Anonymous (68)

This is the fifth book in the Cremorne series of erotic novels, supposedly drawn from an Edwardian work called The Cremorne Chronicles. Although some of the later ones demonstrate that there is no shortage of stories that are capable of entertaining within the confines of the original Cremorne scenario, this one, for me, fails to deliver as well as some of the others. True, it is not short of episodes relating amorous encounters between its young subject, Sophie Starr, and her young friends, show more both male and female, but the ‘storyline’ that connects these is in places lamentably weak. The fairly common tendency of this genre to be repetitive in its ringing of the changes of who does what to whom and how frequently is just too much in evidence for this to be a great example of the genre. That said, it is undeniably erotic, and as these books are not usually bought for their literary qualities, it can be said to achieve its objective reasonably well. show less

Headline’s ‘Cremorne’ series of M/F erotic books are similar to the same publisher’s ‘Eros’ series, as each series has a fairly uniform style, within which each book rings changes of plot and (many of the) characters. Both series are very well written, and contain just enough plot to sustain the reader in his search for the particular kind of stimulus that this genre provides. The Cremorne works tend to have rather less plot, but as they are set in the Edwardian era (even to the show more extent of including the eponymous monarch of the era as a character!) there are many more libidinous individuals, occupying a much wider range of occupations, and encountered in a broader palette of potentially erotic situations, this hardly signifies. The ‘lost instrument’ of this book – a silver, cigar-shaped object whose use will be obvious to aficionados of the genre – is therefore barely significant compared with the welter of situations in which priapic aristocratic males find it necessary to become unclothed in the company of a steady supply of hot-blooded women, from all walks of life, who are equally inclined to disport themselves in the amorous arts. Entertaining, and lives up to the promise of its cover. show less