Guest Review: The Heart of Aces

The Heart of Aces by Sarah Sinnaeve, Esther Day, Stephanie Charvat, Flavia Napoleoni, Rai Scodras, Mursheda Ahad, Chelsey Brinson, Madeline Bridgen, Andrea R. Blackwell, A.J. Hall, Kari Woodrow
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Pages: 206
Published by Good Mourning Publishing on July 14th 2012
Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

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.

Guest Review by Amy:

The Heart of Aces is a collection of short stories around the theme of asexual romance. This comes as a surprise to some, but there are people who are perfectly happy with romance who get little to nothing out of actual sexual intercourse. If you think it over for a bit, you’ll imagine–correctly–that there’s quite a variety of experiences to be had in there, and this collection gives us a sampling of some of those.

Considering the collection as a whole, I was pretty impressed; there are eleven stories here, showing a good variety of asexual experience, characters from different walks of life, both new and established relationships, relationships both gay and straight, and including a couple of transgender people. I would liked to have seen more straight romances–there were several same-sex relationships depicted, and it felt slightly off-balance. The thing I found refreshing about this collection is that the relationships weren’t depicted as “weird” or “other-than”. In every case, the relationship was a positive move for the participants. As I expected, many of the asexuals struggle with their identity, or are afraid to start relationships, out of fear of rejection–that, for me, was one of the strongest resonances of these tales.

Some of the individual tales bear mentioning as especially high-quality, to this reviewer.  A. J. Hall’s “Out of the Dead Land”, which starts the book, is a very well-crafted story of a first meeting between two older men. Philip is a same-sex-attracted “ace,” and he meets Kevin at an old movie showing. The tension is high, as Philip has been burned many times. Out of fear, just as things get interesting, he flees rather than reveal his sexuality to Kevin–but his new friend isn’t done. The ending is as affirming and sweet as anyone could want. “Aphrodite Hour”, by Sarah Sinnaeve, introduces us to a radio love-advice talk show host who, ironically perhaps, is an asexual. She meets a fan, who isn’t at all taken aback, after shaking off the advances of a strange man in a bar. Another favorite of mine was Chelsey Brinson’s “Shades of Grey (A)”, wherein we meet a man who–in his coming-out to his best friend–says that he’s “only ever really been attracted to one person:” his best friend, of course, who doesn’t realize that he is the target of his demisexual friend’s affection until the very end of the story.  The end of the book brings us “Good PR”, by Esther Day, and a young man who’s been living the party-it-up lifestyle as a cover for his own suppressed strangeness. When his corporate-bigwig mother insists that he must marry, things get dicey for him, especially when his mother sets it up with his best friend, a gay doctor. He must come to grips with his own identity, and his feelings for his friend, and that is predictably difficult; the ending shows us a really cute couple, two people deeply in love with each other, and left me, at least, wanting another page or two to enjoy.

Overall Rating: B-. Some of the stories, as I’ve noted, were quite good, and I identified with characters and enjoyed the settings and plots. Short stories are tricky, because you don’t have pages and pages to set scenes; you have to cast them in a place where the reader can fill in the gaps for themselves satisfactorily, and the stories I named here–and a couple of the others–do that very well. A few of the stories really left me scratching my head, though, and it was a serious downer for the collection, for this reader at least. If you’re interested in learning more about the experiences and struggles of asexuality, I do recommend this book, as you’ll learn a fair bit from the better stories in the group. If you’re an asexual looking for a good collection of romances to enjoy, then some of these will fit the bill, certainly–but others just will leave you high and dry.  I was very encouraged seeing this collection in my to-read pile, but I would have liked a more solid set of stories.  The Heart of Aces is a mixed bag, so buyer beware.

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