he may be demisexual, a person who does not experience sexual attraction without a strong emotional connection. Matt is horrified, sure that this means he's lost David to someone else.
I have a feeling that the author's primary writing experience is fanfic, because the writing in this story felt like quite a few fanfics I've read: first person present tense, with pages and pages of writing that could have been edited down. I put up with this sort of thing in fanfic, because I read for the characters and situations. David and Matt just weren't interesting enough for me to give the writing a pass.
This entire story is a single conversation about David's asexuality. David basically gives Matt a lecture on the difference between asexuals, greysexuals, and demisexuals, and there are even mentions of the Kinsey scale. Who talks like this? Anyway, it took Matt pages longer to figure out what David was saying than it should have – he wasn't very bright.
All in all, this story felt a bit like Sexuality for Dummies.
“Paradoxical Perfection” by Mursheda Ahad
Rhydian and Felix meet and instantly connect. They understand each other on a level neither one has ever experienced before. Things are going well, until Rhydian falls ill with something that only Felix seems to be able to help with.
This was an absolute slog to get through. The writing was extremely awkward, and nothing about it seemed natural. An example: “The sudden emancipation of music, so enchanting, prevented him from actually questioning where its source of dispersion was to be found” (105). If you can believe it, this was contemporary-set – not an attempt at a historical. Even the dialogue was like this. The result was an unnecessarily long and sometimes difficult to follow story. It needed a complete clarity rewrite.
I couldn't take either of the characters seriously – Rhydian, in particular, seemed really stuck up. The best I could say is that they were definitely suited for each other. That said, their relationship took a disturbing turn that wasn't ever properly dealt with. Just, “He only did this terrible thing to me because he loved me so!” Ugh.
“Sketch” by Stephanie Charvat
Erin is sketching Heather, who is naked but for a sheet. Later, it's revealed that Erin and Heather are a couple: Erin is asexual and Heather is sexual.
Like many of the stories in this anthology, there is no plot. Erin is happy to have found Heather, who doesn't mind that Erin isn't interested in having sex. After slogging through the previous story, this story's clear writing was a relief. However, it's nothing more than a moment in time. It's a “meh” story that benefited from being placed after an awful one.
“Five Lies” by Kari Woodrow
This story is composed of five moments in Joseph's life: realizing that he's not interested in having sex with his girlfriend; learning about asexuality; telling his ex-girlfriend that he's asexual; dating his best friend and being unable to tell him that he's asexual; and lying to his brother about his feelings of regret.
This story was written in present tense, which I'm not that fond of. Also, it is definitely not a romance - the ending is a downer. I thought it was decently written, but it was a very good example of why I hesitate to call this a romance anthology.
“Good PR” by Esther Day
Ben has always been an irresponsible party animal, and his mother, Evelyn, is tired of it. She figures that, if he gets married, he'll settle down and become someone who might be able to one day take over her multi-billion dollar company. James and Ben are both shocked when she decides the two of them would be perfect for each other. James worries that Ben wouldn't want to be married to an asexual guy like him, and Ben worries that James doesn't want to be married to anyone, period.
This was one of the book's longer stories, and I worried that the longer length would just mean more suffering on my part. Happily, that was not the case. This is by far my favorite story in the whole book. It's also one of the few I feel confident referring to as a romance.
I never quite understood why Ben was the way he was, because Evelyn, his mother, seemed awesome and very astute. I also wondered how Ben and James came to share a home, well before Evelyn's “you two should get married!” idea. On the whole, though, I loved this story. Because Ben and James had been friends for a good chunk of their lives, I didn't get the feeling things were going too fast. I at first was annoyed that two men who supposedly knew each other so well suddenly couldn't seem to communicate, but I eventually realized it made sense. James was the one who usually forced Ben to communicate, and James was too twisted up over the impending marriage Evelyn had basically sprung on them to get Ben to talk to him like he normally did.
I really liked this story, which meant that the various typos and formatting errors really hurt. Even worse, there were new types of errors I hadn't seen before in this anthology: homophone misspellings, multiple instances of “James's s”, and more. This story left me with a smile on my face, but the editing issues did it a disservice.
Goodreads Rating Note: I averaged my grades for all the stories and came up with 2.5. I rounded down, rather than up, because my overall impression of the anthology was not very good.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
August 15, 2012
The Heart Of Aces
A very unique and original book of short stories. Each story has real life characters and situations. The uniqueness of this book, each story is about an asexual person, told through their eyes. It was informative and entertaining and I was in awes at the talent of these Authors (some of which are quite young).
And finally each Author is asexual and gave a brief description of them self. I really enjoyed this read (even though this is not my usual genre) I am always open to read great books that are recommended to me.
A very unique and original book of short stories. Each story has real life characters and situations. The uniqueness of this book, each story is about an asexual person, told through their eyes. It was informative and entertaining and I was in awes at the talent of these Authors (some of which are quite young).
