Bernice
Summerfield 7.4:
Summer of
Love
written by
Simon Guerrier
I guess it
was only a matter of time before someone wrote an actual, honest to
goodness sex comedy for Bernice Summerfield. Bernice has returned to
the Braxiatel Collection which has been falling apart recently
(presumably in the novels which I never followed and would explain
the introduction of Doggles, a character I'd never heard of before).
For some reason people are shagging like rabbits and Ben Tarrant,
former art thief and current head of the Collection, is wandering the
grounds naked reprimanding students.
The
punchline to it all is actually brilliant: this is a literal sex
pollen story. I kid you not, an actual canonical sex pollen story
which has both magnificent comedy potential and some very, very
serious disadvantages where the issue of consent is concerned. The
script absolutely leans into both aspects of the classic fan fiction
trope and I'm not sure it entirely works but here we go.
On the plus
side there's plenty of comedy to be had from Bernice watching the
Collection descending slowly towards all-out gangbang whilst Jason is
off-world. As she explains herself, she and Jason are hardly
monogamous (“monogamous when they can be” is the phrase she uses)
but she's obviously not in the mood to play away at this stage of
their relationship. Unfortunately she has advances from Doggles,
Adrian, Joseph the robot porter, the gaseous groundskeeper Haas (who
I swear used to be an Ice Warrior, probably another event from the
novels I missed), various students and even Bev to contend with.
On the down
side, of course, are the consent issues which range from the merely
bad (Doggles acting like a kicked puppy at his thwarted advances) to
the downright repugnant (Haas engaging Bernice in an activity without
telling her it'll give him a thrill). Its sort of impossible to do a
sex pollen story without addressing this, at least if you want it to
be anything other than masturbation material on a fan fiction site,
but I'm not sure that Guerrier sticks the landing. I'm rather
reminded of some of the more... unsavoury implications of his
Graceless series but a lot
milder.
Like,
a lot milder.
The
main joy of the story, aside from Bernice's constant need for a cold
shower, is getting to hear Bev Tarrant lording it over the Collection
as its nudist master which turns out to be less about sexual
inhibition and more about treaty negotiations with a series of local
worlds who are in real danger of invading the Collection now Brax is
gone. I do wish this series spent a little more time at the
Collection as I've always liked the cast, especially Adrian and Bev
who appear to now be a couple which makes sense of why they're always
mentioned together by Peter in the Legion-era box sets.
Next
stop, according to the cliffhanger, is a Bernice and Jason story as
they go searching for “advice” on how to keep the Collection
safe. For some reason this involves the Oracle of Delphi. You've got
to love anthology series.
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