Posted by Lancelot Knight on 23rd Apr 2010

A dual review...
Outer Island by Lizbeth Dusseau
Sinner's Fire: The Punishing of Rachel by Reese Gabriel
Reviewed by Lancelot Knight, Copyright (c) 2005

These two novels provide a dazzling example of point and counterpoint in novel writing. Although the books were written about ten years apart, they provide a hauntingly similar view of the future. These are cautionary tales, suggesting that our sexual freedoms are in as much danger as any of our other personal freedoms.

Outer Island takes place in a place called New Victoria, where sexuality is harshly repressed. Delila Armand is sentenced to be whipped and sent to prison for having an extra-marital affair. Sent to a distant Siberia-like locale she is recruited by Degas, who, it turns out, is running a high-priced brothel. There Delila discovers the many facets of her sexuality, including her craving for “discipline”.

In Sinner’s Fire the locale is called New Christendom. The state is run by religious zealots, deeply suspicious of any natural sexuality. Rachel Taylor has a husband who is unsatisfying, repressed and conformist. Rachel, too, is having an adulterous affair.

Both women are dissatisfied under the repressive regimes under which they are forced to live. Both women seek release for their pent-up sexuality and discover their submissive sides with men other than their husbands. Both women find themselves attracted to men who dominate them. In Delila’s case it is Degas, the owner of the brothel in which she works; in the case of Rachel it is the sadistic General Lazarus, into whose hands she falls. Both women ultimately find liberation through the freeing of their sexuality.

Both novels also suggest that such state-endorsed repression is doomed to failure, that hypocrisy is bound to be the result if our natural sex drives are ignored or, worse, stifled.

The climaxes of these two stories move in different directions; yet both books are thoughtful, entertaining, well-told tales, which give the reader many moments of erotic pleasure and excitement, and much to reflect upon after the tale is told.