And finally each Author is asexual and gave a brief description of them self. I really enjoyed this read (even though this is not my usual genre) I am always open to read great books that are recommended to me.
December 19, 2012
It's always great to see alternative sexualities and lifestyles represented. I hadn't given asexuality much thought before this, to be honest, so it was interesting to see romance through the eyes of an ace. These stories were well-crafted and interesting, and in addition to the main theme of asexuality, I was happy to see some of the pairings were LGBTQ as well. Hurray for diversity and bucking the heteronormative!
June 11, 2017
[Update 7/1/16 - I wrote this review two and a half years ago, and afaik since that time things haven't changed in terms of ace representation, unfortunately. But since that time, I've realised that I'm a demisexual demiromantic trans lesbian, not an asexual hetero-/alloromantic cis boy, so uh. That gives you some indication of how much of my own sexuality I still didn't grasp at the time, which probably shows up here. If I were to read this again, I don't know how much this review would or wouldn't change. My first thought was "well, I can't be f**ked to read it again since it wasn't very good" (pun intended), but after reading this review back, the only stories I remember at all are Stuck in Possibilities, True Emotions, and the cringe Johnlock one. (I learned from another of these reviews that Shades of Grey (A) was a Johnlock fic too, but I actually don't remember that one.) So maybe I should go back and read the book again after all...]
This anthology is worth about what it costs, $3 for an e-book (specifically, Kindle; to my annoyance, it's not available for Nook or iBooks, so I had to buy the Kindle version and spend hours using Calibre to convert it to work on my Nook). The quality of the stories varies widely, as explored below, and as other reviewers have noted, they're riddled with typographic errors, and the formatting is inconsistent. I wish someone at the publisher would have paid a bit more attention to detail, because the copyediting is so bad that I think it must actually have been nonexistent, to be honest. But it's nice to have SOMETHING out there about ace spectrum people, given that other than this collection, all we've had published about us is two nonfiction books, one of which wasn't even written by an ace. I just wish more care had been put into it than compiling things willy-nilly into a Microsoft Word document (because it's obvious from the formatting in the e-book files that that's exactly what happened), and that they'd chosen the stories more carefully, though in fairness, they probably didn't have a lot to start with.
A.J. Hall, "Out of the Dead Land" - An ace meets a non-ace at a movie showing of Gone with the Wind, and tries to suppress his discomfort with love interests trying to push themselves on him sexually. It's nothing really special, but it's a good enough story that it persuaded me to buy the anthology based on the sample. M/M.
Sarah Sinnaeve, "Aphrodite Hour" - Short but very cute, and probably my favorite story here. A female ace is rescued from a sexual harasser by another woman, and the two go out for coffee. F/F.
Flavia Napoleoni, "Stuck in Possibilities" - I found the narrative style really off-putting, and it was far too didactic (the book's audience doesn't need to have asexuality defined several times over), but the story is interesting: an ace middle-schooler is rejected by her best friend and crush for her sexuality, and as a college student takes a flat with another of their classmates, who has transitioned to a transman. Still, far be it from me to disparage young writers (since I am one myself), but the author's age and lack of experience show; her style is clumsy and seems determined to be as explicit about revealing queerness as possible, when more elegant allusions to queerplatonic partners (for instance) would have had more effect. F/M.
Andrea R. Blackwell, "An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk into a Bar" - Unbelievably clunky title aside (though it's not like The Heart of Aces isn't clunky to begin with), it shares the last story's didacticness, and it didn't have a lot of character development. It's literally just an ace character explaining to his boyfriend why he doesn't mind performing oral sex on him. (And it was originally a John/Sherlock fic — gag.) M/M.
Rai Scodras, "True Emotions" - Probably my second-favorite. A model falls for a punk singer, who helps her figure out her sexuality. It actually seems to have been proofread, which is a nice change, though I took objection to how rapey the singer's actions at one point seemed, and how that was never addressed, and I'm not sure how a billboard model could have the fame of an actor or popstar. Still, it's a good little story with enjoyable characters, and isn't too explicatory in revealing their sexualities, though I was taken aback by how quickly the model adopted a label, seemingly without thinking about it at all. F/F.
Madeline Bridgen, "Thanksgiving Dinner" - I didn't understand this one at all. It's incredibly short, and is actually about a girl's pet bird flying into the room while her cousin plays computer games. It only has a very brief mention of asexuality (or anything sexual or romantic at all), and it doesn't really have anything resembling a plot.
Chelsey Brinson, "Shades of Gray (A)" - Another extremely clunky title, and kind of a clunky story to match. It's less a narrative, and more the kind of thing you'd read in a textbook to provide an example of a certain topic, in this case demi- and gray-asexuality. M/M.
