Dreamspinner Presents http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5863
Blurb
Joon, Tae, and Sangsun belong together, but a relationship will mean defying tradition and coming out of the closet.
College friends Joon, Tae, and Sangsun parted ways after an aborted attempt at a threesome. Ten years later, life has carried them down very different paths, but Joon misses his friends and decides to invite them to his home in South Korea for Christmas. He believes they belong together, but convincing the others to defy tradition and try again will take faith, hope, and a lot of talking—especially since all three of them are still in the closet.
Review
The blurb pretty much says it all. When they were young, the three men were close and attempted to form a threesome, but Sangsun got scared and ran. In the 10 years since then, Joon has remained a virgin, Sangsun has been only with women and Tae has been with men, but only very casually.
Joon decides he needs the threesome to feel complete, so he calls the other two and invites them for Christmas. With only a little bit of talking (the whole story is only 20 pages) he convinces them to give up their very traditional and closeted lives to be together in a threesome/triad relationship, and they have sex.
**
I know that you have to judge short stories with a different standard than a novella or novel, but there are ways to move a story forward that makes sense even with only a few words or pages. This story does not do that. One second they’re all discussing their lives and bemoaning the fact that their traditional Korean lifestyles do not mesh at all with being gay, much less being in a threesome, the next they’re getting naked.
This felt like a long fantasy rather than a developed short story and it just didn’t feel authentic or remotely plausible. The “Christmas” part of the story also felt forced and again emphasized that this was a fantasy disguised as a holiday short story.
I give it a 2.5 of 5 hearts
