Steelwhisper

The author added quite a number of topic-tags to this work at the vendor site where I got it (Smashwords), and none of them were falsely attributed. I should have considered the implications of all those topic-tags being attached to a ca. 9000 word short more than I did. To treat all of those topics well, with interesting characters and as part of a satisfying plot, in such a short text, would seem to outline the boundaries of what I would call 'quite a challenge'. In my opinion, the author was not entirely succesful in dealing with this challenge.

The language is British English, and edited to a high standard.

The author's descriptive narrative is very good. The words flow. In many places, with just a few sentences or a few well chosen words, an atmosphere is created. It's done so well, that as you read the words, you can smell and feel the air, hear the sounds and see the colours.
The world building is done well. From the first paragraphs already you get a feel for the setting.
The description of the characters is good. The combination of rough keyword sketches plus the actions they perform and the words they speak gives the reader a good idea of who they are.

The three chapters of the text seem to present three episodes.
1) the brothel with the virgin deflowering
2) the medical play
3) the may - december sex
And here lies the problem of this short for me. The three episodes are just that: loose episodes, rather than three scenes in a larger tale. Tension is present in each of the episodes, but there does not seem to be a tension arc spanning the whole tale.

The one thing that seems to have been intended to draw all parts of the tale together, is the sexual enjoyment that the main character experiences with the old man at the end of the tale for the first time ever in her 'career' as a prostitute.
However, exactly this element in the story did not come across as was probably intended.
Neither with the virgin, nor with the old man, did the text provide enough clues to indicate that a genuine orgasmic feeling was in fact happening or why, how, when it happened. The decision, for example, that the brothel keeper made for the further training of the deflowered virgin seemed to be based on the man's telling her that it was a good idea, not on anything that was understandable from the text itself.
In that sense, the text suffers from "telling not showing" syndrome, and that's a pity, because in my opinion "showing not telling" is preferable as it makes me feel more connected with the plot events.

The entire story was written from the main character's first person point of view. This worked well in general, but seemed to present a problem where the virgin deflowering scene was concerned. The remark that "She was still tight, her flesh very taut around his erection." would seem to be an impossible observation for the main character to make, as it is another person experiencing these feelings.
Likewise, the feelings of the old man in the last chapter, are difficult to grasp, as we only see them from the main character's perspective and she's as clueless as the rest of us.
It made me wonder if an allknowing story teller would not have been a better choice for the tale.

The impression the text left after reading was that of a mental exploration: What if...? What would a day in the life of ... look like? Taken that way the text was successful. As a story, which would need the strong presence of a plot in my view, the text was rather less successful.

All in all, for the reasons sketched above, I found this short not as enjoyable as I would have hoped.… (more)