Mursheda Ahad, "Paradoxical Perfection" - I couldn't read this one at all, thanks to the author's constant use of enormous words in what must have been an attempt to appear literary, since it only makes things so confusing as to have no meaning at all. Sample passage: "Tendrils of a diaphanous smoke dispersed themselves through the depths of the atmosphere, emanating from the hindermost corner of town whereupon a solitary figure sat, in the mist and darkness, only shadowed by the ochre glow of light admitted through the half-unclosed door of the figure's home." Yeah.
Stephanie Charvat, "Sketch" - Very brief, but sweet. An artist finds a model who respects that she only wants nudity for the sake of aesthetics. F/F.
Kari Woodrow, "Five Lies" - This one was also hard to follow. I think the point was supposed to be that the character was ace/aro, but it's strung together in a way that's awfully confusing. M/F, M/M.
Esther Day, "Good PR" - By far the longest piece (it's almost long enough to be a novella), and one of the better written, though it still has formatting problems. It employs one of my favorite tropes, two people in love who each think their love for the other is unrequited, and does it well, so it automatically wins some favor from me, and it's appealing, but it does drag (though that may just be the result of it coming after such relatively short stories). M/M.
As you can see, the vast majority of the stories are about same-sex relationships, with only one explicitly heteroromantic protagonist ("Stuck in Possibilities") and one who's explicitly bi-/panromantic ("Five Lies") - unless, of course, "Paradoxical Perfection" had one of the two; I wouldn't know since I couldn't read it. It's also interesting that all of the authors but one are female, with the one (Rai Scodras) being non-binary and writing about an F/F relationship. Makes me wonder about the gender makeup of the ace spectrum - it'd be interesting to have some good data on that.
[Edit 7/1/16 - I pulled a sentence from the last paragraph about me being hetero because HAHAHAHA and clarified the last sentence a little bit because I think it came across as being kind of snotty toward male and nb aces. At this time, I think I'd add that it's a little disappointing that there's only one trans character in the book, and I don't actually remember if he was even ace or not. I know it's because I'm ace and trans and confirmation bias is a thing, but it sure seems to me from my experience that trans people are acespec a lot more often than cis people, and acespec people seem to be trans a little more often than allos.]
Basically, if you're ace spectrum and looking for some short fiction that gives you a little representation, you may as well buy this, since you're not going to get explicit representation anywhere else. I only hope that as awareness increases we'll see some work of higher quality, and put out with more attention to detail.
This anthology is worth about what it costs, $3 for an e-book (specifically, Kindle; to my annoyance, it's not available for Nook or iBooks, so I had to buy the Kindle version and spend hours using Calibre to convert it to work on my Nook). The quality of the stories varies widely, as explored below, and as other reviewers have noted, they're riddled with typographic errors, and the formatting is inconsistent. I wish someone at the publisher would have paid a bit more attention to detail, because the copyediting is so bad that I think it must actually have been nonexistent, to be honest. But it's nice to have SOMETHING out there about ace spectrum people, given that other than this collection, all we've had published about us is two nonfiction books, one of which wasn't even written by an ace. I just wish more care had been put into it than compiling things willy-nilly into a Microsoft Word document (because it's obvious from the formatting in the e-book files that that's exactly what happened), and that they'd chosen the stories more carefully, though in fairness, they probably didn't have a lot to start with.
A.J. Hall, "Out of the Dead Land" - An ace meets a non-ace at a movie showing of Gone with the Wind, and tries to suppress his discomfort with love interests trying to push themselves on him sexually. It's nothing really special, but it's a good enough story that it persuaded me to buy the anthology based on the sample. M/M.
Sarah Sinnaeve, "Aphrodite Hour" - Short but very cute, and probably my favorite story here. A female ace is rescued from a sexual harasser by another woman, and the two go out for coffee. F/F.
Flavia Napoleoni, "Stuck in Possibilities" - I found the narrative style really off-putting, and it was far too didactic (the book's audience doesn't need to have asexuality defined several times over), but the story is interesting: an ace middle-schooler is rejected by her best friend and crush for her sexuality, and as a college student takes a flat with another of their classmates, who has transitioned to a transman. Still, far be it from me to disparage young writers (since I am one myself), but the author's age and lack of experience show; her style is clumsy and seems determined to be as explicit about revealing queerness as possible, when more elegant allusions to queerplatonic partners (for instance) would have had more effect. F/M.
Andrea R. Blackwell, "An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk into a Bar" - Unbelievably clunky title aside (though it's not like The Heart of Aces isn't clunky to begin with), it shares the last story's didacticness, and it didn't have a lot of character development. It's literally just an ace character explaining to his boyfriend why he doesn't mind performing oral sex on him. (And it was originally a John/Sherlock fic — gag.) M/M.
Rai Scodras, "True Emotions" - Probably my second-favorite. A model falls for a punk singer, who helps her figure out her sexuality. It actually seems to have been proofread, which is a nice change, though I took objection to how rapey the singer's actions at one point seemed, and how that was never addressed, and I'm not sure how a billboard model could have the fame of an actor or popstar. Still, it's a good little story with enjoyable characters, and isn't too explicatory in revealing their sexualities, though I was taken aback by how quickly the model adopted a label, seemingly without thinking about it at all. F/F.
