Bard Picks

03/27/98

The Love of Lao Ma

by Dana Cory

http://barron@barron.simplenet.com/Content-Xena/BarronsFFPage.html

Dana Cory's "The Love of Lao Ma" is a wonderfully erotic, spiritual, and subtly kinky exploration of Xena's relationship with Lao Ma from Xena's point of view. Xena receives an education in Taoism, love, trust, surrender, and sensuality, and the author is particularly effective in showing the progressions and regressions in Xena's growth as a character, with a surprise twist at the end. Very moving, intense, and hot.

Lao Ma's Kiss

by Elaine Sutherland

http://barron@barron.simplenet.com/Content-Xena/BarronsFFPage.html

Elaine Sutherland's "Lao Ma's Kiss" uses the device of a series of letters found in the bindings of a manuscript of the Tao Te Ching. The letters by Lao Ma are presented by "Professor Sutherland" in counterpoint to a Xena scroll relating the same events. As the "editor" tells us, "These two accounts are here set down in juxtaposition. Here two philosophies, Eastern passivity and Western aggressiveness challenge each other and two lives intermingle, and we see the Yin and the Yang turning in the extraordinary spirits of these two women." Thus we learn of the relationship between Xena and Lao Ma and Lao Ma's attempts to instruct Xena from alternating sections of both characters' points of view. The technique works very well in giving us both Xena and Lao Ma's perceptions of each other and of their experiences together. The descriptions are beautifully detailed, and the story very effectively evokes the subtleties in the emotional dynamic between the two characters, providing a convincing and intimate backstory to "The Debt."

Callisto's Antidote

by Friction

http://xwp-altfic.simplenet.com/antidote.txt

Friction's "Callisto's Antidote" begins as a very dark adenture in which Callisto harms Gabrielle in order to gain control over Xena. The dynamic between Callisto and Xena is very powerfully-rendered; at the same time, we see Xena's other side in her tenderness and love for Gabrielle. I particularly liked the way Gabrielle reveals a wonderfully decisive side in her dealings with Xena. The love scenes are rendered with eroticism, affection, and humor.

All three reviews were written by atara.

Thanks atara!!!!

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