Madeline Bridgen, "Thanksgiving Dinner" - I didn't understand this one at all. It's incredibly short, and is actually about a girl's pet bird flying into the room while her cousin plays computer games. It only has a very brief mention of asexuality (or anything sexual or romantic at all), and it doesn't really have anything resembling a plot.
Chelsey Brinson, "Shades of Gray (A)" - Another extremely clunky title, and kind of a clunky story to match. It's less a narrative, and more the kind of thing you'd read in a textbook to provide an example of a certain topic, in this case demi- and gray-asexuality. M/M.
Mursheda Ahad, "Paradoxical Perfection" - I couldn't read this one at all, thanks to the author's constant use of enormous words in what must have been an attempt to appear literary, since it only makes things so confusing as to have no meaning at all. Sample passage: "Tendrils of a diaphanous smoke dispersed themselves through the depths of the atmosphere, emanating from the hindermost corner of town whereupon a solitary figure sat, in the mist and darkness, only shadowed by the ochre glow of light admitted through the half-unclosed door of the figure's home." Yeah.
Stephanie Charvat, "Sketch" - Very brief, but sweet. An artist finds a model who respects that she only wants nudity for the sake of aesthetics. F/F.
Kari Woodrow, "Five Lies" - This one was also hard to follow. I think the point was supposed to be that the character was ace/aro, but it's strung together in a way that's awfully confusing. M/F, M/M.
Esther Day, "Good PR" - By far the longest piece (it's almost long enough to be a novella), and one of the better written, though it still has formatting problems. It employs one of my favorite tropes, two people in love who each think their love for the other is unrequited, and does it well, so it automatically wins some favor from me, and it's appealing, but it does drag (though that may just be the result of it coming after such relatively short stories). M/M.
As you can see, the vast majority of the stories are about same-sex relationships, with only one explicitly heteroromantic protagonist ("Stuck in Possibilities") and one who's explicitly bi-/panromantic ("Five Lies") - unless, of course, "Paradoxical Perfection" had one of the two; I wouldn't know since I couldn't read it. It's also interesting that all of the authors but one are female, with the one (Rai Scodras) being non-binary and writing about an F/F relationship. Makes me wonder about the gender makeup of the ace spectrum - it'd be interesting to have some good data on that.
[Edit 7/1/16 - I pulled a sentence from the last paragraph about me being hetero because HAHAHAHA and clarified the last sentence a little bit because I think it came across as being kind of snotty toward male and nb aces. At this time, I think I'd add that it's a little disappointing that there's only one trans character in the book, and I don't actually remember if he was even ace or not. I know it's because I'm ace and trans and confirmation bias is a thing, but it sure seems to me from my experience that trans people are acespec a lot more often than cis people, and acespec people seem to be trans a little more often than allos.]
Basically, if you're ace spectrum and looking for some short fiction that gives you a little representation, you may as well buy this, since you're not going to get explicit representation anywhere else. I only hope that as awareness increases we'll see some work of higher quality, and put out with more attention to detail.
July 10, 2021
This was a really mixed bag for me. Some of the stories I liked. Some were okay. One was so full of #deep purple prose I couldn't get through more than two pages of it. The last story put a goofy, happy grin on my face and made me laugh out loud. Many of the stories featured gay couples. I don't think there was a single story were asexuality was the only lgbtqia+ element in it.
Most of these stories lacked editing. They tend to be quite heavyhanded. I would have liked to see just one cis-gendered heterosexual couple, since that part of the ace spectrum faces a lot of erasure. One story was from the POV of a Cis woman who ends up in a relationship with a trans man after misgendering multiple times and deadnaming him once. It was written in a way to justify it but it left me feeling bad. On top of that it seemed like she was only dating him because he was there and okay with her being ace when her previous partner wasn't. It seemed very forced.
Overall the collection showed different parts of the spectrum which I really appreciated, but giving it any more than three stars wouldn't be justified. The final story would get five stars on its own though.
Most of these stories lacked editing. They tend to be quite heavyhanded. I would have liked to see just one cis-gendered heterosexual couple, since that part of the ace spectrum faces a lot of erasure. One story was from the POV of a Cis woman who ends up in a relationship with a trans man after misgendering multiple times and deadnaming him once. It was written in a way to justify it but it left me feeling bad. On top of that it seemed like she was only dating him because he was there and okay with her being ace when her previous partner wasn't. It seemed very forced.
Overall the collection showed different parts of the spectrum which I really appreciated, but giving it any more than three stars wouldn't be justified. The final story would get five stars on its own though.
August 16, 2015
First of all, this is the first lgbtqa (I honestly have no idea if I even wrote this correctly) I've read and it consists of various short stories about relationships involving at least an asexual person. Some are longer, some are just little snippet's of the couple's daily life. In any case, rather than reading this just for fun, I was looking forward to seeing things from the character's perspective, and comparing it to my own. That's what I usually expect from short stories centering around a serious theme.
Ir did a pretty good job of showcasing various types of asexual relationships and the asexual spectrum and perspective but I feel like it lacked one thing: a relationship between a 100% "normal" person and an asexual. Because not every ace will end up with someone of the same sex, or with a transgender, or even with someone who's familiar with the term "asexual". So I was hoping for a story like that to be included, because I think many people will end up (or are) in that situation. But, whatever, this is a review for what the book is, not what it is not.
There were good stories (one particularly stood out to me, since I could identify with the main character), so-so stories, bad stories, and a particularly cringe-worthy one that was filled to the brim with pretentiousness. Ingrid's story was my favourite, for the aforementioned reason, and Paradoxical Perfection (I think it was Paradoxical Perfection, at least) was so bad I feel like I should congratulate myself for reading it to the end.
Although I noticed a few typos, they weren't as many as previous reviewers mentioned (the publisher's probably revised the book, or maybe my English's got worse?) and they didn't bother me... much.
tl;dr: good range of asexuality, mediocre literature
Ir did a pretty good job of showcasing various types of asexual relationships and the asexual spectrum and perspective but I feel like it lacked one thing: a relationship between a 100% "normal" person and an asexual. Because not every ace will end up with someone of the same sex, or with a transgender, or even with someone who's familiar with the term "asexual". So I was hoping for a story like that to be included, because I think many people will end up (or are) in that situation. But, whatever, this is a review for what the book is, not what it is not.
There were good stories (one particularly stood out to me, since I could identify with the main character), so-so stories, bad stories, and a particularly cringe-worthy one that was filled to the brim with pretentiousness. Ingrid's story was my favourite, for the aforementioned reason, and Paradoxical Perfection (I think it was Paradoxical Perfection, at least) was so bad I feel like I should congratulate myself for reading it to the end.
Although I noticed a few typos, they weren't as many as previous reviewers mentioned (the publisher's probably revised the book, or maybe my English's got worse?) and they didn't bother me... much.
tl;dr: good range of asexuality, mediocre literature
September 21, 2014
I really wasn't sure what I was getting with this book when I read it was supposed to be eleven stories in such a short book. But I got it nevertheless, and I was nicely surprised. True, I expected a little more, but it's been a nice and sweet book.
I liked most of the stories. I might not have liked a few, I think only two. One I really didn't get, and the other was written in a very dry sort of a way. A bit like books from the beginning of the last century. Which is quite something.
Apart from that I like the rest of the stories. They were mostly how did people meet and came together, exposing the true nature of their sexuality. And the rest of the stories were from an already existing relationship, sometimes overcoming an obstacle. They were really sweet and sincere. It's just a shame they were so short. With some I'd like to read a little more, and with others I'd like to have a whole novel really. It's just that some of the stories were so captivating that I'd love to know more about the characters and what happened next. Also about the working out their differences – sexual & asexual.
Anyway, this book nicely captures the different aspects of asexuality as well as other sexualities and also a gender identity. Asexuality is often mistaken for something different, or even believed to be non-existing. And many people say a lot of bad about it. This book depicts it nicely.
A very nice book with the realistic depictions of asexuality. Can recommend it.
I liked most of the stories. I might not have liked a few, I think only two. One I really didn't get, and the other was written in a very dry sort of a way. A bit like books from the beginning of the last century. Which is quite something.
Apart from that I like the rest of the stories. They were mostly how did people meet and came together, exposing the true nature of their sexuality. And the rest of the stories were from an already existing relationship, sometimes overcoming an obstacle. They were really sweet and sincere. It's just a shame they were so short. With some I'd like to read a little more, and with others I'd like to have a whole novel really. It's just that some of the stories were so captivating that I'd love to know more about the characters and what happened next. Also about the working out their differences – sexual & asexual.
Anyway, this book nicely captures the different aspects of asexuality as well as other sexualities and also a gender identity. Asexuality is often mistaken for something different, or even believed to be non-existing. And many people say a lot of bad about it. This book depicts it nicely.
A very nice book with the realistic depictions of asexuality. Can recommend it.
May 3, 2015
Most of the stories in this anthology read like not especially well written fanfic*, and all of them could do with a good proof reader as there are way too many typos and/or formatting issues.
Worth a read if you are a kindle unlimited subscriber, but not worth paying actual money for.
*at least one of the stories is available on AO3 in its original form as a Sherlock fic. The author has simply changed the names, which in a way explains the rather odd, unexplained, personality traits of the main characters.
Update: two of the stories are available on AO3 as Sherlock fic. I am sensing a pattern here...
Worth a read if you are a kindle unlimited subscriber, but not worth paying actual money for.
*at least one of the stories is available on AO3 in its original form as a Sherlock fic. The author has simply changed the names, which in a way explains the rather odd, unexplained, personality traits of the main characters.
Update: two of the stories are available on AO3 as Sherlock fic. I am sensing a pattern here...
July 24, 2017
Īss stāstu krājums, kurā galvenie varoņi ir aseksuāli. Stāsti ir romantiski un diezgan izglītojoši. Pēc katra stāsta ir īss bio par katru autoru, diezgan pārsteidzoši ir tas, ka vienam no autoriem ir tikai 14 gadi. Kā jau tas parasti ir ar šādiem krājumiem - ir stāsti, kas ļoti patīk un ir, kas ļoti nepatīk. Pats pēdējais stāsts mani ietekmēja visvairāk un līdz ar to viss krājums man beidzās uz ļoti pozitīvas nots.
Iesaku izlasīt tiem, kurus interesē uzzināt vairāk par aseksualitāti, bet nevēlas lasīt sausus faktus.
Iesaku izlasīt tiem, kurus interesē uzzināt vairāk par aseksualitāti, bet nevēlas lasīt sausus faktus.
June 20, 2013
I'm not much of a romance fan, so I didn't fall completely in love with this (and that... wasn't meant to be clever wordplay, mutter, grumble), but I appreciate the heck out of what it is and what it's doing, and quite enjoyed several of the stories. "Out of the Dead Land" by A. J. Hall was a particularly nice story, adding in some nice metatextual elements about great love stories and asexuality.
August 29, 2012
This book has a great variety of stories, and represents asexuality in many different ways and different situations. Everyone will probably be able to find at least one story in this book that they adore.
While one or two stories have several obvious editing errors, this is nonetheless a good book put out by a small publishing company.
While one or two stories have several obvious editing errors, this is nonetheless a good book put out by a small publishing company.
October 20, 2014
I really did not know how to rate this one. Based on the quality of much of the writing and editing, it doesn't deserve three stars. But because it's difficult to find stories with asexual characters, I decided to bump it up a little. So while most of the stories weren't very professional quality, I felt it could still be enjoyable.
April 29, 2015
My rating would have been a 4.5 (and therefore scaled down to 4 stars for goodreads) because I REALLY disliked one of the stories in this but then the last one was so adorable and perfect that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I love this anthology and I think I will re-read it fairly often because (apart from that one bad apple) it's everything I wanted it to be :D
January 18, 2015
While some of the stories were really cute others werent. Most of them read like fanfiction and not the good kind
December 15, 2021
To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.
I got this book for Christmas and I was really looking forward to reading it. I love romance novels and I identify in the asexual spectrum so I was expecting magic. I don’t want to do this, but I was let down. While I was happy that asexuals were finally getting in the light and allowed to experience romance, there were many issues I had with the book. This book has many authors so no one author will be singled out as I want them all to keep writing as they are some of the few voices that are being heard on the subject.
My biggest issue is the range of asexuality wasn’t really expressed. So most of the characters were gay, white, middle class, asexual people. There was little to no discussion of greysexual or demisexual (I believe there was one) and no mention of aromantic people at all. There was the issue of all of the asexuals, but one being not into sex. There are many asexuals who love sex that are not being discussed. There are many asexuals that have sex, but don’t enjoy it that weren’t being discussed. Instead all, but that one asexual had no sexual contact (when in reality more asexuals than not have had sex at least once). There was the issue that every asexual was able to find a partner that was ok with their asexuality and their desire to not have sex. All of these relationships were monogamous, while in my personal experience most asexuals in mixed couple (asesxual/allosexual pairings) are open.
I understand that I was expecting a lot from eleven stories, but I was expecting it to be better because so many asexuals were involved. The stories themselves were not on the whole badly written and were mostly entertaining. They often were not anything special and I wasn’t too attached to any of the characters. There was one character that I was really upset about. He was a trans man and of course the girl from his third grade class remembers him and can tell it is him though they have not seen each other in ten plus years and after a medical transition. I was really annoyed by that plot. I was happy a trans character made it in, but I almost wish he hadn’t just because of the plot he was given.
I got this book for Christmas and I was really looking forward to reading it. I love romance novels and I identify in the asexual spectrum so I was expecting magic. I don’t want to do this, but I was let down. While I was happy that asexuals were finally getting in the light and allowed to experience romance, there were many issues I had with the book. This book has many authors so no one author will be singled out as I want them all to keep writing as they are some of the few voices that are being heard on the subject.
My biggest issue is the range of asexuality wasn’t really expressed. So most of the characters were gay, white, middle class, asexual people. There was little to no discussion of greysexual or demisexual (I believe there was one) and no mention of aromantic people at all. There was the issue of all of the asexuals, but one being not into sex. There are many asexuals who love sex that are not being discussed. There are many asexuals that have sex, but don’t enjoy it that weren’t being discussed. Instead all, but that one asexual had no sexual contact (when in reality more asexuals than not have had sex at least once). There was the issue that every asexual was able to find a partner that was ok with their asexuality and their desire to not have sex. All of these relationships were monogamous, while in my personal experience most asexuals in mixed couple (asesxual/allosexual pairings) are open.
I understand that I was expecting a lot from eleven stories, but I was expecting it to be better because so many asexuals were involved. The stories themselves were not on the whole badly written and were mostly entertaining. They often were not anything special and I wasn’t too attached to any of the characters. There was one character that I was really upset about. He was a trans man and of course the girl from his third grade class remembers him and can tell it is him though they have not seen each other in ten plus years and after a medical transition. I was really annoyed by that plot. I was happy a trans character made it in, but I almost wish he hadn’t just because of the plot he was given.
January 1, 2024
This book desperately needs a new cover. Because really? A collection of asexual short stories and they slap a provocative cover on it?! I very nearly didn't read it because of the cover. But the old saying of not judging a book by its cover 100% applies with this one. I enjoyed the content very much. Just not the cover.
July 29, 2018
Yay for the theme and for a legitimate attempt at representation (and the diversity within the Ace community). But... while some of the stories are well written, many seem to have just been filler that fit the theme.
November 27, 2012
This is the second publication from the company (the first being “Accessible Love Stories”, romance focused around wheelchair-bound individuals) and by anyone who looked at me while reading the book—they thought it was a lesbian erotica. However, no, it’s about people finding love despite being asexual. The fact that it was an anthology with asexual characters was the reason why I bought the book in the first place. Why? Because I am asexual! It’s hard to find books with that pretense without it being a Christian Romance novel and the whole reason the characters are not jumping each other’s bones in those books are because ~because God tells me not to~.
This anthology shows the wide spectrum within the asexuality scale and gives non-ace readers the chance to realize that we are not all magic unicorns with prudish personalities. We can and want love too!
There were stories in this book that made me all warm inside while others just made me cringe.
I honor the fact that Good Mourning Publishing wants to break away from popular topics featured in bookstores these days but I am a person turned off by spelling errors in books. Sure, you can have a typo here and there but hkjghkjdghkjghj. When something is bound for public sale, it can be annoying and unhelpful for a seller in the buying decision.
It is very obvious that the publishers just read the stories and choose the best from their submissions but didn’t give much advice to the writers before sending the stories to the printers. I would have enjoyed the anthology much more if the writing was cleaned up and suggestions were given between a set of GMP-based editors and the winning writers. Hell, I know I am not a great reviewer but I can give some heavy suggestions and point out what doesn’t work in a story if the publishers need someone! Hint, Hint. Wink, Wink.
This anthology shows the wide spectrum within the asexuality scale and gives non-ace readers the chance to realize that we are not all magic unicorns with prudish personalities. We can and want love too!
There were stories in this book that made me all warm inside while others just made me cringe.
I honor the fact that Good Mourning Publishing wants to break away from popular topics featured in bookstores these days but I am a person turned off by spelling errors in books. Sure, you can have a typo here and there but hkjghkjdghkjghj. When something is bound for public sale, it can be annoying and unhelpful for a seller in the buying decision.
It is very obvious that the publishers just read the stories and choose the best from their submissions but didn’t give much advice to the writers before sending the stories to the printers. I would have enjoyed the anthology much more if the writing was cleaned up and suggestions were given between a set of GMP-based editors and the winning writers. Hell, I know I am not a great reviewer but I can give some heavy suggestions and point out what doesn’t work in a story if the publishers need someone! Hint, Hint. Wink, Wink.
January 13, 2016
I really wanted to like this. It’s an asexual romance book after all. Representation matters and I’m happy I found it. And tbh, the only reason I finished it is cause eI felt like I somehow owed it to the ace community. But no… it’s not good.
Some of the stories are fine, most are ok and kinda meaningless, and then there’s Paradoxical Perfection. It’s SO LONG, and so bad. If it would’ve been something like four pages it would’ve been fine. Just a speed bump. But no, it’s 43 pages (which feel like more). And the writing is just so incredibly pompous and pretentious and makes very little sense. There’s very little plot, and most just feels like a thesaurus vomited on the page and then drew in it with some black eyeliner and blood. The writing just made me angry but I pushed through. The plot that there was, or rather the core of it, in it could’ve been really good, in a shorter story with a normal language.
The last story, Good PR, is also rather long compared to the rest (42 pages, same length as Paradoxial Perfection but so so much easier and more enjoyable to read) but it’s also very good. Definitely my favourite among them.
It’s a very uneven collection. Maybe it would’ve deserved a firm three stars, if it wasn’t for that 43 page brick to the face.
Some of the stories are fine, most are ok and kinda meaningless, and then there’s Paradoxical Perfection. It’s SO LONG, and so bad. If it would’ve been something like four pages it would’ve been fine. Just a speed bump. But no, it’s 43 pages (which feel like more). And the writing is just so incredibly pompous and pretentious and makes very little sense. There’s very little plot, and most just feels like a thesaurus vomited on the page and then drew in it with some black eyeliner and blood. The writing just made me angry but I pushed through. The plot that there was, or rather the core of it, in it could’ve been really good, in a shorter story with a normal language.
The last story, Good PR, is also rather long compared to the rest (42 pages, same length as Paradoxial Perfection but so so much easier and more enjoyable to read) but it’s also very good. Definitely my favourite among them.
It’s a very uneven collection. Maybe it would’ve deserved a firm three stars, if it wasn’t for that 43 page brick to the face.
March 17, 2015
Firstly I would like to say it's great to see stories with asexual characters and if based only on LGBTQA representation then I would rate this 5/5 Stars. However the following ratings are based on how much I enjoyed the story (and not on grammar/editing errors, mostly because I don't notice them).
11 Short Stories - Overall Rating: 3/5 Stars
Out of the Dead Land By A.J. Hall - 2/5 Stars
Aphrodite Hour By Sarah Sinnaeve - 3/5 Stars
Stuck in Possibilities By Flavia Napoleoni - 4/5 Stars
An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk into a Bar By Andrea R. Blackwell - 2/5 Stars
True Emotions By Rai Scodras - 3/5 Stars
Thanksgiving Dinner By Madeline Bridgen - Um just what? Sorry 1/5 Stars
Shades of Gray (A) By Chelsey Brinson - 4.5/5 Stars
Paradoxical Perfection By Mursheda Ahad - Not for me, sorry just couldn't get into this one. DNF 1/5 Stars
Sketch By Stephanie Charvat - 2/5 Stars
Five Lies By Kari Woodrow - 2/5 Stars
Good PR By Esther Day - 4.5/5 Stars
11 Short Stories - Overall Rating: 3/5 Stars
Out of the Dead Land By A.J. Hall - 2/5 Stars
Aphrodite Hour By Sarah Sinnaeve - 3/5 Stars
Stuck in Possibilities By Flavia Napoleoni - 4/5 Stars
An Asexual and a Hypersexual Walk into a Bar By Andrea R. Blackwell - 2/5 Stars
True Emotions By Rai Scodras - 3/5 Stars
Thanksgiving Dinner By Madeline Bridgen - Um just what? Sorry 1/5 Stars
Shades of Gray (A) By Chelsey Brinson - 4.5/5 Stars
Paradoxical Perfection By Mursheda Ahad - Not for me, sorry just couldn't get into this one. DNF 1/5 Stars
Sketch By Stephanie Charvat - 2/5 Stars
Five Lies By Kari Woodrow - 2/5 Stars
Good PR By Esther Day - 4.5/5 Stars
July 4, 2015
Reading this from the viewpoint as someone who is not asexual was extremely interesting and informative.
I like to consider myself well read on most things LGBTQIA but while these are all works of fiction, I feel like I learned more about asexuality from it than everything I've read online over the years.
Some of the stories were a little hard to get into but they were all so diverse and different and interesting, it made for a wonderful book and I wish there were more books featuring asexual characters, especially best sellers.
I like to consider myself well read on most things LGBTQIA but while these are all works of fiction, I feel like I learned more about asexuality from it than everything I've read online over the years.
Some of the stories were a little hard to get into but they were all so diverse and different and interesting, it made for a wonderful book and I wish there were more books featuring asexual characters, especially best sellers.
August 14, 2012
A collection of eleven short stories about asexuality. I find that subject to be interesting and would be willing to explore that topic in more depth. Some of the stories kept me engaged and I didn't want them to end. I found that some of the stories were rather boring. Overall, if you're interested in the topic of asexuality, you may enjoy this book.
In compliance with FTC guidelines, I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
In compliance with FTC guidelines, I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
September 4, 2012
I won this book through a giveaway on goodreads.com
This book gives good insight to the thoughts and feelings of asexuals with sexual peoples.
Every story is interesting because the scenarios are varied, but the basic message and feelings are all the same. I believe this book would be reassuring to an Ace reader.
This book gives good insight to the thoughts and feelings of asexuals with sexual peoples.
Every story is interesting because the scenarios are varied, but the basic message and feelings are all the same. I believe this book would be reassuring to an Ace reader.
September 26, 2014
A nice variety of stories dealing with individuals who identify themselves as asexuals, or "aces". I next plan to read "The Invisible Orientation" and "No Touching". There needs to be more books dealing with this subject. I was happy to find this anthology.
May 19, 2016
Most of the stories were fairly different so I think most aces will find something they can really relate to. For me personally, I related most to the first story. The main character's thought process when deciding to just do it or not sounded identical to mine, which hit hard.
October 19, 2012
Another way of showing love as a normal manifestation.
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